Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Theory of Humor


 Veatch (1998) says, “Humor includes an apparent paradox, it is emotionally compelling; and it pervades human life. Thus it is inherently both mysterious and interesting.”
 Veatch (1998) presents an ambitious, and supposedly complete, theory of humor. It says that there are three conditions, which are individually, necessarily and jointly, sufficient for humor to occur.
1.      V (Violated)
V means things in the situation that the perceiver thinks ought to be certain way but the situation is violated.
2.      N (Normal)
N means that the situation is actually okay. That is the perceiver has in mind a predominating view of the situation as being Normal.  
3.       S (Simultaneity) 
V and N occur at the same time. If the two interpretations above are not simultaneously present, the humor perception cannot occur. It means that the N and V are not completely independent; however, they interact with one another in the mind. Frued in Soedjatmiko’s dissertation (1988: 23) stated that humor is a matter of deviation of normal thought.
            Raskin (1985: 3-5) formulates that there are some factors that characterize humor:
1.      There should be human participants in the act, the speaker and hearer.
2.      Something must happen in a humor act. An utterance has to be made; a situation has to develop or to be perceived. – In short, a new stimulus should be presented and responded to humorously. The natural term for this obligatory factor is the stimulus.
3.      The experience is the important factor. The experience of the speaker and hearer is their familiarity with humor as a special mode of communication.
4.      The psychological type of individual participating in the humor. In this case the speaker and hearer’s predispositions or background knowledge to humor are quite important.
5.      Situational context or situation. Every humor act occurs in a physical environment, which serves as one of the most important contextual factors of the humor act.
6.      Society humor occurs in a certain culture, which belongs to the society. Many researchers have commented on the fact that humor is shared by individuals belong to a certain social group.
            According to Wilson (1979: 10) the theory of humor is divided into three main types: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory.

            Relief Theory 
            Frued (1856-1939) as quoted in Monro (1988: 354) regards humor as a means of outwitting the “censor”, his name for the internal inhibitions, which prevent us from giving rein to many of our natural pulses. According to him, the censor will allow us to indulge in these forbidden thoughts only if it is first beguiled or disarmed in some way. The beguiling is done, he thinks, by means of the techniques of humor. Frued states that relief theory might account for sexual jokes.
            According to Wilson (1979: 10) this theory emphasizes on the emotional of the humor. This theory suggests that “the joke is an emotional hoax that barks without biting – threatening harm, then proving inconsequential. Raskin (1985: 40) concludes that relief theory comment on the feelings and psychology of the hearer only.

            Incongruity Theory
             Monro (1988: 351) stated that incongruity is often identified with “frustrated expectation”. This concept owed to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) who says that humor arises from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. Monro (1988: 352) explains that humor consists in the violent dissolution of an emotional attitude. The humor happens by the abrupt intrusion into the attitude of some thing that is felt not to belong in minds, of some element that has stayed, as it were, from another compartment of our minds. This concept is mingling of two ideas which are felt to be utterly disparate.
            According to Monro (1988: 354) humor according to incongruity theories is the finding of the inappropriate within the appropriate. In any community certain attitudes are felt to be appropriate to something but not to others; so that stereotype developed.

            Superiority Theory
            Monro (1988: 350) states that we laugh at people because they have some feeling of defect, or because they find themselves at disadvantages in some way or suffer small misfortune. Thomas Hobbes added that we laugh at the misfortunes or infirmities of others, at our own past follies. According to this view, Monro concluded that humor is derisive. Humor derisive from our feeling of superiority over those we laugh at.
            Hobes (Monro, 1988: 350) also pointed out that even we laugh with comic vice we are laughing at, perhaps because of feeling superior and the conventional morality which is being flouted. Raskin (1985, 40) concluded that superiority theory characterizes the relation or attitudes between the speaker and the hearer.

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