Studies on Jokes

2.4.1 Studies on Jokes

In this section, two studies are reviewed. The first one is Hung’s (2002) study of Mandarin cold jokes, which classified humor types into three main categories, compared the differences and the similarities between traditional jokes and the so-called cold jokes, and explored the characteristics of cold jokes. The second one is Tsai’s (1997) linguistic study of Chinese sexual punning jokes, which provided a

thorough analysis of different kinds of puns and taboo topics.

2.4.1.1 Hung’s study of Mandarin cold jokes

Hung’s (2002) study explored the types of humor employed in cold jokes in comparison with traditional jokes (i.e. well-formed, funny jokes), and examined the degree of joke well-formedness in these types of humor in order to account for why cold jokes strike one as ‘cold’.

Based on the Incongruity-Resolution Model reviewed in section 2.1, Hung (2002) divided jokes into three major categories: Metahumor, Nonsense Humor, and

Incongruity-Resolution Humor. Hung adopted Suls’(1983) definition and claimed that metahumor occurs in jokes that are considered humorous but do not possess an

incongruity structure. One example is as follows:

<4> ‘Have you heard the latest news?’ ‘No? Well, neither have I.’ (Attardo 1994) In this joke, there exists no incongruity, as it comes as no surprise that the logical or expected response to the question is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Hung (2002) quoted Ruch’s (1992) definition and referred to nonsense humor as humor having a structure in which the punch line may (a) provide no resolution, (b) provide partial resolution (leaving an essential part of the incongruity unresolved), or (c) actually create new absurdities and incongruities. One example of nonsense humor with no resolution is illustrated by the following cartoon narration (Hung, 2002):

<5> Spectators at a sporting event cheer on the athletes in the

foreground, running a relay race. One athlete, holding a duck by the neck, hands it off to another athlete. The cartoon captioned ‘The duck relays.’

This cartoon does not make sense in the real world because runners in a relay race usually take a baton. Thus, the incongruity lies in the fact that the athletes are running with a duck rather than a baton. However, it does not provide a resolution to explain why a duck is used instead of a baton in this case. Therefore, this is an example of nonsense humor with no resolution.

The partial resolution type of nonsense humor can be explained by the following example:

<6> The bedroom of a pair of dragons: A picture of a fire-breathing dragon hangs over the headboard of a bed, slightly crowded with the two dragons underneath the covers, their heads and tails poking out from under the blankets. One dragon faces the other, propped up with its mouth closed and a look of embarrassment on its face. The other faces away, clutching the covers and saying, ‘I’m sorry Irvin…It’s your breath. It’s fresh and minty.’ (Larson, 1983)

In this example, the incongruity lies in the fact that in real world having a fresh and minty breath is usually considered a positive quality. Nonetheless, the dragon in the cartoon was embarrassed by his fresh and minty breath, and his lover apologized and implied that his fresh and minty breath turned her off and made her not want to have sex with him. However, this incongruity can be partially resolved by considering the fact that dragon’s world is supposed to be different from human’s world, as we can see from the picture of the fire-breathing dragon hanging over the headboard of the bed in the cartoon, which gives us a clue that a male dragon is supposed to have a fiery, maybe even smelly, breath rather than a fresh and minty breath. But this cartoon does not explain why these dragons share human characteristics. Thus, this is an example of nonsense humor with partial resolution.

A typical example of the nonsense humor which creates new incongruity is as follows:

<7> One day, a cat stole a fish from a shop in the market and was enjoying this delicious food. While the cat was about to leave, it was caught by the shop owner. The owner asked the cat to pay for the fish, but it didn’t want to. So the cat said, ‘I am the King of cats (Elvis Presley)’

Then, it thought to itself, ‘It’s strange. I am a cat, right? How can I talk?’

(Hung, 2002)

This Mandarin cold joke provides an incongruity by describing a talking cat, which is incongruous with the real world. However, at the end when the cat wonders

why it can talk, a new incongruity is created, which is contradictory to the fact that it did talk in the story.

Finally, Incongruity-resolution humor is characterized by having an incongruity structure, that is, a punch line, which can be completely resolved. The following example can be used to illustrate this type of humor:

<8> ‘Doctor, come at once! Our baby swallowed a pen!’ ‘I’ll be right over. What are you doing in the meantime?’ ‘Using a pencil.’

Using a pencil seems incongruous as it does not really answer the doctor’s question about ways to deal with the baby. The incongruity is resolved because the question ‘What are you doing in the meantime?’ also means ‘What are you using as a substitute for the pen?’

Hung’s (2002) study revealed that cold jokes made use of several types of humor:

meta-humor, nonsense humor, and incongruity-resolution humor, while traditional jokes employed only the humor of incongruity-resolution and partial resolution. Since sitcoms and jokes belong to different forms of humorous text, that is, the former belongs to the spoken form of the conversations and the latter belongs to the written form of the story, it comes as no surprise that the funny lines in sitcoms will

demonstrate different types of humor. The funny lines in sitcoms are expected to illustrate mostly incongruity-resolution humor since the funny lines have to corroborate with the plot line of the story. Without a resolution, the story cannot continue smoothly and the audience will be left puzzled.

2.4.1.2 Tsai’s analysis of Chinese sexual punning jokes

Tsai’s (1997) study analyzed sexual punning jokes used in Taiwan. According to Tsai, the most common linguistic humor is pun, and sexual puns are an everyday happening in language communication. He provided a taxonomy of puns: punning

jokes in which the pun is in the punch-line are called end-puns; those in which the pun appears in the build-up are called garden-path jokes; and those where no overt pun is provided are called implied punning jokes. In implied punning jokes, the hearer has to infer a pun from what he or she hears. In Tsai’s study, sexual punning joke was

defined as the text insinuating sexual behaviors and sexual organs. Issues of sex are rarely mentioned explicitly by people and regarded as a taboo in civilized societies.

However, from sex suppression to sex release, people may have a kind of pleasant sensation and they may burst into laughter. This is because taboo topics comprise the major stream of impulse people will normally try to control; therefore, it should come as no surprise that they fuel our gustiest laughter. The current study verifies this hypothesis by showing that jokes with taboo topics contributes to a high percentage of funny lines in Friends.

On the basis of Raskin’s script theory, Tsai divided sexual punning jokes into four types: the first type contains an overt sexual /nonsexual opposition with the unavailability of any specific sexual script for the joke. The second type contains an overt sexual /nonsexual opposition with a specific sexual script for the joke. Four kinds of binary distinction are often involved in this type: genital size, sexual prowess, sexual exposure, and sexual ignorance or inexperience. The third type is based on the implied sexual/ nonsexual opposition and an overt nonsexual opposition. And the

fourth type is characterized by a specific sexual opposition in explicitly sexual humor.

Tsai conducted three experimental studies and one survey. The result of

experiment one indicated that the violation of the Cooperative Principle decreases the funniness degrees of the joke. The result in experiment two showed that the properties of the sexual puns and their funniness degrees are positively correlated. In experiment three, the extroversion or introversion of the personality of the subjects made

significant differences in accepting explicit and direct sexual punning jokes, but

non-significant differences in accepting the implicit and indirect ones. The survey conducted on the university campus focused on two social variables: gender and age.

Tsai’s analysis took the perspectives of the speaker’s intentionality, which includes deceptive violations of the Cooperative principles, and the speaker’s entrapping of the hearer; and the acceptability of the hearer, which includes the intention to avoid unwelcome questions or to retort the speaker, to quibble about the speaker’s accusation, and to supply a seemingly possible explanation, often at the hearer’s own expense. He also listed the triggers in Chinese sexual punning jokes, including linguistic triggers such as regular ambiguity, quasi-ambiguity, figurative ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity, and situational ambiguity, and non-linguistic triggers such as social meaning devices and meaning association devices.

Based on Raskin’s (1985) humor act theory and Tsai’s(1997) taxonomy, the categorization in the present study on Friends will also adopt the perspectives of the speaker’s use of expressions, the hearer’s interpretation, and the hearer and speaker’s interaction.