Theory Of Humor Research Articles

On the importance of the dynamics of humour and comedy for constructionism and reflexivity in social science research methodology

ABSTRACT Humour and comedy have gained increased significance in academic research in recent years. This article examines the importance of humour and comedy as valuable tools in qualitative social science research methodology. It makes the original contribution of utilizing humour and comedy theory, and critical understandings of both their macro and micro mechanisms and functions, to argue that humour and comedy can accommodate, and indeed, expedite, social science research methodology in relation to two key principles: constructionism and reflexivity. This represents a significant and rigorous theoretical contribution to not just humour and comedy theory but the paradigm of qualitative social science methodology. Following a review of the benefits of using humour and comedy in qualitative research, the article considers how the broader theories and more intricate mechanics of humour and comedy can facilitate research into the social world, examining how humour and comedy can inform and develop constructionism and reflexivity.

Humor and Social Media: A Linguistic Analysis of Some Egyptian Coronavirus Memes

The paper aims at investigating verbal humor in some selected Egyptian web memes about Corona Virus. It also aims at identifying the different strategies and techniques used by memes' producers to create humor. In order to carry out these goals, Attardo's (2014) General Theory of Verbal Humor is used as a methodology of this research. General Theory of Verbal Humour consists of six knowledge resources which are called (KRs): a) script opposition, b) logical mechanism, c) situation, d) target, e) narrative strategy and f) language. Results show that possible/impossible and normal/abnormal oppositions are the two major types of script opposition in the corpus. Analogy and exaggeration, on the other hand, are the most common logical mechanisms to create humor in memes.يهدف البحث الي دراسة وتحليل أستراتيجيات الفکاهه اللفظية في بعض الميمات المصرية التي ظهرت في مختلف وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي عن فيروس کرونا. ومن أجل تحقيق أهداف البحث أعتمدت الدراسة علي نظرية العالم سلفاتور أتاردو (2014) النظرية العامة للفکاهة اللفظية. وتعتمد النظريه علي ستة عناصر أساسيه تسمي بعناصر المعرفة وهم : اللغة واستراتيجية السرد والموقف والهدف والآلية المنطقية والمعارضة النصيه . وأثبتت الدراسة ان أنواع المعارضة النصية الطبيعية و الغير طبيعية و الممکنة و الغير ممکنة هما أکثر الأنواع شيوعا . کما ان المبالغه و التناظر هما أکثر الاليات المستخدمه لفهم المعارضه النصية وتحقيق الفکاهة.

Kindly Scandal: A Mimetic Theory of Humor

Research Article| May 01 2021 Kindly Scandal: A Mimetic Theory of Humor Duncan Reyburn Duncan Reyburn School of the Arts, University of Pretoria DUNCAN REYBURN is an associate professor in the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture (2021) 28: 201–236. https://doi.org/10.14321/contagion.28.2021.0201 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Duncan Reyburn; Kindly Scandal: A Mimetic Theory of Humor. Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture 1 May 2021; 28 201–236. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/contagion.28.2021.0201 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressContagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © Michigan State University Board of Trustees Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Breaking the ice with a joke: The relief-inducing property of humor and its effect on sellers’ performance

Research has identified humor as a communication technique that can help sellers be more effective during their sales pitches. However, the most developed theory of humor – that is, the arousal-safety (or relief) theory – posits some relieving power of humor but has never been applied to the selling context, although such a power could reveal interesting for sellers. Therefore, in this research, we adopt a seller’s perspective and apply this theory to investigate how sellers’ feelings of relief following their use of humor can positively affect their performance during negotiations. More specifically, we investigate the serial process whereby feelings of relief that emerge from humor increase relationship quality and ultimately performance. Finally, we identify empathy as a boundary condition for the effects of humor and subsequent responses, with humor prompting greater feelings of relief when sellers have little empathy with the purchaser. Using a sample of 200 trained students in B2B sales management and a sample of 157 professional sellers, we empirically test and support these predictions, which serve as a basis for managerial recommendations.

Investigating the cultural signs and ideological representations in Masameer Saudi cartoon: a discursive and semiotic analysis

ABSTRACT This study is the first of its own, which provides a semiotic and a discursive analysis of the Saudi animated YouTube sitcom, entitled ‘Masameer’ (the Arabic word for ‘nails-metal spike’). Data were collected from the original YouTube channel of the show (Myrkott) and elaborated on 11 settings which contain three broad categories, namely: traditional treatments, social problems,ideological representation, and gender representations. Cultural signs are explained within Barthes’s (1957) orders of signification to describe each message in three levels of meaning as: denotation, connotation, and myth. Fairclough’s (1989) three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to analyse the underpinning ideologies of the text based on three dimensions of: description, interpretation, and explanation. Lastly, multiple humour theories were used to analyse the humour techniques used in the construction of each setting. The study concludes that ‘Masameer’ contains many cultural-specific signs that require cultural competence in order to elucidate their meanings as well as ideologies which reflect power relations and gender stereotypes. The analysis reveals that ‘Masameer’ is seen not only as an entertaining cartoon comedy, but also as a vehicle for communicating messages, ideologies, and values via humour techniques to poke fun that may stimulate a social change.

Subtitling Humor in The Series “The Big Bang Theory”

Humor is an element which is frequently used in audiovisual texts. Considering the technical constraints of audiovisual translation types such as subtitling and dubbing along with the linguistic factors and many more variables on screen, the translation process of audiovisual humor could be fairly challenging for the translator. The goal of this present study is to discuss the translation process with a focus on the translation of audiovisual humor. In an attempt to observe the theoretical and methodological approach toward the translation of humor in audiovisual texts in a practical study, the humorous elements in 23 episodes in the 3rd season of the famous American comedy series “The Big Bang Theory” were identified and the translation process of subtitling those into Turkish was examined. When the humorous examples in the series were studied in terms of humor theories, it was clearly seen that its humor is mostly produced through superiority and incongruity theories. In addition, it was observed that humor in the series was largely dependent on linguistic elements. It was deduced that a target-oriented approach had been adopted in the translation of humor elements and on that account, mainly the substitution strategy had been applied in subtitling humor from English into Turkish. Overall, in this study, it was concluded that the humorous examples in the source text had been successfully translated into the target text and an attempt had been made to preserve the humor effect from the source culture in the target culture.

SEN HEP GÜLÜMSE REKLAM FİLMİNİN GÖSTERGEBİLİMSEL ÇÖZÜMLEMESİ ÜZERİNDEN ELEŞTİREL BİR DEĞERLENDİRME

A CRITICAL EVALUATION ON THE SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF “SEN HEP GÜLÜMSE (SMILE ALL THE TIME)” ADVERTISING FILM This study presents a semiotic analysis of “Sen Hep Gülümse (Smile All the Time)” advertising film by Happy People Project designed to celebrate the 157th anniversary of Ziraat Bank. Kemal Sunal, known as “the smiling man of Turkey” stars in the lead role. Film is produced by Deepfake technology. To make the character lifelike, images and voice recordings from Sunal movies are put together thanks to deep learning and artificial intelligence made possible by this technology. The film took 3 days to shoot while post-production took a total of 40 days. While the main motive of the film is to remorph Sunal so as to put a smile on people’s faces in these troubling times, the unique selling proposition of the film is to affiliate Ziraat Bank with Sunal by inferring that just like Sunal, it makes millions of people smile as it is always by the one in need. To provide background for this study the first section will look at the historical development of the world comedy cinema, the emergence of the Turkish comedy cinema, its first examples, the emergence of Şaban typification by Sunal, and how this typification influenced the evolution of the Turkish comedy cinema. The following section will present laughter theories and approaches to highlight the transformation of the so-called natural and innocent laughter into a controversial weapon of power and place emphasis on its dialectical nature. Finally, this study will wrap up with the semiotic analysis of the “Sen Hep Gülümse” advertising film followed by a presentation of critical discussion on the sinematographic, and ethical aspects of the film. Keywords: Turkish Comedy Cinema, Theories of Laughter, Humor, Semiotics, Kemal Sunal, "Sen Gülümse Yeter" Advertising Film

Script System and Black Humor in Plays by M. McDonagh

The present paper focuses on intertextuality as a means of black humor in plays by Martin McDonagh, a famous British-Irish playwright. Nine of his plays have been translated into different languages and staged in theatres around the world. However, most theories of comic effect cannot explain the phenomenon of his popularity. This prompted the authors to search for the most accurate and least conditioned way to classify intertext as a means of comic effect in general and black humor in particular. As a result, they chose the semantic theory of humor by V. Raskin and the multidisciplinary general theory of verbal humor developed by V. Raskin and S. Attardo. These theories employ the notions of "script" and "opposition" to examine the linguistic nature of the joke. Using attributed and unattributed intertext inclusions as "signs" or "scripts", the authors analyzed McDonagh’s plays through the prism of this theory. The result was a system of scripts and oppositions that form the chronotope of a long text as opposed to that of a joke. The article also introduces the black humor mechanism in McDonagh's plays: it is based on references to the intertextual thesaurus of the potential reader / theatre audience.

It’s no joke: The critical power of a laughing chorus

There is no known time in history, nor known human community without laughter. Laughter imbues our social life. Laughter dominates our daily interactions, perhaps more visibly so on social media, where it is now a weapon wielded frequently against marketers. Yet, marketing theory paid little attention to laughter as a social phenomenon or a collective consumer (re)action. This article begins to address this neglect through an integrative review of theories of laughter and specifically by introducing Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of a laughing chorus. I engage the notion as a way to understand the internet publics’ rowdy laughter directed at marketing. I show that seemingly nihilistic, irresponsible and discordant laughter is nonetheless an efficacious and notably polyvocal social commentary. To probe further the power of a laughing chorus, I draw on the works of Henri Bergson and Alenka Zupancic and elaborate on laughter as a form of expression that does not depend on reason and argumentation for its effects. I contend that a critical impetus of a laughing chorus may not always be in its content, but in the comic element, centred on repetition. That is, collective, excessive laughter involves a distinct mode of critique, which is not premised on discursive deliberation. I conclude with a reflection on theoretical and methodological opportunities in taking laughter seriously in marketing and consumer culture studies.

The Linguistics of Humor: An Introduction

The Linguistics of Humor: An Introduction

Humor and Social Media: A Linguistic Analysis of Some Egyptian Coronavirus Memes

The paper aims at investigating verbal humor in some selected Egyptian web memes about Corona Virus. It also aims at identifying the different strategies and techniques used by memes' producers to create humor. In order to carry out these goals, Attardo's (2014) General Theory of Verbal Humor is used as a methodology of this research. General Theory of Verbal Humour consists of six knowledge resources which are called (KRs): a) script opposition, b) logical mechanism, c) situation, d) target, e) narrative strategy and f) language. Results show that possible/impossible and normal/abnormal oppositions are the two major types of script opposition in the corpus. Analogy and exaggeration, on the other hand, are the most common logical mechanisms to create humor in memes.

When the World Laughs: Film Comedy East and West

When the World Laughs: Film Comedy East and West

The Dark Side of Comedy

The Dark Side of Comedy

Humor, Psyche, and Society: A Socio-Semiotic Analysis

Humor, Psyche, and Society: A Socio-Semiotic Analysis

The Year's Work in American Humor Studies, 2019

AbstractThe “Year's Work in American Humor Studies,” an annual feature of Studies in American Humor since 1999, reviews humor scholarship and related materials, including humor theory, published during the specified year from many disciplinary perspectives. The review gives special emphasis to studies of humor in American culture, broadly conceived.

On the Popcultural Life of Historical Works of Art in Humorous Advertising

The paramount objective of this paper is to discuss the popcultural life of historical works of art in selected humorous ads. Firstly, the workings of the incongruityresolution theory of humour and script opposition are presented. Then, the author proceeds to the topic of popculturing visual art in ads. Finally, attention is paid to specific instances of popculturing and funification in several art-related multimodal ads, which makes it possible to see the mechanisms of humour elicitation resultant from the ongoing displacement of historical works of art and their transference into the pop-cultural and advertising realms. To this end, the author gathered a collection of ads in English in which visual art is used in order to introduce humour.

Mid-century cultural tectonics: Unpacking the ‘Ying Tong Song’ core sample

The Goons’ ‘Ying Tong Song’ is an unlikely candidate for a popular music chart hit. Yet it held a place in the British top ten for six weeks in 1956. On the face of it, this novelty record presents a musical variation on eccentric Goon themes that had become familiar to British radio audiences over the preceding five years of Goon Shows: silly voices, absurd situations, non sequiturs, sound effects, chaos and seeming non-sense. On closer examination, however, the ‘Ying Tong Song’ reveals itself to be an encapsulation of defining conflicts, phobias and preoccupations of the mid-1950s, such that it takes on the character of a geological core sample. By analysing the ‘Ying Tong Song’ according to its principal operative contexts (British national history, cultural history, musical tastes, radio humour, language and humour theory), this article unpacks key layers of signification that define the Ying Tong phenomenon.

Context and Accidental Humour: The Import of the Sociolinguistic Situation in Linguistic Errors on Public Signage in Kenya

This paper analyses the distinctive context surrounding the erroneous signage in certain public notices in Kenya. More specifically, it seeks to determine how contextual cues go a long way in assisting the reader to comprehend the distinctive genre of humour under consideration in this paper. Ostensibly, the linguistic landscape of Kenya is ridden in plenteous of signage containing numerous translational errors, which eventually yield accidental humour. In order to achieve the above requires the application of the General Verbal Theory of Humour by Attardo and Raskin (1991) to context where language use is put into consideration. The data was collected from the field by photographing erroneous signage where ten public notices were aptly analysed for their specious nature, which eventually resulted into accidental humour. Specifically, their unique context was further scrutinised to identify the precise components within which the author operated and an attempt to recover the lost interpretation in order to understand the resultant humour. Data presentation involved use of tables to summarise and indicate relationship of crucial contextual components. The paper sheds light on the importance of context to understand humour, enriches translational linguistics and boosts pedagogy in relation to language performance. The study concluded that specific category of humour in the selected signage in this paper requires a complete understanding of the author’s situational background. The study recommended that the types of linguistic incongruities as well as how they are resolved to produce accidental humour would go a long way in understanding this category of humour.

Audiovisual Translation of Persian Humour on Social Media

Using a blend of methods including existing subtitling models in Audiovisual Translation (AVT), Functionalism in Translation Studies, the General Theory of Verbal Humour, Cultural Linguistics (CuL) and careful analysis of numerous examples of Persian humour on social media, i.e. Instagram, the present research aims to demonstrate that there is a compelling argument to be made for updating traditional approaches to translation, subtitling in particular (cf. Zabalbeascoa, 2019). The findings of this study show that in today’s globalised world, in which social media and new technologies are influencing the translation process, the core model of translation, subtitling in particular, in all its actuality, seems to be incomplete, as cultural conceptualisations underlying lexical items are lost in translation. Cultural conceptualisations that are, however, central to meaning construction and humour perception in the target culture. Cultural conceptualisations that are, thus, crucial for translators’ daily task. The study suggests that in order to meet the concerns of the translation profession today, in this globalised world with its new ways of communication, and for successful intercultural communication, cultural conceptualisations underlying lexical items be incorporated into Audiovisual Translation (AVT), subtitling models (cf. Zabalbeascoa, 2019).

COVID-19 Editorial Cartoons: Theories of Humor Perspectives

The objective of this paper is to clarify the understanding of disaster humor in editorial cartoons through the use of classical and novel theories of humor. Select cartoons inked by artists from around the world are analyzed via the lens of five classical theories of humor—superiority, inferiority, relief, play, and incongruity theories—and three novel theories of humor—cleverness, benign violation, and mutual vulnerability theories. The study found that these classical and novel theories helped depict the COVID-19 pandemic as a phenomenon of great consequence that exerted power over citizens, governments, and business entities alike. Governments were often portrayed as entities that valued human life over the state of the economy, albeit not initially. Government policies were conveyed as having the potential to worsen the quality of life and the state of the economy. To our knowledge, no other study in humor literature has so far applied these theories to coronavirus editorial cartoons from all over the world. By bridging theoretical frameworks from the fields of philosophy, psychology, and evolutionary biology with issues penned by artists from various countries, this study enables a better understanding of disaster humor as a defense mechanism.