A joke is something spoken, written, or done with
humorous
intention.[1]
Jokes may have many different forms, e.g., a single word or a gesture
(considered in a particular context), a question-answer, or a whole
short story. The word "joke" has
a number of synonyms, including wisecrack,
gag,
prank,
quip, jape
and jest.[1],
To achieve their end, jokes may employ
irony,
sarcasm,
word
play and other devices. Jokes may have a
punch line, i.e. an ending to make it humorous.
A
practical joke or
prank differs from a spoken joke in that the major component of the
humour is physical rather than verbal (for example placing salt in the
sugar bowl).
Purpose
Jokes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers.
The desired response is generally
laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen
flat" or "bombed". However, jokes have other purposes and functions,
common to
comedy/humour/satire
in general.
Antiquity of jokes
Jokes have been a part of human culture since at least 1900 BC.
According to research conducted by Dr Paul McDonald of the
University of Wolverhampton, a
fart joke from ancient
Sumer is
currently believed to be the world's oldest known joke.[2]
Britain's oldest joke, meanwhile, is a 1,000-year-old
double-entendre that can be found in the
Codex Exoniensis.[3]
A recent discovery of a document called
Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) gives us an insight into
ancient humour. Written in Greek by Hierocles and Philagrius, it dates
to the third or fourth century AD, and contains some 260 jokes.
Considering humour from our own culture as recent as the 19th century is
at times baffling to us today, the humour is surprisingly familiar. They
had different
stereotypes: the
absent-minded professor, the
eunuch,
and people with
hernias
or bad breath were favourites. A lot of the jokes play on the idea of
knowing who characters are:
A barber, a bald man and an absent minded professor take a
journey together. They have to camp overnight, so decide to take
turns watching the luggage. When it's the barber's turn, he gets
bored, so amuses himself by shaving the head of the professor. When
the professor is woken up for his shift, he feels his head, and says
"How stupid is that barber? He's woken up the bald man instead of
me."
There is even a joke similar to
Monty Python's "Dead
Parrot" sketch: a man buys a slave, who dies shortly afterwards.
When he complains to the slave merchant, he is told: "He didn't die when
I owned him." Comic
Jim
Bowen has presented them to a modern audience. "One or two of
them are jokes I've seen in people's acts nowadays, slightly updated.
They put in a motor car instead of a chariot - some of them are
Tommy Cooper-esque."[4]
Psychology of
jokes
Why people laugh at jokes has been the subject of serious academic
study, examples being:
-
Immanuel Kant, in Critique of Judgement (1790) states
that "Laughter is an effect that arises if a tense expectation is
transformed into nothing." Here is Kant's two-century old joke and
his analysis:
An Englishman at an Indian's table in
Surat
saw a bottle of ale being opened, and all the beer, turned to froth,
rushed out. The Indian, by repeated exclamations, showed his great
amazement. - Well, what's so amazing in that? asked the Englishman.
- Oh, but I'm not amazed at its coming out, replied the Indian, but
how you managed to get it all in. - This makes us laugh, and it
gives us a hearty pleasure. This is not because, say, we think we
are smarter than this ignorant man, nor are we laughing at anything
else here that it is our liking and that we noticed through our
understanding. It is rather that we had a tense expectation that
suddenly vanished...
- Marvin Minsky suggests that laughter has a specific function
related to the
human brain. In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms
for the brain to learn
nonsense. For that reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as
funny when you hear them repeatedly.
- Edward de Bono suggests that the mind is a pattern-matching
machine, and that it works by recognising stories and behaviour and
putting them into familiar patterns.
When a familiar connection is disrupted and an alternative
unexpected new link is made in the brain via a different route than
expected, then laughter occurs as the new connection is made.
This theory explains a lot about jokes. For example:
- Why jokes are only funny the first time they are told: once
they are told the pattern is already there, so there can be no
new connections, and so no laughter.
- Why jokes have an elaborate and often repetitive set up: The
repetition establishes the familiar pattern in the brain. A
common method used in jokes is to tell almost the same story
twice and then deliver the punch line
the third time the story is told. The first two tellings of
the story evoke a familiar pattern in the brain, thus priming
the brain for the punch line.
- Why jokes often rely on
stereotypes: the use of a stereotype links to familiar
expected behaviour, thus saving time in the set-up.
- Why jokes are variants on well-known stories (e.g.
the genie and a lamp and
a man walks into a bar): This again saves time in the set up
and establishes a familiar pattern.
-
- a feeling of superiority over the subject of the joke.
- a sudden realization of a misconception(or of an over
thought premise) or the realization that a subject has made an
incongruous decision
- edgy dialogue about sensitive topics such as marriage,
morality, and illness.
- that in animal jokes, those that feature ducks are the most
funny
Laughter, the intended human reaction to jokes, is healthy in
moderation, uses the
abdominal muscles, and releases
endorphins, natural "feel good" chemicals, into the brain.
Jokes in
organizations
Jokes can be employed by workers as a way to identify with their
jobs. For example,
9-1-1
operators often crack jokes about incongruous, threatening, or tragic
situations they deal with on a daily basis.[5]
This use of humour and cracking jokes helps employees differentiate
themselves from the people they serve while also assisting them in
identifying with their jobs.[6]
In addition to employees, managers use joking, or jocularity, in
strategic ways. Some managers attempt to suppress joking and humour use
because they feel it relates to lower production, while others have
attempted to manufacture joking through pranks, pajama or dress down
days, and specific committees that are designed to increase fun in the
workplace.[7]
Rules
The rules of humour are analogous to those of
poetry.
These common rules are mainly
timing, precision, synthesis, and
rhythm.
French philosopher
Henri Bergson has said in an essay: "In every wit there is
something of a poet."[8]
In this essay Bergson views the essence of humour as the encrustation of
the mechanical upon the living. He used as an instance a book by an
English humorist, in which an elderly woman who desired a reputation as
a philanthropist provided "homes within easy hail of her mansion for the
conversion of atheists who have been specially manufactured for her, so
to speak, and for a number of honest folk who have been made into
drunkards so that she may cure them of their failing, etc." This idea
seems funny because a genuine impulse of charity as a living, vital
impulse has become encrusted by a mechanical conception of how it should
manifest itself.
Precision
To reach precision, the comedian must choose the words in order to
provide a vivid,
in-focus image, and to avoid being generic as to confuse the
audience, and provide no laughter. To properly arrange the words in the
sentence is also crucial to get precision.
Rhythm
The joke's content (meaning) is not what provokes the
laugh,
it just makes the
salience of the joke and provokes a
smile.
What makes us laugh is the joke mechanism.
Milton Berle demonstrated this with a classic theatre experiment in
the 1950s: if during a series of jokes you insert phrases that are not
jokes, but with the same
rhythm,
the audience laughs anyway[citation
needed]. A classic is the
ternary rhythm, with three
beats:
Introduction,
premise,
antithesis (with the antithesis being the
punch line).
In regards to the Milton Berle experiment, they can be taken to
demonstrate the concept of "breaking context" or "breaking the pattern".
It is not necessarily the rhythm that caused the audience to laugh, but
the disparity between the expectation of a "joke" and being instead
given a non-sequitur "normal phrase." This normal phrase is, itself,
unexpected, and a type of punchline—the
anti-climax.
Comic
In the comic field plays the 'economy of ideative expenditure'; in
other words excessive energy is wasted or action-essential energy is
saved. The profound meaning of a
comic gag or a comic joke is "I'm a child"; the comic deals with the
clumsy body of the child.
Laurel and Hardy are a classic example. An individual laughs because
he recognises the child that is in himself. In
clowns
stumbling is a childish
tempo. In
the comic, the visual gags may be translated into a joke. For example in
Side Effects (By Destiny Denied story) by Woody Allen:
"My father used to wear loafers," she confessed. "Both on the
same foot".
The typical comic technique is the disproportion.
Wit
In the wit field plays the "economy of censorship expenditure"[9]
(Freud calls it "the economy of psychic expenditure"); usually
censorship prevents some 'dangerous ideas' from reaching the conscious
mind, or helps us avoid saying everything that comes to mind; adversely,
the wit circumvents the censorship and brings up those ideas. Different
wit techniques allow one to express them in a funny way. The profound
meaning behind a wit joke is "I have dangerous ideas". An example from
Woody Allen:
I contemplated suicide again - this time by inhaling next to an
insurance salesman.
Or, when a bagpipe player was asked "How do you play that thing?" his
answer was "Well." Wit is a branch of
rhetoric, and there are about 200 techniques (technically they are
called
tropes, a particular kind of
figure of speech) that can be used to make jokes.[10]
Irony
can be seen as belonging to this field.
Humour
In the comedy field, humour induces an "economised expenditure of
emotion" (Freud calls it "economy of affect" or "economy of sympathy".
Freud produced this final part of his interpretation many years later,
in a paper later supplemented to the book.).[9][11]
In other words, the joke erases an emotion that should be felt about an
event, making us insensitive to it.e.g.:
"yo momma" jokes. The profound meaning of the void feeling of a
humour joke is "I'm a
cynic". An example from Woody Allen:
Three times I've been mistaken for
Robert Redford. Each time by a blind person.
This field of jokes is still a
grey area, being mostly unexplored. Extensive use of this kind of
humour can be found in the work of British satirist
Chris Morris, like the sketches of the
Jam television program.
Black humour and
sarcasm
belong to this field. Another kind of joke is the ever popular "Yo
Mamma" joke.
Cycles
Folklorists, in particular (but not exclusively) those who study the
folklore of the United States, collect jokes into joke cycles.
A cycle is a collection of jokes with a particular theme or a
particular "script". (That is, it is a
literature cycle.)[12]
Folklorists have identified several such cycles:
Gruner discusses several "sick
joke" cycles that occurred upon events surrounding
Gary
Hart,
Natalie Wood,
Vic
Morrow,
Jim
Bakker,
Richard Pryor,
Princess Diana and
Michael Jackson, noting how several jokes were recycled from one
cycle to the next. For example: A joke about
Vic
Morrow ("We now know that Vic Morrow had
dandruff: they found his
head and shoulders in the bushes") was subsequently recycled about
Admiral Mountbatten, and again applied to the crew of the Challenger
space shuttle ("How do we know that
Christa McAuliffe had dandruff? They found her head and shoulders on
the beach.").[27]
Berger asserts that "whenever there is a popular joke cycle, there
generally is some widespread kind of social and cultural anxiety,
lingering below the surface, that the joke cycle helps people deal
with".[28]
Types of jokes
Jokes often depend on the humour of the unexpected, the mildly
taboo
(which can include the distasteful or socially improper), or playing off
stereotypes and other cultural beliefs. Many jokes fit into more
than one category.
Subjects
Political jokes are usually a form of
satire.
They generally concern politicians and heads of state, but may also
cover the absurdities of a country's political situation. A prominent
example of political jokes would be political cartoons. Two large
categories of this type of jokes exist. The first one makes fun of a
negative attitude to political opponents or to politicians in general.
The second one makes fun of political clichés, mottoes, catch phrases or
simply blunders of politicians. Some, especially the "you
have two cows" genre, derive humour from comparing different
political systems.
Professional humour includes caricatured portrayals of certain
professions such as lawyers, and in-jokes told by professionals to each
other.
Mathematical jokes are a form of
in-joke,
generally designed to be understandable only by insiders. (They are also
often strictly visual jokes.)
Ethnic jokes exploit
ethnic stereotypes. They are often
racist and frequently considered offensive. For example, the British
tell jokes starting "An
Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman..." which exploit the
supposed parsimony of the Scot, stupidity of the Irish or rigid
conventionality of the English. Such jokes exist among numerous peoples.
Sexist jokes exploit
sexual stereotypes. They are inherently
sexist, and increasingly are considered offensive.
Jokes based on other stereotypes (such as
blonde jokes) are often considered funny.
Religious jokes fall into several categories:
- Jokes based on stereotypes associated with people of religion
(e.g. nun jokes, priest jokes, or rabbi jokes)
- Jokes on classical religious subjects:
crucifixion,
Adam and Eve,
St. Peter at The Gates, etc.
- Jokes that collide different religious denominations: "A
rabbi,
a
medicine man, and a
pastor
went fishing..."
- Letters and addresses to God.
Self-deprecating or self-effacing humour is superficially similar to
racial and stereotype jokes, but involves the targets laughing at
themselves. It is said to maintain a sense of perspective and to be
powerful in defusing confrontations. A common example is
Jewish humour. A similar situation exists in the Scandinavian "Ole
and Lena" joke.
Self-deprecating humour has also been used by politicians, who
recognise its ability to acknowledge controversial issues and steal the
punch of criticism.[citation
needed] For example, when
Abraham Lincoln was accused of being two-faced he replied, "If I had
two faces, do you think this is the one I’d be wearing?".
Dirty jokes are based on
taboo,
often sexual,
content or vocabulary. The definitive studies on them have been written
by
Gershon Legman.
Other taboos are challenged by
sick jokes and
gallows humour, and to joke about
disability is considered in this group.[citation
needed]
Surrealist or minimalist jokes exploit semantic inconsistency, for
example: Q: What's red and invisible? A: No tomatoes..[citation
needed]
Anti-jokes are jokes that are not funny in regular sense, and often
can be decidedly unfunny, but rely on the let-down from the expected
joke to be funny in itself.[citation
needed]
An
elephant joke is a joke, almost always a
riddle
or conundrum and often a sequence of connected riddles, frequently
operating on a surrealistic, anti-humorous or meta-humorous level, that
involves an
elephant.
Jokes involving
non-sequitur humour, with parts of the joke being unrelated to each
other; e.g. "My uncle once punched a man so hard his legs became
trombones", from
The Mighty Boosh TV series.
Dark humour is often used in order to deal with a difficult situation
in a manner of "if you can laugh at it, it won't kill you". Usually
those jokes make fun of tragedies like death, accidents, wars,
catastrophes or injuries.
Styles
The question/answer joke, sometimes posed as a common
riddle,
has a supposedly straight question and an answer which is twisted for
humorous effect;
puns are often employed. Of this type are
knock-knock joke,
light bulb joke, the many variations on "why
did the chicken cross the road?", and the class of "What's the
difference between a _______ and a ______" joke, where the punch line is
often a pun or a
spoonerism linking two apparently entirely unconnected concepts.
Some jokes require a
double act, where one respondent (usually the
straight man) can be relied on to give the correct response to the
person telling the joke. This is more common in performance than
informal joke-telling.
A
shaggy dog story is an extremely long and involved joke with an
intentionally weak or completely non-existent punchline. The humour lies
in building up the audience's anticipation and then letting them down
completely. The longer the story can continue without the audience
realising it is a joke, and not a serious anecdote, the more successful
it is.
See also
Notes
-
^
a
b
"Joke". Dictionary.com.
Retrieved 2012-05-27.
-
^
'World's oldest joke' traced back to 1900 BC.
-
^
Adams,
Stephen (July 31, 2008).
"The world's oldest jokes revealed by university research".
The Daily Telegraph (London).
-
^
Classic gags discovered in ancient Roman joke book March 13,
2009
-
^
"Tracy, S. J., Myers, K. K., &
Scott, C. W. (2006). Cracking jokes and crafting selves:
Sensemaking and identity management among human service workers.
Communication Monographs, 73,283-308."
-
^
"Lynch, O. H. (2002). Humorous
communication: Finding a place for humor in communication
research. Communication Theory, 4,423-445."
-
^
"Collinson, D. L. (2002). Managing
humour.
Journal of Management Studies, 39,269-288."
-
^
Henri Bergson (2005) [1901].
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Dover
Publications.
-
^
a
b
Sigmund Freud (missingdate).
Wit and its relation to the unconscious.
missingpublisher. pp. 180,371–374.
-
^
Salvatore Attardo (1994).
Linguistic Theories of Humour.
Walter de Gruyter. p. 55.
ISBN 3-11-014255-4.
-
^
Sigmund Freud (1928). "Humour".
International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
-
^
Salvatore Attardo (2001). "Beyond the Joke". Humorous Texts:
A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Walter de Gruyter.
pp. 69–71.
ISBN 3-11-017068-X.
-
^
K.
Hirsch and M.E. Barrick (1980). "The Hellen Keller Joke Cycle".
Journal of American Folklore (The Journal of American
Folklore, Vol. 93, No. 370) 93 (370): 441–448.
doi:10.2307/539874.
JSTOR 539874.
-
^
Carl
Rahkonen (Winter 2000). "No Laughing Matter: The Viola Joke
Cycle as Musicians' Folklore". Western Folklore (Western
Folklore, Vol. 59, No. 1) 59 (1): 49–63.
doi:10.2307/1500468.
JSTOR 1500468.
-
^
Elizabeth Radin Simons (October 1986). "The NASA Joke Cycle: The
Astronauts and the Teacher". Western Folklore (Western
Folklore, Vol. 45, No. 4) 45 (4): 261–277.
doi:10.2307/1499821.
JSTOR 1499821.
-
^
Willie Smyth (October 1986). "Challenger Jokes and the Humor of
Disaster". Western Folklore (Western Folklore, Vol. 45,
No. 4) 45 (4): 243–260.
doi:10.2307/1499820.
JSTOR 1499820.
-
^
Elliott Oring (July – September 1987). "Jokes and the Discourse
on Disaster". The Journal of American Folklore (The
Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 397) 100
(397): 276–286.
doi:10.2307/540324.
JSTOR 540324.
-
^
Laszlo Kurti (July – September 1988). "The Politics of Joking:
Popular Response to Chernobyl". The Journal of American
Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 101, No.
401) 101 (401): 324–334.
doi:10.2307/540473.
JSTOR 540473.
-
^
Christie Davies (1998). Jokes and Their Relation to Society.
Walter de Gruyter. pp. 186–189.
ISBN 3-11-016104-4.
-
^
Alan
Dundes (July 1979). "The Dead Baby Joke Cycle". Western
Folklore (Western Folklore, Vol. 38, No. 3) 38 (3):
145–157.
doi:10.2307/1499238.
JSTOR 1499238.
-
^
Christie Davies (2002). "Jokes about Newfies and Jokes told by
Newfoundlanders". Mirth of Nations. Transaction
Publishers.
ISBN 0-7658-0096-9.
-
^
Christie Davies (1999). "Jokes on the Death of Diana". In
eJulian Anthony Walter and Tony Walter. The Mourning for
Diana. Berg Publishers. p. 255.
ISBN 1-85973-238-0.
-
^
Alan
Dundes (1971). "A Study of Ethnic Slurs: The Jew and the Polack
in the United States". Journal of American Folklore (The
Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 84, No. 332) 84 (332):
186–203.
doi:10.2307/538989.
JSTOR 538989.
-
^
Alan
Dundes, ed. (1991). "Folk Humor". Mother Wit from the
Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American
Folklore. University Press of Mississippi. p. 612.
ISBN 0-87805-478-2.
-
^
Alan Dundes (October – December 1985). "The J. A. P. and the
J. A. M. in American Jokelore". The Journal of American
Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 98, No.
390) 98 (390): 456–475.
doi:10.2307/540367.
JSTOR 540367.
-
^
Robin Hirsch (April 1964). "Wind-Up Dolls". Western Folklore
(Western Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 2) 23 (2): 107–110.
doi:10.2307/1498259.
JSTOR 1498259.
-
^
Charles R. Gruner (1997). The
Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh.
Transaction Publishers. pp. 142–143.
ISBN 0-7658-0659-2.
-
^
Dr
Arthur Asa Berger (1993). "Healing with Humor". An Anatomy of
Humor. Transaction Publishers. pp. 161–162.
ISBN 0-7658-0494-8.
References
-
Mary Douglas "Jokes." in Rethinking Popular Culture:
Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. [1975] Ed.
Chandra Mukerji and
Michael Schudson. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991.
Further reading
- Cante, Richard C. (March 2008).
Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US Culture. London:
Ashgate Publishing.
ISBN 0-7546-7230-1. Chapter 2: The AIDS Joke as Cultural Form.
- Holt, Jim (July 2008). Stop Me If
You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. New York:
W. W. Norton.
ISBN 0-393-06673-8.
- Grace Hui Chin Lin & Paul Shih Chieh Chien, (2009) Taiwanese
Jokes from Views of Sociolinguistics and Language Pedagogies
[3]
External links