Volume 28, Issue 3 -

The present work theorizes that the experience of humor relies on distinct roles for each of the two thought modes identified by Kahneman (2011): Intuitive and Reflective Thought. A listener’s Intuitive Thought early in a joke is hypothesized to increase the probability of experiencing incongruity. Reflective Thought is hypothesized to be the mechanism for resolving the incongruity in a joke. If the latter hypothesis is valid, measures of Reflective Thought should be more closely associated with Humor Cognition (Feingold 1983) than would intelligence. SAT Total score was used to represent tested IQ (Frey and Detterman 2004), and the Cognitive Reflection Test (Frederick 2005) and SAT Critical Reading score were used to represent Reflective Thought. Participants consisted of 148 university students, 79 females, 67 males, and 2 undesignated. Partial correlation analysis revealed that controlling for SAT Critical Reading, SAT Total had no relationship to Humor Cognition ( r =–0.04, n.s.). However, controlling for SAT Total, SAT Critical Reading and Humor Cognition remain significantly correlated ( r =0.33, p <0.001).

This article uses interactional sociolinguistic methodology to examine humor as both content and process in the classroom. It contributes to our increasing understanding not only of the ways that humor is perceived and constructed in intercultural discourse, but also the ways that it may have pedagogical benefits of increasing L2 pragmatic and interactional competence. The topic of humor in the classroom is typically treated either in relation to the teacher’s behavior, or in relation to course content. The former focuses on strategies for the use of humor in the service of effective classroom control and relationships with students (e.g., Loomans 1993; Shade 1996), with the assumption that more effective learning can take place in the atmosphere created. The latter focuses on the use of humor genres as the basis for language exercises (Megdyes 2002), but with little analysis of the nature of the humor. Within the field of second language learning and teaching, there has been a recent interest in humor as subsumed under the general rubric of language play (Cook 2000; Bushnell 2008; Evaldsson and Cekaite 2010; Jaspers 2011; Waring 2013), with a focus on the cognitive and the pedagogical possibilities at all levels of language (phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic). In addition, there is a growing body of literature that focuses on student-initiated joking in L2 classrooms, some of which explicitly uses humor as the construct (Garland 2010; Pomerantz and Bell 2011; Matsumoto 2014; Moalla 2014), as well as literature that is concerned with the ways in which joking interaction intersects with learning processes (Tocalli-Beller and Swain 2007; Waring 2011; Bell 2012; Kim 2014). A key idea that has emerged is the importance of student agency. This article uses an example of joking that was brought to the classroom by a student as part of an ethnographic pedagogy, and it analyses students’ use of joking within a discussion of the critical incident facilitated by the teacher. It is a multi-layered analysis of the use of a critical incident involving cross-cultural joking as part of course content, presenting a discourse analysis of a key class discussion in an adult class on cross-cultural interaction in which student joking interaction coincided with an insight point.

This study examines the role of humor orientation and reported humorous communication behaviors during father–son conflict in predicting relational satisfaction. In addition, the main effect and interaction effect (with humor orientation) of verbal aggressiveness on relational satisfaction is investigated. A survey of adult father–son pairs pinpoints an interesting network of findings linking general humor orientations, verbal aggressiveness, reported use of humorous messages during conflict, and relational satisfaction within the father–son relationship. Key findings include: Sons’ relational satisfaction is predicted by lower fathers’ verbal aggressiveness for those with fathers who report a very high humor orientation. On the other hand, fathers’ relational satisfaction is predicted by lower levels of sons’ humor orientation, and not by verbal aggressiveness. Further, sons’ relational satisfaction is negatively related to the reported use of all types of humorous messages in a father–son conflict event.

Although individual differences in personality traits and humor between comedians and non-comedians have received increased attention, conclusions are limited to males as prior samples include few female comedians. This is the first quantitative study of personality traits and humor with more female (n=36) than male (n=33) comedians. This study compared comedians to a diverse non-comedian sample of undergraduates (n=89). A logistic regression using personality, humor styles, and gender as predictors correctly identified 83% of participants as either comedians or non-comedians. As hypothesized, personality and humor styles, but not gender, were significant predictors of comedian status. Male and female comedians were similar on Big Five Personality traits except for neuroticism, on which female comedians scored significantly higher than their male counterparts. Comedians scored significantly higher than non-comedians on extraversion and openness, while non-comedians just failed to be significant in scoring higher than comedians on agreeableness. In addition, as measured by the Humor Styles Questionnaire, male and female comedians scored similarly on all four humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, self-defeating) and scored higher than non-comedians on the humor styles. Overall, these findings suggest personality differences and humor styles are two traits responsible for individuals pursuing stand-up comedy.

This paper explores how performance strategies in stand-up comedy are employed to foster audience receptivity to a comedian’s social commentaries. Stand-up comedy, among other art forms within the live performance genre, possesses the unique ability to respond in real time to the mood, energy, and overall engagement level of a crowd. This responsiveness to audiences is evident to a lesser degree in satirical news shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the United States or the recently cancelled Al-Bernameg in Egypt. Through the interweaving of long successful structural elements in a stand-up performance with the improvisational skill to manipulate and adapt them to each new crowd, Anglophone comedians from around the globe, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, have identified approaches to achieve the goal of an involved audience. Conducting an ethnography in the Midwest of the United States of five stand-up comedy clubs across three states, the researcher collected data through live stand-up performance observations and interviews of comedians and audience members from these shows. The analysis of these data reveals how the subtlety and art of stand-up performance strategies combine with the pleasurable medium of humor to lay the foundation for advancing social critiques.

Humans are vigilant against deception and misinterpretation thanks to a set of cognitive mechanisms that monitor their interlocutors’ benevolence, credibility, competence and preferences, as well as the plausibility and acceptability of the interpretative hypotheses constructed. This paper explores the role of these mechanisms in the comprehension of puns. Through purposeful ambiguity, these bias the audience to an interpretation which, despite initially receiving some credibility, must be dismissed in order for the audience to arrive at a less salient interpretation. In doing so, this paper suggests an approach to their comprehension that differs from previous relevance-theoretic ones, which regard optimal relevance as the criterion determining the acceptability of interpretative hypotheses. Vigilance mechanisms are here argued to be essential for the audience to consider additional interpretative hypotheses, as these mechanisms alert the audience to the punster’s jocular intention, which surfaces in the production of a text amenable to reinterpretation. They also trigger a sophisticated processing strategy that encourages the audience to backtrack in order to detect the reinterpretable part of the text. This involves metarepresentation, as the audience need to attribute to the communicator the intention to transmit a different message.