The present study investigated the structure and facet-to-facet systematic links (controlled for other links) across the temperamental basis of humor along with humor traits using network analysis. ...Undergraduate students (N = 747) completed the state-trait cheerfulness inventory and humor trait measures (e.g., comic styles, benevolent and corrective humor, humor styles, gelotophobia). The EBICglasso estimator was used to conduct partial correlations between facets in the network. Results showed cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood were largely interconnected to humor-related traits, further providing evidence for criterion validity of the temperamental basis of humor model. The nodes humorlessness in cheerful evoking situations (i.e., SE6), cheerful interactive style (CH5), verbal humor, laughter, katagelasticism, humor in everyday life, prevalence of sadness (i.e., BM2), and gelotophobia were strength central personality traits. The correlation stability-coefficients were 0.75 for strength, edge weight, and expected influence, suggesting that centrality indices were highly stable. Implications regarding the theoretical model for the temperamental basis of humor and meaningful components that emerge visually in the network (e.g., laughing at others, laughing with others, mixed styles) are discussed.
A Decade of Dark Humoranalyzes ways in which popular and visual culture used humor-in a variety of forms-to confront the attacks of September 11, 2001 and, more specifically, the aftermath. This ...interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from four countries to discuss the impact of humor and irony on both media discourse and tangible political reality. Furthermore, it demonstrates that laughter is simultaneously an avenue through which social issues are deferred or obfuscated, a way in which neoliberal or neoconservative rhetoric is challenged, and a means of forming alternative political ideologies.
The volume's contributors cover a broad range of media productions, including news parodies (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,The Colbert Report,The Onion), TV roundtable shows (Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher), comic strips and cartoons (Aaron McGruder'sThe Boondocks, Jeff Danzinger's editorial cartoons), television drama (Rescue Me), animated satire (South Park), graphic novels (Art Spiegelman'sIn the Shadow of No Towers), documentary (Fahrenheit 9/11), and other productions.
Along with examining the rhetorical methods and aesthetic techniques of these productions, the essays place each in specific political and journalistic contexts, showing how corporations, news outlets, and political institutions responded to-and sometimes co-opted-these forms of humor.
Recent research has shown that teachers who are positive, humorous, happy, well-organised, supportive, and respectful of students are appreciated by their students (Jiang & Dewaele, 2019). This paper ...aims to explore humour strategies in the classroom of Chinese as a second language (L2) in an in-country study (ICS) program. In particular the study aims to answer three questions: (1) Was humour a common phenomenon in the Chinese language classrooms? (2) How was humorous classroom discourse constructed? (3) How did the humour strategies promote language learning and use? Qualitative data were collected through class observations and student interviews. The study has identified naturally occurring data to explore the phenomenon of humour. The findings indicate that humour strategies in the L2 classroom not only helped students challenge their stereotypical impressions of Chinese educational culture but also facilitated their language use and learning motivation. Chinese teachers are suggested to consider incorporating humour strategically in their teaching, which may contribute to learners’ long-term desire for language learning and ICS in China.
This article presents an innovative reading of humour within the classic Spanish postwar novel, El Jarama by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio (1955), typically deemed dispassionate, solemn, and deadly ...serious. Grounding its interpretation in Humour Studies, it explores undercurrents of desolate, almost deliberately non-funny amusement that encourage stifled laughter from bleak situations, before immediately questioning the veracity and appropriateness of mirthful reactions. It coins new ways of understanding bathetic, grim comedy, based on situations usually interpreted as being mirthless: sluggish 'grey humour', originating fundamentally, and paradoxically, in boredom; 'comic-kazi', a backfiring, debilitating, anti-comic funniness; and 'hardship humour', amusement based on privation.
We explore how norms of science are given attention through laughter in life science doctoral supervision. Four supervision sessions were observed and video recorded. All laugh units were identified, ...and instances of humour were coded in relation to norms of science. Our analysis reveals tensions around how to do valid research, governance vs. administration and the willingness to make sacrifices. Balancing between validity and feasibility and between quality and quantity, not to mention the importance of scepticism in intellectual conversation, are other important norms of science highlighted in the interaction. We found that norms of science are a vital part of life science supervision and that supervisors play a critical role in the process of socialising PhD students into becoming researchers. We saw how PhD students are taught to navigate these norms, that is, how they are supposed to behave in these complex normative systems. We recognised that the norm of calling has many benefits for researchers in natural science but may pose a threat to good work-life balance for PhD students. Since humour is a powerful form of communication, we recommend that supervisors reflect on how laughter is used as well as which norms and values they teach.
The use of humour in advertising is widespread and research about it has grown rapidly. There are now at least 250 academic works devoted to advertising humour with over 150 articles, dissertations, ...books, and major conference papers appearing just since 2000. This article takes stock of the growth of advertising humour research, encompasses an account of the newer research, summarizes what we have learned, thus far, and lays out the dimensions that might be fruitful for future humour researchers. The review reveals a broad and rich array of work that contributes to the historical context, definition, development, effectiveness, and boundary conditions of how, and when, advertising humour works best.
Humour and laughter have been regarded as suitable topics for research in the social sciences, but as methodological principles to be adopted in carrying out and representing the findings of research ...they have been neglected. Indeed, those scholars who have made use of humour — wit, satire, jokes etc. — risk being regarded as trivial and marginalised from the mainstream. Yet, in literature the idea that comedy can tell us something important about the human condition is widely recognised. This neglect of the potential of humour and laughter represents a serious omission. The purpose of this article is to make a sensible case for the place of humour as a methodology for the social sciences.
Vituperation, disparagement, and debasement seem to have become part of the mainstream discourse in contemporary US-American media culture. Zooming in on a distinct televisual comedy genre, Katja ...Schulze explores the formal principles, media-specific realizations, and the cultural work of disparagement in contemporary female-led situation comedies. Subsequently, larger patterns of (gender-based) invective strategies and conventions that define the dynamism of this comedic genre come into view. Her study outlines case studies of popular sitcoms, like Parks and Recreation, Mike & Molly, and the revival of hit-sitcom Roseanne, thereby unearthing how the shows are able to stage humor as mass-mediated deprecation - a signifying practice with its own poetics and politics.
This study aims to bridge the research gap in the humour comprehension problems of individuals with dyslexia in Chinese culture. We conducted a nonexperimental study to examine the differences ...between Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia in visual humour comprehension as well as the group differences in the correlation of visual humour comprehension with other abilities. In total, 48 Chinese adolescents (16 individuals with dyslexia and 32 individuals without dyslexia) were recruited in Hong Kong. They were all administered several tasks: tests of nonverbal IQ, Chinese character reading, visual-spatial attention, orthographic knowledge, and visual humour comprehension. Our results indicated that visual humour comprehension is correlated with other abilities. Additionally, the group with dyslexia performed significantly less accurately on most tasks except humour comprehension accuracy. However, only visual spatial attention, orthographic knowledge, and humour comprehension speed significantly predicted membership in the two groups. Finally, approximately half of the participants with dyslexia had significantly slower humour comprehension than those with typical development. Our findings shed light on problems with humour comprehension exhibited by Chinese individuals with dyslexia.
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