Verbal Humor Research Articles

SPREADING LAUGHTER THROUGH HUMOR FROM GRICEAN MAXIMS AND ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES

Humor is essential in maintaining the balance of human life socially and psychologically. Each culture in the world, including Islamic culture, perceives humor differently. Furthermore, from an academic perspective, humor can be constructed using linguistic features. Therefore, this study aims to examine verbal humor construction using linguistics features and evaluate how verbal humor is perceived by different cultures, particularly popular British and Islamic cultures. British popular culture is directed more toward the liberal culture, which is often opposed to the Islamic culture, which is often seen as conservative. By employing a qualitative approach, the study investigates the verbal humor construction in Black Books comedy series using Gricean cooperative maxim theory and Marzolph's concept of Islamic perspectives on humor based on the Holy Qur’an and Hadith. The results of this study point out that verbal humor utterances in the series flout and violate all four Gricean maxims, which are the maxim of quality (54.3%), quantity (14.3%), relevance (11.4%), and manner (20%). This study also found that most verbal humor utterances in the series are appropriate to Islamic perspectives on humor, as 60% of the verbal humor utterances do not contain ridicule, defamation, offensive utterances and name-calling, and some other forbidden acts in Islam such as lies and abusive behaviors. The results of this study are expected to provide more insights into verbal humor construction and different cultures' perspectives on verbal humor.

Multidimensional Latent Semantic Networks for Text Humor Recognition.

Humor is a special human expression style, an important “lubricant” for daily communication for people; people can convey emotional messages that are not easily expressed through humor. At present, artificial intelligence is one of the popular research domains; “discourse understanding” is also an important research direction, and how to make computers recognize and understand humorous expressions similar to humans has become one of the popular research domains for natural language processing researchers. In this paper, a humor recognition model (MLSN) based on current humor theory and popular deep learning techniques is proposed for the humor recognition task. The model automatically identifies whether a sentence contains humor expression by capturing the inconsistency, phonetic features, and ambiguity of a joke as semantic features. The model was experimented on three publicly available wisecrack datasets and compared with state-of-the-art language models, and the results demonstrate that the proposed model has better humor recognition accuracy and can contribute to the research on discourse understanding.

Different systems, similar challenges: humor and free speech in the United States and Europe

Abstract The United States and Europe are often contrasted with each other regarding their approach to freedom of expression. Yet, despite the differences between their respective judicial systems, courts from both regions inevitably face similar interpretive challenges when dealing with humor. Our paper conducts a comparative discussion of humor-related jurisprudence from the US and Europe, mostly (but not exclusively) focusing on two landmark cases – namely Hustler v. Falwell (US Supreme Court, 1988) and Vereinigung Bildender Künstler v. Austria (European Court of Human Rights, 2007). In particular, our analysis foregrounds two aspects: 1) How courts deal with the complex relations between humor, exaggeration and factual reality; 2) The role of objective harm (as opposed to subjective offence) in distinguishing between lawful and unlawful expression, and how the subjectivity of humor interpretation can undermine this criterion. On both levels, we argue that insights from literary and linguistic theories of humor – from Simpson’s work on satirical discourse to Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humor – can set the basis for a more fine-grained and systematic approach to humor across different judicial systems.

Humour in Translation From English Into Arabic: Subtitles of the Comedy Sitcom Friends

This study aims to investigate the translation methods and strategies used in the Arabic subtitling of English sitcoms. The study's corpus was chosen from the popular TV show Friends. In the U.S. English version, humorous instances are discovered, identified, and divided into three categories according to Debra and Raphaelson-West's (1989) humour taxonomy. The eight strategies for translating cultural jokes outlined by Tomaszkiewicz (1993) and cited in Díaz-Cintas (2009), were adopted for the framework of the study to analyse the strategies applied in rendering humorous expressions in Arabic subtitling for English sitcoms. The findings revealed that universal jokes are easily transferred into different languages; however, linguistic and cultural jokes are difficult to translate due to language and cultural differences. Based on this study’s findings, formal translation was found to be the most utilized strategy in subtitling from English into Arabic. Besides formal translation, a functional strategy was also used in many cases. This study also implies that to successfully translate cultural jokes, it is preferable to develop humour in accordance with the visual setting of the film and then domesticate the translation.

An Analysis Basic Strategy of Verbal Humor found In Ellen DeGeneres Monologue Season 17,2019 : Pragmatic Approach study

Abstract : Language is not only a means of communication between humans; however, it can convey funny expressions known as humor. Everyone likes something fun and funny. In entertainment, humor has developed; thus, physically offensive humor decreases and proceeds to verbal humor, especially on talk shows. As one of America's famous comedy talk shows, Ellen DeGeneres Talkshow successfully maintains its fame and verbal humor. Using a Pragmatic context approach, this study uses the theory of Victor Raskin's Three Major Elements of Humor, which consists of Incongruity, Superiority, and Release/Relief. This study aims to determine the types of humor elements that influential in Ellen Monologue Season 17, 2019, entitled "A Look Back at Best Moment and Favorite Season 17,2019”. The research method used in this research is descriptive-qualitative for analysis of data transcript. This study found that the Ellen DeGeneres talk show has three strong elements of humor as a strategy to trigger audience’s laughter, including Incongruity, Superiority, and Release. This three elements can work well together and have succeeded elements to significantly influence Ellen DeGeneres talk show. A jokes become accurate and precise when this element of humor is used.

ANALYSIS OF HUMOR LANGUAGE IN “NGENEST THE MOVIE” COMEDY SCENE

Humor language is verbal humor created through words, the meaning of words, and jargon. Directors use language humor to build comedy scenes, introduce the characters, or give the impression of a scene. However, sometimes, excessive techniques will be insufficient for the scene itself. Therefore, this study aims to find how language humor in comedy scenes in a film is overused and eventually dries the comedy. Research material was selected from a comedy movie entitled "Ngenest," produced in 2015, directed by Ernest Prakasa, who has a comical background and often uses comedic techniques in his films. The research method chosen is qualitative, with content analysis to identify the value of integrated humor and scenes in the movie "Ngenest.”
 
 Keywords: humor, humor language, scene, comedy

Coping strategies in parents of children with chronic Adrenal insufficiency

IntroductionBeing the parent of a child followed for a chronic pathology can require different resources and coping skills.Objectivesto determine the adaptation strategies of the parents of children monitored for adrenal insufficiency in the face of their children’s pathologyMethodsWe conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out with parents of children with Adrenal Insufficiency followed at the pediatric outpatient clinic in Taher Sfar Mahdia University Hospital between February 2019 and April 2020. We used a pre-established questionnaire collecting sociodemographic data and the strategies of coping using the Brief-COPE Board.ResultsA total of 38 parents of children with adrenal insufficiency and 38 control parents participated in the study. The Brief-Cope board’s study of Coping strategies revealed that the strategies most used by parents of children with Adrenal insufficiency were, in descending order: religion (92.1%), support emotional (73.7%), distraction (63.9%), behavioral disengagement and acceptance (57.9%), instrumental support (52.6%), expression of feelings (50%), positive reinterpretation (39.5%), blame (38.9%), denial and humor (36.8%), active coping and planning (36.1%). On the other hand, those used by the control population were in descending order: religion (94.4%), distraction (84.2%), blame (78.9%), acceptance (72.2%) %), emotional support (69.4%), humor (63.9%), behavioral disengagement (61.1%), active coping (47.2%), expression of feelings (44 , 7%), planning (41.7%), instrumental support (30.6%), positive reinterpretation (22%), denial (19.4%).ConclusionsPsychological support for the parents of children with chronic illnesses would be necessary to prevent parental burnout and improve their ability to adapt to their experiencesDisclosureNo significant relationships.

Eglon’s Fat and Ehud’s Oracle: A Reconsideration of Humour in Judges 3.12–30

Judg. 3.12–30 details the assassination of King Eglon of Moab by the Benjaminite Ehud ben Gera. Many scholars insist that the story was originally meant to be funny, contending that the text casts Eglon (i.e. ‘Little Calf’) humorously as a slaughtered bovine. Indeed, some regard the text as ‘satire’, though there remains no consensus as to what, exactly, constitutes the butt of the joke. In this article, I argue that Eglon’s fat and Ehud’s feigned oracle work together to form a comical critique of foreign rulers and their reliance on divination. The argument draws on Victor Raskin’s semantic theory of verbal humour along with a re-examination of fat on elite male bodies in the Hebrew Bible and the practice of ancient oracle giving, as reflected in cuneiform sources. I thus aim to elucidate ways the text would have registered as humorous and meaningful for an ancient West Asian audience.

The Production of Conversational Humor by Flouting Gricean Maxims in the Sitcom <em>The IT Crowd</em>

This study focuses on the Gricean maxim floutings found in the production of verbal humor by the characters in the show The IT Crowd, seasons one and two. This research aims to identify and classify the flouting of maxims, explain the rhetorical strategies employed, and the functions behind each flouting of the humorous utterances in the sitcom. Qualitative methods were used in analyzing the data, which are the humorous utterances resulted from the maxims flouting found in the first 12 episodes of the series. However, quantitative data is also taken into consideration in the analysis. In the series, a total of 102 occurrences were identified as maxim floutings. The most frequently occurring maxim flouting is of the quality maxim with 56 occurrences (54.90%).The result shows the characters produced verbal humor by flouting the conversational maxims using varied rhetorical strategies. Their most preferred rhetorical strategy is allusion, with 12 occurrences (11.70%) found in the series. It was also discovered that the characters use a variety of rhetorical strategies when they flout the maxims to achieve different communicative goals. The most frequent goal to appear is self-disclosure, with 26 data indicate the speakers flout the maxims to disclose personal information through humor.

Semantic and Pragmatic Features of Hadrami Jokes

Humour with its different forms is a universal phenomenon. The joke is among these forms. Although they are not famous for their sense of humour, Hadrami people have their own special cultural heritage of jokes. This study attempts to investigate the semantic and pragmatic features of the punchline of a selected number of Hadrami jokes depending on two parameters of the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) which are Script Opposition (SO) and Language (LA). The linguistic constructs of LA are adopted from Leech's (1981) associative meanings and Grice's (1975) conversational implicature theory. The sample has been collected from the Internet and Hadrami people. After excluding the irrelevant ones, 37 jokes has been studied within the theoretical framework of this study following the discourse analysis approach of linguistic qualitative researches. The findings show that the most frequent SO in Hadrami jokes are: expected/ unexpected, and stingy/ not stingy. Also, the semantic features exceed the pragmatic ones. Within the semantic features, the connotations exceed – in their turn- the social and the collocative meanings. The focus of the pragmatic features is violating the maxims mainly under the SO parameter stingy/ not stingy. These findings prove that the punchlines of Hadrami jokes are the focal point of the joke and they represent loaded language with a great diversity of semantic and pragmatic indications.

Exploring talented children’s humour through creating pop-up storybooks

ABSTRACT The role of storybooks in offering an educational resource that promotes young children’s cognitive and creative development has been recognised in the previous literature. The small-scale exploratory study reported here investigated children’s senses of humour through pop-up storybook production. A workshop in Hong Kong, entitled Storybook Production: Your Own Pop-Up Storybook, was conducted with eight participants (girls, aged 7–9 years) as part of a summer programme in the Centre for Advancement in Inclusive and Special Education at the University of Hong Kong. During the workshop, the children were taught two core aspects of creative expression: narrative techniques and the pop-up effects involved in creating a storybook. The children created their storylines, infusing their senses of humour into scenes on storyboards and illustrations in pop-up books. They introduced humour in the form of the jokes and funny behaviours of their characters. Their final products provided evidence of talented young children’s expression and understanding of humour.

STREAMING LAUGHTER: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS ON VERBAL HUMOR IN KEVIN HART’S STAND UP COMEDY SPECIAL ZERO F**KS GIVEN

A novel coronavirus was found on December 2019. WHO named the disease caused by this virus COVID-19. The respiratory virus has been spreading rapidly, causing a global pandemic. To prevent infection, governments all over the world compel their citizens to maintain physical distance and stay at home. Having to do all activities, including working and studying, from home and not being able to gather with family and friends, who do not live in the same household, took a toll on people’s mental health. They thus relied on entertainments accessible at home to avoid boredom and stress. An entertainment medium seeing a significant increase in users is streaming services. Besides offering post-launched movies, TV series and TV show, every streaming service nowadays also produces original contents. Netflix, for example, created a stand-up comedy special starring Kevin Hart, called Zero F**ks Given. The researchers thus aim to analyze the verbal humor Hart uses to incite laughter. The data are collected by watching the show on Netflix website and note-taking its subtitle. Using descriptive qualitative method, this research employs Richard Shade’s theory on humor classification as well as Herbert Paul Grice’s theory on implicature. The findings show there are only 7 out of 12 verbal tumor types, with satire being the most frequent one. Additionally, Hart uses conversational implicature more as it is greatly suitable with satire in inciting laughter.

On Silent Laughter: The Political Humour Depicted in Indonesian Cartoons

The cartoon is a part of online media which Indonesian speakers pragmatically favor. Besides being entertaining, the cartoon is popular because it probably contains political humour relevant to the socio-pragmatic situation in society. This study specifically aimed at describing the political humour in Indonesian cartoons. The data used were 222 cartoons. The data was downloaded from online-open source media platforms from November 1st, 2021, to January 5th, 2022. All data was collected from the google search engine based on the digital observation techniques proposed by Cordelois (2010). Apart from being based on the theory of visual metaphors, Attardo’s general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) was utilized to analyze data. The results of this study indicated that, in general, political humour is one of the popular domains of the content of cartoons published in Indonesia’s online media. In particular, political humour consists of at least three types, namely political satire, parody, and irony. Of the three types, parody is the most dominant political humour used in Indonesian cartoons.

Laughing with me or laughing at me? The differential effects of leader humor expressions on follower status and influence at work

SummaryAlthough research suggests that leader humor shapes followers' perceptions of their leaders' status, questions remain as to whether and how leader humor can shape followers' own acquisition of status at work. Drawing from the approach‐avoidance framework, we provide an important extension to the leader humor literature by developing a serial mediation model that explains how and why two styles of leader humor—aggressive humor and affiliative humor—differentially impact followers' ability to garner and wield social influence in the work environment. We theorize that leader aggressive humor, which constitutes unconstrained execution of power that is invasive and hostile in nature, produces a status‐suppressing effect by activating followers' avoidance system, whereas leader affiliative humor, which constitutes relational connection with restrained superiority, produces a status‐enabling effect by activating followers' approach system. We further propose that leader aggressive (affiliative) humor has a negative (positive) indirect effect on followers' constructive voice and work engagement via their avoidance (approach) orientation and workplace status. We find consistent support for our hypothesized predictions across two survey studies. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this study.

“Happy wives” and “sad husbands”

The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic (a global health emergency) following its ravaging spread and increasing death toll that led to the unprecedented multi-sectoral crisis and collateral damage. These, and the non-discovery of reliable therapeutic medicines combined to generate rising fears and tension across the globe. To cope with these realities, discourse participants devised humorous expressions to create laughter, ease tension and melt fears. The paper seeks to examine the contextual usage of such humorous expressions used in Nigeria, particularly in Calabar, that denote the sociolinguistic milieu, and shared knowledge and experience of the interactants. The study adopts Relief and Encryption Theories of Humour because the theories account for the situational appropriateness of the humorous expressions as “coping devices” in coherence with the cognitive, linguistic, situational and social contexts. Data were generated by means of participant observation in on-site and virtual interactions in social media platforms. Findings show that COVID-19 pandemic has exerted irresistible pressure on language resources that stimulated the creation of humorous expressions as coping needs for the consequential circumstance. Specifically, the humorous expressions such as “happy wives”, “sad husbands”, “side chicks are hungry” among others were regularly and contextually deployed for comic reliefs and cognitive recreations to stimulate laughter in crisis. Linguistically, the expressions are devised English structures and other constructs with codemixed elements derived from the registers of several discourse domains that reflect the Nigerian sociolinguistic environment. The constructs are therefore modelled to demystify the pandemic and unify interactants in order to ease tension and cope with the realities of the preventive and survival protocols.

Stereotyping Arab women in jokes circulated on social media during the coronavirus crisis

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in late 2019, fear and panic dominated the content of online news. Simultaneously, there was a prevalence of jokes and satire on the different social media sites. During the crisis, most Arab countries went through a nationwide lockdown for weeks that people found themselves trapped in their homes and resorted to social media to express their frustrations about the prevailing happenings. They began exchanging jokes and parodies on social media that indirectly reflected stereotypes about them. 1424 jokes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp messages during a period of three months and were categorized based on the themes they covered. Gender-related jokes ranked the highest, and were predominantly targeting women. Hence, this study is an attempt to explore how Arab Women were stereotyped in Jokes circulated on social media during the Coronavirus crisis. The 508 gender-related jokes were analysed in light of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The analysis generated 4 main themes, namely 'marital relations' (33%), 'habits and attributes' (26%), 'beauty and makeup' (23%) and 'violence' (18%). Women were stereotyped as being ugly and less feminine without makeup, talkative, shopaholic, despising and annoying wives, and violent and harmful partners in their private sphere. The study concludes that such negative stereotypes might be unintentionally produced and reinforced through laughter-eliciting humor that circulates fast in the virtual world.

Translating humorous literature from Vietnamese into Italian language: an empirical study of humour reception

The empirical study presented in this article aims to determine some of the linguistic and cultural elements that can influence the production process and the reception of humour and to verify the applicability of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) to humorous literary translation. 60 Vietnamese and 60 Italian participants had to read and rate the level of humorousness of excerpts taken from the Vietnamese novel Số Đỏ (Vũ Trọng Phụng, 1936) and its correspondent Italian translation (Il gioco indiscreto di Xuan, 2012). By comparing their feedback, it was possible to observe that one is more likely to appreciate humour when one is not part of the categories subject to ridicule/irony/satire; and that a direct contact with the original language and culture constitutes an important role in humour understanding and appreciating. Also, a comparison between the rating that the Italian participants assigned to the official Italian translation and an alternative version allowed us to analyze the role of Language Knowledge Resource (GTVH). According to the Italian participants, although the two versions of the translation, which share the first five levels of Knowledge Resources, were remarkably similar (as predicted by the GTVH), they were dissimilar in terms of humour and in readers' preferences. I therefore argue that, although the GTVH is a useful tool for analyzing and verifying the similarity between the source and target text, it has proved to be impractical and not always reliable if we want to use it as a parameter of the translation of literary humorous texts.

Ain’t that funny? A jurisprudential analysis of humour in Europe and the U.S.

This paper provides a legislative and jurisprudential comparative of European and U.S. case Law on humour. Whilst the Europe-U.S. comparison, in the ambit of expression, has been looked at extensively, there has yet to be a focus on the varying ways in which humour is treated in the two spheres. What will become evident is the intricacy of cultivating just legal tests to be used by the judiciary in deciphering an inherently abstract theme. At the core of these tests at the European level, is a balancing exercise between the right to offend and the right to be free from offence. However, the multitude of available interpretative routes, in addition to the array of differing human responses to humour, renders such tests and their application legally fragile. This reality raises concerns vis-à-vis the fundamental right of freedom of expression and becomes particularly topical within the current digital age and the ‘polarizing dynamics of social media.’ Godioli (2020:1) The analysis will demonstrate that humour receives much greater protection in the U.S. Framework due to the First Amendment whereas the highest regional human rights court in Europe, namely the European Court of Human Rights is quick to limit humorous speech on grounds of offending others, thereby demonstrating a backsliding of the fundamental freedom of expression, including humorous expression in the region.

Creation of Humorous Situation By Flouting Conversational Maxims Accompanied By Facial Expression in “Friends”

This study focused on analyzing the humorous situation created by flouting conversational maxims that were followed by facial expressions found in situated comedy Friends. The analysis included how humorous situation were generated by flouting conversational maxims and the relationship between humorous situation and facial expressions. The results of the study showed that the humorous situations categorized were generated by flouting Grice maxims in which satire and over/understatement were frequently created by means of the implicature from flouting the conversational maxims. In flouting quality, the characters tended not to employ direct lying to other people as it would influence the perspective of the audience about lying to other people as common things although hidden meanings were provided behind the utterances with joy facial expressions. In flouting quantity, the humorous situation was dominated by the creation of overstatement and understatement which were accompanied mostly by joyous facial expression as in line with the definition of overstatement and understatement. In flouting relation, the humorous situation was dominated by satire accompanied by anger facial expressions and clever replies to serious statement accompanied by joyous facial expressions. In flouting manner, satire and pun humorous situation was mostly generated by anger and contempt facial expression. In addition, there were close relationship between certain humorous situation created by flouting conversational maxims and facial expressions. For further study, it is recommended that the study of humorous situation could explore the other aspect of pragmatics elements such as how humor could be generated through the use of politeness strategies within a conversation.

How humor is experienced: An embodied metaphor account

AbstractThe study explores the humor-body association from the perspective of embodied cognition. According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, abstract concepts tend to be understood with concrete experiences through embodied mappings. Therefore, the current study attempts to investigate how humor, an understudied abstract concept, is perceived in the Chinese context by means of textual analysis and a behavioral experiment. Firstly, 6,500 entries of the corpus data related to laughter and humor in Chinese were used for the textual analysis. Extensive uses of embodied humor metaphors were found, which provided important linguistic evidence for the interaction between laughter, humor, and body. Secondly, a behavioral study was conducted based on some frequently-used embodied metaphorical expressions of humor (e.g.,pěngfù dàxiào捧腹大笑, meaning ‘to hold one’s sides laughing’) identified in the corpus. Specifically, the participants were instructed to either do embodied metaphor or non-metaphor actions as bodily primes (i.e., ‘holding one’s belly while bending forward and backward repeatedly’ vs. ‘turning one’s upper body from side to side with both hands on the back’) or perform no actions before completing the subsequent joke rating task and the mood rating task. Results showed that the participants who were primed with the embodied metaphor actions rated the jokes higher than those in the control groups who were primed with non-metaphor actions or had no primes. Also, there was no significant difference in the mood ratings across the groups. These findings suggest that embodied humor metaphors indeed affect humor experience and shape how humor is conceptualized. The current study supports not only the embodied view of humor understanding but also the conceptual metaphor account of abstract reasoning, which sheds new light on the theoretical development of the embodiment of abstract concepts.