Joke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the form of humour. For other uses, see Joke (disambiguation).
This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used
on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.
(October 2011)

Look up joke in Wiktionary, the free

dictionary.

A joke is something spoken, written, or done with humorous intention.[1] Jokes may have many
different forms, e.g., a single word or a gesture (considered in a particular context), a questionanswer, or a whole short story. The word "joke" has a number of synonyms, including wisecrack,
gag, prank, quip, jape and jest.[1], To achieve their end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word
play and other devices. Jokes may have a punch line, i.e. an ending to make it humorous.
A practical joke or prank differs from a spoken joke in that the major component of the humour
is physical rather than verbal (for example placing salt in the sugar bowl).

Purpose
Jokes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers. The desired response is
generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen flat" or "bombed".
However, jokes have other purposes and functions, common to comedy/humour/satire in general.

Antiquity of jokes
Jokes have been a part of human culture since at least 1900 BC. According to research conducted
by Dr Paul McDonald of the University of Wolverhampton, a fart joke from ancient Sumer is
currently believed to be the world's oldest known joke.[2] Britain's oldest joke, meanwhile, is a
1,000-year-old double-entendre that can be found in the Codex Exoniensis.[3]
A recent discovery of a document called Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) gives us an insight
into ancient humour. Written in Greek by Hierocles and Philagrius, it dates to the third or fourth
century AD, and contains some 260 jokes. Considering humour from our own culture as recent
as the 19th century is at times baffling to us today, the humour is surprisingly familiar. They had
different stereotypes: the absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad
breath were favourites. A lot of the jokes play on the idea of knowing who characters are:

A barber, a bald man and an absent minded professor take a journey together. They have to camp
overnight, so decide to take turns watching the luggage. When it's the barber's turn, he gets
bored, so amuses himself by shaving the head of the professor. When the professor is woken up
for his shift, he feels his head, and says "How stupid is that barber? He's woken up the bald man
instead of me."
There is even a joke similar to Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch: a man buys a slave, who
dies shortly afterwards. When he complains to the slave merchant, he is told: "He didn't die when
I owned him." Comic Jim Bowen has presented them to a modern audience. "One or two of them
are jokes I've seen in people's acts nowadays, slightly updated. They put in a motor car instead
of a chariot - some of them are Tommy Cooper-esque."[4]

Psychology of jokes
Why people laugh at jokes has been the subject of serious academic study, examples being:

Immanuel Kant, in Critique of Judgement (1790) states that "Laughter is an effect that
arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing." Here is Kant's two-century old
joke and his analysis:

An Englishman at an Indian's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale being opened, and all the beer,
turned to froth, rushed out. The Indian, by repeated exclamations, showed his great amazement. Well, what's so amazing in that? asked the Englishman. - Oh, but I'm not amazed at its coming
out, replied the Indian, but how you managed to get it all in. - This makes us laugh, and it gives
us a hearty pleasure. This is not because, say, we think we are smarter than this ignorant man, nor
are we laughing at anything else here that it is our liking and that we noticed through our
understanding. It is rather that we had a tense expectation that suddenly vanished...

Henri Bergson, in his book Le rire (Laughter, 1901), suggests that laughter evolved to
make social life possible for human beings.
Sigmund Freud's "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious". (Der Witz und seine
Beziehung zum Unbewuten).

Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation (1964), analyses humour and compares it to other
creative activities, such as literature and science.

Marvin Minsky in Society of Mind (1986).

Marvin Minsky suggests that laughter has a specific function related to the human brain.
In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms for the brain to learn nonsense. For that
reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as funny when you hear them repeatedly.
Edward de Bono in "The Mechanism of the Mind" (1969) and "I am Right, You are
Wrong" (1990).
Edward de Bono suggests that the mind is a pattern-matching machine, and that it works
by recognising stories and behaviour and putting them into familiar patterns. When a

familiar connection is disrupted and an alternative unexpected new link is made in the
brain via a different route than expected, then laughter occurs as the new connection is
made. This theory explains a lot about jokes. For example:
Why jokes are only funny the first time they are told: once they are told the
pattern is already there, so there can be no new connections, and so no laughter.
Why jokes have an elaborate and often repetitive set up: The repetition establishes
the familiar pattern in the brain. A common method used in jokes is to tell almost
the same story twice and then deliver the punch line the third time the story is
told. The first two tellings of the story evoke a familiar pattern in the brain, thus
priming the brain for the punch line.

Why jokes often rely on stereotypes: the use of a stereotype links to familiar
expected behaviour, thus saving time in the set-up.

Why jokes are variants on well-known stories (e.g. the genie and a lamp and a
man walks into a bar): This again saves time in the set up and establishes a
familiar pattern.

In 2002, Richard Wiseman conducted a study intended to discover the world's funniest
joke [1]. Some elements of jokes have been observed in the Laugh Factory's report [2]:

a feeling of superiority over the subject of the joke.

a sudden realization of a misconception(or of an over thought premise) or the

realization that a subject has made an incongruous decision

edgy dialogue about sensitive topics such as marriage, morality, and illness.

that in animal jokes, those that feature ducks are the most funny

Laughter, the intended human reaction to jokes, is healthy in moderation, uses the abdominal
muscles, and releases endorphins, natural "feel good" chemicals, into the brain.

Jokes in organizations
Jokes can be employed by workers as a way to identify with their jobs. For example, 9-1-1
operators often crack jokes about incongruous, threatening, or tragic situations they deal with on
a daily basis.[5] This use of humour and cracking jokes helps employees differentiate themselves
from the people they serve while also assisting them in identifying with their jobs.[6] In addition
to employees, managers use joking, or jocularity, in strategic ways. Some managers attempt to
suppress joking and humour use because they feel it relates to lower production, while others
have attempted to manufacture joking through pranks, pajama or dress down days, and specific
committees that are designed to increase fun in the workplace.[7]

Rules

The rules of humour are analogous to those of poetry. These common rules are mainly timing,
precision, synthesis, and rhythm. French philosopher Henri Bergson has said in an essay: "In
every wit there is something of a poet."[8] In this essay Bergson views the essence of humour as
the encrustation of the mechanical upon the living. He used as an instance a book by an English
humorist, in which an elderly woman who desired a reputation as a philanthropist provided
"homes within easy hail of her mansion for the conversion of atheists who have been specially
manufactured for her, so to speak, and for a number of honest folk who have been made into
drunkards so that she may cure them of their failing, etc." This idea seems funny because a
genuine impulse of charity as a living, vital impulse has become encrusted by a mechanical
conception of how it should manifest itself.

Precision
To reach precision, the comedian must choose the words in order to provide a vivid, in-focus
image, and to avoid being generic as to confuse the audience, and provide no laughter. To
properly arrange the words in the sentence is also crucial to get precision.

Rhythm
Main articles: Timing (linguistics) and Comic timing
The joke's content (meaning) is not what provokes the laugh, it just makes the salience of the
joke and provokes a smile. What makes us laugh is the joke mechanism. Milton Berle
demonstrated this with a classic theatre experiment in the 1950s: if during a series of jokes you
insert phrases that are not jokes, but with the same rhythm, the audience laughs anyway[citation
needed]
. A classic is the ternary rhythm, with three beats: Introduction, premise, antithesis (with the
antithesis being the punch line).
In regards to the Milton Berle experiment, they can be taken to demonstrate the concept of
"breaking context" or "breaking the pattern". It is not necessarily the rhythm that caused the
audience to laugh, but the disparity between the expectation of a "joke" and being instead given a
non-sequitur "normal phrase." This normal phrase is, itself, unexpected, and a type of punchline
the anti-climax.

Comic
In the comic field plays the 'economy of ideative expenditure'; in other words excessive energy is
wasted or action-essential energy is saved. The profound meaning of a comic gag or a comic joke
is "I'm a child"; the comic deals with the clumsy body of the child.
Laurel and Hardy are a classic example. An individual laughs because he recognises the child
that is in himself. In clowns stumbling is a childish tempo. In the comic, the visual gags may be
translated into a joke. For example in Side Effects (By Destiny Denied story) by Woody Allen:
"My father used to wear loafers," she confessed. "Both on the same foot".

The typical comic technique is the disproportion.

Wit
In the wit field plays the "economy of censorship expenditure"[9] (Freud calls it "the economy of
psychic expenditure"); usually censorship prevents some 'dangerous ideas' from reaching the
conscious mind, or helps us avoid saying everything that comes to mind; adversely, the wit
circumvents the censorship and brings up those ideas. Different wit techniques allow one to
express them in a funny way. The profound meaning behind a wit joke is "I have dangerous
ideas". An example from Woody Allen:
I contemplated suicide again - this time by inhaling next to an insurance salesman.
Or, when a bagpipe player was asked "How do you play that thing?" his answer was "Well." Wit
is a branch of rhetoric, and there are about 200 techniques (technically they are called tropes, a
particular kind of figure of speech) that can be used to make jokes.[10]
Irony can be seen as belonging to this field.

Humour
In the comedy field, humour induces an "economised expenditure of emotion" (Freud calls it
"economy of affect" or "economy of sympathy". Freud produced this final part of his
interpretation many years later, in a paper later supplemented to the book.).[9][11] In other words,
the joke erases an emotion that should be felt about an event, making us insensitive to it.e.g.: "yo
momma" jokes. The profound meaning of the void feeling of a humour joke is "I'm a cynic". An
example from Woody Allen:
Three times I've been mistaken for Robert Redford. Each time by a blind person.
This field of jokes is still a grey area, being mostly unexplored. Extensive use of this kind of
humour can be found in the work of British satirist Chris Morris, like the sketches of the Jam
television program.
Black humour and sarcasm belong to this field. Another kind of joke is the ever popular "Yo
Mamma" joke.

Cycles
Folklorists, in particular (but not exclusively) those who study the folklore of the United States,
collect jokes into joke cycles. A cycle is a collection of jokes with a particular theme or a
particular "script". (That is, it is a literature cycle.)[12] Folklorists have identified several such
cycles:

the Helen Keller Joke Cycle that comprises jokes about Helen Keller[13]

Viola jokes[14]

the NASA, Challenger, or Space Shuttle Joke Cycle that comprises jokes relating to the
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster[15][16][17]

the Chernobyl Joke Cycle that comprises jokes relating to the Chernobyl disaster[18]

the Essex girl and the Stupid Irish joke cycles in the United Kingdom[19]

the Dead Baby Joke Cycle[20]

the Newfie Joke Cycle that comprises jokes made by Canadians about
Newfoundlanders[21]

the Little Willie Joke Cycle, and the Quadriplegic Joke Cycle[22]

the Jew Joke Cycle and the Polack Joke Cycle[23]

the Rastus and Liza Joke Cycle, which Dundes describes as "the most vicious and
widespread white anti-Negro joke cycle"[24]

the Jewish American Princess and Jewish American Mother joke cycles[25]

The Wind-up doll joke cycle[26]

The "Blonde joke" cycle.

Gruner discusses several "sick joke" cycles that occurred upon events surrounding Gary Hart,
Natalie Wood, Vic Morrow, Jim Bakker, Richard Pryor, Princess Diana and Michael Jackson,
noting how several jokes were recycled from one cycle to the next. For example: A joke about
Vic Morrow ("We now know that Vic Morrow had dandruff: they found his head and shoulders
in the bushes") was subsequently recycled about Admiral Mountbatten, and again applied to the
crew of the Challenger space shuttle ("How do we know that Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?
They found her head and shoulders on the beach.").[27]
Berger asserts that "whenever there is a popular joke cycle, there generally is some widespread
kind of social and cultural anxiety, lingering below the surface, that the joke cycle helps people
deal with".[28]

Types of jokes
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section
by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and
removed. (March 2011)
Jokes often depend on the humour of the unexpected, the mildly taboo (which can include the
distasteful or socially improper), or playing off stereotypes and other cultural beliefs. Many jokes
fit into more than one category.

Subjects
Political jokes are usually a form of satire. They generally concern politicians and heads of state,
but may also cover the absurdities of a country's political situation. A prominent example of
political jokes would be political cartoons. Two large categories of this type of jokes exist. The
first one makes fun of a negative attitude to political opponents or to politicians in general. The
second one makes fun of political clichs, mottoes, catch phrases or simply blunders of
politicians. Some, especially the "you have two cows" genre, derive humour from comparing
different political systems.
Professional humour includes caricatured portrayals of certain professions such as lawyers, and
in-jokes told by professionals to each other.
Mathematical jokes are a form of in-joke, generally designed to be understandable only by
insiders. (They are also often strictly visual jokes.)
Ethnic jokes exploit ethnic stereotypes. They are often racist and frequently considered
offensive. For example, the British tell jokes starting "An Englishman, an Irishman and a
Scotsman..." which exploit the supposed parsimony of the Scot, stupidity of the Irish or rigid
conventionality of the English. Such jokes exist among numerous peoples.
Sexist jokes exploit sexual stereotypes. They are inherently sexist, and increasingly are
considered offensive.
Jokes based on other stereotypes (such as blonde jokes) are often considered funny.
Religious jokes fall into several categories:

Jokes based on stereotypes associated with people of religion (e.g. nun jokes, priest jokes,
or rabbi jokes)
Jokes on classical religious subjects: crucifixion, Adam and Eve, St. Peter at The Gates,
etc.

Jokes that collide different religious denominations: "A rabbi, a medicine man, and a
pastor went fishing..."

Letters and addresses to God.

Self-deprecating or self-effacing humour is superficially similar to racial and stereotype jokes,

but involves the targets laughing at themselves. It is said to maintain a sense of perspective and
to be powerful in defusing confrontations. A common example is Jewish humour. A similar
situation exists in the Scandinavian "Ole and Lena" joke.
Self-deprecating humour has also been used by politicians, who recognise its ability to
acknowledge controversial issues and steal the punch of criticism.[citation needed] For example, when
Abraham Lincoln was accused of being two-faced he replied, "If I had two faces, do you think
this is the one Id be wearing?".

Dirty jokes are based on taboo, often sexual, content or vocabulary. The definitive studies on
them have been written by Gershon Legman.
Other taboos are challenged by sick jokes and gallows humour, and to joke about disability is
considered in this group.[citation needed]
Surrealist or minimalist jokes exploit semantic inconsistency, for example: Q: What's red and
invisible? A: No tomatoes..[citation needed]
Anti-jokes are jokes that are not funny in regular sense, and often can be decidedly unfunny, but
rely on the let-down from the expected joke to be funny in itself.[citation needed]
An elephant joke is a joke, almost always a riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of
connected riddles, frequently operating on a surrealistic, anti-humorous or meta-humorous level,
that involves an elephant.
Jokes involving non-sequitur humour, with parts of the joke being unrelated to each other; e.g.
"My uncle once punched a man so hard his legs became trombones", from The Mighty Boosh TV
series.
Dark humour is often used in order to deal with a difficult situation in a manner of "if you can
laugh at it, it won't kill you". Usually those jokes make fun of tragedies like death, accidents,
wars, catastrophes or injuries.

Styles
The question/answer joke, sometimes posed as a common riddle, has a supposedly straight
question and an answer which is twisted for humorous effect; puns are often employed. Of this
type are knock-knock joke, light bulb joke, the many variations on "why did the chicken cross
the road?", and the class of "What's the difference between a _______ and a ______" joke, where
the punch line is often a pun or a spoonerism linking two apparently entirely unconnected
concepts.
Some jokes require a double act, where one respondent (usually the straight man) can be relied
on to give the correct response to the person telling the joke. This is more common in
performance than informal joke-telling.
A shaggy dog story is an extremely long and involved joke with an intentionally weak or
completely non-existent punchline. The humour lies in building up the audience's anticipation
and then letting them down completely. The longer the story can continue without the audience
realising it is a joke, and not a serious anecdote, the more successful it is.

See also

Anecdote
Comedy

Comedy genres

Computational humour

East Frisian jokes

Feghoot

Funny

Humour

Internet humour

Irish jokes

Joke chess problem

Mathematical joke

Paradox

Polish joke

Practical jokes

Pun

Punch line

Roman jokes

Russian jokes

Stand-up comedy

The Funniest Joke in the World

World's funniest joke

Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.

^ a b "Joke". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2012-05-27.

^ 'World's oldest joke' traced back to 1900 BC.
^ Adams, Stephen (July 31, 2008). "The world's oldest jokes revealed by
university research". The Daily Telegraph (London).
^ Classic gags discovered in ancient Roman joke book March 13, 2009

5.

^ "Tracy, S. J., Myers, K. K., & Scott, C. W. (2006). Cracking jokes and crafting
selves: Sensemaking and identity management among human service workers.
Communication Monographs, 73,283-308."

6.

^ "Lynch, O. H. (2002). Humorous communication: Finding a place for humor in

communication research. Communication Theory, 4,423-445."

7.

^ "Collinson, D. L. (2002). Managing humour. Journal of Management Studies,

39,269-288."

8.

^ Henri Bergson (2005) [1901]. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the

Comic. Dover Publications.

9.

^ a b Sigmund Freud (missingdate). Wit and its relation to the unconscious.

missingpublisher. pp. 180,371374.

10.

^ Salvatore Attardo (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humour. Walter de Gruyter.

p. 55. ISBN 3-11-014255-4.

11.

^ Sigmund Freud (1928). "Humour". International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

12.

^ Salvatore Attardo (2001). "Beyond the Joke". Humorous Texts: A Semantic and
Pragmatic Analysis. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 6971. ISBN 3-11-017068-X.

13.

^ K. Hirsch and M.E. Barrick (1980). "The Hellen Keller Joke Cycle". Journal of
American Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 93, No. 370) 93 (370): 441
448. doi:10.2307/539874. JSTOR 539874.

14.

^ Carl Rahkonen (Winter 2000). "No Laughing Matter: The Viola Joke Cycle as
Musicians' Folklore". Western Folklore (Western Folklore, Vol. 59, No. 1) 59 (1): 4963.
doi:10.2307/1500468. JSTOR 1500468.

15.

^ Elizabeth Radin Simons (October 1986). "The NASA Joke Cycle: The
Astronauts and the Teacher". Western Folklore (Western Folklore, Vol. 45, No. 4) 45 (4):
261277. doi:10.2307/1499821. JSTOR 1499821.

16.

^ Willie Smyth (October 1986). "Challenger Jokes and the Humor of Disaster".
Western Folklore (Western Folklore, Vol. 45, No. 4) 45 (4): 243260.
doi:10.2307/1499820. JSTOR 1499820.

17.

^ Elliott Oring (July September 1987). "Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster".
The Journal of American Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 100, No. 397)
100 (397): 276286. doi:10.2307/540324. JSTOR 540324.

18.

^ Laszlo Kurti (July September 1988). "The Politics of Joking: Popular

Response to Chernobyl". The Journal of American Folklore (The Journal of American
Folklore, Vol. 101, No. 401) 101 (401): 324334. doi:10.2307/540473. JSTOR 540473.

19.

^ Christie Davies (1998). Jokes and Their Relation to Society. Walter de Gruyter.
pp. 186189. ISBN 3-11-016104-4.

20.

^ Alan Dundes (July 1979). "The Dead Baby Joke Cycle". Western Folklore
(Western Folklore, Vol. 38, No. 3) 38 (3): 145157. doi:10.2307/1499238.
JSTOR 1499238.

21.

^ Christie Davies (2002). "Jokes about Newfies and Jokes told by

Newfoundlanders". Mirth of Nations. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0096-9.

22.

^ Christie Davies (1999). "Jokes on the Death of Diana". In eJulian Anthony

Walter and Tony Walter. The Mourning for Diana. Berg Publishers. p. 255. ISBN 185973-238-0.

23.

^ Alan Dundes (1971). "A Study of Ethnic Slurs: The Jew and the Polack in the
United States". Journal of American Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 84,
No. 332) 84 (332): 186203. doi:10.2307/538989. JSTOR 538989.

24.

^ Alan Dundes, ed. (1991). "Folk Humor". Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel:
Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore. University Press of
Mississippi. p. 612. ISBN 0-87805-478-2.

25.

^ Alan Dundes (October December 1985). "The J. A. P. and the J. A. M. in

American Jokelore". The Journal of American Folklore (The Journal of American
Folklore, Vol. 98, No. 390) 98 (390): 456475. doi:10.2307/540367. JSTOR 540367.

26.

^ Robin Hirsch (April 1964). "Wind-Up Dolls". Western Folklore (Western

Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 2) 23 (2): 107110. doi:10.2307/1498259. JSTOR 1498259.

27.

^ Charles R. Gruner (1997). The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of

Why We Laugh. Transaction Publishers. pp. 142143. ISBN 0-7658-0659-2.

28.

^ Dr Arthur Asa Berger (1993). "Healing with Humor". An Anatomy of Humor.

Transaction Publishers. pp. 161162. ISBN 0-7658-0494-8.

References

Mary Douglas "Jokes." in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in

Cultural Studies. [1975] Ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1991.

Further reading

Cante, Richard C. (March 2008). Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US Culture.
London: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0-7546-7230-1. Chapter 2: The AIDS Joke as
Cultural Form.
Holt, Jim (July 2008). Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes.
New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-06673-8.
Grace Hui Chin Lin & Paul Shih Chieh Chien, (2009) Taiwanese Jokes from Views of
Sociolinguistics and Language Pedagogies [3]

External links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke