Volume 3, Issue 2

In this article, metacommunication is initially defined as explicit or implicit communication about aspects of the ongoing communication. One of these aspects can be previous metacommunication, so that in some cases metacommunication is communication about metacommunication. The result, then, is a hierarchy of metacommunicative acts. Metacommunication always involves changing one's communicative position from a participant's to an observer's. While it is a common phenomenon of all kinds of communication, metacommunication plays a specific role in humorous discourse. This is due to the fact that humour usually involves incongruities, i. e. ill-fitting communicative elements that destroy an expectation introduced before. Incongruities necessarily trigger a metacommunicative reflection of the communicative process leading up to it. The incongruous element is therefore one of the most important (implicit) metacommunicative cues in the humorous discourse. Humour is thus understood as a production/reception process with a necessary metacommunicative component. This can be minimal, but often is a complex web of metacommunicative cues. Methodologically, humour is seen as evidence of metacommunication, as there can be no humour without a minimum of metacommunication. In section 2, the circumstances of metacommunication in humour are discussed: The producer of humour metacommunicates by explicitly announcing a joke and giving explicit information on some aspects of the ongoing discourse or by implicitly constructing the communication in such a way that the audience's attention is necessarily drawn to some aspect of the communicative process, without which the humour would not deliver. The recipient either follows the producer's explicit metacommunicative cue or is drawn to consider specific aspects of the communicative process itself, even in absence of explicit clues. Meta-humour, as in the parody of a humour pattern, is usually based on implicit metacommunication, as an explicit cue would destroy its subtlety. A prominent position in the hierarchy of metacommunicative cues is taken up by the one that indicates the comedian's/joker's humorous intent, because it primes the recipient for the humorous event and activates all the respective expectations and communicative patterns. This humour cue establishes the humorous mode of communication, and a humour maxim along with it, which forms the pragmatic basis for the interpretation within the humorous mode of communication. The humour cue and the incongruity together form the central metacommunicative elements in the humour process. In this article, the view is taken that humorous incongruities can attack at any point in the discourse. Hence, the recipient's metacommunicative attention can be directed at any aspect of the communicative process. Examples of this are given from phonology, the lexicon (e. g. a spoof education programme claims that the terms Ginny, Ninny and Peter's Peg are commonly used for the chemical element calcium), knowledge frames, and genre patterns. In some cases, the incongruities are quite blatant, whereas in others, the metacommunicative message is subtle and requires an attentive audience, when, for instance, the word mafipulate is used in a context of chemistry, and the audience is left unsure whether the word exists or not. In section 4, some basic constellations of metacommunication in humour are presented. 1. The humour cue with delayed fulfilment: Here, a metacommunicative humour cue is given. However, a humorous incongruity is then not delivered for a relatively long time, so that when it finally arrives, the previous delay adds considerably to the communicative effect. In this context, the principle of delayable fulfilment of maxims – here the humour maxim – is discussed. 2. No humour cue, sudden humour: Typical realisations of this pattern are the spontaneous joke in a conversation and involuntary humour. Here, the fact that the humour is unannounced may heighten its effects. At the same time, however, this constellation involves the risk of the audience missing the humour. 3. Humour cue follows after the punch-line: A common realisation of this constellation is the studio audience laughter in TV sitcoms that draws the TV audience's attention to the humorous potential of the lines and actions presented immediately before. 4. Humour cue, but no delivery: This constellation may produce meta-humour, when, for instance, comedians parody a worn humour pattern and deliberately produce a predictable, poor punch-line, or none at all. The realisation of a meta-humorous intention is guided by the humour maxim, which – like other Gricean-type maxims – may trigger an implicature: If humour was expected, but not delivered, then the real humorous incongruity may lie in the absence of the expected incongruity. The article closes with the observation that subtlety and suspense in humour may to some degree be brought about by the clever manipulation or suppression of metacommunicative cues. The question of whether the omnipresence of metacommunication in humour and the necessary connection between incongruity and metacommunication suggest a metacommunication theory of humour is answered in the negative: The presence of a certain phenomenon in humour does not automatically prove that it is also the cause of humour. But metacommunication may well be behind the phenomenon that some humour theorists call the resolution of an incongruity.

The topic of this article is a special type of storytelling which consists in the collaborative construction of a coherent fantasy scenario. Characteristic of this highly entertaining genre is that several conversational participants make brief contributions that distance the scenario from reality and turn-by-turn (step-by-step) shape and intensify its absurdity. Such co-constructed stories are not based on an actual amusing event in the past, but rather an amusing scene is jointly created »on-line« by various participants cooperating with and orienting themselves to each others' turns at talk. The article discusses the structure and function of joint fictionalizations in the frame of conversation analysis and of an anthropological-linguistic genre concept and highlights the artistic dimensions. The article relates this non-prototypical type of story to »verbal art«, well aware that oral stories generally make use of different strategies than written stories, for example, sound strategies. Collaborative participation makes another important difference in comparison to written narratives. In this narrative sub-type tellers even cooperate on the level of formulation: A specific syntax seems to belong to the performative details. Often speakers use short syntactical ellipses with omissions that have a particular effect. Cooperatively they develop »imagery«, in Tannen's sense (Talking Voices, Cambridge, 1989). Only by adopting a broad concept of the story can the examples discussed below be treated as stories at all. In co-creating fictions, participants react quickly and coherently. Stylistic particularities are often obvious: speakers take many short, elliptical turns in rapid succession. This narrative subtype reveals how strongly interlocutors orient themselves to what has been said previously in the conversation and build upon comments others have already made by drawing on the appropriate (con-) textual knowledge, so that they can immediately top the fantasies of other participants. Meta-communicatively they signal »this is play« (Bateson 1954) from the beginning of the story to its end. The group members increase their amusement by making their contributions more and more absurd. The article describes the core activities of fictionalization, such as introducing the fantasy scene and confirming the scene by presenting absurd details; several further turns detach the scene from reality and magnify its absurdity. The fictitious scenarios are always anchored in reality, but are stepwise detached from it. In one scenario discussed, for example, the participants begin sharing experiences about their eating socialization and gradually develop a joint pretense, including fantasies such as of feeding children only under running water and feeding them only white food to match the color of the white walls on which they often spit their food. In humorous distancing, speakers develop a shared stance towards ideologies of healthy food and clean places. At the same time, the group members' willingness to join in and play along shows their affiliation within the group. We agree with Winchatz and Kozin (2009, 401) that in this genre participants display their knowledge of particular cultural artifacts. At the same time, they also negotiate their stances about the behavior they are talking about. As Bergmann and Luckmann (Die kommunikative Konstruktion von Moral, 1998) have noted, explicit moralizing is dispreferred in the postmodern world. Engaging in humorous fiction could be a preferred way to give hints as to what one thinks and how one feels in regard to certain topics.

Humor is strongly related to group boundaries. Jokes and other humorous utterances often draw on implicit references and inside knowledge; they tend to refer to sensitive topics which may offend people; and they ideally incite laughter, one of the strongest markers of social solidarity and emotional attunement. Hence, a shared sense of humor is generally a sine qua non for sustained relationships. Inversely, people who do not share one's humor are often shunned (Kuipers, Good Humor Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke, 2006). Laughing together, therefore, is a sign of belonging: those who join in the laughter, are part of the group; those who don't join expose themselves as outsiders. This essay explores the mechanisms through which humor is related to social boundaries: how does humor differ between groups? What are the consequences of such differences? How do humor styles emerge and change, and what happens when different humor styles »meet«? Theoretically, the essay draws on insights from cultural sociology (Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement, 1979; Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: Sociogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, 1939; Lamont 1992; Lamont/Thevenot, Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology, 2000; Lahire 2004; Molnar/Lamont, Annual Review of Sociology 28: 167–195, 2002), the sociology of emotions (Collins 2005; Goffman 1959)., as well as humor scholarship (Davies, The Mirth of Nations, 2002; Oring, Engaging Humor, 2003; Raskin 2008). The discussion will be organized around empirical examples both from my own sociological research on humor in various European countries and the US, and from examples of humor in literature and popular culture. The essay will discuss the following mechanisms: Humor draws on implicit and culture- or group-specific knowledge. Moreover, it requires considerable linguistic aptitude. In other words: humor needs to be decoded. Humor touches on sensitive topics and taboo issues, which obviously differ strongly between groups. Hence, what is funny to some is offensive to others. Humor requires, and leads to specific emotional responses (laughter, mirth) that are strongly connected with emotional closeness, solidarity and trust. Hence, humor requires specific social bonds to flourish. On the other hand, humor may also generate such social bonds, if used wisely. Humor has generic conventions and markers that may differ between groups. As a result, people may not recognize attempts at humor as such, or they may object to a specific form. Also, a specific form may require specific skills (e. g. appreciating Shakespearean comedies requires considerable background and training, which is not related to humor appreciation as such but still may be an impediment. Alternatively, educated Europeans often distrust the joke form to the extent that they will not be open to it even though they might rather like the content of the joke). Finally, and most importantly: Different groups often have different notions of what good and bad humor is. In other words: they have different stylistic criteria and standards, and different ideas of what humor is, or should »do«. This may lead to different evaluations of the same humorous utterances and genres. Such stylistic factors are hardest to grasp, but probably account for most of the difference in appreciation of humor, especially within one culture or society (Kuipers, Good Humor Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke, 2006). These five mechanisms by and large account for the emergence of »humor styles«. Such humor styles are often related to social boundaries, and they often demarcate what sociologists refer to as »symbolic boundaries«: social boundaries that become salient, meaningful, and often imbued with status differences (Molnar/Lamont, Annual Review of Sociology 28: 167–195, 2002). Such stylistic differences are expressed in the use of humor in everyday life, but also in standardized and mediated forms of humor – such as literary humor. Literary humor reflects, but also contributes to, the humor style of a specific place, time, and group. Moreover, innovation in literary humor, as well as other forms of mediated humor, often implies adaptation or even transgression of the current humor styles.

This article assesses three traditional theories of laughter and humor: the Superiority Theory, the Relief Theory, and the Incongruity Theory. Then, taking insights from those theories, it presents a new theory in which humor is play with cognitive shifts. The oldest account of what we now call humor is the Superiority Theory. For Plato and Aristotle laughter is an emotion involving scorn for people thought of as inferior. Plato also objects that laughter involves a loss of self-control that can lead to violence. And so in the ideal state described in his Republic and Laws , Plato puts tight restrictions on the performance of comedy. This negative assessment of laughter, humor, and comedy influenced early Christian thinkers, who derived from the Bible a similar understanding of laughter as hostile. The classic statement of the Superiority Theory is that of Thomas Hobbes, who describes laughter as an expression of »sudden glory«. Henri Bergson's account of laughter in Le Rire incorporates a version of the Superiority Theory. For any version of the Superiority Theory to be correct, two things must be true when we laugh: we must compare ourselves with someone else or with our former selves, and in that comparison we must judge our current selves superior. But neither of these seems to be a necessary feature of laughter or humor. First, not all laughter is about persons, and so there need be no comparison of persons. In an experiment by Lambert Deckers, subjects were asked to lift a series of apparently identical weights. The first several weighed the same, but then the subjects picked up a weight that was much heavier or lighter. Most of them laughed, but not because they were comparing themselves with anyone. Even when what we are laughing about is a person, we need not compare ourselves with that person. We may be amused by a stage comedian doing a perfect impression of some movie star without comparing ourselves with that comedian or the movie star. And even if we do compare ourselves with persons about whom we are laughing, we need not judge ourselves superior to them. They may make us laugh by surprising us with unexpected skills that we lack. After two millennia in which the Superiority Theory was the only widely accepted account of laughter, the Relief Theory and the Incongruity Theory emerged in the 18 th century. According to the Relief Theory, laughter operates like a safety valve in a steam pipe, releasing built-up nervous energy. Herbert Spencer had a simple version of the theory in which a laughter stimulus evokes emotions but then shows them to be inappropriate. Sigmund Freud had a complex theory in which there are three laughter situations: jokes ( der Witz ), the comic, and humor. In jokes, laughter is a release of psychic energy normally used to repress emotions such as hatred and sexual desire. The psychic energy »saved« in the comic is energy used for thinking. And the energy »saved« in humor is the energy of feeling emotions that are suddenly rendered unnecessary. The simple version of the Relief Theory in which laughter releases emotions that have been rendered superfluous faces several problems. Our enjoyment of simple wordplay – »If it's feasible, let's fease it« – does not seem to require emotions at all, much less their being rendered unnecessary. Some experiences of amusement, too, seem to depend merely on surprise, as in Deckers' experiment. Freud's complex theory of jokes, the comic, and humor faces even bigger challenges. There is no systematic way to sort laughter situations into his three categories. That is why no important theorist of humor after Freud has tried to maintain this distinction. Freud's distinction between three kinds of psychic energy – of repression, of thinking, and of feeling – is also unworkable and does not figure in later theories of humor. Several claims in Freud's account of »the comic«, especially his account of the mechanics of »mimetic representation«, are also counterintuitive. The Incongruity Theory is the third traditional account of humor. Immanuel Kant, David Hartley, James Beattie, William Hazlitt, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Søren Kierkegaard had versions of this theory, and in the 20 th century it became the most widely accepted theory of humor. The core of this account is that humorous amusement is a reaction to something that violates our mental patterns and expectations. To this we need to add, as Michael Clark does, that in humor, we do not simply experience incongruity but enjoy it. Even that is not sufficient for humor, however, for we can enjoy incongruity in other ways than amusement, as in the grotesque, the macabre, the horrible, the bizarre, and the fantastic. There is also a more general problem at the heart of the Incongruity Theory: it makes humor look irrational, even psychologically perverse. Indeed, George Santayana and several contemporary psychologists have claimed that adults are not able to enjoy incongruity per se. Before turning to my own theory of humor, I derive from the traditional theories four insights. First, humor is a cognitive phenomenon – it involves perceptions, thoughts, mental patterns, and expectations. Secondly, humor involves a change of cognitive state. Thirdly, that cognitive change is sudden. And fourthly, amusement is pleasurable. To these insights I add three of my own: 1) humor is a non-serious activity in which we suspend practical concern and concern about what is true, 2) humor is primarily a social experience, and 3) humor is a form of play in which laughter serves as a »play signal«. Coining the term shift for a sudden change, we can say that humor involves the enjoyment of cognitive shifts. Putting all these ideas together, I present this theory of humorous amusement: A) Someone experiences a cognitive shift . B) They are in a play mode , disengaged from practical and noetic concerns. C) Instead of reacting with puzzlement or negative emotions, they enjoy the cognitive shift. D) Their playful disengagement and their pleasure are expressed in laughter , which signals to others that they can relax and enjoy the cognitive shift too.

Humor is a prevalent feature in many forms of interaction. Banter, teasing, irony and sarcasm frequently surface in everyday talk, and conversationalists often engage in telling funny stories if not outright joke-telling. Any complete theory of humor must include its exploitation in and effects on interaction, taking into account such matters as gender, power, solidarity, politeness and identity. Such an interactional theory of humor goes beyond a purely pragmatic description of jokes and joking. The data for an interactional analysis of humor can not be limited to joke texts in books. Humor competence must include knowing how to perform and how to receive and respond to humor and jokes, and this will encompass an account of timing for both the tellers and recipients. Research on humor in interaction has experienced a steady progression from the time that recordings and transcriptions of behavior became available in 1970s. Methods of analysis developed in Conversation Analysis, discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics allowed for the detailed examination of talk-in-interaction, and this enabled the description of humorous activities. Research has shown how joking can work as a strategy for enhancing intimacy, but also for controlling a conversation; an account of humor in conversation highlights the interactional achievement of puns, irony and sarcasm along with personal anecdotes and joke-telling between participants and the mutual construction of identity they accomplish in the process. Conversational joking – especially teasing and sarcasm – has a dual force: because it plays on relational identity, teasing directed at intimates can have the potential to hurt, even as it ratifies the bond between the interactants. Still, generally, humor facilitates friendly interaction and helps participants negotiate identity. Humor can be characterized as a gendered discourse resource on which both men and women regularly draw when negotiating their gender identities in interaction; Women and men deploy humor differently, just as those with more power or control in a particular interaction use humor differently than those who are one down. Researchers have noted significant differences in the characteristics of men's and women's self-targeted humor, and shown that women and men tell different kinds of stories illustrating different types of humor; The performance of a joke follows the pattern for storytelling generally; the major difference consists in the expectation of laughter at the conclusion. Jokes are told as ‘understanding tests’, since not everyone necessarily gets every joke, and getting jokes involves background knowledge and rational processing. This testing routinely aims to find common ground, rather than to embarrass the hearer, and both the teller and the hearer learn something about each other. Jokes allow group members to direct aggression at a third party, they can help create and enhance feelings of rapport. The conversational joke performance represents a particularly salient example of interaction between the teller and the listeners. Timing in the performance of a joke is compounded of elements depending upon both the teller and the recipient: there are standard joke prefaces, characteristic patterns of syntax and discourse organization in the areas of tempo, fluency and information flow, and customary reactions at the completion of the joke. Further, there are characteristic points where a teller and/or a listener may laugh before the punch line: both tellers and recipients of jokes sometimes laugh about problems in the telling of a joke, and listeners may laugh in response to the preface of a joke, and at various incongruities during the performance. All these features of joke-telling affect the overall timing of the performance: they guide the teller in how to construct and pace the performance, and they act as cues to the recipients of the joke, helping them respond to the performance in appropriate ways and to get the joke, so that they can laugh (or perhaps withhold laughter) at the right time. Our everyday talk thrives on all kinds of stories, especially humorous ones. In exchanging anecdotes about our personal lives, we present personal identities for ratification by the other participants in the conversation. Personal anecdotes present an amusing scene which invites listeners to laugh and offer comments of their own. A story by one of them may spawn collaborative narration, whereby two or more participants contribute to or comment on a story in progress Frequently the details, dialogue and comments tend to introduce humor to a serious story or to render an already humorous story even funnier. Humor makes any story more tellable, even a familiar story, and humorous stories have characteristic patterns of participation: in particular, co-narration is acceptable whenever it creates humor. Familiar humorous stories regularly appear, and co-narration of such stories occurs quite commonly as well. The tellability of familiar stories hinges not on their content as such, but on the dynamics of the narrative event itself, and humor makes communal retelling desirable. Personal narratives allow conversationalists to demonstrate group membership and present an identity on various levels; funny personal anecdotes add to these the introduction of entertainment and fun into the interaction and demonstration of a sense of humor as well as offering opportunities for active participation by others. One personal story often leads to another by a previous recipient, and two or more participants may co-construct a story about a shared experience: such collaborative narration serves to ratify group membership and modulate rapport in multiple ways, first because it allows participants to re-live pleasant common experiences, second because it confirms the long-term bond they share, third because the experience of collaborative narration itself redounds to feelings of belonging, and fourth because communal retelling serves to solidify shared stories and their significance for the members of the group.

The main thrust of this paper is to present to an important adjacent scholarly community of literary scholars how humor can be treated by the current strand of contemporary linguistics, or – more specifically – by linguistic semantics. In the process, we will show how a major theory of humor, the Semantic Script-based Theory of Humor (Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, 325–335, 1979a, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, 1985; Attardo, Linguistic Theories of Humor, 1994) first evolved into the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo/Raskin, HUMOR – International Journal of Humor Research 4: 293–347, 1991; Attardo, Linguistic Theories of Humor, 1994), and now into the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor (Raskin/Triezenberg, Ontological Semantics of Humor: Pre-Conference Tutorial, Youngstown State University, 2005; Raskin, From SSTH to GTVH to OSTH, Finally, University of California, 2009; Hempelmann, From SSTH to GTVH to OSTH: The LM in OSTH, University of California, 2009; Taylor, SO in OSTH: Ontological Semantic View of Script Overlap/Oppositeness Support, University of California, 2009, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing 1: 3, 2010). The last theory is a work in (rapid) progress, and the last section of the paper will be devoted to a number of recent developments in blending the Ontological Semantic Technology our team is developing for Natural Language Processing applications with the improved and revised humor theory. Before we get there, however, we will discuss three major areas that are necessary for understanding, especially by scholars outside of linguistic semantics, what we have been doing and why. First, we will explain our understanding of theory, so that it not be confused with a reader's own interpretations and expectations and not lead, again and again, to the most surprising readings of what our theory of humor has done. Second, we will restate – for those yet unexposed to either of them – what exactly the Semantic Script-based Theory of Humor and the General Theory of Verbal Humor claim, what premises they use, what their goals are, and how they justify and evaluate themselves. In the last section of the paper on the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor we will address a number of important issues, often subverting and revising the claims of its predecessors. The Semantic Script-based Theory of Humor claimed that the list of script oppositions was an extra piece of knowledge that it had to use along with regular semantic analysis, this making the Semantic Script-based Theory of Humor no longer a strict application of linguistic semantics to humor. We will demonstrate how the list actually folds onto Ontological Semantic Theory, so this disappears as an obstacle to the strict-application status of the Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor. Second, we will show that Ontological Semantic Theory offers a procedure for discovering the main script opposition in a joke, an algorithm that the Semantic Script-based Theory of Humor and General Theory of Verbal Humor described rather rigorously for a competent linguist, but apparently incomprehensibly to other, often enthusiastic adherents of the theories. We will also sketch out the contribution Ontological Semantic Theory can make to the still controversial Logical Mechanism Knowledge Resource of the General Theory of Verbal Humor. This will be an initial step, we hope, towards understanding how jokes are put together and what exactly their internal/false logics are. One side product of this paper is intended to be a better understanding by the non-linguists and atheoretical linguists in the humor research community as well as by any scholar interested in humor, what the linguists of humor do and what they don't, what they can deliver to these communities and what they cannot, and what to expect from our work and what to do on their own rather than writing misdirected, even if majorly entertaining, things about our work. We do not intend this paper to kill off all the Hollywood-strength conspiracy theories, mostly of European vintage, of how a bunch of us have been trying to dominate humor research and claim the firstborns from everybody else. We do apologize for trying to remove the fun stuff from humor research: we realize we are acting as killjoys and killsports; instead of joining the fun and games of discovering the subverting humanity and inexhaustible complexity of humor, we boringly persist in discovering the truth about how humor works.

For some time now, there has been widespread support for the idea that incongruity resolution (IR) is at the heart of much, perhaps all, humour. However, the two central terms, »incongruity« and »resolution«, are as yet unclear. This means that there could be a number of different IR theories, depending on the exact definitions adopted for these terms. The dimensions of variation between the possible theories can be organised by analysing the terms »incongruity« and »resolution«, and the ways in which they are put together, in greater depth. The first of these aspects is the scope : how much of humour the theory claims to cover. Some authors offer IR as an explanation of all humour, others regard IR as a subclass of humour. Which of these positions is adopted has consequences for how the theory can be tested, as it radically affects the notion of a counter-example. A fundamental attribute of most versions of IR is that the model is sequential : that is, it characterises humour in terms of a process (in which resolution follows incongruity) rather than as a static configuration of elements. Although this is generally regarded as an essential aspect of IR, some recent suggestions raise the possibility of a non-sequential variant of IR. Perhaps the most central area of variation between IR theories concerns the nature of the incongruity. Within a sequential IR mechanism, there are number of stages where incongruity (in the sense of a clash between two meanings) can occur. It can be embedded within the situation which the text (or image) conveys, or it can consist of a clash between two alternative interpretations of the material, or it can be defined in terms of a relation between information presented initially (in the set-up ) and information presented later (the punch-line ). These are not all equivalent definitions. The point here is not that incongruity can arise in a number of different ways (which may well be the case); the issue is that different theorists define incongruity in logically different ways. It is also useful to distinguish between the way in which the incongruous situation differs from normality (what we call the deviation ) and the cognitive route by which the perceiver of the humour arrives at the incongruity (the discovery ). Some writings imply that one of these can be the »resolution« but neither is involved with lessening or removing the incongruity, which further blurs the notion of resolution. There is also a lack of clarity within the literature about what exact facet of the processing of the humour constitutes the »resolution«: is it the information (in the joke or other material) on which the reasoning depends, or the general rule which the reasoning invokes, or the actual process of applying some inference? Or is it some combination of these? Perhaps the most obviously varying feature of IR theories is the extent of the resolution: the incongruity can be eliminated ( full resolution), merely mitigated ( partial resolution) or not affected ( null resolution). Some IR frameworks allow only full resolution, others allow partial and/or null resolution. The IR model was primarily developed in the 1970s, with articles by Suls and by Shultz being highly influential. This work can be seen as setting out the traditional IR model, which is highly sequential, and typically involves full resolution. More recent proposals (including the »general theory of verbal humour«) are non-sequential, with only partial resolution. Despite this lack of agreement amongst theoreticians, experimental studies of psychological and neurological aspects of humour sometimes assume that there is an unproblematic notion of IR theory, usually treating IR as a subclass of humour involving sequential processing. Even in these cases, it is apparent (from the way that the investigators analyse the texts which they use in the tests) that different authors can have quite different views on what defines the IR model. A further complication is that the 3WD test – a prominent psychological classification of people's reactions to humour – uses two categories which are sometimes glossed as corresponding to IR and non-IR (nonsense) humour. However, the design of the 3WD test says only that there seem to be two clusters of humorous items which people react to differently; it does not provide a formal analysis of how these classes of humorous items differ, and the two classes can, strictly speaking, overlap. There appears to be a widely accepted informal notion of IR, but in view of the variation in versions of this framework, it is not clear that all who espouse this terminology are actually in agreement on the substantive details. If we try to extract a minimal essence which is present in all IR proposals, then we arrive at something like the following: All humour involves some degree of incongruity, but this incongruity is not random or arbitrary – it is systematically related to other aspects of the setting . Although few writers on IR would disagree with this, it has the methodological disadvantage of being a very weak statement, not claiming a great deal about the nature of humour.

The research is based on a model of humor appreciation that was developed thirty years ago by means of a three-mode factor analysis (Ruch, Zeitschrift für Differentielle und Diagnostische Psychologie 2: 253–273, 1981). In this study 110 adults rated 48 jokes on 5 criteria. Based on factor analysis a model of humor appreciation was derived that is composed of a classification of jokes and cartoons and of basic dimensions of responses to humor. Both content and structure contributes to individual differences in humor and two structural dimensions (i. e., incongruity-resolution, nonsense) and one content dimension (sexual humor) need to be distinguished. Jokes and cartoons of the incongruity-resolution humor category are characterized by punch lines in which the surprising incongruity can be resolved. The common element in this type of humor is that the recipient first discovers an incongruity which is then resolvable upon consideration of information available elsewhere in the joke or cartoon. Nonsense humor also has a surprising or incongruous punch line, but the punch line may 1) provide no resolution at all, 2) provide a partial resolution (leaving an essential part of the incongruity unresolved), or 3) actually create new absurdities or incongruities. The responses to humor seem to be two-dimensional, as factors of funniness (representing all positive responses) and aversiveness (representing the negative responses). Thus, maximal appreciation of jokes and cartoons consists of high funniness and low aversiveness; while minimal appreciation occurs, if the joke is not considered funny but is found aversive. However, a joke can also be considered not funny but be far from being aversive; or it can make one laugh although there are certain annoying aspects. Berlyne (Humor and Its Kin, 1972) postulated that collative variables (such as novelty, incongruity, anomaly etc.) contribute to the stimulus potential of a variable, which, in turn, affects the appreciation of the artwork. These thoughts were used as a bridge to explore individual differences in humor appreciation (Ruch, Assessment of Appreciation of Humor: Studies with the 3WD Humor Test, 1992). In short, appreciation of INC-RES is hypothesized to be a manifestation of a broader need of individuals for contact with structured, unambiguous, stable forms of stimulation (i. e., preference for redundancy), whereas appreciation of the nonsense structure in humor reflects a generalized need for uncertain, unpredictable, and ambiguous stimuli (i. e., preference for stimulus uncertainty). Earlier research used Wilson's (A Dynamic Theory of Conservatism, 1973) dynamic theory of conservatism who postulates that this trait reflects a generalized fear of both stimulus and response uncertainty . This should lead more conservative individuals to show greater avoidance and dislike of novel, complex, unfamiliar, incongruous events and to prefer and seek out stimuli which are simpler, more familiar and congruent. This hypothesis was validated for visual art, poetry, and music. Not surprisingly, then, the hypotheses that conservative persons find incongruity-resolution humor more funny and nonsense humor more aversive than liberals could be substantiated. While conservatism does not predict the seeking of stimulus uncertainty, the trait of sensation seeking (Zuckerman, Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking, 1994), and in particular the component of experience seeking (ES), does. ES involves the seeking of stimulation through the mind and the senses, through art, travel, even psychedelic drugs, music, and the wish to live in an unconventional style. There is evidence that ES is closely related to the novelty and complexity dimensions of stimuli. Therefore it was hypothesized and substantiated that ES will be positively related to appreciation of nonsense humor (Ruch, Assessment of Appreciation of Humor: Studies with the 3WD Humor Test, 1992). The present study expands the former by studying the relationship between humor appreciation and appreciation of the grotesque. As an art form the grotesque is described as an arbitrarily distorted, exaggerated representation, which seems ridiculous, absurd or scary. The grotesque seems to involve a structural element (i. e., the exaggerated deviation from the reality) and also content elements, like the fearful or disgusting. It is argued that both do add to the arousal potential of the text and hence will be appreciated by the same people that also like more incongruous (both initial and residual incongruity) forms of humor, more complex (vs. simple) visual art and by the high experience seeker. The Test of Appreciation of the Grotesque (TAG) was constructed on utilizing texts by authors such as Burroughs, Charms, Henscheid, von Kleist, Morgenstern, Rosendorfer, Schneider, and Valentin. Twelve experts were asked to rate the degree of grotesqueness of 81 text excerpts on a scale ranging from »0 = not at all« to »6 = very much«. The inter-rater reliability was high and the total score was used to select six excerpts of low, middle and high level of grotesqueness. The TAG was then given to 110 adults who also rated the 30 jokes and cartoons of the 3WD (Ruch, Assessment of Appreciation of Humor: Studies with the 3WD Humor Test, 1992) for their perceived funniness and aversiveness. Furthermore, they filled in the Sensation Seeking Scale by Zuckerman (Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking, 1994) (measuring level of thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility) and the Barron-Welsh Art scale (BWAS; Barron/Welsh, Journal of Psychology 33: 199–203, 1952), which measures preference of complexity vs. simplicity in visual art. The results confirmed liking and aversiveness of the grotesque were uncorrelated. Furthermore, the main hypothesis was confirmed which stated that a general tendency underlies these domains of aesthetics. Liking of grotesque texts correlated positively with appreciation of nonsense and preference for complexity in visual arts. Incongruity-resolution humor correlated only with liking of low level of grotesqueness. Aversiveness of all humor categories correlated positively with aversiveness of the grotesque, presumably due to the shared tendermindedness and negative affectivity. As expected, experience seeking is the subscale of sensation seeking predicting aesthetic preferences. Two step-wise regression analyses were computed with age, gender, the four sensation seeking subscales, the BWAS complexity and simplicity scales, and the 3WD scores as predictors, and liking and aversiveness of the grotesque as criteria. Funniness of nonsense and Experience Seeking together correlated at .57 with the liking of the grotesque. Finding the grotesque aversive was even better predicted (multiple correlation of .64) by aversiveness of nonsense humor, aversiveness of sexual humor and negatively by ES. It is argued that more studies are needed comparing different domains of aesthetics. The framework of the experimental aesthetics encourages interdisciplinary research, which allows combining well-founded theories and empirical methodology. This is a corrected version of the article. The previous version, if needed, can be found under 'Supplemental Material'.

In prevalent theories of the comic, whether literary, philosophical-aesthetic, linguistic or psychological in origin, the humor of the human body plays a subordinate role. It is addressed as a humor of situation or movement, as ›lower‹ or (for the literature up to 1700) farcical humor, and therefore used as a blurry sub-type. The body is imponderable for such a concept of humor that, since Kant and Jean Paul, is subsumed under aesthetic perception and excludes the body or, at most, treats it as a phenomenon represented by language. The body is also unwieldy for linguistic and semantic theories of humor or of the joke, as they can be found in some types of cognitive models of linguistic or logic incongruity, overlap or opposition of scripts, in interdisciplinary humor research. This article aims at uncoupling the possibilities of a humor of the human body from linguistic-semantic and ontological concepts and at exploring the topic of bodily causes for laughter in theatre and literature from a performative perspective, i. e. from the perspective of a theory of action and perception. Thereby a whole range of problems in older literature (which up to now have been discussed within the Bakhtin concept of the ›grotesque body‹) can be analyzed, as well as the complex phenomena of ›comic figures‹ on stage and in literary texts. The article explores two questions: 1. How can comical stagings of the body that aim at laughter be described and explained in their functioning? 2. By the aid of which linguistic strategies are these stagings produced in literary texts? In order to answer these questions, the article starts by giving a survey of the most relevant approaches towards a theory of bodily humor: Bergson's mechanism thesis, Freud's thesis of Aufwandsdifferenz (difference of effort) and Plessner's idea of bodily disorganization are evaluated in terms of their applicability. All three theories point out the multifold meanings of the body in comical situations or processes. Bergson assumes the comical in the sudden shift of our attention from soul to body. Freud grounds his thoughts in the psychological activity of innervation at comparing the »effort« of one's own and others. Plessner views humor as a cause for laughter that overstrains the spectator and in which the tension between »Leib sein« (to be a body) and »Körper haben« (to have a body) becomes visible. Thereby the body as a cause for laughter is revaluated. Its humor is not structural, but bears the characteristics of an event. Still, the psychological effects in the interaction of comical object and laughing subject remain disputed. Consequently, the article explores the conditions and functionings of perception of the comical body by combining approaches from phenomenology and neuro-physiology. The main interest here is an understanding of laughter as »Widerfahrnis« (befalling) and »Einleibung« (embodiment) (Waldenfels, Schmitz, Merlau-Ponty), which findings are confirmed by the neuro-scientific theory of mirror neurons (Rizzolati, Warren, et al.). Laughing at bodies appears to be an attentional kind of comprehension of bodily inappropriateness and loss of control in a playful frame or mode. This refers to nonverbal humor of the body in movement, proximity, mimics and gestures, in voice, para-language and body noises on the one hand, and in body related semantics of utterances on the other hand. The humor of this cannot be described structurally or ontologically, but modally, in reference to the situation and the performance of the body in question. The last part of the article illuminates in which way this humor can be experienced outside of theatrical as-if situations, in a literary text. Here the embedding of body humor within language and the bodily quality of language are discussed. Two aspects are important: firstly, the question of how traces of comical speech and their corporal effects like intonation, emphasis, or sound can be staged in literature, and secondly, the problem of how language can ›stage‹ and ›orchestrate‹ bodies in a way that readers can perceive the humor of the body and the situational transgressions that are combined with them. The semiotic signs of the text world function as ›embodied‹ apperceptions, which are related to the phantasm of laughter as an act of distancing.