A THEORY OF HUMOR IN THE

CLASSROOM
Author.Trad.Lic. Agustina Sosa Revol
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 A THEORY OF HUMOR IN THE CLASSROOM

Abstract

In teaching English as a second language through the use of Humor in the classroom develops the base of a discussion of
classroom discourse, additional language learning, and language teaching, a mode in which elements from one’s
communicative range are spoken, written, or otherwiseput into use. Moreover, humor may include both instances of
language ludic learning and acts of creative language use. Further, by constructing activities that allow learners to
encounter unexpected language and linguistic practices will afford them the opportunity to improvise
communicative solutions, and to learn to make choices. Activities that involve an element of surprise may also raise
awareness of the situated,contingent nature of interaction and eventually humorous interaction. Humor thrives on
unpredictability, making it a natural way to insert unforeseen language into the classroom. Language plays a main
function to destabilize a language learner’s system, allowing further development.In the freedom of language learning
activities, unpredictability encourages creativity and pushes learners to construct unknown meanings, rather than
relying on familiar language, which they may do when given complete freedom. Gardner accounts on how teachers
working in a linguistically diverse classroom transformed a scripted phonetic activity into a creative game that
supported not only the children’s language development, but also their identities as competent members of the
classroom community. Gardner found that these strategies were central in making the activity “at once more
cognitively challenging with the real communicative need to justify, more enjoyable-humorous in its appeal to the
imagination. (Gardner, 2008, 272).Vigostky’ socio-cultural approach is embedded in social activity where learning
occurs; that is, new skills make their first appearance in social interaction and are constructed through collective
action. It is only later that they become internalized and available for individual use. Vygotsky (1978) explains that
learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when students are
interacting with people in their environment and in cooperation with their peers. He argues further that when social
and private speech has largely become internalized, they may reappear as needed when confronting new problems
and in his concept of Romance or play with language stage, laughter -founded in humor- generates identities.
Humor’s role in classroom learning entails a complex array of factors. It has a great effect on identities and power
relations, and the romance and precise stages in learning. Many researchers have, instead, turned their focus to the role of
language play. Although some, like Lantolf, have emphasized the idea of language play as a form of private speech or
rehearsal that facilitates internalizing comfort and competence with second language forms. In addition, the a socio-
cognitive theory of language development that is consistent with the sociocultural approach to the learning of a language
make the learner and instructor take into account the rich sociocultural background of those learners from different
cultures and geographical loci. Further, I have explored taking non-serious language seriously in language education. It is,
then, up to instructors to embrace the risks and rewards of using humor in their professional practice and the classroom-
space/time. Learning a new language entails communicative approaches, play, romance, precision, unpredictability, relief,
romance-precision, the prompting of social action and change, the construction of bonds, influence on others, negotiation
of meaning, the boosting of cognitive skills, the richness of sociocultural aspects, humor as a social practice, functions,
the encountering of linguistic challenges, the challenges of interpretation in connection with the learner’s linguistic
competence, its nature to raise awareness, and the plural interpretation.

Based on the philosophy of humor, when humor is used in the classroom it can be considered to be part of

developing a strong foundation on which to base our discussion of classroom discourse, additional
language learning, and language teaching, among others. Further, humor refers to the key or mode in

which elements from one’s communicative range are spoken, written, or otherwise put into use.

Moreover, humor may include both instances of language ludic learning and acts of creative language

use. As a topic, humor has long captured the interest of philosophers and researchers alike. Since the time

of the ancient Greeks, numerous theories have been put forth to explain why it is that we find certain

utterances and situations funny. The most comprehensive of humor theories are those that attempt to

explain it in terms of incongruity, relief and superiority. Among these the relevant one is that the

incongruous theory on humor posits that humor derives from the juxtaposition of two odd, unexpected, or

inappropriate elements in a particular context. The incongruity that results from this pairing must, then be

at least partially resolved in order for the contrast to be interpreted as funny. Of all theories, Attardo and

Raskin’s (Attardo,2001. 45), General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) is perhaps the most widely

accepted. Sigmund Freud’s theory on relief of tension is the easiest one to understand since by the

contraction of the body in the act of laughter, tension leads to relief. This statement, however, is arguable

as people laugh for reasons that do not lead to relief of tension. Lastly, the theory of superiority, besides

the relief and superiority theory, refers to the view of the world as inferior from a sense of superiority and

flawless comedian.

Among the multiple range of functions of humor in language, I can assert that some rapport, the

release of suppressed tensions, a subtly critique of society, effective learning, better performance,

positive motivation,

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attention –gaining effect connected with memory awareness and control, results in better response by students

reflected in hard work, joy of trying language structures in a romance phase, when they play with words and

structures. Humor orientation targets affective and cognitive learning and so students in surveys have

scored higher grades by those instructors who use humor orientation learning. Thus, humor does not

prevent students from being able to transition from the Romance (Vygotsky) stage in the use of the language

to the stage of Precision-in which norms and rules result from the same student who can still play upon words,

literally speaking, in search for the precision of the rules. It is, moreover, of utmost importance the roles

that humor plays in managing our identities and our relationships with others.

In all educational contexts, humor facilitates learning. Yet, a close look at the research literature suggests that

the results are mixed. Given the current confirmation, the most powerful argument for using humor in

education is affective. Humor is found in some studies to promote a sense of immediacy and connection

between teacher and students, to reduce anxiety, and to increase enjoyment of and interest in the class

(Berk & Nanda, 1998; Wanzer & Frymier, 1999), as I have already mentioned. One limitation to this, however, is

that the type of humor used by the instructors is important. Students tend not to appreciate offensive,

aggressive, or disparaging humor, particularly that which is directed at them or their peers (Wanzer,

Frymier, Wojtaszczyk, & Smith, 2006). With respect to academic learning, there is some evidence to suggest

that when humor is used positively, thus reducing anxiety, student achievement will be higher (Ford, Ford,

Boxer, &Armstrong, 2012). A few studies, too, have linked humor to greater memorability, although this effect

may not take place under all conditions (McDaniel, Dornburg, & Guynn, 2005; et.al 2010).

Moreover, the studies that have demonstrated higher classroom achievement through the use of humor

have meticulously constructed their curriculum using humor that is relevant to the topic and to the

students’ experiences, cultures and lives instead of being simply an entertaining tool (Suzuki & Heath,

2014; Ziv, 1988).

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Opponents to these arguments have argued against the effectiveness to connect the use of humor to increased

learning, and refer to arguments about humor and learning as simply perceptions of learning. Although

many scholars have noted the importance of play in development (Erikson, 1963; Piaget, 1962; Sutton-

Smith 1975, 1997), the work of Lev Vygotsky has been particularly influential for SLA researchers. Briefly,

Vygotsky’s research and writings focused on young children. One of his major insights was that learning is

what pushes development. In other words, it is not the case that a certain level of development must be

reached before skills can be used. Rather, it is the use of new skills that leads to further development.

Moreover, it is in social activity that learning occurs; that is, new skills make their first appearance in social

interaction and are constructed through collective action. It is only later that they become internalized

and available for individual use. Both of these ideas are addressed in the following quote, in which Vygotsky

(1978) explained that learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to

operate only when the student is interacting with people in his environment and in

cooperation with his peers. Once these processes are internalized, they become part of the student’s

independent developmental achievement. The process of internalization mentioned relies on an

understanding of another important concept introduced by Vygotsky, that of mediation. As Lantolf (2000)

succinctly explains, “humans use symbolic artifacts to establish an indirect, or mediated, relationship

between ourselves and the world”. This means that “humans do not act directly on the physical world but

rely, instead, on tools and labor activity, which allow us to change the world” (Lantolf, 2000, 1). Of these

mediational tools, language is among the most important: The first meta-toy to play with, meta-

language, to understand Vygotsky.

It is through the social use of language as a mediational tool that internal mental processes develop. Vygotsky

(1978) described how children solving problems that are beyond their skills will seek help from others. In the

absence of assistance, or if the child is at a slightly higher, developmental level, egocentric(or private) speech

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will occur, as the child uses speech to control, and eventually to plan, his or her behavior. With time and

repeated exposure to similar problems, external speech becomes internalized. Although Vygotsky

focused on children’s development, it is easy enough to see these processes at work for adults. For instance,

Leny remembers learning to drive a standard transmission car. At first, she could do nothing without

instruction and often needed to appeal to her long-suffering father for guidance. Eventually the skill to

use a stick shift became automatic, for the most part. However, before that time she recalls having to

“talk herself through” some of the steps. Furthermore, even once she felt fairly confident about her

skills, she remembers having to again seek external help from her more experienced passenger in

certain challenging situations, such as getting the car moving from a dead stop up a steep hill. Thus,

even when social and private speech has largely become internalized, they may reappear as needed

when confronting new problems. (Lantolf, 1997, 123)

Like instruction, Vygotsky found that play, too, leads to development and helps in the process of

internalization. In a well-known quote he explained that “in play a child always behaves beyond his

average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself ”

(Vygotsky, 1978, 102). For Vygotsky, a crucial aspect of play was that it freed participants from

situational constraints by creating an imaginary scenarios. A second primary component of play was its

rule-based nature. Whether

in organized games or in creating make-believe scenarios, overt or covert rules characterize play. Participation in

play entails voluntarily opting to subordinate oneself to these rules, whether this means not touching a ball with

your hands or agreeing to treat a pillow as an animate creature and engage in conversation with it. In this view,

“the essential attribute of play is a rule that has become a desire” (Vygotsky, 1978, 99). Abiding by the rules

creates contexts for children to try out new roles, new language, and new activities. For Vygotsky, the

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creative imitations that children engage in during play represent an important means by which they can

accomplish tasks that are beyond their capabilities when they are they acting alone (1978, 88). While playing,

they are learning about the future roles and activities in adult life. He wrote,

Though the play-development relationship can be compared to the instruction-development

relationship, play provides a much wider background for changes in needs and consciousness. Action

in the imaginative sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of voluntary intentions, and the

formation of real-life plans and volitional motives—all appear in play and make it the highest level of

preschool development. (102)

Although Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach of development remains seminal, Holzman (2010), questioned

whether play may be central to adolescent and adult learning. Moreover, questions about the role of specific forms

of play in specific forms of learning have prompted SL Academic researchers to ask how private speech, repetition

and imitation, re-voicings, re-appropriations of classroom tasks, and linguistic manipulations might contribute to

the learner’s development. Lantolf, then, began speaking about language play in the late 1980s, paper, “The

Function of Language Play in the Acquisition of L2 English.” In this paper, he focused on second language play as

self-directed speech, seeing it as a “non-communicative language activity” (Lantolf, 1997, 3) that creates

opportunities for the learner to “do something” (Lantolf, 1997, 19) with the second language, thus facilitating

acquisition. In this work, key forms of language play that he identified as potentially leading to learners’ learning

were “talking out loud to yourself in English; repeating phrases to yourself silently;

making up sentences or words in English; imitating to yourself sounds in English; having random

snatches of English pop into your head” (Lantolf, 1997, 11).The purpose [of play] in Lantolf’s

(Vygotskian) sense is clearly exercise, or the rehearsal of target forms. Lantolf focuses on language play

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as a type of private speech that has the function of rehearsal for some future public performance

because language play in Lantolf’s sense exists as mental rehearsal of un-mastered language forms. It is

a phenomenon that diminishes when the learner has mastered them and no longer needs to rehearse. (p.

366). Thus, language play is conceived of as a rehearsal for future interaction, rather than as a ludic end

unto itself.

It goes without saying that interaction is crucial to language development, as it is in social interaction that

affordances for language use, and thus for learning, arise. Although the public tends to portray

communication as an orderly, linear process of encoding and decoding utterances, applied linguists

know that the act of making meaning is a dynamic, messy process involving continual mutual change

and adjustment between interlocutors. Communication entails “action, reaction, collaborative

interaction, inter-subjectivity, and mutually assisted performance” (Hulstijn et al., 2014, 40). This

cooperative, adaptive process of aligning oneself with another individual in order to construct meaning

and effect. Thus, social action is how a learner’s development takes place.

Larsen-Freeman (2010) describes how this is a cyclical process, explaining learning as “the constant adaptation

of their [learners’] linguistic resources in the service of meaning-making in response to the affordances that emerge

in the communicative situation, which is, in turn, affected by learners’ “adaptivity” ( author’s coinage. 67).

Through this ongoing cycle, new resources become available to the learner, who then may be able to deploy them

at a different time or in a different context—or in a different key, with features first

encountered in a serious context later being used for humor or vice versa. In response to the learner using

increasing linguistic sophistication, interact- ants also adjust the language they use, drawing on more complex

structures and topics. Thus, with increasingly intricate language resources at our disposal we are presented

with, and eventually are able to manage, more complex social actions. Thus, Atkinson (2014) defined

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learning as “the (skills) to adapt to our environment better (than formerly) through

progressive interaction with/experience in and alignment with that environment” (7).

The learner’s development becomes part of the process of increasing their skills to construct meanings

effectively and with growing sophistication and amount across a variety of contexts, (i.e., Atkinson’s, 2014,

45:“adapting better”). But what do terms such as effectively and better mean? Learners and their

interlocutors each come to the task of communication with their own linguistic and cultural biographies; their

distinctive frames of reference that come from their history of prior experiences, their meanings, and values.

In the act of communicating, they engage in mutual interpretation to negotiate their own meanings in

relation to those of others. (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013, 43–44) From this socio-cultural approach,

learning “also involves learners coming to understand how they interpret knowledge through their

positioning in their own language and culture” (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013, 35). This is consistent, too,

with the move to consider communicative competence in terms of an individual’s entire language range.

Far from merely accumulating linguistic items, in learning an additional language, we engage in new

interpretations of ourselves, of those with whom we interact, of our other languages, and of the process of

communication. Thus, “better” and “more effective” involves meaning building at a deeper level, in

which we do not merely interpret words or structures. Kramsch (2002) defined success in language

learning from an ecological perspective as “aligning oneself in the social space,” “using one’s full

semiotic potential,” and “seizing the moment and negotiating paradoxes” (24–25).

Successful learners are, furthermore, those who are able to make choices within their whole linguistic range in

order to appropriately position themselves and their interlocutors within the conversational space, to

negotiate power structures, to express stance and emotion, and to notice and take advantage of variability

and diversity which can be done within the use of humor. These ideas was foreshadowed by Kramsch’s

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(2006) move to see the goal of learning as the development of symbolic competence. A related, and until

recently almost completely neglected issue in language development is the role of emotions and those that

entail the speaker to reach humorous competence in the learning of a second language. Emotions are not

only linked to a learner’s affective state but also play a crucial role in issues such as the learner’s subjectivity,

cognition, and the ability to express oneself and interpret others (Benesch, 2012; Dewaele, 2011; Pavlenko,

2005, 2006; Swain, 2013). Becoming bilingual or multilingual can be a process of gaining a new self, and

many multi-lingual speakers report feeling different in each language they use (Koven, 1998; Pavlenko,

2006) due to the new and rich developments of aspects of one’s personality. The ability to communicate

emotions is crucial to engage with others and effectively represent ourselves; learners tend to use

proportionally fewer emotion words than monolinguals. Attending to the emotional aspects of learners would seem

to be an important part of helping students achieve the first two objectives mentioned here: engaging in

interpretation and social action. Furthermore, Swain (2013) argued that emotions, both positive and negative,

can facilitate students to development inseparable from cognition. She analyzed the metalinguistic talk of two

classroom learners from a sociocultural perspective and concluded that their talk “mediates the co-

construction of a cognitively permeated set of emotional processes” and “an emotionally soaked set of

cognitive processes” (Swain, 2013, 203). Thus, we again see that a socio-cognitive position, taking a holistic

view of the learner, is necessary.

Further, today’s language educators must be accustomed to

• developing learners’ agency,

• raising learners’ awareness of variability,

• preparing learners for unpredictability, and enhancing learners’ skills to read and manipulate
situations.
Language educators, in my view, should acknowledge these foundational perspectives discussed so far to

consider how humor and language play might help us to accomplish some of the conceptual shifts that

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are necessary to move language education into the 21 Century. The classroom can be a space where learners

have access to structured interaction designed to facilitate the development of their interpretive
and communicative repertoires. Based on how we understand the process of a learner’s language

development, the goals of the language classroom, and what language use entails in today’s world, I list,

further, six broad principles for the use of humor in the structuring of activities to facilitate learning a

second language. These are,

• teaching language as a set of choices,

• raising language awareness,

• constructing iterative activities,

• engaging learners with unpredictability,

• teaching meaning as relational and subjective, and engaging with emotions.

I also examine evidence for the ways that humor and language play can help in carrying out each of these.

Learners should see language as a set of choices or a set of options that the speaker can choose among for

different effects such as lexical items, grammatical structures, and phonological patterns understanding that

they do not have fixed meaning but, rather, become instilled with meaning in situated interaction.

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This is made abundantly clear, for example, in pedagogical approaches derived from concept-based

instruction, in which the conceptual bases of various linguistic features (e.g., verb morphology) are made

transparent to learners (Lantolf, 2008; Negueruela &Lantolf, 2006). Because of the different meanings that

each option constructs, language cannot be taught as a fixed set of forms, but must be presented as a set

of options with varying and sometimes unpredictable consequences that learners must be prepared to

negotiate. An understanding of language as choices also raises awareness of systematic sociolinguistic-

humorous variations, as well as the idiosyncratic and unsystematic variability that can occur within and

across speakers. Furthermore, instilling in learners that they have meaningful alternatives for how they

construct their utterances also respects and develops learners’ agency and autonomy.

To teach language as an open, flexible system of options for communicating various stances and shades

of meaning requires first that the classroom activities provide space for experimentation, and second

that the instructor be able and willing to provide thoughtful feedback on possible consequences of

various linguistic choices. Language play that suspends the normal rules of interaction and encourages

learners to construct scenarios that allow them to use language in ways not normally associated with the

language classroom—for example, by expressing humor in strong emotions (grief, anger, love) or by

using voices that take them out of their usual student role (teacher, taxi driver, ambassador)—is one

way of fulfilling the need for linguistic experimentation. Feedback can then address the pertinence in

different situations of the language used, the meanings of any pertinent lexical items used and their

usual domains of use, and the ways that different aspects of the register used tend to be perceived in

different contexts. Casual conversation can also fulfill these needs.

Humorous practices themselves, moreover, offer an opportunity to present language as choices. Davies

(2004) described a German preference for joking as largely as a private act in contrast to Americans, who

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tend to joke in public, as well. She noted that teaching about these differences can help American learners of

German make choices about whether and when to joke in German and to be aware that joking might make

Germans perceive them as frivolous. J. Kim (2014, 163) found that Korean learners of English had

difficulties understanding sarcasm because they were drawing on their native language schema to interpret

potentially sarcastic utterances. Indeed, a tenet closely related to teaching language as a set of choices involves

raising language awareness, a necessity for learners to be able to make choices in their language use. This may

occur through activities structured in such a way as to draw learners’ attention to particular patterns, or it may

be done through explicit instruction. The former include activities such as Schema for Orienting Basis of Action

used in pedagogies based on construction-based instruction. Raising language awareness among learners

can involve such things as drawing students’ attention to specific forms and form-meaning relationships

and sensitizing them to the pragmatic force of different linguistic choices. Students should work with

bizarre sentences to begin the process of humor in language or humor in the odd language and how to

re-construct sentences to make them humorous for a native speaker as part of playing with the

plasticity of the second language.

Having fallen out of favor in language education for some time now, repetition is making a comeback as an
important facilitator of learners’ development. In a review of the role that repetition can play in the second

language development, Larsen-Freeman (2012, 78) rote learning enhances working memory, develops automaticity

in processing, and frees space for processing new structures, allowing for improved performance. Each of these

findings points to the potential benefit of activities involving memorization and (public or private) rehearsal in the

classroom. Larsen-Freeman emphasizes that repetition is never exact and that in fact,

iteration, in which learners engage in a number of activities that are similar but that also require some

adjustment to their use of their linguistic resources, can be an important facilitator of the second language

development. Such a sequence of activities not only requires the learner to adapt when a slight change

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introduces a new challenge to a familiar landscape but, in doing so, also introduces variation,

potentially making new resources available and maintaining dynamism in the system, thus allowing it to

continue to develop.

Iteration is also a fundamental feature of much language play, thus elevating its importance for learning as

well. Repetition, in its various and creative forms unlike the old rote-learning, is valued as a way of pushing

forward language development through automatization and creative experimentation. The often iterative

nature of humor and ludic language play may be one factor that is particularly influential in this regard.

Bongartz and Schneider (2003, 122) observed successful vocabulary learning by two young brothers

learning German during play that involved repetition and modeling. Iteration may also be particularly

important for vocabulary acquisition, because we have to encounter a word repeatedly in numerous contexts

in order to learn it. Also, having a critical range of vocabulary seems to be one of the most

important indicators of being able to communicate successfully (Iwashita, Brown, McNamara, &

O’Hagan, 2008, 34). This seems to be true for being able to use and understand creative and humorous

language, as well. A well-developed skill to recognize and use formulaic sequences is also likely to

provide a learner with more opportunities for humor, as formulaic language is an important resource

for joking (Bell, 2012a; Shardakova, 2010,47).

Although linguistic and sociolinguistic patterns in language are identifiable, individuals use their language

resources flexibly and idiosyncratically, as well. Furthermore, language changes through time and across

different social and geographical spaces; thus, learners must be aware of linguistic diversity and prepared for

the unexpected in addition to more conventional, routine uses of language. Constructing activities that

allow

learners to encounter unexpected language and linguistic practices will afford them the opportunity to

improvise communicative solutions, and to learn to make choices. Activities that involve an element of

surprise may also raise awareness of the situated, contingent nature of interaction and eventually

humorous interaction.
Humor thrives on unpredictability, making it a natural way to insert unexpected language into the

classroom. Furthermore, as Tarone (2006) suggested, language play may function to destabilize a language

learner’s system, allowing further development. In the freedom of language learning activities, unpredictability

encourages creativity and pushes learners to construct unknown meanings, rather than relying on familiar

language, which they may do when given complete freedom. These types of adjustments to language play

activities have been demonstrated to result in different types of language use. For example, found that role-plays

allows the learner they observed to rely on familiar, formulaic sequences and contained a larger proportion of

preferred responses being able to romance with humor as part of the plasticity of the development of the new

language. However, the language used in rule-based games that constrained learner contributions, on the other

hand, used more novel language but a higher proportion of disliked responses, resulting in overall greater

complexity to those interactions. Humor and language play can also introduce unpredictability into

otherwise mundane, predictable classroom interactions and prescribed curricula. Gardner (2008)

offered a detailed account of how one primary school teacher working in a linguistically diverse

classroom transformed a scripted phonetic activity into a creative game that supported not only the

children’s language development, but also their identities as competent members of the classroom

community. In this case, the teacher used a variety of strategies to help children justify their answers to

the “silly questions” (i.e., Do hens dig?) posed in the instructional script rather than accepting simple

yes/no responses. Gardner found that these strategies were central in making the activity “at once more

cognitively challenging with the real communicative need to justify, more enjoyable-humorous in its

appeal to the imagination. (Gardner, 2008, 272)

Learner-initiated humor can also be used to disrupt mundane activities and add an element of

unpredictability to instructor-fronted classroom activities (Waring, 2011. 68). In particular, Waring’s work

showed how the typical triadic IRF (initiation–response–feedback) sequence could be disrupted by

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learners’ humorous initiations. Such learner-initiated classroom talk can be an opportunity for rich,

unpredictable, and highly engaging interaction. (Yoshida, 2007).

Later studies by Waring (2011, 2013,59) demonstrated that play in the ESL classroom seems to arise mainly

from play with identities at various levels: situational, relational, and personal. She demonstrated how, as

learners playfully created alternate universes in which they were instructors or music lovers, rather than

students, they were given the opportunity to “do conversation” and thus engage in contingent talk that

included unexpected elements (see Chapter 4).

Laughter conveys information; the laughing person signals that he or she finds a scene funny. However, this

information is sometimes not the crucial point, because its content may have been tacitly presupposed

anyway. Even without laughter I might have surmised that my partner finds the film funny, because I saw her

smile about the gag in the Woody Allen film from the corner of my eyes; I might have been quite sure because

she likes all Jacques Tati or Will Ferrell comedies; and, I might have even been fully certain that she loves

What’s Up, Doc?, because I know it is one of her favorite films. What seems at least equally important is that

laughter transforms the situation between those laughing out loud. When two or more people laugh it

establishes a common vantage point, a public space between them, an entre nous. It raises an awareness of

something that the viewers are now, to a certain extent, aware of together. Laughter thus not only has a

communicative function (‘we share the information that we find this scene funny’) but also a collective-

awareness function (‘we are now aware that in this public space we find this funny together’). What may have

been knowledge of you and me separately and individually is now in the open and among us. It is something

for us and for us together. Taylor writes:

I want to claim that what we recognize as full communication always has this feature of our coming

together in that something is made an object for us, where this is something stronger than its being just

an object severally for me and for you, and my knowing that you know, and your knowing that I know,

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 and my knowing that you know that I know, etc., up to any level that we can cope with. For in this

type of case, no matter how refined by looped knowledge about the other’s knowledge about my

knowledge, we have something quite different from communication.[6]

Taylor does not argue that this implies we have to ponder the matter. To argue that grasping what is entre

nous involves a fully ‘reflective’ stance could be misleading; ‘reflection’ in a strong sense of the word is not

required in most of our communications. He writes:

to be capable of human communication requires that we be sensitive to not just the things communicated

about, but the way in which they are present or evident to us, and particularly to the subject(s) to whom

they are present. This sensitivity has a reflexive dimension, therefore, we are not just aware of some matter,

but also responding to how we are aware and who is aware. There is a second-order component which is

irreducibly present, however little we reflect on it, in the sense of taking it for our focus ….(7)

Laughing together raises our mutual awareness that we find this or that funny, even if we don’t fully

reflect on it in the sense of, ‘Wow, isn’t it amazing that we all find this funny!’ In the cinema there are

good reasons why non-linguistic communication like laughter predominates over speech. It has at least

two advantages when compared to linguistic communication. First, it does not make highly demanding

calls on one’s consciousness; making a verbal comment on the film in its nature or grosso modo means

more distraction. Laughter, instead, allows the viewer to follow the ongoing narrative more smoothly.

Laughing is therefore an effective way of communicating and simultaneously pursuing other interests

such as watching a film. Second, language can become a barrier in the act of communal

communication. Laughter here offers a nice solution as it helps to integrate anonymous others more

easily. As sociologist Jack Katz tells us “just because words are so effective in conveying finely

differentiated import, if too many people speak at the same time, no one knows what anyone is saying.

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 With laughter, any number can play and all can be assured from moment to moment that they

are nevertheless in the same game”. [8]

When six or 60 or even 600 persons scream a sentence this creates cacophonic noise, but it raises little mutual

awareness. In contrast, when in the darkness of the cinema everybody looks directly at the screen, laughing

out loud is a highly efficient way to establish something entre nous. This is, of course, not to deny that there

are varieties of amused laughter that come in different shades of intensity, duration, and even prosody. While

one viewer might find a scene intensely funny and thus displays his or her passionate involvement, another

viewer may consider it only mildly funny and therefore laughs somewhat distantly. Hence we can expect

‘differences in sameness’ even amongst a group of people who are amused and share their emotional

judgment by and large. By establishing a public space in the theater the laughing viewers partly and

momentarily withdraw from their immersive film experience. [9]Instead they become (to a somewhat higher

degree than before) aware of the theatrical experience they share with others. Even if laughter does not draw

one’s attention away from the film completely (its cognitive effort is, as I said, comparatively small), it still

does so to a certain degree. In fact, we may expect that the funnier a scene is the more withdrawn from the

film the viewers may be. This is true for two reasons.

First, laughter provoked by a comedy is an eruptive, outward-moving bodily response. Since laughter puts the body

in motion the more eruptive the laughter the more difficult to sustain immersion in the filmic world. As viewers we

may even rock our torso, slap our knees, hold our stomach, and stomp our feet (the movement that comes with

laughter is a point I will return to with regard to Benjamin). Second, the funnier the scene and the more communal

the laughter the louder and the more conspicuous it will be. When 60 or even 600 people laugh we become all the

more aware of the co-presence of others. This is a point also underscored by Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik: ‘with

comedy laughter “disrupts” the “passively consumed” dramatic illusionism and one is

17
pulled away from the world represented on the screen and is united with other spectators as part of an

audience’. This is why for theorists like Walter Benjamin or Julia Kristeva laughter has an important anti-

ideological function; it prevents a powerful illusionary effect of the film and grounds the viewer in the here

and now of the movie theater with co-present others. [9]

With the example of laughter in mind I would like to refine Taylor’s points in two respects. First, I believe that this

mutual awareness raised through laughter is not a question of either-or – it is a matter of degrees. When I am

sitting in the cinema and share laughter with others this might be considered a weak form of mutual awareness;

when we look at each other and exchange glances while laughing this might be a medium form of mutual

awareness; and when we point to the screen, show two thumbs up, or even let our laughter be followed by a quick

exchange of verbal comments, then we might talk of a strong form of mutual awareness. Hence there are

gradations on a continuum in terms of our mutual awareness through laughter. [10] Second, one may broadly claim

that the degree of mutual awareness is inversely proportional to the range of people included.

However, the degree of mutual awareness is not as strong between me and all the others out there in the orbit of the

cinema auditorium as it is between me and the students sitting next to me. All this is not to deny that the situation

in the cinema is often more complicated than Taylor’s situation on the bus. As we have seen, Taylor gives us the

example of the two strangers to underline that communication is not necessarily a matter of information, because

the facts seem obvious. [11] However, in the cinema, due to the darkness, the unidirectional viewing position, and

the back of the seats, I often do not presuppose that the others find the scene funny. The examples I have given

above of viewers who surmise the responses of others or are even fully certain about them despite the fact that the

reactions were not expressed acoustically referred to immediate peers. In the movie theater I usually do not know

the majority of other viewers sitting in the dark. Neither can I properly see their facial expression responding to the

film (for instance, their display of an amused smile); nor would I

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expect them to share my humor when it comes to this particular film (for instance, because I am a German

watching a German comedy in Moscow). [12]

In situations like this laughter certainly does inform me about something less-than-obvious. First, it can

convey deictic information by referring to and acoustically pointing at an event or content: ‘Look, this is

funny!’ This happens to me regularly when abroad. The nuances of a particular humor slip my attention and I

gratefully accept the notification that this is funny so that I have something to laugh at myself. Second, since

we do not laugh continuously and about everything, we can single something out by responding with laughter

to just this scene: ‘Look, this – and precisely this – is funny!’ Third, laughter has a personal communicative

function over and above the deictic one as it corresponds to something about the person laughing: ‘Look, this

– and precisely this – is funny for me!’ Admitting that laughter is communicating important information does

not do harm to the argument that it also establishes a collective awareness.

Due to the structural features of the movie theater the situation is more complicated than in Taylor’s example for a

second reason. Taylor points out that in order to establish collective awareness, and thus to create a public space,

someone must take a first step. If the man on the bus had not exclaimed, ‘Whew, it’s hot!’ the mutual awareness

between him and the other passenger would have remained implicit at best. It would not have been raised to a

higher level and brought out into the open between the two men. Likewise, in the cinema someone has to laugh in

order to establish something entre nous. However, in the cinema it is not enough that a single person laughs out

loud. Solitary laughter can create a peculiar imbalance or asymmetry. A second person in the auditorium, who

finds the scene equally funny but remains silent, may now be aware that both he and the laughing person have

something in common and share a feeling. Yet the laughing person herself may not know that the other viewers

find the scene funny – and may therefore feel uncomfortably left alone. While on the bus the exclamation ‘Whew,

it’s hot!’ does not need approval because the facts are obvious, in the cinema the solitary laughter needs

confirmation in order to raise a balanced, symmetrical kind of collective awareness. One

19
reason is the uncertainty based on the aforementioned structural features of the movie theater. Therefore

laughter also expresses a wish: ‘Look, this – and precisely this – is funny for me, but hopefully also for you

and hence for us!’ Helmuth Plessner once noted that the laughing person becomes truly joyous only when he

or she knows that the laughter rings out and is heard: the occasion of laughter … has an effect which is all the

more pronounced, the more ‘objective’ it seems. And it seems more objective to the degree that others are also

struck by it. To that extent it requires endorsement by others and gains strength in community.[13]

We subjectively need confirmation by others that something is objectively funny in order to create the common

vantage point of the entre nous. Laughter can therefore also be equivalent to an invitation: ‘Look, this – and

precisely this – is funny for me, but definitely also for you!’ Sometimes one might even feel the need to issue a

license to laugh. Think of a case when you feel the need to show others that it is allowed and appropriate to laugh.

Watching a German comedy in the Netherlands, one can conclude that the Dutch viewers either do not understand

the German humor (which does exist!) or that they do not find it funny enough to give it credit. Either way I found

it necessary for both my own or their enjoyment to stimulate and invite them, to indicate that this is indeed ‘worth’

laughing about. I laughed forcefully and insistently, since I felt the need to ‘break through’ their ‘wall of silence’ –

but this insistence can itself be risky. When the other viewers remain stubbornly silent the laughing person may

begin to wonder whether the others consider his or her humor strange – a situation evoking embarrassment. It can

also elicit anger about the others who do not laugh and thus refuse to participate in what, for the laughing person,

seems to be an evident reason to respond expressively.

Laughter in the funny video can fulfill a plethora of functions, and certainly not all of them have been mentioned

here. For instance, one may object to my account by asking if laughter about something comical or funny is first

and foremost a bodily response – an eruptive response to a crisis situation that seems contradictory and

unanswerable and in which the body takes over from the person, as Plessner would put it. It would be shortsighted

to overlook this bodily component.[14] However, the bodily response of laughter is much more

20
prominent in public. Robert Provine claims that people are 30 times more likely to laugh in the presence of

others than when they are alone. Even if some people do laugh wholeheartedly alone, say in front of a

television screen, this would not be a refutation to my argument, because in the movie theater laughter simply

takes over both a communicative role and a collective awareness function as well.

One could also complain that my argument overlooks that establishing something entre nous does not

necessarily imply everyone has to agree: there are persons who laugh along because of peer pressure (a point I

will return to). There may always be persons who do not consider themselves part of this ‘for us’. When a

person on a bus suffering from influenza experiences a moment of rigor or chill he or she does certainly not

feel included in the public space established by the exclamation ‘Whew, it’s hot!’ Likewise, in the cinema

someone who does not find the film funny at all may feel excluded and thus does not consider him or herself

part of the laughing community. Laughter therefore sometimes has an exclusionary function: ‘Look, this – and

precisely this – is funny for us, but not for others!’ The inclusion and exclusion function of laughter is a

commonplace in sociological theories of laughter;[17] even in biology this has been known for a long time.

Some 50 years ago the biologist Konrad Lorenz pointed out that laughter ‘produces simultaneously a strong

fellow-feeling among participants and joint aggressiveness against outsiders’. Again, this is not a fatal

objection, because those who are included may still be collectively aware of their common laughter.

In turn, the experience of feeling excluded from a laughing community can itself be highly relevant and

revelatory in moments of inadequate laughter. When viewers laugh about racist violence or a misogynist joke

those who do not laugh may become aware of the social distance that separates them; they realize the gap

between what they find inacceptable and what others consider as worthy of laughter. In this case laughter may

create a public awareness of another kind. The public place of the movie theater thus allows for beneficial

monitoring, which is not possible if the laughter is merely private. Interestingly, elements of this ‘control

function’ of cinematic laughter can already be found in Benjamin’s famous artwork essay – one of the few

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places in canonical film theory where the ‘simultaneous collective experience’ of the movie theater assumes a

significant role. As should become clear in the following discussion, precisely because the viewer’s film

experience is a collective one in the movie theater it enables public reactions whose very public-ness can turn

out to be significant in an ethical sense.

The control function of laughter

Opposing the idea that laughter is liberating, the German philosopher, essayist and translator, Walter

Benjamin writes on a laughter that imposes identity. This imposition of identity, for Benjamin, is associated

with “the strick joke”. The joke imposes identities but for that reason it also has the potential to show that

these identities are nothing beyond the effects of the jokes. At its most intense moment, the laughter of the

cruel joke, which asserts identity, turns back on itself and undoes itself. This kind of identity crisis also

connects comedy to the well-studied topic of mourning terminology, a connection made by Benjamin.

Laughter always has a controlling dimension and never simply frees us, but it also – because it is a moment in

which we are constructed- has the potential to reveal how we are put together as subjects. Laughter plays a

vital social and cultural roles in forming our identities, our relations with others and our sense of who we are.

Even in cases when large amounts of beholders look at paintings in galleries and museums, they do not do so

simultaneously and collectively. Benjamin points out that, unlike a short video, galleries and salons do not

give time to the masses to organize and control themselves in their response. Thus, there is a lack of

synchronization of responses and as a result the beholders cannot mutually control their reactions.

Moreover, it is important to note that the reactions of the individuals can, in groups, create a massive audience

reaction. Of course this cannot be true for each and every response. It is hard to measure how collective feelings of

beauty or boredom end in a massive reaction, but the argument certainly accounts for expressive responses like

screaming or laughter, as we shall see. Consciously or subconsciously, the viewer attend the showing of a funny

video that others will presumably respond in a similarly expressive way. Knowing that their reactions

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will add up to a mass response the audience attune for this expected outcome. By watching the videos alone

(as under today’s solitary viewing conditions), they would not anticipate a collective response and hence

refrain from attuning their response to an ‘immediate concentration and agglomeration’ of their peers. In this

passage Benjamin seems to be shrewdly aware of what is known as the audience effect: the effect existing

prove others can have the present effect on our viewing experience. As part of a group of people individuals

often register things differently than when they are alone, while they may perhaps also respond in a different

way when they are amongst other viewers.

Further, by becoming public the individual reactions control one another. Does he refer to a control of affects

in the sense of a suppression of the emotional reaction? Hence we could infer that Benjamin may have

claimed that if (and only if) viewers’ responses become public in the classroom, others can control them and

judge them as foolish or even ethically challenging; the viewer reveals and makes publically available what

they find funny and deems worthy of laughter.[1]

The reactions of the others, once they are out there, are in turn themselves subject to scrutiny. We

could even argue that there may be instances when people become critical of their own response

precisely because of its collective character. For instance, the viewer can despise the fact that he or she

has laughed about something with the other viewers that he or she should not have laughed about – be

it for reasons of peer pressure or due to involuntary emotional contagion. This is a point shared by

philosopher Simon Critchley, who writes that perhaps one laughs at jokes one would rather not laugh

at. Humour can provide information about oneself that one would rather not have.[2]

The word ‘control’ today often used in conjunction with the ‘disciplinary societies’ (Foucault) or the

‘societies of control’ (Deleuze), to me has a much more positive ring in Benjamin’s text.[3] Again, Critchley

is pertinent as follows,

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 The reactionary quality of much humor, in particular ethnic humor, must be analyzed … in its

‘untruth’, as it were, reactionary humor tells us important truths about who we are. Jokes can therefore

be read as symptoms of societal repression and their study might be said to amount to a return of the

repressed. In other words, humor can reveal us to be persons that, frankly, we would rather not be.[4]

the artwork essay’s valorization of distraction (as opposed to the contemplative reception of traditional works

of art) presupposes a type of cinema experience still patterned on the variety format, that is, the programming

of shorter films (interspersed with or framed by live performances) on the principle of maximum stylistic or

thematic diversity.[5]

Broadly speaking, we have to distinguish two functions that can be deduced from Benjamin’s writings on

laughter – call them the therapeutic function and the control function. Miriam Hansen has discussed in

splendid detail Benjamin’s arguments about the mass-psychological release effects of collective laughter.[6]

In this draft Benjamin argues that it belongs to the prime social functions of funny videos to strike a balance

between the human being and technology, a balance knocked out of kilter precisely by modern technology.

Via the technology of a video laughing about a cartoon may therefore acquire a healthy effect: The collective

laughter suggests a premature and therapeutic eruption of such mass neuroses, as stated by Benjamin.[7]

Ultimately, this therapeutic function has to remain highly speculative – and it is not for no reason that it received

severe criticism from Adorno: ‘The laughter of the cinema audience is … anything but good and revolutionary;

instead, it is full of the worst bourgeois sadism’.[8] Less speculative is the control function of laughter. As we have

seen, for Benjamin laughing about – and thus responding in a vocal and motor fashion to – a slapstick film or a

contemporaneous Chaplin comedy like City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) implies a progressive

reaction. Sitting in the classroom makes possible for the STUDENTS to find a way to not only synchronize their

reception but also to monitor one another. The public space created through laughter allows for a positive kind of

control, because inappropriate or even ethically-questionable laughter becomes publically available – and

24
thus a matter of knowledge about what kind of opinions and judgments exist out there. Benjamin’s arguments

could be summarized in two sayings: ‘tell me what you laugh about and I’ll tell you who you are’ and ‘tell me

who you laugh with and I’ll tell you who you are’. Laughter defines and re-defines identities in the context of

moving contexts or funny videos in the classroom’s sessions, under the monitoring process of the students’

instructors.

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I have downloaded 500 idioms from series and video clips such as The Big Bang Theory to teach idioms in
moving contexts

A Philosophy of Humor
As an English invention and core of its spirit, the first use of Humor took place in 1682 in tandem with the
emergence of democracy, 1776-8. Humor enforces a social bond but is of paramount importance to underline
its power for change in all contexts where the humorous event takes place. What is interesting about humor it
is its geographic specificity to the concept. The geography of humor is key to understand universal writers
such as Jonathan Swift, Johnson and the context of body, religion, protestant and post-reformation in England.
Italian Catholics, on the other hand, had to set for buffoonish laughter, as the saying goes. In the 18th C, even
the French recognized that humor belongs to the English people.

Traditionally philosophers have not paid much attention to humor despite its core nature of dealing and
raising the big questions. What causes the feeling of humor? There are basically, three theories of humor: The
superiority theory, the Relief theory and the Incongruity theory.

The Superiority Theory humor involves comparing yourself to another person or being, judging that you are
superior. Hobbes states that humor is a “sudden glory arising in some conception of some eminency in
ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly. “ Comedy often involves
flawed characters or characters who find themselves in bad situations. We laugh at the stupid, the cowardly,
and the socially inept.

Many jokes ridicule particular groups: blonde jokes, fat jokes, jokes that play on stereotypes about
nationalities. Some problems in seeing yourself as superior to another person often lead to pity, not humor.
Defenders of the superiority theory would add that humor involves perceiving yourself to be superior, where
the other person is not so badly off that you feel sympathy instead. We often find humor where there is no
judgment of superiority. Consider simple jokes using wordplay and puns:

“A plateau is the highest form of flattery” – “I still remember what my granddad said before he kicked the
bucket: “How far do you consider I can kick this bucket?”
Even in cases where we laugh at another person’s misfortune, does this involve judging ourselves to be
superior? Many people watch TV shows vivaciously- they project themselves into the positions of characters.
The superiority theory does not seem to be compatible with the self- deprecating humor, where we poke fun at
ourselves. Indeed, some have suggested an “inferiority theory” of humor that involves judging yourself to be
flawed, to be less than ideal.

27
The superiority theory embraces hierarchy, plays on misfortune, differences in social status. Does humor have
something intrinsic to it?; is there something fundamental about humor that exposes power relationships? The
moral implication, on the superiority theory, suggest the possibility that humor can be morally wrong –humor
always involves 2 putting others down , and perhaps undermines cooperation and tolerance. Humor always
involves judgments of superiority. In Plato’s Republic, humor was seen as corruptible as in many other
memorable works such as Aristotle’s and Hobbes.
The core assumption of the superiority theory is that we laugh about the misfortunes of others; it reflects our
own superiority. This theory can be found in the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes. Plato suggests that humor
is some kind of malice towards people that are being considered relatively powerless. Hobbes further explains
that humans are in a constant competition with each other, looking for the shortcomings of other persons. He
considers laughter as an expression of a sudden realization that we are better than others, an expression of
‘sudden glory’.
Although this theory seems old-fashioned in the 21st century, Charles Gruner reformulated this theory as the
Superiority Theory of Humor. His theory contains a three-part thesis:

· Every humorous situation has a winner and a loser.

· Incongruity is always present in a humorous situation.

· Humor requires an element of surprise.

The first part of this thesis contains the idea of Superiority. The assumption that all humor has a winner and a
loser is based on human nature. Through history humans have used humor to “compete” with other persons,
making them the target of their humorous comment. The “winner “is the one that successfully makes fun of
the “loser”.
The relief theory involves a release of mental tension. Hence, the connection between humor and laughter:
laughter is a bodily expression, difficult to control. It is a release of positive emotion. Sigmund Freud
championed this theory. The Relief Theory has a clear physiological or psycho-physiological nature. The theory
reached its zenith when Freud proposed his theory how laughter can release tension and “psychic energy”. This
energy continuously builds up within the human body, has no further use and, therefore, has to be released. This
release is spontaneous and expresses itself in laughter. This theory is popular among those who believe that
laughter is beneficial for one’s health. A more conventional version of the Relief Theory is that we experience
a pleasant sensation when humor replaces negative feelings like pain or sadness. However, this statement may

28
be refutable since pain and sadness coexist in works of literature within the postmodern metafiction, historiographic
metafiction, magic realism and carnivalesque literary works. To wrap up the ideas on humor and laughter explored in
this paper, I would like to refer to The New Sincerity movement, popular in the 80s and 90s
, was strong in the USA and his main stand-up comedian, George Carlin, mastered a type of humor that
is brutally honest.

POST IRONIC AND GENUINISTS

By brown...you mean ....trash talk under florescent lights...I have carried a lot of research and the post-ironic is
very connected with new sincerity...but somehow...one overshadows the other...the latter.
Brett Banfe states that he is using them all as synonymous. One explains the other. But the core message is a
reclaiming of oneself. Not necessarily the public face, but the deepened being, reclaiming without fear as a way
of ingenuining (my coinage) oneself with others. I kind of think of it like Peter Pan and Tink's dust. The dust is
like the fluorescent brown; brown being synonymous with natural, so it is a way of saying the sparkling natural,
or the extraordinary ordinary. The result is a "flight" like that of the Lost Boys to Neverland, or a land of
imagining. This could be viewed as "evident experience," and is also closely connected to the experience of lucid
dreaming. It's like lucid living. It is the post-ironic condition to be living in a state of open, lucid living, where the
purpose is neither concealed, nor apparent. It is process-derivative. It is Effect-driven. It is Autopoiesis and Self-
invented. I view it not as a contained philosophical perspective, but rather it's an examination of popular culture.
In other words, I don't think you can really compare it to say Dadaism, or even post-modern deconstructionism or
structuralism. It's actually more similar to a term like hipster, which no one would think of as a science of branch
of philosophy so much as it is just a class of popular culture. That being said, I think the hipsters are a process of
this reclamation of identity. Reclaiming some of the authentic culture of our times, as opposed to a homogenous
suburban identity. It is why our heroes tend to be rugged, authentic Americans such as Neal Cassady, Allen
Ginsberg, George Carlin and Hunter S. Thompson. The irony of the term is that there is no such thing as
fluorescent brown. So in a way, whatever it is that is fluorescent, it emerges from within. It shines through. I feel
like irony is a way of diverting that shine, so that it doesn't stand out, so that attention is not drawn. I think in a
post-ironic culture, the self is preserved through a fierce sense of individualism and that preservation of the self-
sense (as contrasted to in teenage years where an emphasis is placed on fitting in above standing out) is in the
name of the overall health of the individual, and so it is liberally embraced for both the health of the individual, as
well as the collective health of the whole. The USA is a country extremely free as regards of all kinds of humor
and strongly keeps his tradition on all kinds of humor no matter if they are politically incorrect. They make fun of
everything and the series and movies account for this statement.
Author. Lic . Agustina Sosa Revol

29
The theory does not really give an explanation as to why we find humor funny and can in fact be seen a theory
of laughter. Different forms of humor release different tensions created by the mind’s attempt to inhibit
particular impulses. As we get older, we are expected to behave rationally and regulate emotions, thus inhibiting
a tendency to nonsense and childishness. This inhibition creates a mental tension, which needs to be released
by particular kinds of humor. Relief theory explains why so much humor deals with taboo topics- sex, violence,
political incorrectness- these are all inhibited in polite contexts. The problems with this theory is that we enjoy
engaging with taboo topics in general even in non –humorous contexts. But why doesn’t this also “release
tension”, and so provoke humor in all contexts?

The primary objection to relief theory is it assumes an implausible psychological theory. We do not literally build
up pressure; we don’t literally release anything. Even if we are humorous is the release supposed to work?
Why would telling a sexual joke release sexual tension, as opposed to just increasing such tension? Relief
Theory makes incorrect predictions: if it’s true that humor releases tension, then after a few jokes on the same
theme, there should be nothing left to release. Yet, we can laugh at a topic over and over for no reason but just
contagious laughter.

If the tension to be released is created by inhibitions, then people who are more inhibited should find more
things funny. Again, this seems to be false. The connection between humor and laughter is very
controversial. Laughter is prompted by many things that are not humorous: being tickled, contagious
laughter, cannabis, surprise, nervousness. Many times we laugh because others do. And we often find things
funny without laughing. Much of the humorous things in the world just give us an “intellectual tickle”.

The Incongruity Theory is the most significant approach to the study of humor and laughter. Kant, in
the eighteenth century, is credited to have made the first full conceptualization of incongruity. A good
description of the incongruity theory is found in the following words uttered by Schopenhauer:

“The cause of laughter in every case is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept
and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and the laugh itself is just an
expression of this incongruity.”

When jokes are examined in the light of the incongruity theory, two objects in the joke are presented through a
single concept, or ‘frame’. The concept becomes applied to both objects and the objects become similar. As
the joke progresses, it becomes apparent that this concept only applies to one of the two objects and thus the
difference between the objects or their concepts becomes apparent. This is what is called incongruity. Many
agree on the point that it is not the incongruity but the congruous resolution of the apparent incongruity that

30
makes a certain situation funny. That is why we speak of the incongruity resolution theory. The incongruity-
resolution theory is a linguistic theory that explains how jokes are structured and does not pay attention to the
influence of the surrounding factors. Moreover, it cannot explain why we can hear a joke more than one time and
still find it funny and why not all incongruities are the source of laughter. Whether relief of tension, a sense
of superiority to see the absurd in the inferior realities or the incongruous spaces, the three theories on humor
fall into Michael Foucault’s space of the incongruous where all forms meet since none of them exist in the purest

form, relief may be invaded by a sense of superiority and a vision of life as just a heap of the incongruous. We

are all familiar with the disconcerting effect of the proximity of extremes, 4 or, quite simply, with the sudden
vicinity of things that have no relation to each other; the mere act of enumeration that heaps them all together
has a power of enchantment all its own in their power to coexist.

Humor comes in many flavors, any of which may appeal to one person but not to another, and which may
be enjoyed in alternation or in combination. Here are names and descriptions of the varieties of comic
expression:

1. Anecdotal: Named after the word anecdote (which stems from the Greek term meaning “unpublished”);
refers to comic personal stories that may be true or partly true but embellished.
2. Blue: Also called off-color, or risqué (from the French word for “to risk”); relies on impropriety or
indecency for comic effect. (The name probably derives from the eighteenth-century use of the word blue to
refer to morally strict standards — hence the phrase “blue laws” to refer to ordinances restricting certain
behavior on the Sabbath).
A related type is broad humor, which refers to unrestrained, unsubtle humor often marked by coarse jokes
and sexual situations.
3. Burlesque: Ridicules by imitating with caricature, or exaggerated characterization. The
association with striptease is that in a bygone era, mocking skits and ecdysiast displays were often on
the same playbills in certain venues.
4. Dark/Gallows/Morbid: Grim or depressing humor dealing with misfortune and/or death and
with a pessimistic outlook.
5. Deadpan/Dry: Delivered with an impassive, expressionless, matter-of-fact presentation.
6. Droll: From the Dutch word meaning “imp”; utilizes capricious or eccentric humor.
7. Epigrammatic: Humor consisting of a witty saying such as “Too many people run out of ideas long
before they run out of words.” (Not all epigrams are humorous, however.) Two masters of epigrammatic
humor are Benjamin Franklin (as the author of Poor Richard’s Almanackand Oscar Wilde.
8. Farcical: Comedy based on improbable coincidences and with satirical elements, punctuated at times with
overwrought, frantic action. (It, like screwball comedy — see below — shares many elements with a comedy
of errors.) Movies and plays featuring the Marx Brothers are epitomes of farce. The adjective also refers to
incidents or proceedings that seem too ridiculous to be true.
9. High/highbrow: Humor pertaining to cultured, sophisticated themes.
10. Hyperbolic: Comic presentation marked by extravagant exaggeration and outsized characterization.
11. Ironic: Humor involving incongruity and discordance with norms, in which the intended meaning
is opposite, or nearly opposite, to the literal meaning. (Not all irony is humorous, however.)

31
12. Juvenile/sophomoric: Humor involving childish themes such as pranks, name-calling, and other
immature behavior.
13. Mordant: Caustic or biting humor (the word stems from a Latin word meaning “to bite”).
Not to be confused with morbid humor (see above).
14. Parodic: Comic imitation often intended to ridicule an author, an artistic endeavor, or a genre.
15. Satirical: Humor that mocks human weaknesses or aspects of society.
16. Screwball: Akin to farce in that it deals with unlikely situations and responses to those situations;
distinguished, like farcical humor, by exaggerated characterizations and episodes of fast-paced action.
17. Self-deprecating: Humor in which performers target themselves and their foibles or misfortunes
for comic effect. Stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield was a practitioner of self-deprecating humor.
18. Situational: Humor arising out of quotidian situations; it is the basis of sitcoms, or situation
comedies. Situational comedies employ elements of farce, screwball, slapstick, and other types of humor.
19. Slapstick: Comedy in which mock violence and simulated bodily harm are staged for comic effect;
also called physical comedy. The name derives from a prop consisting of a stick with an attached piece of
wood that slapped loudly against it when one comedian struck another with it, enhancing the effect. The
Three Stooges were renowned for their slapstick comedy.
20. Stand-up: A form of comedy delivery in which a comic entertains an audience with jokes and
humorous stories. A stand-up comedian may employ one or more of the types of humor described here.
21. Physical Comedy: people falling down, pranks, the dramatic telling of jokes, humor
involving physicality, clowns, mimes, funny facial expressions
Exaggerated Humor: Clownish persona, impersonating someone, telling about their day in an exaggerated
way, etc. Careful about: tall tales and lying in the exaggeration.

22.Droll Humor – “imp” or goblin – used to mean “buffoonish”, a jester, amusingly odd, whimsically
humorous, zany behavior and speech, capricious or eccentric. Can provoke deadpan responses! :-) Often the
type of humor of the “comic relief” characters in cartoon movies and even also in live-action movies.

23. Witty Humor: one-liners (pithy, concise, meaningful), punch lines, intellectual humor, epigrams, charm
& whit.

24. Highbrow Humor – cultured/sophisticated themes. Lowbrow is something anyone would

understand (e.g. knock-knock jokes) and Highbrow Humor is something a regular person might not get
– high-level chemistry or math jokes for example.

25. Wit/Wordplay – play on words, twist language with humorous results, clever manipulation
of language (puns are included in this category).

26. Hyperbole – phrases that contain an obvious exaggeration to make a point (e.g. “he is older
than the hills”).

27. Deadpan / Dry – impassive, expressionless, matter-of-fact humor said with a straight face.

28. Ironic Humor – incongruity and discordance with norms, opposite or nearly opposite. The game “Apples to
Apples” can be used as ironic humor when pairing unlikely examples with a category. There are at least three
types of ironic humor: verbal (says one thing, but implies another, more of “go figure” type of phrasing
vs. sarcasm), situational (what happens is completely different from what is expected), and dramatic (in a

32
film, TV show, play, skit, or sketch, the characters think something is one way, but its really
another and the audience knows the truth).

29. Parody – a literary composition imitating/mimicking in a funny way an author, genre,

particular book, song, or another artistic endeavor. E.g. parodies of songs that take the tune and add
different words, a mockumentary (fake documentary) can be a parody but can also be satire.

30. Spoof – a funny version of a work or genre just to make people laugh. E.g. a movie imitating a serious TV
show in a purely humorous way. Unfortunately, hoaxes are in this category but do not define the category.

31.Satire – imitates or mocks something to make a point or comment on a societal phenomenon. E.g.
Animal Farm is a statement against Stalinism. Fake news stories can also be in this category.

32.Heritage comedy – highlighting humorous traits or characteristics from a culture or heritage (e.g.
video shorts about life in the southern United States, a movie about a family from a particular country
and highlighting the funny quirks about that culture, etc).

33.Surreal Humor – trippy, bizarre, creepy but hilarious, crazy experiences, nonsensical and
nonsequiturs, bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations, nonsensical themes, nonsense logic.

34.Topical Humor – humor about current events/trends, humorous spin on the news, elections, pop culture,
headlining late night talk shows, skits about current events, fake news stories, political cartoons, etc.

35.Situational Comedy – humor arising out of quotidian (everyday, ordinary) situations, scripted
dialogue creates a thematic situation. It is the basis of sitcoms (situation comedies), farce, screwball,
and slapstick comedies.

36.Observational Comedy – poking fun at everyday life, humor in everyday life, inflating
the importance of trivial things, or observing the silliness that society accepts as normal.

37.Farcical Humor – improbable coincidences with satirical elements, punctuated by overwrought,

frantic action (e.g. focus of a lot of old black-and-white tv shows, shorts, and movies).

38.Antidotal – comic personal stories.

39.Sketch (skits about situations) – shorter than sitcoms, usually live.

40.Character comedy – stereotypes, a persona invented by the performer.

41.Musical Comedy – music with or without lyrics that is intended to be funny.

42.Improv Comedy – where the dialogue or behavior is not planned beforehand.

43.Cuteness Humor(my self-invented category!) – so cute it just makes you laugh.

33
Types of humor that may be problematic (depends):

Mocking Humor: making fun of someone or something. Different from sophomoric humor. There are examples
in the Bible! The example is I Kings 18:26-19 ESV version. Note “relieving himself” means what
we call using the bathroom today!

Dark/Morbid Humor – “humor out of the deepest, darkest, situations in life.” However, the Bible does
have at least one example of dark humor that I can see: Judges 5:28-30 (I like the NIV version)

Anti-humor – intentionally not funny, lacking in intrinsic meaning, joke set-up, what’s funny is that
it’s not funny, parodies of jokes.

*Humorously dim-witted logic.

Self-depreciating for comic effects – foibles or misfortunes, memes, make self the butt of jokes.

Sarcasm – can be subtle, often reflects a dark/pessimistic view of life.

“Cringe Comedy” – the comedy of embarrassment.

Shock Value Humor

Bodily Humor – toilet jokes, farts, toilet humor, bodily functions.

Types of humor that does or may conflict with Ephesians 5:4:

*Juvenile / Sophomoric humor – name-calling, jokes at other person’s expense, pranks, mimicking
in a mocking way.

*Insult comedy

*Mordant humor – (to bite or sting)- grim with sharp sarcasm, caustic or biting humor (e.g. “my parents spanked
me as a child, as a result, I now suffer from a psychological condition known as ‘respect for others’”. “Nice
perfume must you marinate in it?” (Sarcasm in acerbic fashion) mocking something or someone (we
laugh but think twice). I think telling people truth even if you are painfully blunt at times can be valuable
in certain contexts, it is just that mordant humor can be biting and mean.

*Raunchy Humor (or Blue Humor, Off-Color) – vulgar, sex, cringe but crack up, the
true raw human condition, impropriety, and indignity.

Hoaxes (a form of anti-humor and spoof)

—————

Possible sources of a clean laugh:

34
Cartoons: You can look some up online or buy on Amazon books full of strips from your favorite cartoon
artists for cheap (or look at thrift stores). Note – sarcastic cynical cartoons might be unhealthy in the long
run even if they are not/seem not to be unhealthy in the short run. Buying several books that only contain
your favorite cynical sarcastic cartoon might slant your thinking to be more cynical so that is something
to consider.

Jokes: you can buy clean joke books on Amazon or look up lists of jokes online. What type
of categories of jokes do you like?

Clean comedy routines, also known as PG Comedy: For examples of clean comedian clips check out
the free Pandora station “PG Comedy”.

Funny TV Shows that were actually on TV at one point: Episodes of these may be available on Youtube or
you may need a subscription to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc to view them. Might help to identify what
type of humor you like in picking shows. You can look up reviews online to see if they are raunchy.
Categories include those include: shows entirely focused on humor (e.g. I really enjoy Candid Camera, others
include America’s Funniest Home Videos which is not my favorite but some people really like if they like
physical humor or cuteness humor). Also are funny sitcoms based on 1) witty banter, 2) funny life situations
exemplified, 3) awkward humor, 4) deadpan humor, 5) “inside jokes” (e.g. nerd-specific references, office
humor), or sarcastic humor (sarcastic humor has questionable healthiness). Again unfortunately many of them
include raunchy humor so looking up reviews online on “family friendliness” can be important. Also, consider
old black and white films, you can watch clips on Youtube to see if you like them.

Fake News Humor (caution!)

Full-Length Films (Comedies): You can watch their trailers on Youtube to see if it is the humor style you find
funny. You can look up descriptions in “Plugged In” on the Focus on the Family website to see what type of
humor it is and whether it is raunchy or vulgar.

Short Funny Videos on YouTube and Facebook.

Skits and Classic Plays: Especially if you enjoy wit, farce, ironic humor, satire, and situational humor.

Analyzing Types of Humor:

Analyzing forms of media for what types of humor they contain can be fun!

Here is an example from the movie “The Emperor’s New Groove” which is my own personal
analysis (not copied from anyone else):

“The Emperor’s New Groove” movie includes 1) A caricature of the classic self-centered teenager, the classic
dim-witted muscular side-kick (which actually ends up being deeper and surprisingly likable), and other
memorable characters. It has dark elements (finding something funny in tragic situations), over-dramatic
illustrations of scenes that are humorous, a little bit of deadpan (Kuzco’s lines to Yzma etc), exaggerated
expressions, settings, and sound effects, witty humor, and satire in the form of witty commentary on a selfish
and petty mindset . Kuzco is extremely sarcastic but you can tell by the delivery it is done in satire so we are

35
not supposed to imitate it. There is also humor when they say something in a serious way but it’s
funny because they really believe it (Kronk).

So….what kinds of humor do you appreciate? That might help you find something to laugh about and help
you appreciate other people’s uniqueness.

Conclusion

Fabricating activities that allow learners to encounter unexpected language and linguistic practices will

afford them the opportunity to improvise communicative solutions, and to learn to make choices. Activities

that involve an element of surprise may also raise awareness of the situated, contingent nature of interaction

and eventually humorous interaction. Humor thrives on unpredictability, making it a natural way to insert

unforeseen language into the classroom. Language plays a main function to destabilize a language learner’s

system, allowing further development. In the freedom of language learning activities,

unpredictability encourages creativity and pushes learners to construct unknown meanings, rather than

relying on familiar language, which they may do when given complete freedom. Humor and language play

can also introduce unpredictability into otherwise routine, predictable classroom interactions and

prescribed curricula. Gardner accounts on how teachers working in a linguistically diverse classroom

transformed a scripted phonetic activity into a creative game that supported not only the children’s

language development, but also their identities as competent members of the classroom community. In this

case, the teacher used a variety of strategies to help children justify their answers to the “silly questions”

posed in the instructional script rather than accepting simple yes/no responses. Gardner found that

these strategies were central in making the activity “at once more cognitively challenging with the

real communicative need to justify, more enjoyable-humorous in its appeal to the imagination. (Gardner,

2008, 272)

36
Vigostky’ socio-cultural approach is embedded in social activity where learning occurs; that is, new skills make

their first appearance in social interaction and are constructed through collective action. It is only later that

they become internalized and available for individual use. Both of these ideas are addressed in the following

quote, in which Vygotsky (1978) explained that learning awakens a variety of internal developmental

processes that are able to operate only when the student is interacting with people in his environment and in

cooperation with his peers. He argues further by stating that when social and private speech has largely become

internalized, they may reappear as needed when confronting new problems and in his concept of Romance

or play with language stage, laughter -founded in humor- generates identities.

Humor’s role in classroom learning entails a complex array of factors. It has a great effect on identities and power

relations, and the romance and precise stages in learning. Many researchers have, instead, turned their focus to the

role of language play. Although some, like Lantolf, have emphasized the idea of language play as a form of private

speech or rehearsal that facilitates internalizing comfort and competence with second language forms. In addition,

the a socio-cognitive theory of language development that is consistent with the sociocultural approach to the

learning of a language make the learner and instructor take into account the rich sociocultural background of those

learners from different cultures and geographical loci. Moreover, we discussed six principles for language

education that are not only grounded in this view of development but could also be realized through purposeful

engagement with humor and language play. Further, I have explored taking non-serious language seriously in

language education. It is, then, up to instructors to embrace the risks and rewards of using humor in their

professional practice and the classroom-space/time. Learning a new language entails communicative approaches,

play, romance, precision, unpredictability, relief, romance-precision, the prompting of social action and change, the

construction of bonds, influence on others, negotiation of meaning, the boosting of cognitive skills, the richness of

sociocultural aspects, humor as a social practice, functions, the encountering of linguistic challenges, the challenges

of interpretation in connection with the learner’s linguistic competence, its nature to raise awareness, and the plural

interpretation. Within the intersection of all these categories, the effectiveness of humor in the development of

language learning poses collegiate and unprecedented challenges,

in the threshold of the 21st century.

Lic. Agustina Sosa Revol

2022

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Endnotes

[1-1] For slightly different interpretations of section XII in Benjamin’s artwork essay see Hansen 2012, p. 100

and McBride 1998, p. 469.

[2-2] Critchley 2002, p. 74.

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[3-3] See Foucault 1995; Deleuze 1992.

[4-4] Why this should be the case ‘nowhere more than in the cinema’ – and not also, for instance, in stage comedies –

remains open in Benjamin’s text.

[5-5] Critchley 2002, p. 12. He continues: ‘[j]okes can be read in terms of what or simply who a particular society is

subordinating, scapegoating or denigrating. Grasping the nature of societal repression can itself be liberating, but only

negatively.’ Critchley 2002, pp. 75-76.

[6-6] Hansen 2012, p. 86.

[7-7] Ibid.

[8] Benjamin 2008, p. 337 (translated by R. Livingstone). In German: ‘Chaplin hat sich in seinen Filmen an den zugleich

internationalsten und revolutionärsten Affekt der Massen gewandt, das Gelächter. “Allerdings”, sagt Soupault,

“Chaplin bringt nur zum Lachen. Aber abgesehen davon, daß das das Schwerste ist, was es gibt, ist es auch im sozialen

Sinne das Wichtigste.”’

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[9] Curiously, Hansen does not discuss these allusions. The fact that she overlooks Benjamin’s references to comedies

is symptomatic of the general problem that the genre poses for the neat divide between early cinema and classical

cinema. Since 1895 comedies transcend the boundaries between film historical periods. Moreover, even if the mode

of address of the comedy may have changed throughout the decades its laughing audiences are hardly the absorbed,

voyeuristic spectators often deemed typical for the classical paradigm.

[10] Benjamin 1969, p. 250 (translated by H. Zohn).

[11] In the German original Benjamin notes: ‘Ehe der Film zur Geltung kam, suchten die Dadaisten durch ihre

Veranstaltungen eine Bewegung ins Publikum zu bringen, die ein Chaplin dann auf natürlichere Weise hervorrief.’

Benjamin 1977 (‘Kunstwerk’), p. 37 (emphasis added).

[12] In the late 1920s the film theorist and critic Rudolf Arnheim once turned around in the movie theater in order to

follow the audience rather than the film. His comments anticipate what Benjamin would say a couple of years later:

‘Die Körper liegen als dunkle Klumpen schwer und unbeweglich in bequemen Stühlen … Manchmal geht ein Gelächter

durch das Dunkel, dann wiegen sich alle die Körper eine Weile hin und her, so als wenn der Wind durch die Bäume

geht.’ Quoted from: Paech & Paech 2000, p. 133.

[13] Benjamin 1999, p. 79

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