The project gutenberg ebook of the world as will and idea vol. While the superiority theory says that the cause of laughter is feelings of superiority, and the relief theory says that it is the release of nervous energy, the incongruity theory says that it. One day, while having dinner, he was sitting with his family at the dining table and out of the sudden he said, the steak stinks. In his problemata, aristotle even wrote, laughter is a sort of surprise and deception probl. Incongruity theorists hold in such cases that people ob tain humor from the surprise of a new perspective being enjoyed multiple times even when they know the basics of an impending humor ous message. Monros theories of humor michigan state university. Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. The second theory of laughter, which is currently the dominant one, is the incongruity theory. Consistent with prevailing theory, biased personnel decisions about women can. Suggests that the words incongruous and incongruity are used sloppily when referring to this theory, because of the dictionary definition which says incongruous things are characterized by a lack of harmony, consistency, or compatibility with one another. The incongruity of something is its strangeness when considered together with other. Although various classical theories of humor and laughter may be found, in contemporary academic literature, three theories of humor appear repeatedly. A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice. Democratizing laughter university of illinois, urbana.
N2 in behavioral psychology, the incongruity theory is currently the most wellaccepted explanation as the underlying mechanism behind humor. We like to laugh at things that seem surprising, out of place. Women in leadership positions experience a double bind situation as a result of the biases identified by role congruity theory that traps women into a bind of meeting the demands of both leadership and being a woman. Veatch 1992 makes incongruity through affective ab surdity the centerpiece of his humor theory, which holds that a humor.
Among current humor researchers, there is no consensus about which of these three theories of humor is most viable. Twenty spoof ad postcards created by the adbusters media. It is the dominant theory of humor in philosophy and psychology. May 14, 20 the incongruity theory was described rather badly by immanuel kant in 1790 when he said that laughter is an affectation arising from the sudden transformation of strained expectation into nothing.
A fourth type of theory, which takes the central feature of humor to be ambivalence, a mingling of attraction and repulsion, is of minor importance. The present paper involves a pragmatic analysis of shakespeares measure for measure 1604. Pdf free download humour theory formula of laughter pdf. To further understand this theory, the following joke has been included to let you experience the humour of the incongruity theory. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. Of the three, the incongruity theory seems to capture more of the examples of humor than any of its competitors. Humor as antisocial with all the ways in which laughter and. May 01, 2007 this pairing of queer theory and kenneth burke marks a perspective by incongruity in itself, as burkean thought is often restricted to, but fails to fit neatly into, categories determined by the historical context in which he produced his work. Suls 1975 later proposed that familiar humor is appreciated because of the sense of competence derived from adequately remembering the joke. Humorous names in the light of incongruity theory the article addresses the humorous function of proper names in the light of incongruity theory. This study applies kenneth burkes rhetorical theory of perspective by incongruity to the adbusters anticonsumerism campaign. Schopenhauer the ludicrous is always the paradoxical, and. The incongruity theory is the most popular of the three at present.
As of today we have 77,897,669 ebooks for you to download for free. Incongruity comedic theory by alexa wieczorek on prezi. The first is incongruity theory, according to which we laugh when there is a break between what we would normally expect and what we read. Incongruity theory wtf and other aberrations of comedy tuesday, september 18, 12. As this theory was created by emmanuel kant, it states that laughter is caused by something unexpected morreall, 2009. It aims at proving that, although names are often defined as pragmatically transparent, they may possess some humorous value due to semantic and pragmatic shifts resulting. The roosterashoodornament scenario is an example of this theory. However, the incongruity theory is not without its limitations. Graphical humor ontology for contemporary cultural heritage access pdf, ctra. However, there is no precise statement either of this theory nor of its main concepts incongruity and resolution, and different authors may disagree on details.
Competence theory and the appreciation of novel and familiar. Proper usage and audio pronunciation plus ipa phonetic transcription of the word incongruity. An effective punch line must be unpredictable and take us. Though it is not entirely flawless, incongruity theory stands as one of the most prominent accounts of amusement in the contemporary discussion of philosophy of humor. Nov, 2012 apparently incongruity is king in the book of humour theory and i suppose relief and superiority are the prince and princess of humour theory. Within the gender double bind, women are harshly judged or not seen as a good fit in leadership positions. Incongruity definition and meaning collins english dictionary. If someone is telling a joke that has rhythm followed by. Incongruity theory the incongruity theory is one of the four original theories created about humor and laughter. The reason behind selecting this play is attributed to two main points. According to suls 1972 incongruity model for the appreciation of jokes, humor with which recipients are familiar should not be perceived as funny because the ending is predictable. Incongruity twelfth night example scene from a film the scene that represents incongruity theory in twelfth night is act 1 scene 3.
Female stereotypical attributes, including the positive communal qualities ofwarmthandniceness,tendtobeinconsistent with the attributes. Theories of humor in the wider sense are attempts to solve this problem. Incongruity definition, the quality or condition of being incongruous. Chapter 2 incongruity theory the term incongruity theory refers to a group of philosophical accounts of humor that posit the perception of incongruity as the source of amusement.
The current paper proposes a fourstage process model by integrating mandlers schema incongruity theory and optimal stimulation level theory to increase our understanding of incongruity in. Rather than revise the theory so that it made better predictions, they fiddled with the formula to make it fit the data. This is caused by the literalization branch of incongruity theory. Strengths and weaknesses of the congruity theory glossary references selftest figure 1 osgood and tannenbaums congruity theory one nice feature of osgood and tannenbaums 1955 congruity theory is that it is explicitly oriented to communication and persuasion. Philosophy of humor stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Schopenhauer the ludicrous is always the paradoxical, and therefore unexpected, subsumption of an object under a conception which in other respects is different from it. Congruity theory schema congruity theories propose that cues e. If the relief theory held water, however, we might expect the crime rate to be much lower and every comedy at the cineplex to bring in blockbuster crowds. Their refinement of heider treated the other person o as a message source. The second account of humor that arose in the 18 th century to challenge the superiority theory was the incongruity theory. The idea of incongruityresolutionhas frequently been suggested as an account of many types of joke. Heres a list of similar words from our thesaurus that you can use instead.