The first book to offer an integrated reading of ancient Greek attitudes to laughter. Taking material from various genres and contexts, the book analyses both the theory and the practice of laughter ...as a revealing expression of Greek values and mentalities. Greek society developed distinctive institutions for the celebration of laughter as a capacity which could bridge the gap between humans and gods; but it also feared laughter for its power to expose individuals and groups to shame and even violence. Caught between ideas of pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, laughter became a theme of recurrent interest in various contexts. Employing a sophisticated model of cultural history, Stephen Halliwell traces elaborations of the theme in a series of important texts: ranging far beyond modern accounts of 'humour', he shows how perceptions of laughter helped to shape Greek conceptions of the body, the mind and the meaning of life.
•The Dual Self-Directed Humor Scale (DSDHS) was developed.•The DSDHS assesses self-directed humor (SDH) on two dimensions.•Deleterious SDH was positively correlated with the psychosocial well-being ...index.•Benign SDH was negatively correlated with the psychosocial well-being index.•Promising evidence on the validity and reliability of the DSDHS is presented.
This article discusses the development and initial validation of the Dual Self-Directed Humor Scale (DSDHS), the first instrument to evaluate individual differences in the two dimensions of self-directed humor (SDH). The DSDHS assumes two distinct dimensions: Deleterious SDH and Benign SDH. While the former is potentially harmful to well-being, the latter is potentially beneficial. By employing 400 participants in Study 1, the validity of the two-factor model of the DSDHS was demonstrated. In Study 2, which included 446 participants, evidence for concurrent validity was shown by correlating the DSDHS with other humor measures. The construct validity was also evaluated by correlating the DSDHS with a broad range of psychosocial well-being indices. While Deleterious SDH was negatively correlated with adaptive indices (self-esteem, happiness, perceived general health, and social support) and positively correlated with maladaptive indices (trait anxiety, depression, aggression, and loneliness), the correlation pattern of Benign SDH was the opposite, thereby providing evidence for construct validity. Study 3 included 136 participants and showed a positive correlation between self- and peer-rated scores for Deleterious SDH and Benign SDH, providing evidence for the DSDHS's convergent validity. In essence, these results provide strong initial evidence for the reliability and validity of the DSDHS.
This thesis takes a stylistic approach to joke analysis, in order to answer the question of 'what makes a joke text funny?'. According to Simpson et al (2019), humour research is often neglected in ...stylistics, and research into humour from outside of this discipline lacks a consensus or joined up approach. The three main families of humour research (Attardo, 1994) are introduced, with the suggestion that they can form a unified approach as they are all aspects of foregrounding occurring through deviation from norms at either linguistic, ideational or interpersonal levels of meaning. This leads to the conclusion that foregrounding is a necessary feature of humour, but not sufficient to define a text as humorous. Raskin's (1985) 'Semantic Script Theory of Humour' (SSTH) has become a mainstay of humour research due to the claims that this theory does provide the necessary and sufficient conditions to define a text as joke carrying. The SSTH hypothesis that jokes are constructed using a pair of overlapping and opposing scripts remains unfalsified, though this thesis makes the argument that this is due to an unfalsifiable methodology, and suggests revisions to the SSTH from a stylistic approach. Using Jeffries' (2010b) and Davies' (2012;2013) work on constructed opposition a sample of 80 jokes is analysed, finding that a majority of these joke texts are not based on constructed oppositions which does not offer support to the SSTH approach. The remainder of the thesis then details the text-based discovery process which was taken to develop a new theoretical framework for joke analysis. In a three-stage process, quantitative and qualitative textual analysis is applied to a total of 645 jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to determine what patterns are present in the humorous textual meanings. This leads to the proposal of a new theoretical framework of Textually Constructed Meaning Shifts in Jokes, with a testable hypothesis that joke texts will contain at least one of five foregrounded Textually Constructed Meaning Shifts: bisociation, reinterpretation, asymmetrical comparison, contradiction and performative reinforcement.
How many aqueous humor outflow pathways are there? Costagliola, Ciro; dell’Omo, Roberto; Agnifili, Luca ...
Survey of ophthalmology,
March-April 2020, 2020 Mar - Apr, 2020-03-00, 20200301, Letnik:
65, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The aqueous humor (AH) outflow pathways definition is still matter of intense debate. To date, the differentiation between conventional (trabecular meshwork) and unconventional (uveoscleral) pathways ...is widely accepted, distinguishing the different impact of the intraocular pressure on the AH outflow rate. Although the conventional route is recognized to host the main sites for intraocular pressure regulation, the unconventional pathway, with its great potential for AH resorption, seems to act as a sort of relief valve, especially when the trabecular resistance rises. Recent evidence demonstrates the presence of lymphatic channels in the eye and proposes that they may participate in the overall AH drainage and intraocular pressure regulation, in a presumably adaptive fashion. For this reason, the uveolymphatic route is increasingly thought to play an important role in the ocular hydrodynamic system physiology. As a result of the unconventional pathway characteristics, hydrodynamic disorders do not develop until the adaptive routes cannot successfully counterbalance the increased AH outflow resistance. When their adaptive mechanisms fail, glaucoma occurs. Our review deals with the standard and newly discovered AH outflow routes, with particular attention to the importance they may have in opening new therapeutic strategies in the treatment of ocular hypertension and glaucoma.
Humour is the predominant element in all the novels of Chetan Bhagat. His novels contain ‘black humour’ which is a form of humour that presents sorrows and sufferings as very mean or that regards ...human existence as ironic and pointless but somehow comic. ‘Black humour’ is also called ‘Black Comedy’ or ‘Dark Humour’, and the idea that people are powerless victims of fate and character is frequently used to illustrate farce and low humour. The novelist uses humour to reflect the realistic picture of contemporary society. Humour can be more successful in one’s native language. Though the novelist writes in English, he uses very simple language which seems to be one’s own native tongue. The present paper is an attempt to explore humorous elements in Chetan Bhagat's most recent two novels, ‘The Girl in Room 105’ and ‘One Arranged Murder’, with special reference to black humour and satire.
Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy (FECD) is a leading cause of corneal endothelial (CE) degeneration resulting in impaired visual acuity. It is a genetically complex and age-related disorder, with ...higher incidence in females. In this study, we established a nongenetic FECD animal model based on the physiologic outcome of CE susceptibility to oxidative stress by demonstrating that corneal exposure to ultraviolet A (UVA) recapitulates the morphological and molecular changes of FECD. Targeted irradiation of mouse corneas with UVA induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in the aqueous humor, and caused greater CE cell loss, including loss of ZO-1 junctional contacts and corneal edema, in female than male mice, characteristic of late-onset FECD. UVA irradiation caused greater mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and nuclear DNA (nDNA) damage in female mice, indicative of the sex-driven differential response of the CE to UVA, thus accounting for more severe phenotype in females. The sex-dependent effect of UVA was driven by the activation of estrogen-metabolizing enzyme CYP1B1 and formation of reactive estrogen metabolites and estrogen-DNA adducts in female but not male mice. Supplementation of N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a scavenger of reactive oxygen species (ROS), diminished the morphological and molecular changes induced by UVA in vivo. This study investigates the molecular mechanisms of environmental factors in FECD pathogenesis and demonstrates a strong link between UVA-induced estrogen metabolism and increased susceptibility of females for FECD development.
To systematically review research into the use of humour‐based health promotion strategies for addressing public health issues during the past 10 years.
The systematic review was conducted in ...accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
Thirteen studies were included in the review. Mental health, breast and testicular cancer self‐examination, safe sex, skin cancer and binge drinking public health issues were targeted. Humour‐based strategies were used to influence health attitudes and behaviours, encourage interpersonal sharing to indirectly affect health behaviour, and investigate the level of threat and humour associated with positive outcomes. Findings provided some evidence to support the use of humour‐based strategies as determined by the right combination of audience characteristics, level of humour and amusement evoked, and message persuasion and behaviour change methods underpinning strategies.
Methodologies varied limiting comparability, although overall results indicate that humour‐based health promotion strategies may be a useful tool for increasing awareness and help‐seeking behaviour for public health priorities, particularly those associated with stigma.
Humour interventions vary widely because there can never be a standardised approach to evoking humour. Further research examining humour and public health promotion is needed.
What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? Or was it a carefully regulated culture in which the uncontrollable excess of laughter was a ...force to fear—a world of wit, irony, and knowing smiles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? Laughter in Ancient Rome explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects. Drawing on a wide range of Roman writing—from essays on rhetoric to a surviving Roman joke book—Mary Beard tracks down the giggles, smirks, and guffaws of the ancient Romans themselves. From ancient “monkey business” to the role of a chuckle in a culture of tyranny, she explores Roman humor from the hilarious, to the momentous, to the surprising. But she also reflects on even bigger historical questions. What kind of history of laughter can we possibly tell? Can we ever really “get” the Romans’ jokes?
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