Volume 25, Issue 4

This paper explores some of the difficulties involved in defining satire. Neither the formal characteristics of satire nor its informing purposes, including its variable associations with humour and the provocation of amusement allow for a unifying definition over the long term. It considers a range of approaches to and types of definition and takes as a principle example the notion of Menippean satire. It argues that a characterisation in terms of family resemblance is more helpful for a strictly historical understanding than formal definitions and that it is misleading to take satire as a genre, let along a literary one. Throughout it also suggests that the case of satire tells us something about definition and the often naïve expectations of what definitions can establish.

In the film The Aristocrats (2005) comedy audiences are given a rare glimpse inside the entertainment industry green room. An analysis of the age-old joke “The Aristocrats”, the film offers insight into the role of humor in everyday life, the gendered nature of comedy, and the powerful ties that bind stand-up and variety comedy performers. This paper applies Bakhtinian theories of laughter and the carnivalesque to The Aristocrats . In particular, I consider the way in which female comics construct humor from within a masculinized and often misogynist field. I find that comedy is able to make evident divergent perspectives while paradoxically also serving to pull people together into a common discursive framework.

It is proposed that a distinction should be made between two fundamentally different kinds of humor. In disclosure humor, an identity (person, statement, etc.) is disclosed as having different characteristics/meanings from those originally supposed by the observer. In distortion humor, new characteristics are imaginatively added to the identity in a way that leads to absurdity. In both cases, incompatible attributes are experienced in relation to the identity concerned, this apparent escape from Aristotle's law of identity being made possible by one of the attributes being experienced as real and the other as an appearance. In both cases, humor is only experienced when the identity is diminished in the eyes of the observer. In the case of disclosure humor, the diminishment relates to the “real” attribute, while in the case of distortion humor it relates to the “apparent” attribute. This novel distinction is presented as an extension of the reversal theory of humor (Apter 1982), and is used to develop a taxonomy of humor that also involves the dichotomy of transitional and non-transitional humor, as well as three different levels of reference. Throughout, these concepts are illustrated with many kinds of humor, including jokes, parody, caricature, farce, riddles and slapstick.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC), more than other media, has been associated with humor and joking (e.g., Crystal 2001, 2005; Danet 1998, 2001; del-Teso-Craviotto 2006; Fisher et al. 2000; Georgakopoulou 2005; Hancock 2004; Herring 1999, 2001; North 2007; Rellstab 2007; Rouzie 2001; Sotillo 2000). In text-based synchronous CMC, paralinguistic, gestural, mimetic, or other nonverbal cues are either lacking or are transcribed in some form (e.g., LOL ‘laugh out loud’ ). Adopting Hay's (2001) analytical framework, we look at how foreign language learners in synchronous computer-mediated discussions provide humor support in a unimodal environment. The data show that CMC participants did not transcribe laughter or other emotive reactions to humor by using emoticons or verbal glosses. Instead, they supported humor by producing more humor, a strategy also attested in the face-to-face environment (Hay 2001). Participants also responded to humor tokens with “silence”, a strategy which may signal lack of humor support but can also be caused by a technical glitch, among other things. In addition, the analysis shows a link between humor appreciation, on the one hand, and agreement with the humorist's stance, on the other (see Hay 2001).

Three samples (English, Hungarian and bilingual speakers, N = 91) were asked to rate 32 jokes covering various topics. Funniness ratings revealed several between- and within-group differences. Hungarians perceived jokes with ethnic stereotypes to be funnier than did either bilingual or English speakers. Bilinguals with Hungarian dominance rated jokes presented in Hungarian higher than jokes presented in English. No such preference was observed in bilinguals with English dominance. The implications of the findings to multicultural research and clinical practice are discussed.

Humor serves a variety of functions in interpersonal communication, including the release of tension and the diffusion of conflict. Based on Dyadic Power Theory (Dunbar 2004; Dunbar and Abra 2010), it is predicted that interactants of equal power will use more humor and different types of humor than those either relatively high or low in power as compared to their partners. The present study analyzed experimentally manipulated problem-solving interactions between research participants (N = 150) and confederate strangers. Participants used a mean of 8 humorous statements in interactions that lasted for a mean of 15 minutes. The results revealed that power did not influence the amount of humor used overall but those who were equal in power used more tension-releasing humor than those unequal in power. Additionally, those with equal power or high power positions were more likely to use humor to disparage the task or laugh along with their partner than those low in power. Humor use did not affect the participants' satisfaction with the interaction, but those who laughed along with their partner exerted more influence over the outcome of the problem-solving task. Although not hypothesized, some sex differences in types of humor use also emerged.

This study examines a commonly held belief, left over from psychoanalytic theories of humor as a coping mechanism, that relationships with parents strongly influence comedians' temperaments and career choices. Thirty one professional stand-up comedians and 400 students completed the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), which concerns recollected parental care and protectiveness, and a new self-report questionnaire that measures popularity and humor use among peers during adolescence. Results show that comedians' parents did not differ from students' parents in care or protectiveness, and comedians did not differ from students in adolescent popularity, but comedians did use more humor among adolescent peers (were more likely to be class clowns, make fun of others, laugh at themselves, and be the butt of jokes). The results suggest that stand-up comedians do not differ much from ordinary college students in their parental or adolescence peer relationships.