Volume 32, Issue 2 - Special Issue Dedicated to Christie Davies: Jokes, Targets and Spontaneous Order

The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) has dominated the discussion of humor theory for the last quarter of a century. It generated a great deal of interest in humor studies by scholars both within and outside the discipline of linguistics. Problems are resident in GTVH, however, which have been inherited from its predecessor the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH). Script Opposition and Script Overlap are not adequately defined, nor are they sufficient for the identification of a joke-carrying text. The resource of the Logical Mechanism posited by GTVH may have complicated rather than simplified the matter as the list of proposed mechanisms are too loosely defined and woefully incomplete. The Ontological Semantics Theory of Humor (OSTH) has promised to demonstrate the adequacy of the linguistic theories of humor by the ability of computers to process natural language input to discriminate between joke-carrying and non-joke-carrying texts. That promise, also decades old, remains to be fulfilled, and it is questionable whether it can be fulfilled if based on SSTH and GTVH platforms.

The law and lawyers are so pervasive in US life and culture that it should come as no surprise that they invite the kind of parody that the cinematic tradition has displayed from the birth of the movies to the present day. By examining a small number of well-known courtroom comedies, this short essay will examine how these movies often use an unlikely character, an outsider and an underdog in terms of class or education who is unable to adhere to the rules of judiciary procedures. While it is true that this outsider is there to be laughed at, humor also emerges from the ridiculousness of many aspects of the legal system and especially of legalese.

This paper seeks to apply Christie Davies’ target theory to the classical jokebook Philogelos and more specifically, its most common protagonist, the scholastikos , whose central flaw is stupidity caused by his inability to interact with material reality, similar to modern “dotty professor” jokes. This paper seeks to build a model of how scholastikos jokes work, how the stereotype is constructed and perpetuated, how this differs from other “stupid” stereotypes used elsewhere in the Philogelos (largely ethnic-based stereotypes), and possible social and cultural anxieties bound up in the character of the scholastikos . It will explore the relationship between ancient and modern targets in light of Christie Davies’ target theory and extend this model of how humour functions to transhistorical case studies.

This paper discusses Christie Davies’ recommendation for seriousness in the investigation of jokes and contrasts it with several instances of humorous discourse in his own writings. After arguing that a taste for both the production and the appreciation of humor played an important role in Davies’ research, and that humor can be used productively in humor research, the article raises the question of whether the need for a separation between humor as a subject of study and as a style of discourse about it has not been overstated in humor studies.

This paper contributes to our understanding of the inception of disaster humor by refuting the position of ‘technological determinism’ that is central for the theory of disaster jokes. This view, developed by Christie Davies, ties the emergence of this form of humor to the visual presentation of disaster events on television. The paper reports on the discovery of several contemporary instances of pre-television disaster humor on the topic of the sinking of the Titanic from 1912, thereby explicitly challenging the premise that prior to televised coverage, there were no disaster jokes. While the data come from a culture that was cognitively very distant from the disaster (and, thus, more likely to give rise to instantaneous disaster humor creation), the paper suggests that a modification to the original theory is possible, arguing that disaster humor can be interpreted as a reaction to the more general process of mediatization, whether televisual or exclusively verbal, which constructs a shared body of knowledge that people can draw upon as a resource when constructing humor. That is particularly the case with iconic disasters, such as the sinking of the Titanic, which can be seen symbolically as an epic fail of modernity rather than a mere tragic disaster.

We look back on the significant contribution that the late Christie Davies made to the International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter over a period of seventeen years, and present reminiscences about him from some past participants in this event.

The paper discusses contemporary Polish humor which features references to Chinese language and culture. Together with the ideological, political, financial and economic visibility of China, its presence in Polish humorous discourse is on the rise. Jokes, cabaret sketches and visual materials, such as memes, more and more frequently use the Chinese as targets for entertaining the audience. The article will analyze the instances of Polish humorous discourse (largely Internet memes) to show which are the most frequent specific stereotypes about the Chinese and how that relates to Davies’s models of target choice. The results suggest that Polish humor about the Chinese as an untypical case of center-periphery relations constitutes an extension of Davies’s model in that Poles see the Chinese as both comically “stupid” and “clever”. The specific comic scripts evoked by the humorous material include not only that of cheap Chinese products, incomprehensible language or proverbs and unrecognizability of the Chinese people from other Asians (all considered scripts of a periphery), but also of the huge population and high sophistication of Chinese civilization (perceived as a center). Some of our humor material, however, is better explained using Davies’s monopoly-competition model due to references to authoritarian leaders.

One of Davies’ significant contributions to the sociology of humor involves the exploration of the relation between jokes and the social order. He particularly argues that jokes seem to work like a “thermometer” conveying truths for the sociopolitical system. In our study, we aim to analyze jokes related to the migration crisis and circulated online since 2014 following Davies’ methodological guidelines. During the past few years, the number of migrants arriving at Greek shores has significantly increased. The prospect of Greece becoming a permanent base for these people has evoked diverse reactions. Migrant jokes seem to be part of Greek majority’s response to the migration ‘threat’ against national sovereignty and linguocultural homogeneity. They (re)produce and perpetuate xenophobia and racism by portraying migrants as ‘dangerous invaders’ in the Greek territory and as ‘culturally inferior’ people. Hence, such jokes align with dominant values and standpoints circulating in the Greek public sphere via underscoring the inequality between the Greek majority and migrants and via naturalizing the latter’s assimilation to majority norms and values.

This essay starts with a story about Christie’s collections at his home from around the world that he collected during his field research. The postcard from Australia on an Aussie Gentlemen fits into his description of Australians in the jokes as “coarse Australians”. Christie explained the Essexgirl jokes in London and I learned the importance of contexts hidden behind the jokes such as socio-cultural characteristics, mobility and social division in UK. Christie’s analysis of the Japanese jokes about stupidity revealed the prototype of ethnic jokes in Japan.From the episode at his home in Reading I will reflect on his father’s influence on his humor research.

Taking its cue from the observation that forms of aggressive humor directed against the political figure Donald Trump are not an ephemeral aspect of contemporary American politics but have been firmly embedded in American cultural discourse for more than two years, this article will explore the ways in which comedians, journalists and other contemporary observers have described and commented on the role and functions of humor and comedy with regard to the Trump phenomenon in the context of the 2016 presidential elections and its aftermath. Drawing on a selection of material from established online news resources the essay will document how popular media outlets have presented the nation’s most prominent late-night comedy as an arena in which the format’s popular hosts deploy humor in an attempt to undermine Trump’s status and ultimately to end his foray onto America’s highest political sphere. The article will then trace the popularity of the idea that political humor is subversive in the tradition of the country’s intellectual history and check it against a selection of empirical studies devoted to the topic. In this context it will become apparent that the belief in the corrective power of humor is deeply ingrained in the American popular imagination and is being perpetuated by contemporary reports and comments in important segments of the media landscape.