What is Humor?

If you look up the word “Humor” in any on-line and off-line dictionary, every definition given can be summarized in this one I found in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “humor is the tendency of a particular cognitive experience to provoke laughter and provide amusement”[1].

But to define precisely what humor is and what social function it serves is a horse of a very different color. It is a well established fact that people of all ages and cultures respond to humor, but it is also a well established fact that  humor relies heavily on cultural association and a host of other variables including geographical location, maturity, education level and context. Hence it does not often translate into other languages and cultures with the same perspective. Simply, people from different cultures often consider different things funny.

This does not mean that humor can’t be universal too. As Barry Blake underlines in his book Playing with Words: Humor in the English Language:

 

 If you want to get a laugh from people of virtually any culture, show someone all togged out in a fine white costume and then have them slip and fall in the mud! [...] laughing at someone’s misfortune seems to be universal and the bigger the accident, the greater the potential for humor.[2]

 

The simple reason is that humor is not just in language but is also in action: as the history of cinema teaches, the first comedies were silent movies created by the amazing genius of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

So, how can someone be funny and make other people laughs? Unfortunately there is no magic formula or rule to be followed that will enable us to be funny, still we can detect some recurrent properties.

First of all, the overriding principle of humor is that there should be a set-up and a punch, whether it is a line or an action.

 

“Men are such idiots. And I married their king”

[Married…with children - 1988]

 

A good punch should come as a surprise, a sudden revelation. The person that is listening should expect another interpretation. In this case one would expect the sentence to be expressed is different ways, like “Men are such idiots. And I married one of them”, or even, one can expect the line to have a completely different meaning: “Men are such idiots. But I married an intelligent one”.

Another technique used to make fun with words is the use of puns, but more than any other technique such as jokes, or wit, puns and its relatives (grammar ambiguities and rhymes) depend completely on the language of the audience.

 

Kelly: “I'm Kelly. We met in the boys' shower the other day?”

Matt: “Oh, yeah, the soup girl.”

Kelly: “The soap girl. S-O-P-E.”

[Married…with children -1989]

 

Brian: “Do you get Sesame Street where you live?”

ALF: “No, and frankly I don't get it here either.”

[ALF - 1985]

 

“House, house, house. Oh, you are made of stone
But you are not alone-

-ly house!”

[The Young Ones  - 1983]

 

Stinky: “What does RSVP mean?”
Ben: “Don't be an idiot, Stinky, it means Refreshments Served at Vito's Party!”

 [Growing Pains - 1985]

Even though it would be interesting to analyze how a joke or a sarcastic comment would be perceived and translated in each and every country around the globe, we don’t have that kind of time on our hands. What we are going to do instead is to cut down on the two kinds of humor that truly split the world in two: American humor and British humour.

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[1] http://www.iep.utm.edu

[2] Blake B., Playing with Words: Humour in the English Language, Equinox Publishing, 2007