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Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter
Laughter

Laughter is an audible expression , or appearance of merriment or happiness, or an inward feeling of joy and pleasure . It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli....
 and provide amusement
Amusement

Amusement is the state of experience humour and usually entertainment events or situations, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure....
. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. People of most ages and cultures respond to humour. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are considered to have a "sense of humour."

The term derives from the humoural medicine
Humorism

Humourism, or humouralism, was a theory of the makeup and workings of the human body adopted by Ancient Greek medicine and Medicine in ancient Rome and Greek philosophy....
 of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: , chymos, literally juice
Juice

Juice is a liquid naturally contained in fruit or vegetable tissue. Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or Maceration fresh fruits or vegetables without the application of heat or solvents....
 or sap
Sap

Sap may refer to:* Plant sap, the fluid transported in xylem cells or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant* Baton #Blackjack, another word for a blackjack, an easily concealed Club ....
; metaphorically, flavour) controlled human health and emotion.

A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, although the extent to which an individual will find something humorous depends on a host of variable
Variable

A variable is a symbol that stands for a value that may vary; the term usually occurs in opposition to constant, which is a symbol for a non-varying value, i.e....
s, including geographical location, culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
, maturity
Maturity (psychological)

Maturity is a psychology term used to indicate that a person responds to the circumstances or Social environment in an Norm . This response is generally learned rather than instinctual, and is not determined by one's age....
, level of education
Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
, intelligence
Intelligence

Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to problem solving, to think abstraction, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to Learning....
, and context.






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Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter
Laughter

Laughter is an audible expression , or appearance of merriment or happiness, or an inward feeling of joy and pleasure . It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli....
 and provide amusement
Amusement

Amusement is the state of experience humour and usually entertainment events or situations, and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure....
. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. People of most ages and cultures respond to humour. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are considered to have a "sense of humour."

The term derives from the humoural medicine
Humorism

Humourism, or humouralism, was a theory of the makeup and workings of the human body adopted by Ancient Greek medicine and Medicine in ancient Rome and Greek philosophy....
 of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours (Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: , chymos, literally juice
Juice

Juice is a liquid naturally contained in fruit or vegetable tissue. Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or Maceration fresh fruits or vegetables without the application of heat or solvents....
 or sap
Sap

Sap may refer to:* Plant sap, the fluid transported in xylem cells or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant* Baton #Blackjack, another word for a blackjack, an easily concealed Club ....
; metaphorically, flavour) controlled human health and emotion.

A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, although the extent to which an individual will find something humorous depends on a host of variable
Variable

A variable is a symbol that stands for a value that may vary; the term usually occurs in opposition to constant, which is a symbol for a non-varying value, i.e....
s, including geographical location, culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
, maturity
Maturity (psychological)

Maturity is a psychology term used to indicate that a person responds to the circumstances or Social environment in an Norm . This response is generally learned rather than instinctual, and is not determined by one's age....
, level of education
Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
, intelligence
Intelligence

Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to problem solving, to think abstraction, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to Learning....
, and context. For example, young children may possibly favour slapstick
Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated extreme physical violence or activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense, such as a character being hit in the face with a heavy frying pan or running into a brick wall....
, such as Punch and Judy
Punch and Judy

Punch and Judy is a traditional, popular English puppet show featuring the characters of Punch and his wife Judy. The performance consists of a sequence of short scenes, each depicting an interaction between two characters, most typically the anarchic Punch and one other character....
 puppet shows or cartoons (e.g., Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry

'Tom and Jerry' is a series of theatrical animated cartoons featuring a cat and a mouse.'Tom and Jerry' may also refer to:* ...
). Satire
Satire

Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic arts and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improv...
 may rely more on understanding the target of the humour, and thus tends to appeal to more mature audiences. Nonsatirical humour can be specifically termed "recreational drollery."

Understanding humour


Humour occurs when:
  • An alternative (or surprising) shift in perception or answer is given that still shows relevance and can explain a situation.
  • Sudden relief occurs from a tense situation. "Humourific," as formerly applied in comedy
    Comedy

    Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
    , referred to the interpretation of the sublime
    Sublime (philosophy)

    In aesthetics, the sublime...
     and the ridiculous, a relation also known as bathos
    Bathos

    Bathos is from the Greek language wikt:?????, meaning depth. As used in English language it originally referred to a particular type of bad poetry, but it is now used more broadly to cover any ridiculous artwork or performance....
    . In this context, humour is often a subjective
    Subject (philosophy)

    In philosophy, a subject is a being which has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed....
     experience, as it depends on a special mood or perspective from its audience to be effective.
  • Two ideas or things that are very distant in meaning emotionally or conceptually (i.e., having a significant incongruity) are juxtaposed.
  • One laughs at something that points out another's errors, lack of intelligence, or unfortunate circumstances, thereby granting a sense of superiority.


Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a Germany philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world....
 lamented the misuse of the term "humour" (a German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 loanword
Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
 from English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
) to mean any type of comedy. However, both "humour" and "comic" are often used when theorizing about the subject. The connotation of "humour" is more that of response, while "comic" refers more to stimulus. "Humour" also originally had a connotation of a combined ridiculousness and wit in one individual, the paradigm case being Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff. The French were slow to adopt the term "humour," and in French, "humeur" and "humour" are still two different words, the former still referring only to the archaic concept of humours.

Western humour theory begins with Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
, who attributed to Socrates
Socrates

Socrates was a Classical Greece Philosophy. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students....
 (as a semihistorical dialogue character) in the Philebus
Philebus

The Philebus is among the last of the late Socratic dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Socrates is the primary speaker in Philebus, unlike in the other late dialogues....
 (p. 49b) the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed. Later, in Greek philosophy, Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
, in the Poetics
Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' . Aristotle attempts to explain 'poetry' through 'first principles' and by discerning its different genres and component elements....
 (1449a, pp. 34–35), suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour.

In ancient Sanskrit drama
Sanskrit drama

Theatre in India as a distinct genre of Sanskrit literature emerges in the final centuries BC, although its origins date back to the Rigvedic dialogue hymns....
, Bharata Muni
Bharata Muni

Bharata was an ancient Indian musicologist who authored the Natya Shastra of Bharata, a theoretical treatise on ancient Indian dramaturgy and histrionics, dated to between roughly 400 BC and 200 BC....
's Natya Shastra
Natya Shastra

The Natya Shastra is an ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts, encompassing Indian theatre, Indian classical dance and Indian classical music....
 defined humour (hasyam) as one of the eight nava rasas
Nava rasas

The Nine Rasas are the nine basic emotions that are fundamental to all Indian art and art forms - Dance in India, music and Indian literature. Bharata Muni enunciated 8 Rasa for the first time....
, or principle rasas (emotional responses), which can be inspired in the audience by bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform. Each rasa was associated with a specific bhavas portrayed on stage. In the case of humour, it was associated with mirth (hasya).

The terms "comedy
Comedy

Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
" and "satire
Satire

Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic arts and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improv...
" became synonymous after Aristotle's Poetics was translated into Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
 in the medieval Islamic world
Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden Age, also sometimes known as the Islamic Renaissance, was traditionally dated from the 700 A.D. to 1200 A.D.Common Era, but has been extended to the 15th and 16th centuries by some scholars....
, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers
Arabic literature

Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers of the Arabic language. It does not usually include works written using the Arabic alphabet but not in the Arabic language such as Persian literature and Urdu literature....
 and Islamic philosophers
Early Islamic philosophy

Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH ....
 such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi
Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr al-Farabi , known in the Western world as Alpharabius , was a Muslim polymath and one of the greatest Islamic sciences and Early Islamic philosophys of History of Iran and the Islamic Golden Age in his time....
, Avicenna
Avicenna

, known as Abu Ali Sina Balkhi or Ibn Sina and commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna , was a Persian people polymath and the foremost Islamic medicine and Early Islamic philosophy of his time....
, and Averroes
Averroes

Abu 'l-Walid Mu?ammad ibn A?mad ibn Rushd , better known just as Ibn Rushd , and in European literature as Averroes , was an Al-Andalus-Arab Muslim polymath: a master of early Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki Sharia and Fiqh, Logic in Islamic philosophy, Psychology in medieval Islam, Arabic music theory, and the Scien...
. Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation, and instead identified it with Arabic poetic
Arabic poetry

Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Our present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that....
 themes and forms, such as hija (satirical poetry). They viewed comedy as simply the "art of reprehension" and made no reference to light and cheerful events or troublous beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term "comedy" thus gained a new semantic meaning in Medieval literature
Medieval literature

Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe beyond and during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works....
.

The Incongruity Theory originated mostly with Kant
KANT

KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in Global field function fields, and in local fields....
, who claimed that the comic is an expectation that comes to nothing. Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson

Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosophy, influential in the first half of the 20th century....
 attempted to perfect incongruity by reducing it to the "living" and "mechanical."

An incongruity like Bergson's, in things juxtaposed simultaneously, is still in vogue. This is often debated against theories of the shifts in perspectives in humour; hence, the debate in the series Humor Research between John Morreall and Robert Latta. Morreall presented mostly simultaneous juxtapositions, with Latta countering that it requires a "cognitive shift" created by a discovery or solution to a puzzle or problem. Latta is criticized for having reduced jokes' essence to their own puzzling aspect.

Humour frequently contains an unexpected, often sudden, shift in perspective, which gets assimilated by the Incongruity Theory. This view has been defended by Latta (1998) and by Brian Boyd
Brian Boyd

Brian Boyd is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov....
 (2004). Boyd views the shift as from seriousness to play. Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist; it is, however, in the areas of human creativity (science and art being the varieties) that the shift results from "structure mapping" (termed "bisociation" by Koestler) to create novel meanings. Arthur Koestler argues that humour results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them.

Tony Veal, who is taking a more formalised computational approach than Koestler did, has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour, using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner
Dedre Gentner

Dedre Gentner is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. She is the world leader in the study of analogy. Her work on structure-mapping theory was foundational for the development of the structure mapping engine by Ken Forbus....
's theory of structure-mapping, George Lakoff
George Lakoff

George P. Lakoff is a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. Although some of his research involves questions traditionally pursued by linguists, such as the conditions under which a certain linguistic construction is grammatically viable, he is most famous for his ideas...
 and Mark Johnson
Mark Johnson (professor)

Mark L. Johnson is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is well-known for contributions to embodied philosophy, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, some of which he has coauthored with George Lakoff such as Metaphors We Live By....
's theory of conceptual metaphor
Conceptual metaphor

In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality ....
, and Mark Turner
Mark Turner (cognitive scientist)

Mark Turner is a Cognitive science, linguistics, and author. He is Institute Professor and Professor and Chair of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, where he was for two years Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences....
 and Gilles Fauconnier
Gilles Fauconnier

Gilles Fauconnier is a France linguistics, researcher in cognitive science, and author, currently working in the United States. He is a professor at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Cognitive Science....
's theory of conceptual blending
Conceptual blending

Conceptual Blending is a general theory of cognition. According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process known as Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language....
.

Some claim that humour cannot or should not be explained. Author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
 E.B. White once said, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."

Evolution of humour

As with any form of art, the same goes for humour: acceptance depends on social demographics and varies from person to person. Throughout history, comedy has been used as a form of entertainment all over the world, whether in the courts of the Western kings or the villages of the Far East. Both a social etiquette and a certain intelligence can be displayed through forms of wit and sarcasm. Eighteenth-century German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 author Georg Lichtenberg said that "the more you know humour, the more you become demanding in fineness."

Alastair Clarke explains: "The theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds anything funny. Effectively, it explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter." The theory further identifies the importance of pattern recognition in human evolution: "An ability to recognize patterns instantly and unconsciously has proved a fundamental weapon in the cognitive arsenal of human beings. The humorous reward has encouraged the development of such faculties, leading to the unique perceptual and intellectual abilities of our species."

Humour formulae

Root components:
  • appealing to feeling
    Feeling

    Feeling is the nominalization of to feel. The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch either through experience or perception....
    s or to emotion
    Emotion

    An emotion is a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior.Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from an individual point of view....
    s.
  • similar to reality
    Reality

    Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist". In a sense it is what is real. The term reality, in its widest sense, includes everything that being, whether or not it is observation or comprehension....
    , but not real.
  • some surprise
    Surprise

    Surprise may refer to:...
    /misdirection
    Misdirection

    Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another....
    , contradiction
    Contradiction

    In classical logic, a contradiction consists of a logical incompatibility between two or more propositions. It occurs when the propositions, taken together, yield two logical consequences which form the logical inversions of each other....
    , ambiguity
    Ambiguity

    Ambiguity is the property of being ambiguous, where a word, term, notation, sign, symbol, phrase, Sentence , or any other form used for communication, is called ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way....
    , or paradox
    Paradox

    A paradox is a Proposition or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition ; or, it can be an apparent contradiction that actually expresses a non-dual truth ....
    .


Methods:
  • hyperbole
    Hyperbole

    Hyperbole comes from ancient Greek "?pe?????" and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is rarely meant to be taken literally....
  • metaphor
    Metaphor

    Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
  • reductio ad absurdum
    Reductio ad absurdum

    Reductio ad absurdum , also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile, or proof by contradiction, is a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument and derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original claim must have been wrong as it led to an abs...
     or farce
    Farce

    A farce is a comedy written for the stage or film which aims to entertain the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include sexual innuendo and word play, and a fast-paced Plot whose speed usually increases, culminat...
  • reframing
  • timing
    Comic timing

    Comic timing is use of rhythm and tempo to enhance comedy and humor. The pacing of the delivery of a joke has a strong impact on its comic effect; the same is also true of more physical comedy such as slapstick....


Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson

'Rowan Sebastian Atkinson' is an England comedian, actor and writer, famous for his work on the classic sitcoms Blackadder, The Thin Blue Line and Mr....
 explains in his lecture in the documentary "Funny Business" that an object or a person can become funny in three different ways. They are:
  • By behaving in an unusual way
  • By being in an unusual place
  • By being the wrong size


Most sight gags fit into one or more of these categories.

Humour is also sometimes described as an ingredient in spiritual life. Humour is also the act of being funny. Some synonyms of funny or humour are hilarious, knee-slapping, spiritual, wise-minded, outgoing, and amusing. Some Masters have added it to their teachings in various forms. A famous figure in spiritual humour is the laughing Buddha.

See also

  • Clown
    Clown

    Clowns are comical performers, stereotypically characterized by their grotesque appearance: colored wigs, Cosmetics, outlandish costumes, unusually large footwear, etc., who entertain spectators by acting in a hilarious fashion....
    s
  • Comedy
    Comedy

    Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western culture origins are found in Ancient Greece....
     and Comedian
    Comedian

    A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain members of an audience, primarily by making them laughter. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy....
    s
  • Comedy and humour by nationality
  • Comics
    Comics

    Comics is a graphic Mass media in which are utilized in order to convey a sequential narrative; the term, derived from massive early use to convey comic themes, came to be applied to all uses of this medium including those which are far from comic....
  • Computational humour
    Computational humor

    Computational humor is a branch of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence which uses computers in humor research. It is not to be confused with :category:computer humor ....
  • Gelotology
    Gelotology

    Gelotology is the study of humor and laughter, its effects on the human body, and of medical abnormalities of laughing. It is also the psychological and physiological study of laughter....
  • Humor research
    Humor research

    Humor research is a multidisciplinary field which enters the domains of psychology, philosophy, linguistics, sociology, history and literature. More recently, computational humor, a subdomain of the computer science and artificial intelligence emerged, which uses computers to model humor....
  • Internet humour
    Internet humor

    The Internet has long been a resource for the circulation of humorous ideas and jokes. Countless web-sites are devoted to the collection of Internet humor, and every day e-mail crosses the world, containing the text of humorous articles, or jokes about current events....
  • Joke
    Joke

    A joke is a short story or ironic depiction of a situation communicated with the intent of being humour. These jokes will normally have a punch line that will end the sentence to make it humorous....
  • Laughter
    Laughter

    Laughter is an audible expression , or appearance of merriment or happiness, or an inward feeling of joy and pleasure . It may ensue from jokes, tickling, and other stimuli....
  • List of publications in humour research
    List of publications in humor research

    This page lists publications in humor research, with brief annotations. The list includes books, scholarly journals that regularly cover articles in humor research, as well as some seminal, frequently cited journal articles about humor....
  • Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
    Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

    The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor is awarded by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts annually since 1998. It is named after the 19th century novelist, essayist and humorist Mark Twain....
  • Satire
    Satire

    Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic arts and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improv...
    • Political satire
      Political satire

      Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly forbidden....
  • Smile
    Smile

    A smile is a facial expression formed by flexing those muscles most notably near both ends of the mouth. The smile can also be found around the eyes ....
  • Theory of humour


Further reading

  • (Abstract)
  • Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London: Sage. ISBN 1412911435
  • Bricker, Victoria Reifler (Winter, 1980) Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 411-418
  • (Abstract)
  • Carrell, Amy (2000), , University of Central Oklahoma. Retrieved on 2007-07-06.*Goldstein, Jeffrey H., et al. (1976) "Humour, Laughter, and Comedy: A Bibliography of Empirical and Nonempirical Analyses in the English Language." It's a Funny Thing, Humour. Ed. Antony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot. Oxford and New York: Pergamon Press, 1976. 469-504.
  • Holland, Norman. (1982) "Bibliography of Theories of Humor." Laughing; A Psychology of Humor. Ithaca: Cornell U P, 209-223.
  • Luttazzi, Daniele
    Daniele Luttazzi

    Daniele Luttazzi , real name Daniele Fabbri, is an Italy comedian, writer, satirist, illustrator and singer/songwriter. His stage name is a homage to musician and actor Lelio Luttazzi....
     (2004) Introduction
    Introduction (essay)

    The introduction is the most important part of a presentation. In an essay, Article , or book, an introduction is a beginning section which states the purpose and goals of the following writing....
     to his Italian translation of Woody Allen
    Woody Allen

    Woody Allen is an Cinema of the United States film director, writer, actor, comedian, musician and playwright.Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to Screwball comedy film, have made him one of the most respected living American directors....
    's trilogy Side Effects
    Side Effects

    Side Effects is an anthology of 17 comical short stories written by Woody Allen between 1975 and 1980, all but one of which were previously published in, variously, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Kenyon Review....
    , Without Feathers
    Without Feathers

    Woody Allen's Without Feathers is one of his best-known literary pieces. The book spent 4 months on the New York Times Bestseller List. The book is a collection of short stories and also features two one act plays, Death and God ....
     and Getting Even
    Getting Even

    Getting Even was a 1993 rock album released by Greg Ginn on Cruz Records, his first full-length solo album. Guitarist Greg Ginn had taken time to establish his solo career after the breakup of Black Flag and this would come to be his first solo album....
     (Bompiani, 2004, ISBN 88-452-3304-9 (57-65).
  • Martin, Rod A. (2007). The Psychology Of Humour: An Integrative Approach. London, UK: Elsevier Academic Press. ISBN 13: 978-0-12-372564-6
  • McGhee, Paul E. (1984) "Current American Psychological Research on Humor." Jahrbuche fur Internationale Germanistik 16.2: 37-57.
  • Mintz, Lawrence E., ed. (1988) Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988. ISBN 0313245517; OCLC: 16085479.
  • Mobbs, D., Greicius, M.D.; Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V. & Reiss, A. L. (2003) "Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centers". , 40, 1041-1048.
  • Nilsen, Don L. F. (1992) "Satire in American Literature." Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1992. 543-48.
  • Pogel, Nancy, and Paul P. Somers Jr. (1988) "Literary Humor." Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Ed. Lawrence E. Mintz. London: Greenwood, 1988. 1-34.
  • Roth, G., Yap, R, & Short, D. (2006). "Examining humour in HRD from theoretical and practical perspectives". Human Resource Development International, 9(1), 121-127.
  • Smuts, Aaron. "Humor".
  • (Abstract)


External links

  • International Humanities Institute, Dartmouth College