Joke

A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-
defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is not meant to be taken
seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch
line. It is in the punch line that the audience becomes aware that the story contains a
second, conflicting meaning. This can be done using a pun or other word play such
as irony, a logical incompatibility, nonsense, or other means. Linguist Robert
Hetzron offers the definition:

Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton enjoying

A joke is a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the
a joke, in spite of their language
funniness culminates in the final sentence, called the punchline… In
differences
fact, the main condition is that the tension should reach its highest
level at the very end. No continuation relieving the tension should be
added. As for its being "oral," it is true that jokes may appear
printed, but when further transferred, there is no obligation to
.[1]
reproduce the text verbatim, as in the case of poetry

It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the
end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be
verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humor—the shaggy dog story is in a
class of its own as an anti-joke; although presenting as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place and character,
rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to deliver punchline.
a Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is a
joke. Some humorous forms which are not verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational humour, practical jokes, slapstick and
anecdotes.

Identified as one of the simple forms of oral literature by the Dutch linguist André Jolles,[2] jokes are passed along anonymously.
They are told in both private and public settings; a single person tells a joke to his friend in the natural flow of conversation, or a set
of jokes is told to a group as part of scripted entertainment. Jokes are also passed along in written form or, more recently, through the
internet.

Stand-up comics, comedians and slapstick work with comic timing, precision and rhythm in their performance, relying as much on
actions as on the verbal punchline to evoke laughter. This distinction has been formulated in the popular saying "A comic says funny
things; a comedian says things funny".[note 1]

Contents
History of the printed joke
Telling jokes
Framing: "Have you heard the one…"
Telling
Punchline
Responding
Shifting contexts, shifting texts
Joking relationships
Electronic joking
 Joke cycles
Tragedies and catastrophes
Ethnic jokes
Absurdities and gallows humour
Classification systems
Joke and humour research
Psychology
Linguistics
Folklore and anthropology
Computational humour
Physiology of laughter
See also
Notes
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links

History of the printed joke

Any joke documented from the past has been saved
through happenstance rather than design. Jokes do not
belong to refined culture, but rather to the entertainment
and leisure of all classes. As such, any printed versions
were considered ephemera, i.e., temporary documents
created for a specific purpose and intended to be thrown
away. Many of these early jokes deal with scatological
and sexual topics, entertaining to all social classes but
The Westcar Papyrus, dating to c. 1600 BC, contains an
not to be valued and saved. [3]
example of one of the earliest surviving jokes.
Various kinds of jokes have been identified in ancient
pre-classical texts.[note 2] The oldest identified joke is
an ancient Sumerian proverb from 1900 BC containing toilet humour: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial;
a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap." Its records were dated to the Old Babylonian period and the joke may go as far
back as 2300 BC. The second oldest joke found, discovered on the Westcar Papyrus and believed to be about Sneferu, was from
Ancient Egypt circa 1600 BC: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing
nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish." The tale of the three ox drivers from Adab completes the three known
oldest jokes in the world. This is acomic triple dating back to 1200 BCAdab.[3]

The earliest extant joke book is the Philogelos (Greek for The Laughter-Lover), a collection of 265 jokes written in crude ancient
Greek dating to the fourth or fifth century AD.[4][5] The author of the collection is obscure[6] and a number of different authors are
attributed to it, including "Hierokles and Philagros the grammatikos", just "Hierokles", or, in the Suda, "Philistion".[7] British
classicist Mary Beard states that the Philogelos may have been intended as a jokester's handbook of quips to say on the fly, rather
than a book meant to be read straight through.[7] Many of the jokes in this collection are surprisingly familiar
, even though the typical
protagonists are less recognisable to contemporary readers: the absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad
breath.[4] The Philogelos even contains a joke similar toMonty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch".[4]

During the 15th century,[8] the printing revolution spread across Europe following the development of the movable type printing
press. This was coupled with the growth of literacy in all social classes. Printers turned out Jestbooks along with Bibles to meet both
lowbrow and highbrow interests of the populace. One early anthology of jokes was the Facetiae by the Italian Poggio Bracciolini,
first published in 1470. The popularity of this jest book can be measured on the
twenty editions of the book documented alone for the 15th century. Another popular
form was a collection of jests, jokes and funny situations attributed to a single
character in a more connected, narrative form of the picaresque novel. Examples of
this are the characters of Rabelais in France, Till Eulenspiegel in Germany, Lazarillo
de Tormes in Spain and Master Skelton in England. There is also a jest book
ascribed to William Shakespeare, the contents of which appear to both inform and
borrow from his plays. All of these early jestbooks corroborate both the rise in the
literacy of the European populations and the general quest for leisure activities
during the Renaissance in Europe.[8]

The practice of printers to use jokes and cartoons as page fillers was also widely
used in the broadsides and chapbooks of the 19th century and earlier. With the
increase in literacy in the general population and the growth of the printing industry,
these publications were the most common forms of printed material between the
16th and 19th centuries throughout Europe and North America. Along with reports
1597 engraving of Poggio Bracciolini
of events, executions, ballads and verse, they also contained jokes. Only one of
many broadsides archived in the Harvard library is described as "1706. Grinning
made easy; or, Funny Dick's unrivalled collection of curious, comical, odd, droll, humorous, witty, whimsical, laughable, and
eccentric jests, jokes, bulls, epigrams, &c. With many other descriptions of wit and humour."[9] These cheap publications, ephemera
intended for mass distribution, were read alone, read aloud, posted and discarded.

There are many types of joke books in print today; a search on the internet provides a plethora of titles available for purchase. They
can be read alone for solitary entertainment, or used to stock up on new jokes to entertain friends. Some people try to find a deeper
meaning in jokes, as in "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes".[10][note 3] However a
deeper meaning is not necessary to appreciate their inherent entertainment value.[11] Magazines frequently use jokes and cartoons as
filler for the printed page. Reader's Digest closes out many articles with an (unrelated) joke at the bottom of the article. The New
Yorker was first published in 1925 with the stated goal of being a "sophisticated humour magazine" and is still known for
its cartoons.

Telling jokes
Telling a joke is a cooperative effort;[12][13] it requires that the teller and the audience mutually agree in one form or another to
understand the narrative which follows as a joke. In a study of conversation analysis, the sociologist Harvey Sacks describes in detail
the sequential organisation in the telling a single joke. "This telling is composed, as for stories, of three serially ordered and
adjacently placed types of sequences … the preface [framing], the telling, and the response sequences."[14] Folklorists expand this to
include the context of the joking. Who is telling what jokes to whom? And why is he telling them when?[15][16] The context of the
joke telling in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a
culture who engage in institutionalised banter and joking.

Framing: "Have you heard the one…"

Framing is done with a (frequently formulaic) expression which keys the audience in to expect a joke. "Have you heard the one…",
"Reminds me of a joke I heard…", "So, a lawyer and a doctor…"; these conversational markers are just a few examples of linguistic
frames used to start a joke. Regardless of the frame used, it creates a social space and clear boundaries around the narrative which
follows.[17] Audience response to this initial frame can be acknowledgement and anticipation of the joke to follow. It can also be a
dismissal, as in "this is no joking matter" or "this is no time for jokes".

Within its performance frame, joke-telling is labelled as a culturally marked form of communication. Both the performer and
audience understand it to be set apart from the "real" world. "An elephant walks into a bar…"; a native English speaker automatically
understands that this is the start of a joke, and the story that follows is not meant to be taken at face value (i.e. it is non-bona-fide
communication).[18] The framing itself invokes a play mode; if the audience is unable or unwilling to move into play, then nothing
will seem funny.[19]

Telling
Following its linguistic framing the joke, in the form of a story, can be told. It is not required to be verbatim text like other forms of
oral literature such as riddles and proverbs. The teller can and does modify the text of the joke, depending both on memory and the
present audience. The important characteristic is that the narrative is succinct, containing only those details which lead directly to an
understanding and decoding of the punchline. This requires that it support the same (or similar) divergent scripts which are to be
embodied in the punchline.[20]

The narrative always contains a protagonist who becomes the "butt" or tar
get of the joke. This labelling serves to develop and solidify
stereotypes within the culture. It also enables researchers to group and analyse the creation, persistence and interpretation of joke
cycles around a certain character. Some people are naturally better performers than others, however anyone can tell a joke because
the comic trigger is contained in the narrative text and punchline. A joke poorly told is still funny unless the punchline gets mangled.

Punchline
The punchline is intended to make the audience laugh. A linguistic interpretation of this punchline / response is elucidated by Victor
Raskin in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour. Humour is evoked when a trigger contained in the punchline causes the
audience to abruptly shift its understanding of the story from the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing
interpretation. "The punchline is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary
to interpret [re-interpret] the joke text."[21] To produce the humour in the verbal joke, the two interpretations (i.e. scripts) need to be
both compatible with the joke text AND opposite or incompatible with each other.[22] Thomas R. Shultz, a psychologist,
independently expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution." He explains that
"… incongruity alone is insufficient to account for the structure of humour. […] Within this framework, humour appreciation is
conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity."[23]
Resolution generates laughter.

This is the point at which the field of neurolinguistics offers some insight into the cognitive processing involved in this abrupt
laughter at the punchline. Studies by the cognitive science researchers Coulson and Kutas directly address the theory of script
switching articulated by Raskin in their work.[24] The article "Getting it: Human event-related brain response to jokes in good and
poor comprehenders" measures brain activity in response to reading jokes.[25] Additional studies by others in the field support more
generally the theory of two-stage processing of humour, as evidenced in the longer processing time they require.[26] In the related
field of neuroscience, it has been shown that the expression of laughter is caused by two partially independent neuronal pathways: an
"involuntary" or "emotionally driven" system and a "voluntary" system.[27] This study adds credence to the common experience
when exposed to an off-colour joke; a laugh is followed in the next breath by a disclaimer: "Oh, that's bad…" Here the multiple steps
in cognition are clearly evident in the stepped response, the perception being processed just a breath faster than the resolution of the
moral / ethical content in the joke.

Responding
Expected response to a joke islaughter. The joke teller hopes the audience "gets it" and is entertained. This leads to the premise that a
joke is actually an "understanding test" between individuals and groups.[28] If the listeners do not get the joke, they are not
understanding the two scripts which are contained in the narrative as they were intended. Or they do "get it" and don't laugh; it might
be too obscene, too gross or too dumb for the current audience. A woman might respond dif
ferently to a joke told by a male colleague
around the water cooler than she would to the same joke overheard in a women's lavatory. A joke involving toilet humour may be
funnier told on the playground at elementary school than on a college campus. The same joke will elicit different responses in
different settings. The punchline in the joke remains the same, however it is more or less appropriate depending on the current
context.
Shifting contexts, shifting texts
The context explores the specific social situation in which joking occurs.[29] The narrator automatically modifies the text of the joke
to be acceptable to different audiences, while at the same time supporting the same divergent scripts in the punchline. The vocabulary
used in telling the same joke at a university fraternity party and to one's grandmother might well vary. In each situation it is important
to identify both the narrator and the audience as well as their relationship with each other. This varies to reflect the complexities of a
matrix of different social factors: age, sex, race, ethnicity, kinship, political views, religion, power relationship, etc. When all the
potential combinations of such factors between the narrator and the audience are considered, then a single joke can take on infinite
shades of meaning for each unique social setting.

The context, however, should not be confused with the function of the joking. "Function is essentially an abstraction made on the
basis of a number of contexts".[30] In one long-term observation of men coming off the late shift at a local café, joking with the
waitresses was used to ascertain sexual availability for the evening. Different types of jokes, going from general to topical into
explicitly sexual humour signalled openness on the part of the waitress for a connection.[31] This study describes how jokes and
joking are used to communicate much more than just good humour. That is a single example of the function of joking in a social
setting, but there are others. Sometimes jokes are used simply to get to know someone better. What makes them laugh, what do they
find funny? Jokes concerning politics, religion or sexual topics can be used effectively to gage the attitude of the audience to any one
of these topics. They can also be used as a marker of group identity, signalling either inclusion or exclusion for the group. Among
pre-adolescents, "dirty" jokes allow them to share information about their changing bodies.[32] And sometimes joking is just simple
entertainment for a group of friends.

Joking relationships
The context of joking in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups
within a culture who take part in institutionalised banter and joking. These relationships can be either one-way or a mutual back and
forth between partners. "The joking relationship is defined as a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism. The behaviour
is such that in any other social context it would express and arouse hostility; but it is not meant seriously and must not be taken
seriously. There is a pretence of hostility along with a real friendliness. To put it in another way, the relationship is one of permitted
disrespect."[33] Joking relationships were first described by anthropologists within kinship groups in Africa. But they have since been
identified in cultures around the world, where jokes and joking are used to mark and re-inforce appropriate boundaries of a
relationship.[34]

Electronic joking
The advent of electronic communicationsat the end of the 20th century introduced new traditions into jokes. A verbal joke or cartoon
is emailed to a friend or posted on a bulletin board; reactions include a replied email with a :-) or LOL, or a forward on to further
recipients. Interaction is limited to the computer screen and for the most part solitary. While preserving the text of a joke, both
context and variants are lost in internet joking; for the most part emailed jokes are passed along verbatim.[35] The framing of the joke
frequently occurs in the subject line: "RE: laugh for the day" or something similar. The forward of an email joke can increase the
number of recipients exponentially.

Internet joking forces a re-evaluation of social spaces and social groups. They are no longer only defined by physical presence and
locality, they also exist in the connectivity in cyberspace.[36] "The computer networks appear to make possible communities that,
although physically dispersed, display attributes of the direct, unconstrained, unofficial exchanges folklorists typically concern
themselves with".[37] This is particularly evident in the spread of topical jokes, "that genre of lore in which whole crops of jokes
spring up seemingly overnight around some sensational event … flourish briefly and then disappear, as the mass media move on to
fresh maimings and new collective tragedies".[38] This correlates with the new understanding of the internet as an "active folkloric
[39]
space" with evolving social and cultural forces and clearly identifiable performers and audiences.
A study by the folklorist Bill Ellis documented how an evolving cycle was circulated over the internet.[40] By accessing message
boards that specialised in humour immediately following the 9/11 disaster, Ellis was able to observe in real time both the topical
jokes being posted electronically and responses to the jokes. "Previous folklore research has been limited to collecting and
documenting successful jokes, and only after they had emerged and come to folklorists' attention. Now, an Internet-enhanced
collection creates a time machine, as it were, where we can observe what happens in the period before the risible moment, when
attempts at humour are unsuccessful".[41] Access to archived message boards also enables us to track the development of a single
[40]
joke thread in the context of a more complicated virtual conversation.

Joke cycles
A joke cycle is a collection of jokes about a single target or situation which displays consistent narrative structure and type of
humour. Some well-known cycles are elephant jokes using nonsense humour, dead baby jokes incorporating black humour and light
bulb jokes, which describe all kinds of operational stupidity. Joke cycles can centre on ethnic groups, professions (viola jokes),
catastrophes, settings (…walks into a bar), absurd characters (wind-up dolls), or logical mechanisms which generate the humour
(knock-knock jokes). A joke can be reused in different joke cycles; an example of this is the same Head & Shoulders joke refitted to
the tragedies of Vic Morrow, Admiral Mountbatten and the crew of the Challenger space shuttle.[note 4][42] These cycles seem to
appear spontaneously, spread rapidly across countries and borders only to dissipate after some time. Folklorists and others have
studied individual joke cycles in an attempt to understand their function and significance within the culture.

Joke cycles circulated in the recent past include:

Conditional joke
Bar jokes
Bellman jokes
Blonde joke, lawyer joke and Microsoft joke cycles.
Challenger (Space Shuttle) jokes[43]
Chernobyl jokes[44]
Chicken jokes
Two cow jokes
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Dead baby jokes[45] To get to the other side.
East Frisian jokes in Germany
Essex girl joke cycle in the United Kingdom[46]
Helen Keller joke cycle[47]
Irish jokes
Island jokes
Jew and Polack joke cycles[48]
[49]
Jewish American Princess and Jewish Mother joke cycles
Knock-knock jokes[50]
Lightbulb jokes[51]
Little Willie and Quadriplegic joke cycles[52]
Manta jokes
NASA joke cycle[53]
Newfie joke cycle in Canada[54]
Persian Gulf War jokes[55]
Polish jokes
Redneck jokes
Russian jokes
Viola jokes[56]
Wind-up doll joke cycle[57]
Yo Mama jokes
Sardarji jokes
Tragedies and catastrophes
As with the 9/11 disaster discussed above, cycles attach themselves to celebrities or national catastrophes such as the death of Diana,
Princess of Wales, the death of Michael Jackson, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These cycles arise regularly as a response
to terrible unexpected events which command the national news. An in-depth analysis of the Challenger joke cycle documents a
change in the type of humour circulated following the disaster, from February to March 1986. "It shows that the jokes appeared in
distinct 'waves', the first responding to the disaster with clever wordplay and the second playing with grim and troubling images
associated with the event…The primary social function of disaster jokes appears to be to provide closure to an event that provoked
[58]
communal grieving, by signaling that it was time to move on and pay attention to more immediate concerns".

Ethnic jokes
The sociologist Christie Davies has written extensively on ethnic jokes told in countries around the world.[59] In ethnic jokes he finds
that the "stupid" ethnic target in the joke is no stranger to the culture, but rather a peripheral social group (geographic, economic,
cultural, linguistic) well known to the joke tellers.[60] So Americans tell jokes about Polacks and Italians, Germans tell jokes about
Ostfriesens, and the English tell jokes about the Irish. In a review of Davies' theories it is said that "For Davies, [ethnic] jokes are
more about how joke tellers imagine themselves than about how they imagine those others who serve as their putative targets…The
[61]
jokes thus serve to center one in the world – to remind people of their place and to reassure them that they are in it."

Absurdities and gallows humour

A third category of joke cycles identifies absurd characters as the butt: for example the grape, the dead baby or the elephant.
Beginning in the 1960s, social and cultural interpretations of these joke cycles, spearheaded by the folklorist Alan Dundes, began to
appear in academic journals. Dead baby jokes are posited to reflect societal changes and guilt caused by widespread use of
contraception and abortion beginning in the 1960s.[note 5][62] Elephant jokes have been interpreted variously as stand-ins for
American blacks during the Civil Rights Era[63] or as an "image of something large and wild abroad in the land captur[ing] the sense
of counterculture" of the sixties.[64] These interpretations strive for a cultural understanding of the themes of these jokes which go
beyond the simple collection and documentation undertaken previously by folklorists and ethnologists.

Classification systems
As folktales and other types of oral literature became collectibles throughout Europe in the 19th century (Brothers Grimm et al.),
folklorists and anthropologists of the time needed a system to organise these items. The Aarne–Thompson classification system was
first published in 1910 byAntti Aarne, and later expanded byStith Thompson to become the most renowned classification system for
European folktales and other types of oral literature. Its final section addresses anecdotes and jokes, listing traditional humorous tales
ordered by their protagonist; "This section of the Index is essentially a classification of the older European jests, or merry tales –
humorous stories characterized by short, fairly simple plots. …"[65] Due to its focus on older tale types and obsolete actors (e.g.,
numbskull), the Aarne–Thompson Index does not provide much help in identifying and classifying the modern joke.

A more granular classification system used widely by folklorists and cultural anthropologists is the Thompson Motif Index, which
separates tales into their individual story elements. This system enables jokes to be classified according to individual motifs included
in the narrative: actors, items and incidents. It does not provide a system to classify the text by more than one element at a time while
[66]
at the same time making it theoretically possible to classify the same text under multiple motifs.

The Thompson Motif Index has spawned further specialised motif indices, each of which focuses on a single aspect of one subset of
jokes. A sampling of just a few of these specialised indices have been listed under other motif indices. Here one can select an index
for medieval Spanish folk narratives,[67] another index for linguistic verbal jokes,[68] and a third one for sexual humour.[69] To assist
the researcher with this increasingly confusing situation, there are also multiple bibliographies of indices[70] as well as a how-to
guide on creating your own index.[71]
Several difficulties have been identified with these systems of identifying oral narratives according to either tale types or story
elements.[72] A first major problem is their hierarchical organisation; one element of the narrative is selected as the major element,
while all other parts are arrayed subordinate to this. A second problem with these systems is that the listed motifs are not qualitatively
equal; actors, items and incidents are all considered side-by-side.[73] And because incidents will always have at least one actor and
usually have an item, most narratives can be ordered under multiple headings. This leads to confusion about both where to order an
item and where to find it. A third significant problem is that the "excessive prudery" common in the middle of the 20th century means
[74]
that obscene, sexual and scatological elements were regularly ignored in many of the indices.

The folklorist Robert Georges has summed up theconcerns with these existing classification systems:

…Yet what the multiplicity and variety of sets and subsets reveal is that folklore [jokes] not only takes many forms,
but that it is also multifaceted, with purpose, use, structure, content, style, and function all being relevant and
important. Any one or combination of these multiple and varied aspects of a folklore example [such as jokes] might
emerge as dominant in a specific situation or for aparticular inquiry.[75]

It has proven difficult to organise all different elements of a joke into a multi-dimensional classification system which could be of
real value in the study and evaluation of this (primarily oral) complex narrative form.

The General Theory of Verbal Humour or GTVH, developed by the linguists Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo, attempts to do
exactly this. This classification system was developed specifically for jokes and later expanded to include longer types of humorous
narratives.[76] Six different aspects of the narrative, labelled Knowledge Resources or KRs, can be evaluated largely independently of
each other, and then combined into a concatenated classification label. These six KRs of the joketructure
s include:

1. Script Opposition (SO)references the script opposition included in Raskin's SSTH. This includes, among others,
themes such as real (unreal), actual (non-actual), normal (abnormal), possible (impossible).
2. Logical Mechanism (LM)refers to the mechanism which connects the dif ferent scripts in the joke. These can range
from a simple verbal technique like a pun to more complex LMs such as faulty logic or false analogies.
3. Situation (SI) can include objects, activities, instruments, props needed to tell the story.
4. Target (TA) identifies the actor(s) who become the "butt" of the joke. This labelling serves to develop and solidify
stereotypes of ethnic groups, professions, etc.
5. Narrative strategy (NS)addresses the narrative format of the joke, as either a simple narrative, a dialogue, or a
riddle. It attempts to classify the different genres and subgenres of verbal humour. In a subsequent study Attardo
expands the NS to include oral and printed humorous narratives of any length, not just jokes. [76]

6. Language (LA) "…contains all the information necessary for the verbalization of a text. It is responsible for the exact
wording …and for the placement of the functional elements." [77]

As development of the GTVH progressed, a hierarchy of the KRs was established to partially restrict the options for lower level KRs
depending on the KRs defined above them. For example, a lightbulb joke (SI) will always be in the form of a riddle (NS). Outside of
these restrictions, the KRs can create a multitude of combinations, enabling a researcher to select jokes for analysis which contain
only one or two defined KRs. It also allows for an evaluation of the similarity or dissimilarity of jokes depending on the similarity of
their labels. "The GTVH presents itself as a mechanism … of generating [or describing] an infinite number of jokes by combining the
various values that each parameter can take. … Descriptively, to analyze a joke in the GTVH consists of listing the values of the 6
KRs (with the caveat that TA and LM may be empty)."[78] This classification system provides a functional multi-dimensional label
for any joke, and indeed any verbal humour.

Joke and humour research

Many academic disciplines lay claim to the study of jokes (and other forms of humour) as within their purview. Fortunately there are
enough jokes, good, bad and worse, to go around. Unfortunately the studies of jokes from each of the interested disciplines brings to
mind the tale of the blind men and an elephant where the observations, although accurate reflections of their own competent
methodological inquiry, frequently fail to grasp the beast in its entirety. This attests to the joke as a traditional narrative form which is
indeed complex, concise and complete in and of itself.[79] It requires a "multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary
field of inquiry"[80] to truly appreciate these nuggets of cultural insight.
[note 6][81]
Psychology
Sigmund Freud was one of the first modern scholars to recognise jokes as an
important object of investigation.[82] In his 1905 study Jokes and their Relation to
the Unconscious[83] Freud describes the social nature of humour and illustrates his
text with many examples of contemporary Viennese jokes.[84] His work is
particularly noteworthy in this context because Freud distinguishes in his writings
between jokes, humour and the comic.[85] These are distinctions which become
easily blurred in many subsequent studies where everything funny tends to be
gathered under the umbrella term of "humour", making for a much more diffuse
discussion.

Since the publication of Freud's study, psychologists have continued to explore

humour and jokes in their quest to explain, predict and control an individual's "sense
of humour". Why do people laugh? Why do people find something funny? Can jokes
predict character, or vice versa, can character predict the jokes an individual laughs
at? What is a "sense of humour"? A current review of the popular magazine
Psychology Today lists over 200 articles discussing various aspects of humour; in Sigmund Freud
psychospeak the subject area has become both an emotion to measure and a tool to
use in diagnostics and treatment. A new psychological assessment tool, the Values in
Action Inventory developed by the American psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman includes humour (and
playfulness) as one of the core character strengths of an individual. As such, it could be a good predictor of life satisfaction.[86] For
psychologists, it would be useful to measure both how much of this strength an individual has and how it can be measurably
increased.

A 2007 survey of existing tools to measure humour identified more than 60 psychological measurement instruments.[87] These
measurement tools use many different approaches to quantify humour along with its related states and traits. There are tools to
measure an individual's physical response by their smile; the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is one of several tools used to
identify any one of multiple types of smiles.[88] Or the laugh can be measured to calculate the funniness response of an individual;
multiple types of laughter have been identified. It must be stressed here that both smiles and laughter are not always a response to
something funny. In trying to develop a measurement tool, most systems use "jokes and cartoons" as their test materials. However,
because no two tools use the same jokes, and across languages this would not be feasible, how does one determine that the
assessment objects are comparable? Moving on, whom does one ask to rate the sense of humour of an individual? Does one ask the
person themselves, an impartial observer, or their family, friends and colleagues? Furthermore, has the current mood of the test
subjects been considered; someone with a recent death in the family might not be much prone to laughter. Given the plethora of
variants revealed by even a superficial glance at the problem,[89] it becomes evident that these paths of scientific inquiry are mined
with problematic pitfalls and questionable solutions.

The psychologist Willibald Ruch has been very active in the research of humour. He has collaborated with the linguists Raskin and
Attardo on their General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) classification system. Their goal is to empirically test both the six
autonomous classification types (KRs) and the hierarchical ordering of these KRs. Advancement in this direction would be a win-win
for both fields of study; linguistics would have empirical verification of this multi-dimensional classification system for jokes, and
psychology would have a standardised joke classification with which they could develop verifiably comparable measurement tools.

Linguistics
"The linguistics of humor has made gigantic strides forward in the last decade and a half and replaced the psychology of humor as the
most advanced theoretical approach to the study of this important and universal human faculty."[90] This recent statement by one
noted linguist and humour researcher describes, from his perspective, contemporary linguistic humour research. Linguists study
words, how words are strung together to build sentences, how sentences create meaning which can be communicated from one
individual to another, how our interaction with each other using words creates discourse. Jokes have been defined above as oral
narrative in which words and sentences are engineered to build toward a punchline. The linguist's question is: what exactly makes the
punchline funny? This question focuses on how the words used in the punchline create humour, in contrast to the psychologist's
concern (see above) with the audience response to the punchline. The assessment of humour by psychologists "is made from the
individual's perspective; e.g. the phenomenon associated with responding to or creating humor and not a description of humor
itself."[91] Linguistics, on the other hand, endeavours to provide a precise description of what makes a text funny
.[92]

Two major new linguistic theories have been developed and tested within the last decades. The first was advanced by Victor Raskin
in "Semantic Mechanisms of Humor", published 1985.[93] While being a variant on the more general concepts of the incongruity
theory of humour, it is the first theory to identify its approach as exclusively linguistic. TheScript-based Semantic Theory of Humour
(SSTH) begins by identifying two linguistic conditions which make a text funny. It then goes on to identify the mechanisms involved
in creating the punchline. This theory established the semantic/pragmatic foundation of humour as well as the humour competence of
speakers.[note 7][94]

Several years later the SSTH was incorporated into a more expansive theory of jokes put forth by Raskin and his colleague Salvatore
Attardo. In the General Theory of Verbal Humour, the SSTH was relabelled as a Logical Mechanism (LM) (referring to the
mechanism which connects the different linguistic scripts in the joke) and added to five other independent Knowledge Resources
(KR). Together these six KRs could now function as a multi-dimensional descriptive label for any
piece of humorous text.

Linguistics has developed further methodological tools which can be applied to jokes:
discourse analysis and conversation analysis of
joking. Both of these subspecialties within the field focus on "naturally occurring" language use, i.e. the analysis of real (usually
recorded) conversations. One of these studies has already been discussed above, where Harvey Sacks describes in detail the
sequential organisation in the telling a single joke.[95] Discourse analysis emphasises the entire context of social joking, the social
interaction which cradles the words.

Folklore and anthropology

Folklore and cultural anthropology have perhaps the strongest claims on jokes as belonging to their bailiwick. Jokes remain one of
the few remaining forms of traditional folk literature transmitted orally in western cultures. Identified as one of the "simple forms" of
oral literature by André Jolles in 1930,[2] they have been collected and studied since there were folklorists and anthropologists abroad
in the lands. As a genre they were important enough at the beginning of the 20th century to be included under their own heading in
the Aarne–Thompson index first published in 1910:Anecdotes and jokes.

Beginning in the 1960s, cultural researchers began to expand their role from collectors and archivists of "folk ideas"[81] to a more
active role of interpreters of cultural artefacts. One of the foremost scholars active during this transitional time was the folklorist Alan
Dundes. He started asking questions of tradition and transmission with the key observation that "No piece of folklore continues to be
transmitted unless it means something, even if neither the speaker nor the audience can articulate what that meaning might be."[96] In
the context of jokes, this then becomes the basis for further research. Why is the joke told right now? Only in this expanded
perspective is an understanding of its meaning to the participants possible.

This questioning resulted in a blossoming of monographs to explore the significance of many joke cycles. What is so funny about
absurd nonsense elephant jokes? Why make light of dead babies? In an article on contemporary German jokes about Auschwitz and
the Holocaust, Dundes justifies this research: "Whether one finds Auschwitz jokes funny or not is not an issue. This material exists
and should be recorded. Jokes are always an important barometer of the attitudes of a group. The jokes exist and they obviously must
[97] A stimulating generation of new humour
fill some psychic need for those individuals who tell them and those who listen to them."
theories flourishes like mushrooms in the undergrowth: Elliott Oring's theoretical discussions on "appropriate ambiguity" and Amy
Carrell's hypothesis of an "audience-based theory of verbal humor (1993)" to name just a few
.

In his book Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach,[34] the anthropologist Mahadev Apte presents a solid case for his
own academic perspective.[98] "Two axioms underlie my discussion, namely, that humor is by and large culture based and that humor
can be a major conceptual and methodological tool for gaining insights into cultural systems." Apte goes on to call for legitimising
the field of humour research as "humorology"; this would be a field of study incorporating an interdisciplinary character of humour
studies.[99]
While the label "humorology" has yet to become a household word, great strides are being made in the international recognition of
this interdisciplinary field of research. The International Society for Humor Studies was founded in 1989 with the stated purpose to
"promote, stimulate and encourage the interdisciplinary study of humour; to support and cooperate with local, national, and
international organizations having similar purposes; to organize and arrange meetings; and to issue and encourage publications
concerning the purpose of the society." It also publishes Humor: International Journal of Humor Research and holds yearly
conferences to promote and inform its speciality
.

Computational humour
Computational humour is a new field of study which uses computers to model humour;[100] it bridges the disciplines of
computational linguisticsand artificial intelligence. A primary ambition of this field is to develop computer programs which can both
generate a joke and recognise a text snippet as a joke. Early programming attempts have dealt almost exclusively with punning
because this lends itself to simple straightforward rules. These primitive programs display no intelligence; instead they work off a
template with a finite set of pre-defined punning options upon which to build.

More sophisticated computer joke programs have yet to be developed. Based on our understanding of the SSTH / GTVH humour
theories, it is easy to see why. The linguistic scripts (a.k.a. frames) referenced in these theories include, for any given word, a "large
chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it [...] a cognitive structure internalized by the native
speaker".[101] These scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word; they contain the speaker's complete knowledge
of the concept as it exists in his world. As insentient machines, computers lack the encyclopaedic scripts which humans gain through
life experience. They also lack the ability to gather the experiences needed to build wide-ranging semantic scripts and understand
language in a broader context, a context that any child picks up in daily interaction with his environment.

Further development in this field must wait until computational linguists have succeeded in programming a computer with an
ontological semantic natural language processing system. It is only "the most complex linguistic structures [which] can serve any
formal and/or computational treatment of humor well".[102] Toy systems (i.e. dummy punning programs) are completely inadequate
to the task. Despite the fact that the field of computational humour is small and underdeveloped, it is encouraging to note the many
interdisciplinary efforts which are currently underway.[103] As this field grows in both understanding and methodology, it provides an
ideal testbed for humour theories; the rules must firstly be cleanly defined in order to write a computer program around a theory
.

Physiology of laughter
In 1872, Charles Darwin published one of the first "comprehensive and in many ways
remarkably accurate description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial action
and gesture and posture" (Laughter).[104] In this early study Darwin raises further questions
about who laughs and why they laugh; the myriad responses since then illustrates the
complexities of this behaviour. To understand laughter in humans and other primates, the
science of gelotology (from the Greek gelos, meaning laughter) has been established; it is the
study of laughter and its effects on the body from both a psychological and physiological
perspective. While jokes can provoke laughter, laughter cannot be used as a one-to-one
marker of jokes because there are multiple stimuli to laugher, humour being just one of them.
The other six causes of laughter listed are: social context, ignorance, anxiety, derision, acting
apology, and tickling.[105] As such, the study of laughter is a secondary albeit entertaining
Charles Darwin in his later
perspective in an understanding of jokes.
years.

See also
List of humour research publications

Notes
 1. Generally attributed toEd Wynn
2. In 2008, British TV channelDave commissioned a team of academics, led by humour expert Paul McDonald from
the University of Wolverhampton, to research the world’s oldest examples of recorded humour. Because humour
may difficult to define their condition was "a clear set-up and punch line structure". In review
, McDonald stated:
"... jokes have varied over the years, with some taking the question and answer format while others are witty
proverbs or riddles. What they all share however, is a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.
Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this
research."
3. NPR Interview with the authors Cathcart and Klein can be found athttps://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?
storyId=10158510
4. How do we know that ___ had dandruff? They found his/her head and shoulders on the ___.
5. Contraceptive pills were first approved for use in the United States in 1960.
6. Our focus here is with the contemporary state of joke research. A more extensive survey of the history of various
humour theories can be found under the topictheories of humor.
7. i.e. The necessary and sufficient conditions for a text to be funny

References

Footnotes
1. Hetzron 1991, pp. 65–66. 29. Dundes 1980, p. 23.
2. Jolles 1930. 30. Dundes 1980, pp. 23–24.
3. Joseph 2008. 31. Walle 1976; Oring 2008, p. 201.
4. Adams 2008. 32. Sims & Stephens 2005, p. 39.
5. Beard 2014, p. 185. 33. Radcliffe-Brown 1940, p. 196.
6. Beard 2014, pp. 186-188. 34. Apte 1985.
7. Beard 2014, p. 188. 35. Frank 2009, pp. 99–100.
8. Ward & Waller 2000. 36. Mason 1998.
9. Lane 1905. 37. Dorst 1990, pp. 180–181.
10. Cathcart & Klein 2007. 38. Dorst 1990.
11. Berry 2013. 39. Dorst 1990, p. 183.
12. Raskin 1985, p. 103. 40. Ellis 2002.
13. Attardo & Chabanne 1992. 41. Ellis 2002, p. 2.
14. Sacks 1974, pp. 337–353. 42. Gruner 1997, pp. 142–143.
15. Dundes 1980, pp. 20–32. 43. Smyth 1986; Oring 1987.
16. Bauman 1975. 44. Laszlo 1988.
17. Sims & Stephens 2005, p. 141. 45. Dundes 1979.
18. Raskin 1992. 46. Davies 1998.
19. Ellis 2002, p. 3; Marcus 2001. 47. Hirsch & Barrick 1980.
20. Toelken 1996, p. 55. 48. Dundes 1971.
21. Carrell 2008, p. 308. 49. Dundes 1985.
22. Raskin 1985, p. 99. 50. "The Secret History Of Knock-Knock Jokes"(https://w
23. Shultz 1976, pp. 12–13; Carrell 2008, p. 312. ww.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/03/03/3898658
87/the-secret-history-of-knock-knock-jokes). npr.org.
24. Coulson & Kutas 1998.
51. Dundes 1981; Kerman 1980.
25. Coulson & Kutas 2001, pp. 71–74.
52. Davies 1999.
26. Attardo 2008, pp. 125–126.
53. Simons 1986; Smyth 1986; Oring 1987.
27. Wild et al. 2003.
54. Davies 2002.
28. Sacks 1974, p. 350.
55. Kitchener 1991; Dundes & Pagter 1991.
56. Rahkonen 2000. 81. Dundes 1972.
57. Hirsch 1964. 82. Carrell 2008, p. 304.
58. Ellis 1991. 83. Freud 1905.
59. Davies 1990. 84. Oring 1984.
60. Davies 2008, pp. 163–165. 85. Morreall 2008, p. 224.
61. Oring 2000. 86. Ruch 2008, p. 47.
62. Dundes 1987, pp. 3–14. 87. Ruch 2008, p. 58.
63. Dundes 1987, pp. 41–54. 88. Furnham 2014.
64. Oring 2008, p. 194. 89. Ruch 2008, pp. 40–45.
65. Brunvand 1968, p. 238; Dundes 1997. 90. Raskin 1992, p. 91.
66. Dundes 1997. 91. Ruch 2008, p. 19.
67. Goldberg 1998. 92. Ruch 2008, p. 25.
68. Lew 1996. 93. Raskin 1985.
69. Legman 1968. 94. Attardo 2001, p. 114.
70. Azzolina 1987. 95. Sacks 1974.
71. Jason 2000. 96. Dundes & Pagter 1987, p. vii.
72. Apo 1997. 97. Dundes & Hauschild 1983, p. 250.
73. Dundes 1962. 98. Apte 2002.
74. Dundes 1997, p. 198. 99. Apte 1988.
75. Georges 1997, p. 111. 100. Mulder & Nijholt 2002.
76. Attardo 2001. 101. Raskin 1985, p. 46.
77. Attardo 1994, p. 223. 102. Raskin 2008, p. 17/349.
78. Attardo 2001, p. 27. 103. Hempelmann & Samson 2008, p. 354.
79. Attardo & Chabanne 1992, p. 172. 104. Ruch 2008, p. 24.
80. Apte 1988, p. 7. 105. Giles & Oxford 1970; Attardo 2008, pp. 116–117.

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External links
The dictionary definition ofjoke at Wiktionary

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