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146-501: A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, and ends in a punch line , whereby the humorous element of the story is revealed; this can be done using a pun or other type of word play , irony or sarcasm , logical incompatibility, hyperbole , or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers

292-627: A mystical experience . The benign-violation theory, endorsed by Peter McGraw , attempts to explain humour's existence. The theory says "humour only occurs when something seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening, but simultaneously seems okay, acceptable or safe." Humour can be used as a method to easily engage in social interaction by taking away that awkward, uncomfortable, or uneasy feeling of social interactions. Others believe that "the appropriate use of humour can facilitate social interactions". Some claim that humour should not be explained. Author E. B. White once said, "Humor can be dissected as

438-641: A bar ), absurd characters ( wind-up dolls ), or logical mechanisms which generate the humour ( knock-knock jokes ). A joke can be reused in different joke cycles; an example of this is the same Head & Shoulders joke refitted to the tragedies of Vic Morrow , Admiral Mountbatten and the crew of the Challenger space shuttle . These cycles seem to appear spontaneously, spread rapidly across countries and borders only to dissipate after some time. Folklorists and others have studied individual joke cycles in an attempt to understand their function and significance within

584-538: A bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish." The tale of the three ox drivers from Adab completes the three known oldest jokes in the world. This is a comic triple dating back to 1200 BC Adab . It concerns three men seeking justice from a king on the matter of ownership over a newborn calf, for whose birth they all consider themselves to be partially responsible. The king seeks advice from

730-447: A certain character. Some people are naturally better performers than others; however, anyone can tell a joke because the comic trigger is contained in the narrative text and punchline. A joke poorly told is still funny, unless errors or omissions make the intended relationship between the narrative and the punchline unintelligible. The punchline is intended to make the audience laugh. A linguistic interpretation of this punchline/response

876-539: A collection of 265 jokes written in crude ancient Greek dating to the fourth or fifth century AD. The author of the collection is obscure and a number of different authors are attributed to it, including "Hierokles and Philagros the grammatikos ", just "Hierokles", or, in the Suda , "Philistion". British classicist Mary Beard states that the Philogelos may have been intended as a jokester's handbook of quips to say on

1022-489: A compressed and formulaic story, being told with no substantiating details, and placing an unlikely combination of characters into an unlikely setting and involving them in an unrealistic plot, is the start of a joke, and the story that follows is not meant to be taken at face value (i.e. it is non-bona-fide communication). The framing itself invokes a play mode; if the audience is unable or unwilling to move into play, then nothing will seem funny. Following its linguistic framing

1168-501: A core network of cortical and subcortical structures, including temporo-occipito-parietal areas involved in detecting and resolving incongruity (mismatch between expected and presented stimuli); and the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic system and the amygdala , key structures for reward and salience processing." Humour can be verbal, visual, or physical. Non-verbal forms of communication–for example, music or visual art–can also be humorous. Rowan Atkinson explains in his lecture in

1314-476: A dismissal, as in "this is no joking matter" or "this is no time for jokes". The performance frame serves to label joke-telling as a culturally marked form of communication. Both the performer and audience understand it to be set apart from the "real" world. "An elephant walks into a bar…"; a person sufficiently familiar with both the English language and the way jokes are told automatically understands that such

1460-509: A folklore example [such as jokes] might emerge as dominant in a specific situation or for a particular inquiry. It has proven difficult to organise all different elements of a joke into a multi-dimensional classification system which could be of real value in the study and evaluation of this (primarily oral) complex narrative form. The General Theory of Verbal Humour or GTVH, developed by the linguists Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo , attempts to do exactly this. This classification system

1606-549: A form of entertainment all over the world, whether in the courts of the Western kings or the villages of the Far East. Both a social etiquette and a certain intelligence can be displayed through forms of wit and sarcasm . Eighteenth-century German author Georg Lichtenberg said that "the more you know humour, the more you become demanding in fineness." Western humour theory begins with Plato , who attributed to Socrates (as

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1752-450: A frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." Counter to this argument, protests against "offensive" cartoons invite the dissection of humour or its lack by aggrieved individuals and communities. This process of dissecting humour does not necessarily banish a sense of humour but directs attention towards its politics and assumed universality. Arthur Schopenhauer lamented

1898-510: A functional multi-dimensional label for any joke, and indeed any verbal humour. Many academic disciplines lay claim to the study of jokes (and other forms of humour) as within their purview. Fortunately, there are enough jokes, good, bad and worse, to go around. The studies of jokes from each of the interested disciplines bring to mind the tale of the blind men and an elephant where the observations, although accurate reflections of their own competent methodological inquiry, frequently fail to grasp

2044-405: A higher pitch than the speech preceding it, or a dramatic pause before the punchline is delivered. In laboratory settings, however, none of these changes are employed at a statistically significant level in the production of humorous narratives . Rather, the pitch and loudness of the punchline are comparable to those of the ending of any narrative, humorous or not. In order to better elucidate

2190-406: A how-to guide on creating your own index. Several difficulties have been identified with these systems of identifying oral narratives according to either tale types or story elements. A first major problem is their hierarchical organisation; one element of the narrative is selected as the major element, while all other parts are arrayed subordinate to this. A second problem with these systems is that

2336-424: A joke. "Have you heard the one…", "Reminds me of a joke I heard…", "So, a lawyer and a doctor…"; these conversational markers are just a few examples of linguistic frames used to start a joke. Regardless of the frame used, it creates a social space and clear boundaries around the narrative which follows. Audience response to this initial frame can be acknowledgement and anticipation of the joke to follow. It can also be

2482-472: A lighter context, thus ultimately reducing anxiety and allowing more happy, positive emotions to surface. Additionally, humour may be used as a tool to mitigate the authoritative tone by managers when giving directives to subordinates. Managers may use self-deprecating humour as a way to be perceived as more human and "real" by their employees. The attachment to the notion of fun by contemporary companies has resulted in workplace management coming to recognise

2628-403: A local café, joking with the waitresses was used to ascertain sexual availability for the evening. Different types of jokes, going from general to topical into explicitly sexual humour signalled openness on the part of the waitress for a connection. This study describes how jokes and joking are used to communicate much more than just good humour. That is a single example of the function of joking in

2774-468: A more mature audience. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. The prevailing types of theories attempting to account for the existence of humour include psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider humour-induced behaviour to be very healthy; spiritual theories, which may, for instance, consider humour to be a "gift from God"; and theories which consider humour to be an unexplainable mystery, very much like

2920-419: A much more diffuse discussion. Since the publication of Freud's study, psychologists have continued to explore humour and jokes in their quest to explain, predict and control an individual's "sense of humour". Why do people laugh? Why do people find something funny? Can jokes predict character, or vice versa, can character predict the jokes an individual laughs at? What is a "sense of humour"? A current review of

3066-526: A one-to-one association. While most previous theories assumed the connection between the two almost to the point of them being synonymous, psychology has been able to scientifically and empirically investigate the supposed connection, its implications, and significance. In 2009, Diana Szameitat conducted a study to examine the differentiation of emotions in laughter. They hired actors and told them to laugh with one of four different emotional associations by using auto-induction, where they would focus exclusively on

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3212-471: A priestess on how to rule the case, and she suggests a series of events involving the men's households and wives. The final portion of the story (which included the punch line ), has not survived intact, though legible fragments suggest it was bawdy in nature. Jokes can be notoriously difficult to translate from language to language; particularly puns , which depend on specific words and not just on their meanings. For instance, Julius Caesar once sold land at

3358-543: A psychologist, independently expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution". He explains that "incongruity alone is insufficient to account for the structure of humour. [...] Within this framework, humour appreciation is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity." Resolution generates laughter. There are many folk theories of how people deliver punchlines, such as punchlines being louder and at

3504-797: A pun or joke)—and thus are considered to have a sense of humour . The hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the behaviour to be inexplicable, strange, or even irrational. Though ultimately decided by subjective personal taste , the extent to which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location , culture, maturity , level of education, intelligence and context . For example, young children may favour slapstick such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons such as Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes , whose physical nature makes it accessible to them. By contrast, more sophisticated forms of humour such as satire require an understanding of its social meaning and context, and thus tend to appeal to

3650-415: A re-evaluation of social spaces and social groups. They are no longer only defined by physical presence and locality, they also exist in the connectivity in cyberspace. "The computer networks appear to make possible communities that, although physically dispersed, display attributes of the direct, unconstrained, unofficial exchanges folklorists typically concern themselves with". This is particularly evident in

3796-429: A result. Others examined results of this movement while focusing around the science of happiness—concerned with mental health , motivation , community building and national well-being—and drew attention to the ability to achieve "flow" through playfulness and stimulate "outside the box" thinking. Parallel to this movement is the " positive " scholarship that has emerged in psychology which seeks to empirically theorise

3942-403: A romantic relationship increases. Recent research suggests expressions of humour in relation to physical attractiveness are two major factors in the desire for future interaction. Women regard physical attractiveness less highly compared to men when it came to dating, a serious relationship, and sexual intercourse. However, women rate humorous men more desirable than nonhumorous individuals for

4088-473: A search on the internet provides a plethora of titles available for purchase. They can be read alone for solitary entertainment, or used to stock up on new jokes to entertain friends. Some people try to find a deeper meaning in jokes, as in "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes". However a deeper meaning is not necessary to appreciate their inherent entertainment value. Magazines frequently use jokes and cartoons as filler for

4234-618: A semi-historical dialogue character) in the Philebus (p. 49b) the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed. Later, in Greek philosophy, Aristotle , in the Poetics (1449a, pp. 34–35), suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour. In ancient Sanskrit drama , Bharata Muni 's Natya Shastra defined humour ( hāsyam ) as one of

4380-403: A sense of satisfaction in their lives. Through the ageing process many changes will occur, such as losing the right to drive a car. This can cause a decrease in satisfaction in the lives of the individual. Humour helps to alleviate this decrease of satisfaction by allowing the humour to release stress and anxiety caused by changes in the individuals life. Laughing and humour can be a substitute for

4526-468: A serious relationship or marriage, but only when these men were physically attractive. Furthermore, humorous people are perceived by others to be more cheerful but less intellectual than nonhumorous people. Self-deprecating humour has been found to increase one's desirability and physical attractiveness to others for committed relationships. The results of a study conducted by McMaster University suggest humour can positively affect one's desirability for

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4672-414: A single aspect of one subset of jokes. A sampling of just a few of these specialised indices have been listed under other motif indices . Here one can select an index for medieval Spanish folk narratives, another index for linguistic verbal jokes, and a third one for sexual humour. To assist the researcher with this increasingly confusing situation, there are also multiple bibliographies of indices as well as

4818-521: A social setting, but there are others. Sometimes jokes are used simply to get to know someone better. What makes them laugh, what do they find funny? Jokes concerning politics, religion or sexual topics can be used effectively to gauge the attitude of the audience to any one of these topics. They can also be used as a marker of group identity, signalling either inclusion or exclusion for the group. Among pre-adolescents, "dirty" jokes allow them to share information about their changing bodies. And sometimes joking

4964-493: A source of humour—the shaggy dog story is an example of an anti-joke ; although presented as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place and character, rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to deliver a punchline. Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is in the form of a joke. Some humorous forms which are not verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational humour, practical jokes , slapstick and anecdotes. Identified as one of

5110-572: A specific relationship partner, but this effect is only most likely to occur when men use humour and are evaluated by women. No evidence was found to suggest men prefer women with a sense of humour as partners, nor women preferring other women with a sense of humour as potential partners. When women were given the forced-choice design in the study, they chose funny men as potential relationship partners even though they rated them as being less honest and intelligent. Post-Hoc analysis showed no relationship between humour quality and favourable judgments. It

5256-435: A study that showed the distracting nature of a joke on bereaved individuals. Subjects were presented with a wide range of negative pictures and sentences. Their findings showed that humorous therapy attenuated the negative emotions elicited after negative pictures and sentences were presented. In addition, the humour therapy was more effective in reducing negative affect as the degree of affect increased in intensity. Humour

5402-554: A style called AAB, (referred to as an A-A-A' triad by Yves Lavandier in Writing Drama ) where a joke is made up of a set of three, the first two of which share some common attribute, and the third represents a deviation from that attribute. Under these conditions, the third item in the set—the B—is the punchline. Rozin gives the following example as exemplifying this structure: A Some men are about to be executed. The guard brings

5548-600: A supplement for cardiovascular exercise and might increase muscle tone. However an early study by Paskind J. showed that laughter can lead to a decrease in skeletal muscle tone because the short intense muscle contractions caused by laughter are followed by longer periods of muscle relaxation. The cardiovascular benefits of laughter also seem to be just a figment of imagination as a study that was designed to test oxygen saturation levels produced by laughter, showed that even though laughter creates sporadic episodes of deep breathing, oxygen saturation levels are not affected. As humour

5694-488: A surprisingly cheap price to his lover Servilia , who was rumoured to be prostituting her daughter Tertia to Caesar in order to keep his favour. Cicero remarked that " conparavit Servilia hunc fundum tertia deducta." The punny phrase, "tertia deducta", can be translated as "with one-third off (in price)", or "with Tertia putting out." The earliest extant joke book is the Philogelos (Greek for The Laughter-Lover ),

5840-741: A time machine, as it were, where we can observe what happens in the period before the risible moment, when attempts at humour are unsuccessful Access to archived message boards also enables us to track the development of a single joke thread in the context of a more complicated virtual conversation. A joke cycle is a collection of jokes about a single target or situation which displays consistent narrative structure and type of humour. Some well-known cycles are elephant jokes using nonsense humour, dead baby jokes incorporating black humour, and light bulb jokes , which describe all kinds of operational stupidity. Joke cycles can centre on ethnic groups, professions ( viola jokes ), catastrophes, settings ( …walks into

5986-583: A variety of negative as well as positive emotions. However, if humour is limited to positive emotions and things which cause positive affect, it must be delimited from laughter and their relationship should be further defined. Adaptive Humour use has shown to be effective for increasing resilience in dealing with distress and also effective in buffering against or undoing negative affects. In contrast, maladaptive humour use can magnify potential negative effects. Madelijn Strick, Rob Holland, Rick van Baaren, and Ad van Knippenberg (2009) of Radboud University conducted

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6132-490: Is a strong correlation through constant humour in ageing and better health in the individuals. Another way that research indicates that humour helps with the ageing process, is through helping the individual to create and maintain strong social relationship during transitory periods in their lives. One such example is when people are moved into nursing homes or other facilities of care. With this transition certain social interactions with friend and family may be limited forcing

6278-441: Is able to loosen the grip of negative emotions on people's thinking. A distancing of thought leads to a distancing of the unilateral responses people often have to negative arousal. In parallel with the distancing role plays in coping with distress, it supports the broaden and build theory that positive emotions lead to increased multilateral cognitive pathway and social resource building. Humour has been shown to improve and help

6424-600: Is also a jest book ascribed to William Shakespeare , the contents of which appear to both inform and borrow from his plays. All of these early jestbooks corroborate both the rise in the literacy of the European populations and the general quest for leisure activities during the Renaissance in Europe. The practice of printers using jokes and cartoons as page fillers was also widely used in the broadsides and chapbooks of

6570-582: Is an ancient Sumerian proverb from 1900 BC containing toilet humour : "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." Its records were dated to the Old Babylonian period and the joke may go as far back as 2300 BC. The second oldest joke found, discovered on the Westcar Papyrus and believed to be about Sneferu , was from Ancient Egypt c.  1600 BC : "How do you entertain

6716-426: Is described as "1706. Grinning made easy; or, Funny Dick's unrivalled collection of curious, comical, odd, droll, humorous, witty, whimsical, laughable, and eccentric jests, jokes, bulls, epigrams, &c. With many other descriptions of wit and humour." These cheap publications, ephemera intended for mass distribution, were read alone, read aloud, posted and discarded. There are many types of joke books in print today;

6862-450: Is elucidated by Victor Raskin in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour . Humour is evoked when a trigger contained in the punchline causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding of the story from the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing interpretation. "The punchline is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary to interpret [re-interpret]

7008-448: Is generally known that humour contributes to higher subjective wellbeing (both physical and psychological). Previous research on humour and psychological well-being show that humour is in fact a major factor in achieving, and sustaining, higher psychological wellbeing. This hypothesis is known as general facilitative hypothesis for humour. That is, positive humour leads to positive health. Not all contemporary research, however, supports

7154-456: Is just simple entertainment for a group of friends. The context of joking in turn leads to a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who take part in institutionalised banter and joking. These relationships can be either one-way or a mutual back and forth between partners. The joking relationship is defined as a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism. The behaviour

7300-435: Is limited to the computer screen and for the most part solitary. While preserving the text of a joke, both context and variants are lost in internet joking; for the most part, emailed jokes are passed along verbatim. The framing of the joke frequently occurs in the subject line: "RE: laugh for the day" or something similar. The forward of an email joke can increase the number of recipients exponentially. Internet joking forces

7446-424: Is no obligation to reproduce the text verbatim, as in the case of poetry. It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners, the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be

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7592-481: Is of negative characteristics. Humour is often used to make light of difficult or stressful situations and to brighten up a social atmosphere in general. It is regarded by many as an enjoyable and positive experience, so it would be reasonable to assume that it might have some positive physiological effects on the body. A study designed to test the positive physiological effects of humour, the relationship between being exposed to humour and pain tolerance in particular,

7738-451: Is often used to ease tension, it might make sense that the same would be true for anxiety. A study by Yovetich N, Dale A, Hudak M. was designed to test the effects humour might have on relieving anxiety. The study subject were told that they would be given to an electric shock after a certain period of time. One group was exposed to humorous content, while the other was not. The anxiety levels were measured through self-report measures as well as

7884-902: Is self-defeating and aggressive humour. Each of these styles can have a different impact on psychological and individuals' overall subjective wellbeing. In the study on humour and psychological well-being, research has concluded that high levels of adaptive type humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) is associated with better self-esteem, positive affect, greater self-competency, as well as anxiety control and social interactions. All of which are constituents of psychological wellbeing. Additionally, adaptive humour styles may enable people to preserve their sense of wellbeing despite psychological problems. In contrast, maladaptive humour types (aggressive and self-defeating) are associated with poorer overall psychological wellbeing, emphasis on higher levels of anxiety and depression. Therefore, humour may have detrimental effects on psychological wellbeing, only if that humour

8030-486: Is such that in any other social context it would express and arouse hostility; but it is not meant seriously and must not be taken seriously. There is a pretence of hostility along with a real friendliness. To put it in another way, the relationship is one of permitted disrespect. Joking relationships were first described by anthropologists within kinship groups in Africa. But they have since been identified in cultures around

8176-582: Is the Thompson Motif Index , which separates tales into their individual story elements . This system enables jokes to be classified according to individual motifs included in the narrative: actors, items and incidents. It does not provide a system to classify the text by more than one element at a time while at the same time making it theoretically possible to classify the same text under multiple motifs. The Thompson Motif Index has spawned further specialised motif indices, each of which focuses on

8322-448: Is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement . The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks , which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours ( Latin : humor , "body fluid"), controlled human health and emotion. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. Most people are able to experience humour—be amused, smile or laugh at something funny (such as

8468-421: Is the time when the importance of parents fades into the background and social interaction with peers becomes increasingly important. Conflict is inherent in these interactions. The use of humour plays an important role in conflict resolution and ultimately in school success and psychological adjustment. The use of humour that is socially acceptable leads to a lower likelihood of being a victim of bullying, whereas

8614-497: Is therefore decidedly relevant in organisational contexts, such as the workplace. The significant role that laughter and fun play in organisational life has been seen as a sociological phenomenon and has increasingly been recognised as also creating a sense of involvement and possible comradery among workers. Sharing humour at work not only offers a relief from boredom, but can also build relationships, improve camaraderie between colleagues and create positive affect . Humour in

8760-517: Is to empirically test both the six autonomous classification types (KRs) and the hierarchical ordering of these KRs. Advancement in this direction would be a win-win for both fields of study; linguistics would have empirical verification of this multi-dimensional classification system for jokes, and psychology would have a standardised joke classification with which they could develop verifiably comparable measurement tools. Humour Humour ( Commonwealth English ) or humor ( American English )

8906-573: The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is one of several tools used to identify any one of multiple types of smiles. Or the laugh can be measured to calculate the funniness response of an individual; multiple types of laughter have been identified. It must be stressed here that both smiles and laughter are not always a response to something funny. In trying to develop a measurement tool, most systems use "jokes and cartoons" as their test materials. However, because no two tools use

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9052-606: The ageing process in three areas. The areas are improving physical health, improving social communications, and helping to achieve a sense of satisfaction in life. Studies have shown that constant humour in the ageing process gives health benefits to individuals. Such benefits as higher self-esteem , lower levels of depression, anxiety , and perceived stress , and a more positive self-concept as well as other health benefits which have been recorded and acknowledged through various studies. Even patients with specific diseases have shown improvement with ageing using humour. Overall there

9198-407: The humorist , an audience, and the subject matter of the humour. The two transformations associated with this particular model involves the subject matter of the humour, and the change in the audience's perception of the humorous person, therefore establishing a relationship between the humorous speaker and the audience. The social transformation model views humour as adaptive because it communicates

9344-591: The printing revolution spread across Europe following the development of the movable type printing press . This was coupled with the growth of literacy in all social classes. Printers turned out Jestbooks along with Bibles to meet both lowbrow and highbrow interests of the populace. One early anthology of jokes was the Facetiae by the Italian Poggio Bracciolini , first published in 1470. The popularity of this jest book can be measured on

9490-409: The undoing hypothesis , have shown several positive outcomes of humour as an underlying positive trait in amusement and playfulness. Several studies have shown that positive emotions can restore autonomic quiescence after negative affect. For example, Frederickson and Levinson showed that individuals who expressed Duchenne smiles during the negative arousal of a sad and troubling event recovered from

9636-515: The "art of reprehension" and made no reference to light and cheerful events or troublesome beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century , the term comedy thus gained a new meaning in Medieval literature . Mento star Lord Flea , stated in a 1957 interview that he thought that: " West Indians have the best sense of humour in

9782-498: The 19th century ( Brothers Grimm et al.), folklorists and anthropologists of the time needed a system to organise these items. The Aarne–Thompson classification system was first published in 1910 by Antti Aarne , and later expanded by Stith Thompson to become the most renowned classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. Its final section addresses anecdotes and jokes , listing traditional humorous tales ordered by their protagonist; "This section of

9928-468: The 19th century and earlier. With the increase in literacy in the general population and the growth of the printing industry, these publications were the most common forms of printed material between the 16th and 19th centuries throughout Europe and North America. Along with reports of events, executions, ballads and verse, they also contained jokes. Only one of many broadsides archived in the Harvard library

10074-533: The 20th century means that obscene, sexual and scatological elements were regularly ignored in many of the indices. The folklorist Robert Georges has summed up the concerns with these existing classification systems: …Yet what the multiplicity and variety of sets and subsets reveal is that folklore [jokes] not only takes many forms, but that it is also multifaceted, with purpose, use, structure, content, style, and function all being relevant and important. Any one or combination of these multiple and varied aspects of

10220-528: The Challenger joke cycle documents a change in the type of humour circulated following the disaster, from February to March 1986. "It shows that the jokes appeared in distinct 'waves', the first responding to the disaster with clever wordplay and the second playing with grim and troubling images associated with the event…The primary social function of disaster jokes appears to be to provide closure to an event that provoked communal grieving, by signalling that it

10366-496: The Civil Rights Era or as an "image of something large and wild abroad in the land captur[ing] the sense of counterculture" of the sixties. These interpretations strive for a cultural understanding of the themes of these jokes which go beyond the simple collection and documentation undertaken previously by folklorists and ethnologists. As folktales and other types of oral literature became collectables throughout Europe in

10512-486: The English tell jokes about the Irish. In a review of Davies' theories it is said that "For Davies, [ethnic] jokes are more about how joke tellers imagine themselves than about how they imagine those others who serve as their putative targets…The jokes thus serve to center one in the world – to remind people of their place and to reassure them that they are in it." A third category of joke cycles identifies absurd characters as

10658-539: The Index is essentially a classification of the older European jests, or merry tales – humorous stories characterized by short, fairly simple plots. …" Due to its focus on older tale types and obsolete actors (e.g., numbskull), the Aarne–Thompson Index does not provide much help in identifying and classifying the modern joke. A more granular classification system used widely by folklorists and cultural anthropologists

10804-615: The Party-state's approach towards humour was generally repressive. Social liberalisation in the 1980s, commercialisation of the cultural market in the 1990s, and the advent of the internet have each—despite an invasive state-sponsored censorship apparatus—enabled new forms of humour to flourish in China in recent decades. The social transformation model of humour predicts that specific characteristics, such as physical attractiveness, interact with humour. This model involves linkages between

10950-496: The State-Trait-Cheerfulness-Inventory. The instructions for the three groups were as follows: the cheerfulness group were told to get excited about the movie without laughing or smiling, the exhilaration group was told to laugh and smile excessively, exaggerating their natural reactions, the humour production group was told to make humorous comments about the video clip as they watched. To ensure that

11096-508: The Unconscious Freud describes the social nature of humour and illustrates his text with many examples of contemporary Viennese jokes. His work is particularly noteworthy in this context because Freud distinguishes in his writings between jokes, humour and the comic. These are distinctions which become easily blurred in many subsequent studies where everything funny tends to be gathered under the umbrella term of "humour", making for

11242-464: The ability for colleagues to be able to laugh during work, through banter or other, promotes harmony and a sense of cohesiveness. Humour may also be used to offset negative feelings about a workplace task or to mitigate the use of profanity, or other coping strategies, that may not be otherwise tolerated. Not only can humour in the workplace assist with defusing negative emotions, but it may also be used as an outlet to discuss personal painful events, in

11388-457: The beast in its entirety. This attests to the joke as a traditional narrative form which is indeed complex, concise and complete in and of itself. It requires a "multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary field of inquiry" to truly appreciate these nuggets of cultural insight. Sigmund Freud was one of the first modern scholars to recognise jokes as an important object of investigation. In his 1905 study Jokes and their Relation to

11534-494: The beginning of the 20th century, the actual term "punch line" is first documented in the 1910s; the Merriam-Webster dictionary pegs the first use in 1916. A linguistic interpretation of the mechanics of the punch line response is posited by Victor Raskin in his script-based semantic theory of humor . Humor is evoked when a trigger, contained in the punch line, causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding of

11680-418: The butt of the joke. Another type of anti-joke is the nonsense joke, defined as having "a surprising or incongruous punch line", which provides either no resolution at all or only a partial, unsatisfactory resolution. One example of this is the no soap radio punch line: "Two elephants were taking a bath. One said, 'Please pass the soap.' The other replied, 'No soap, radio.'" Here the anticipated resolution to

11826-460: The butt: for example the grape, the dead baby or the elephant. Beginning in the 1960s, social and cultural interpretations of these joke cycles, spearheaded by the folklorist Alan Dundes , began to appear in academic journals. Dead baby jokes are posited to reflect societal changes and guilt caused by widespread use of contraception and abortion beginning in the 1960s. Elephant jokes have been interpreted variously as stand-ins for American blacks during

11972-775: The centuries. Local performing arts, storytelling, vernacular fiction, and poetry offer a wide variety of humorous styles and sensibilities. Famous Chinese humourists include the ancient jesters Chunyu Kun and Dongfang Shuo ; writers of the Ming and Qing dynasties such as Feng Menglong , Li Yu, and Wu Jingzi ; and modern comic writers such as Lu Xun , Lin Yutang , Lao She , Qian Zhongshu , Wang Xiaobo , and Wang Shuo , and performers such as Ge You , Guo Degang , and Zhou Libo . Modern Chinese humour has been heavily influenced not only by indigenous traditions, but also by foreign humor, circulated via print culture, cinema, television, and

12118-405: The context of the joking. Who is telling what jokes to whom? And why is he telling them when? The context of the joke-telling in turn leads into a study of joking relationships , a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who engage in institutionalised banter and joking. Framing is done with a (frequently formulaic) expression which keys the audience in to expect

12264-553: The core character strengths of an individual. As such, it could be a good predictor of life satisfaction. For psychologists, it would be useful to measure both how much of this strength an individual has and how it can be measurably increased. A 2007 survey of existing tools to measure humour identified more than 60 psychological measurement instruments. These measurement tools use many different approaches to quantify humour along with its related states and traits. There are tools to measure an individual's physical response by their smile ;

12410-509: The culture. Joke cycles circulated in the recent past include: As with the 9/11 disaster discussed above, cycles attach themselves to celebrities or national catastrophes such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales , the death of Michael Jackson , and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster . These cycles arise regularly as a response to terrible unexpected events which command the national news. An in-depth analysis of

12556-537: The decrease in satisfaction by allowing individuals to feel better about their situations by alleviating the stress. This, in turn, can help them to maintain a sense of satisfaction towards their new and changing life style. In an article published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience , it is reported that a study's results indicate that humour is rooted in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex . The study states, in part: "Humour seems to engage

12702-402: The definition: A joke is a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the funniness culminates in the final sentence, called the punchline… In fact, the main condition is that the tension should reach its highest level at the very end. No continuation relieving the tension should be added. As for its being "oral," it is true that jokes may appear printed, but when further transferred, there

12848-467: The documentary Funny Business that an object or a person can become funny in three ways: Punch line In a broader sense, "punch line" can also refer to the unexpected and funny conclusion of any performance, situation or story. The origin of the term is unknown . Even though the comedic formula using the classic "set-up, premise, punch line" format was well-established in Vaudeville by

12994-500: The family might not be much prone to laughter. Given the plethora of variants revealed by even a superficial glance at the problem, it becomes evident that these paths of scientific inquiry are mined with problematic pitfalls and questionable solutions. The psychologist Willibald Ruch  [ de ] has been very active in the research of humour. He has collaborated with the linguists Raskin and Attardo on their General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) classification system. Their goal

13140-416: The first man forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready! Aim!" Suddenly the man yells, "Earthquake!" Everyone is startled and looks around. In all the confusion, the first man escapes. A The guard brings the second man forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready! Aim!" Suddenly

13286-411: The fly, rather than a book meant to be read straight through. Many of the jokes in this collection are surprisingly familiar, even though the typical protagonists are less recognisable to contemporary readers: the absent-minded professor , the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath. The Philogelos even contains a joke similar to Monty Python 's " Dead Parrot Sketch ". During the 15th century ,

13432-516: The folklorist Bill Ellis documented how an evolving cycle was circulated over the internet. By accessing message boards that specialised in humour immediately following the 9/11 disaster, Ellis was able to observe in real-time both the topical jokes being posted electronically and responses to the jokes. Previous folklore research has been limited to collecting and documenting successful jokes, and only after they had emerged and come to folklorists' attention. Now, an Internet-enhanced collection creates

13578-443: The four emotional states displayed a full range of high and low sender arousal and valence. This study showed that laughter can be correlated with both positive (joy and tickle) and negative (schadenfreude and taunt) emotions with varying degrees of arousal in the subject. This brings into question the definition of humour, then. If it is to be defined by the cognitive processes which display laughter, then humour itself can encompass

13724-418: The heart rate. Subjects which rated high on sense of humour reported less anxiety in both groups, while subjects which rated lower on sense of humour reported less anxiety in the group which was exposed to the humorous material. However, there was not a significant difference in the heart rate between the subjects. Humour is a ubiquitous, highly ingrained, and largely meaningful aspect of human experience and

13870-419: The humorist when other variables are also favourable. 90% of men and 81% of women, all college students, report having a sense of humour is a crucial characteristic looked for in a romantic partner. Humour and honesty were ranked as the two most important attributes in a significant other. It has since been recorded that humour becomes more evident and significantly more important as the level of commitment in

14016-601: The individual to look elsewhere for these social interactions. Humour has been shown to make transitions easier, as humour is shown reduce stress and facilitate socialisation and serves as a social bonding function. Humour may also help the transition in helping the individual to maintain positive feelings towards those who are enforcing the changes in their lives. These new social interactions can be critical for these transitions in their lives and humour will help these new social interactions to take place making these transitions easier. Humour can also help ageing individuals maintain

14162-417: The internal emotion and not on the expression of laughter itself. They found an overall recognition rate of 44%, with joy correctly classified at 44%, tickle 45%, schadenfreude 37%, and taunt 50%. Their second experiment tested the behavioural recognition of laughter during an induced emotional state and they found that different laughter types did differ with respect to emotional dimensions. In addition,

14308-412: The internet. During the 1930s, Lin Yutang 's phono-semantic transliteration yōumò ( 幽默 ; humour) caught on as a new term for humour, sparking a fad for humour literature, as well as impassioned debate about what type of humorous sensibility best suited China, a poor, weak country under partial foreign occupation. While some types of comedy were officially sanctioned during the rule of Mao Zedong,

14454-502: The joke is absent and the audience becomes the butt of the joke. A joke contains a single story with a single punch line at the end. In the analysis of longer humorous texts, an expanded model is needed to map the narratological structure . With this in mind, the general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) was expanded to include longer humorous texts together with jokes, using the GTVH narrative structure to categorize them. A new term "jab line"

14600-407: The joke text." To produce the humour in the verbal joke, the two interpretations (i.e. scripts) need to both be compatible with the joke text and opposite or incompatible with each other. Thomas R. Shultz, a psychologist, independently expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution." He explains that "… incongruity alone is insufficient to account for

14746-405: The joke, in the form of a story, can be told. It is not required to be verbatim text like other forms of oral literature such as riddles and proverbs. The teller can and does modify the text of the joke, depending both on memory and the present audience. The important characteristic is that the narrative is succinct, containing only those details which lead directly to an understanding and decoding of

14892-411: The listed motifs are not qualitatively equal; actors, items and incidents are all considered side-by-side. And because incidents will always have at least one actor and usually have an item, most narratives can be ordered under multiple headings. This leads to confusion about both where to order an item and where to find it. A third significant problem is that the "excessive prudery" common in the middle of

15038-462: The listeners do not get the joke, they are not understanding the two scripts which are contained in the narrative as they were intended. Or they do "get it" and do not laugh; it might be too obscene, too gross or too dumb for the current audience. A woman might respond differently to a joke told by a male colleague around the water cooler than she would to the same joke overheard in a women's lavatory. A joke involving toilet humour may be funnier told on

15184-429: The longer processing time they require. In the related field of neuroscience , it has been shown that the expression of laughter is caused by two partially independent neuronal pathways: an "involuntary" or "emotionally driven" system and a "voluntary" system. This study adds credence to the common experience when exposed to an off-colour joke; a laugh is followed in the next breath by a disclaimer: "Oh, that's bad…" Here

15330-422: The man yells, "Tornado!" In the confusion, the second man escapes. B By now the last man has it all figured out. The guard brings him forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready! Aim!" and the last man yells, "Fire!" According to this theory, the punchline is always the deviation, and it does not matter how many instances of A occur for there to be

15476-465: The misuse of humour (a German loanword from English) to mean any type of comedy. However, both humour and comic are often used when theorising about the subject. The connotations of humour as opposed to comic are said to be that of response versus stimulus. Additionally, humour was thought to include a combination of ridiculousness and wit in an individual; the paradigmatic case being Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff. The French were slow to adopt

15622-409: The multiple steps in cognition are clearly evident in the stepped response, the perception being processed just a breath faster than the resolution of the moral/ethical content in the joke. Expected response to a joke is laughter . The joke teller hopes the audience "gets it" and is entertained. This leads to the premise that a joke is actually an "understanding test" between individuals and groups. If

15768-562: The narrative in which they appear (i.e., they do not disrupt the flow of the narrative, because they either are indispensable to the development of the 'plot' or of the text, or they are not antagonistic to it)". Using the expanded narrative structure of the GTVH and this new terminology of jab lines, literature and humor researchers now have a single theoretical framework, with which they can analyze and map any kind of verbal humor, including novels, short stories, TV sitcoms, plays, movies as well as jokes. Felicitous jokes are often formatted in

15914-401: The narrative which follows as a joke. In a study of conversation analysis , the sociologist Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in the telling of a single joke. "This telling is composed, as for stories, of three serially ordered and adjacently placed types of sequences … the preface [framing], the telling, and the response sequences." Folklorists expand this to include

16060-477: The negative affect approximately 20% faster than individuals who did not smile. Using humour judiciously can have a positive influence on cancer treatment. The effectiveness for humour‐based interventions in patients with schizophrenia is uncertain in a Cochrane review. Humour can serve as a strong distancing mechanism in coping with adversity. In 1997, Kelter and Bonanno found that Duchenne laughter correlated with reduced awareness of distress. Positive emotion

16206-764: The nine nava rasas , or principle rasas (emotional responses), which can be inspired in the audience by bhavas , the imitations of emotions that the actors perform. Each rasa was associated with a specific bhavas portrayed on stage. The terms comedy and satire became synonymous after Aristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world , where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers such as Abu Bischr , his pupil Al-Farabi , Persian Avicenna , and Averroes . Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation, and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms, such as hija (satirical poetry). They viewed comedy as simply

16352-459: The optimisation of human potential . This happiness movement suggests that investing in fun at the workplace, by allowing for laughter and play, will not only create enjoyment and a greater sense of well-being, but it will also enhance energy, performance and commitment in workers. The use of humour plays an important role in youth development. Studies have shown that humour is especially important in social interactions with peers. School entry

16498-482: The participants actually found the movie humorous and that it produced the desired effects the participants took a survey on the topic which resulted in a mean score of 3.64 out of 5. The results of the Cold Press Test showed that the participants in all three groups experienced a higher pain threshold and a higher pain tolerance than previous to the film. The results did not show a significant difference between

16644-432: The playground at elementary school than on a college campus. The same joke will elicit different responses in different settings. The punchline in the joke remains the same, however, it is more or less appropriate depending on the current context. The context explores the specific social situation in which joking occurs. The narrator automatically modifies the text of the joke to be acceptable to different audiences, while at

16790-661: The popular magazine Psychology Today lists over 200 articles discussing various aspects of humour; in psychological jargon, the subject area has become both an emotion to measure and a tool to use in diagnostics and treatment. A new psychological assessment tool, the Values in Action Inventory developed by the American psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman includes humour (and playfulness) as one of

16936-415: The potential combinations of such factors between the narrator and the audience are considered, then a single joke can take on infinite shades of meaning for each unique social setting. The context, however, should not be confused with the function of the joking. "Function is essentially an abstraction made on the basis of a number of contexts". In one long-term observation of men coming off the late shift at

17082-433: The potentially positive effects of "workplay" and realise that it does not necessarily undermine workers' performance. Laughter and play can unleash creativity, thus raising morale , so in the interest of encouraging employee consent to the rigours of the labour process, management often ignore, tolerate and even actively encourage playful practices, with the purpose of furthering organisational goals. Essentially, fun in

17228-454: The present desire to be humorous as well as future intentions of being humorous. This model is used with deliberate self-deprecating humour where one is communicating with desires to be accepted into someone else's specific social group. Although self-deprecating humour communicates weakness and fallibility in the bid to gain another's affection, it can be concluded from the model that this type of humour can increase romantic attraction towards

17374-614: The previous assertion that humour is in fact a cause for healthier psychological wellbeing. Some of the previous researches' limitations is that they tend to use a unidimensional approach to humour because it was always inferred that humour was deemed positive. They did not consider other types of humour, or humour styles . For example, self-defeating or aggressive humour. Research has proposed 2 types of humour that each consist of 2 styles, making 4 styles in total. The two types are adaptive versus maladaptive humour. Adaptive humour consist of facilitative and self-enhancing humour, and maladaptive

17520-406: The printed page. Reader's Digest closes out many articles with an (unrelated) joke at the bottom of the article. The New Yorker was first published in 1925 with the stated goal of being a "sophisticated humour magazine" and is still known for its cartoons . Telling a joke is a cooperative effort; it requires that the teller and the audience mutually agree in one form or another to understand

17666-448: The punchline. Studies by the cognitive science researchers Coulson and Kutas directly address the theory of script switching articulated by Raskin in their work. The article "Getting it: Human event-related brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders" measures brain activity in response to reading jokes. Additional studies by others in the field support more generally the theory of two-stage processing of humour, as evidenced in

17812-415: The punchline. This requires that it support the same (or similar) divergent scripts which are to be embodied in the punchline. The narrative always contains a protagonist who becomes the "butt" or target of the joke. This labelling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes within the culture. It also enables researchers to group and analyse the creation, persistence and interpretation of joke cycles around

17958-409: The same jokes, and across languages this would not be feasible, how does one determine that the assessment objects are comparable? Moving on, whom does one ask to rate the sense of humour of an individual? Does one ask the person themselves, an impartial observer, or their family, friends and colleagues? Furthermore, has the current mood of the test subjects been considered; someone with a recent death in

18104-497: The same time supporting the same divergent scripts in the punchline. The vocabulary used in telling the same joke at a university fraternity party and to one's grandmother might well vary. In each situation, it is important to identify both the narrator and the audience as well as their relationship with each other. This varies to reflect the complexities of a matrix of different social factors: age, sex, race, ethnicity, kinship, political views, religion, power relationships, etc. When all

18250-423: The similarity or dissimilarity of jokes depending on the similarity of their labels. "The GTVH presents itself as a mechanism … of generating [or describing] an infinite number of jokes by combining the various values that each parameter can take. … Descriptively, to analyze a joke in the GTVH consists of listing the values of the 6 KRs (with the caveat that TA and LM may be empty)." This classification system provides

18396-598: The simple forms of oral literature by the Dutch linguist André Jolles , jokes are passed along anonymously. They are told in both private and public settings; a single person tells a joke to his friend in the natural flow of conversation, or a set of jokes is told to a group as part of scripted entertainment. Jokes are also passed along in written form or, more recently, through the internet . Stand-up comics, comedians and slapstick work with comic timing and rhythm in their performance, and may rely on actions as well as on

18542-450: The spread of topical jokes , "that genre of lore in which whole crops of jokes spring up seemingly overnight around some sensational event … flourish briefly and then disappear, as the mass media move on to fresh maimings and new collective tragedies". This correlates with the new understanding of the internet as an "active folkloric space" with evolving social and cultural forces and clearly identifiable performers and audiences. A study by

18688-462: The story from the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing interpretation. "The punch line is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary to interpret [re-interpret] the joke text." To produce the humor in the verbal joke, the two interpretations (i.e., scripts) need to be both compatible with the joke text and opposite or incompatible with each other. Thomas R. Shultz,

18834-422: The structure and function of the punch line, it is useful to look at some joke forms that purposely remove or avoid the punch line in their narrative. Shaggy dog stories are long-winded anti-jokes in which the punch line is deliberately anticlimactic. The humor here lies in fooling the audience into expecting a typical joke with a punch line. Instead they listen and listen to nothing funny and end up themselves as

18980-409: The structure of humour. […] Within this framework, humour appreciation is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity." In the case of a joke, that resolution generates laughter. This is the point at which the field of neurolinguistics offers some insight into the cognitive processing involved in this abrupt laughter at

19126-518: The term humour ; in French, humeur and humour are still two different words, the former referring to a person's mood or to the archaic concept of the four humours . Non-satirical humour can be specifically termed droll humour or recreational drollery . As with any art form, the acceptance of a particular style or incidence of humour depends on sociological factors and varies from person to person. Throughout history, comedy has been used as

19272-475: The three groups. There are also potential relationships between humour and having a healthy immune system. SIgA is a type of antibody that protects the body from infections. In a method similar to the previous experiment, the participants were shown a short humorous video clip and then tested for the effects. The participants showed a significant increase in SIgA levels. There have been claims that laughter can be

19418-619: The twenty editions of the book documented alone for the 15th century. Another popular form was a collection of jests, jokes and funny situations attributed to a single character in a more connected, narrative form of the picaresque novel . Examples of this are the characters of Rabelais in France, Till Eulenspiegel in Germany, Lazarillo de Tormes in Spain and Master Skelton in England. There

19564-484: The use of self-disparaging humour leads to a higher likelihood of being bullied. When students are bullied, the use of self-disparaging humour can lead to an exacerbation of the negative effects on the student's psychological adjustment to school. One of the main focuses of modern psychological humour theory and research is to establish and clarify the correlation between humour and laughter. The major empirical findings here are that laughter and humour do not always have

19710-648: The verbal punchline to evoke laughter. This distinction has been formulated in the popular saying "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny". Jokes do not belong to refined culture, but rather to the entertainment and leisure of all classes. As such, any printed versions were considered ephemera , i.e., temporary documents created for a specific purpose and intended to be thrown away. Many of these early jokes deal with scatological and sexual topics, entertaining to all social classes but not to be valued and saved. Various kinds of jokes have been identified in ancient pre- classical texts. The oldest identified joke

19856-527: The workplace is no longer being seen as frivolous. The most current approach of managed fun and laughter in the workplace originated in North America, where it has taken off to such a degree, that it has humour consultants flourishing, as some states have introduced an official "fun at work" day. The results have carried claims of well-being benefits to workers, improved customer experiences and an increase in productivity that organisations can enjoy, as

20002-506: The workplace may also relieve tension and can be used as a coping strategy . In fact, one of the most agreed upon key impacts that workplace humour has on people's well-being, is the use of humour as a coping strategy to aid in dealing with daily stresses, adversity or other difficult situations. Sharing a laugh with a few colleagues may improve moods, which is pleasurable, and people perceive this as positively affecting their ability to cope. Fun and enjoyment are critical in people's lives and

20148-417: The world, where jokes and joking are used to mark and reinforce appropriate boundaries of a relationship. The advent of electronic communications at the end of the 20th century introduced new traditions into jokes. A verbal joke or cartoon is emailed to a friend or posted on a bulletin board ; reactions include a replied email with a :-) or LOL , or a forward on to further recipients. Interaction

20294-399: The world. Even in the most solemn song, like Las Kean Fine ["Lost and Can Not Be Found"], which tells of a boiler explosion on a sugar plantation that killed several of the workers, their natural wit and humour shine though." Confucianist & Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, with its emphasis on ritual and propriety, have traditionally looked down upon humour as subversive or unseemly. Humour

20440-564: Was conducted in 1994 by Karen Zwyer, Barbara Velker, and Willibald Ruch. To test the effects of humour on pain tolerance the test subjects were first exposed to a short humorous video clip and then exposed to the cold pressor test . To identify the aspects of humour which might contribute to an increase in pain tolerance the study separated its fifty-six female participants into three groups, cheerfulness, exhilaration and humour production. The subjects were further separated into two groups, high Trait-Cheerfulness and high Trait-Seriousness according to

20586-452: Was developed specifically for jokes and later expanded to include longer types of humorous narratives. Six different aspects of the narrative, labelled Knowledge Resources or KRs, can be evaluated largely independently of each other, and then combined into a concatenated classification label. These six KRs of the joke structure include: As development of the GTVH progressed, a hierarchy of the KRs

20732-399: Was established to partially restrict the options for lower-level KRs depending on the KRs defined above them. For example, a lightbulb joke (SI) will always be in the form of a riddle (NS). Outside of these restrictions, the KRs can create a multitude of combinations, enabling a researcher to select jokes for analysis which contain only one or two defined KRs. It also allows for an evaluation of

20878-428: Was immediately effective in helping to deal with distress. The escapist nature of humour as a coping mechanism suggests that it is most useful in dealing with momentary stresses. Stronger negative stimuli requires a different therapeutic approach. Humour is an underlying character trait associated with the positive emotions used in the broaden-and-build theory of cognitive development. Studies, such as those testing

21024-438: Was introduced to designate humor within the body of a text, as opposed to the punch line, which is always placed at the end. The jab line is functionally identical to the punch line, except that it can be positioned anywhere within the text, not just at the end. "Jab and punch lines are semantically indistinguishable (...), but they differ at a narratological level." Additionally, "jab lines are humorous elements fully integrated in

21170-558: Was perceived as irony and sarcasm. The Confucian Analects itself, however, depicts the Master as fond of humorous self-deprecation, once comparing his wanderings to the existence of a homeless dog. Early Daoist philosophical texts such as Zhuangzi pointedly make fun of Confucian seriousness and make Confucius himself a slow-witted figure of fun. Joke books containing a mix of wordplay, puns, situational humour, and play with taboo subjects like sex and scatology, remained popular over

21316-486: Was time to move on and pay attention to more immediate concerns". The sociologist Christie Davies has written extensively on ethnic jokes told in countries around the world. In ethnic jokes he finds that the "stupid" ethnic target in the joke is no stranger to the culture, but rather a peripheral social group (geographic, economic, cultural, linguistic) well known to the joke tellers. So Americans tell jokes about Polacks and Italians, Germans tell jokes about Ostfriesens, and

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