Theories of Humor, Research Paper Example

Jokes are the great part of our every-day reality. Sense of humor is something we particularly value in people we communicate to. Why so? I guess it is probably because most life upheavals should better by treated with humor than without one, since excessively serious treatment to whatever happens to us in life will definitely drive us into a deep heavy depression. And so we laugh. Thus humor is as old as humanity. It has naturally underwent numerous complex changes and transformations through the course of the world history, and has turned into something pretty much like a science, with its practical and theoretical aspects being frequently studies by scholars.

The philosophical study of humor concentrates on the development of an acceptable definition of humor. Until recently the essence of humor was viewed and described as something being treated as a phenomenon generally connected with laughter it generates. However, the philosophers have faced a task of determining what humor is, and made attempts to develop a satisfactory theories explaining humor’s true nature.

The task of determining what the humor is may seem an easy one. In fact, everything related to humor is supposed to be something not too hard to deal with. However, the mentioned task proved to be hard enough. Each theory attempts to offer a description of what is at least at the heart of humor. Nevertheless, the proposed theories should not be viewed as competing ones. The truth is they are mainly focusing on diverse aspects of humor, with the only difference of attributing more significance to certain aspects and treating them as fundamental ones.

According to the typical analysis, humor theories can be organized into three carefully identifiable groups: incongruity, superiority, and relief theories. Incongruity theory is the principal approach and takes account of historical characters such as Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and probably originates from the comments made by Aristotle in his Rhetoric.

“Primarily focusing on the object of humor, this school sees humor as a response to an incongruity, a term broadly used to include ambiguity, logical impossibility, irrelevance, and inappropriateness” (Smuts). Superiority theory is represented by Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes who states that humor is something being aroused from a “sudden glory” experienced when we are aware of our domination over others. Plato and Aristotle believed that humor is stimulated by aggressiveness. Relief theory, the third group, is naturally believed to be represented by Sigmund Freud and Herbert Spencer, who basically viewed humor as fundamental way to free or accumulate energy produced by oppression. There is also another group of theories of humor called Play theory, represented by philosophers who refrain from listing needed conditions for something’s being perceived as humor, but rather propose us to treat humor as an extension of animal play.

In fact, there are much more theories of humor proposed by researchers using various approaches and perspectives. It is impossible to list them all in one paper, not talking about giving even brief characteristic to each one. Moreover, the three mentioned theories are claimed to be the fundamental ones.  The problem contemporary researchers are facing is the fact that even though each of the proposed theories is able to describe some types of humor, it can hardly explain in an acceptable way every type of humor ever.

Superiority theories give proper explanation to our laughter at minute troubles, as well as to the appeal of satire, but are far less successful when dealing with word play, absurdity, nonsense, and offensiveness. Incongruity theories are doing well where superiority theories fail to be satisfactory. Relief theories explain excellently our laughter at shockingly offensive humor, nastiness, and nonsense, but cannot refrain from admitting that there is a natural appeal in incongruity and word play that is rather free of relief from restraint. Thus “most of the humor theories ever proposed are actually mixed theories, and many contemporary researchers believe that humor in its totality is too huge and multiform a phenomenon to be incorporated into a single integrated theory” (Krikmann). Nonetheless, each type of theory does shed light on some feature of humor.

The undeniable force the humor has makes it a persistent topic for research in many areas, including communication. Humor has four basic functions in communication: the identification, the clarification, the enforcement and the differentiation functions. The first two have a tendency to unite communicators, while the latter two are likely to divide them.   “Humor use unites communicators through mutual identification and clarification of positions and values, while dividing them through enforcement of norms and differentiation of acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors or people. This paradox in the functions of humor in communication as, alternately, a unifier and divider, allows humor use to delineate social boundaries” (Meyer 310). Thus the role of humor in society is greater than we are used to thinking of it, since it inevitably influence our daily communications.

No doubt, humor makes a living better. Good joke can save you from despair; it can heal your mind and your spirit. In modern society we know humor both as an every-day practise that everyone is exercising from time to time, and as an art of making people smile if not laugh. In its most refined forms it is a skill which people readily pay money for. But does it require so badly any kind of theoretical explanations? Making jokes, the motives of joking in particular, is a part oh human psychology studies. But even if being organized into a number of less or more satisfactory theories, our motives and our ways of joking will never change, and even if they will the reason will be definitely different. I view humor researches as somehow vain attempts to give scientific explanation to something that doesn’t need explanation at all.

Works Cited

Krikmann, Arvo. “Contemporary  Linguistic Theory of Humor.” Folklore. 12 July 2009. <http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol33/kriku.pdf>.

Meyer, John C. “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication.” Communication Theory. 10. 3 (2000): 310.

Monro, D. H. “Theories of Humor.” Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum:. 3rd ed. Eds. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1988. 349-355.

Roeckelein, Jon E. The Psychology of Humor: A Reference Guide and Annotated Bibliography.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Smuts, Aaron. “Humor.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009. 12 July 2009 . <http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/humor.htm>.

“Three Philosophers Walk into a Bar.” The Wilson Quarterly. 31. 3 (2007): 76.

Wells, Carolyn. An Outline of Humor: Being a True Chronicle from Prehistoric Ages to the Twentieth Century. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923.