Examination of Alexander Mccall Smith's Children's Stories According to the Theories of Humor

Abstract

Humour has existed in numerous fields throughout history, including philosophy, psychology, medicine, athletics, and art and literature. In literature, humour has been employed as a mode of expression, a mode of communication. The purpose of this study is to examine the children's stories of British author Alexander MacCall Smith in light of humour theories. Document analysis, which is one of the qualitative research approaches, was utilized to conduct this study. Nineteen of Alexander MacCall Smith's children's literature works were studied through a literature review, and eleven children's stories were picked using criterion sampling as the research's data source. The selected stories were assessed based on the superiority theory, the incongruity theory, and the relief theory. Using descriptive analysis, the humorous components of the narratives were identified and evaluated in accordance with the theoretical framework of humour theories. It was concluded that Alexander MacCall Smith's hilarious children's stories contained 25% superiority theory, 42.5% incongruity theory, and 32.5% relaxation theory-based humour. The conclusion was that the author's children's stories featured funny facts that were consistent with the theoretical foundations of all three theories. The author's conception of comedy is based on the conceptual framework of the incongruity theory, which defines discordant and conflicting mental states.