Joke
A
joke is a short story or short series of words spoken or communicated with the intent of being laughed at or found
humorous by the listener or reader. A
practical joke differs in that the humour is not verbal, but mainly visual (e.g. putting a custard pie in somebody's face).
Jokes are performed either in a staged situation in front of an audience, or informally for the entertainment of participants and onlookers. The desired response is generally laughter, although loud groans are also a common response to some forms of jokes, such as
puns and shaggy dog stories.
Why we laugh has been the subject of serious academic study, examples being:
*
Henri Bergson, in his book
Le rire (
Laughter, 1901), suggests that laughter evolved to make social life possible for human beings.
*
Sigmund Freud's
"Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious".
*
Arthur Koestler, in
The Act of Creation (1964), analyzes humor and compares it to other creative activities, such as
literature and
science.
*
Marvin Minsky in
Society of Mind (1986).:Marvin suggests that laughter has a specific function related to the human
brain. In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms for the brain to learn
nonsense. For that reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as funny when you hear them repeatedly.
*
Edward de Bono in
"The Mechanism of the Mind" (1969) and
"I am Right, You are Wrong" (1990).:Edward de Bono suggests that the mind is a pattern matching machine, and that it works by recognizing stories and behavior and putting them into familiar patterns. When a familiar connection is disrupted and an alternative unexpected new link is made in the brain via a different route than expected, then laughter occurs
as the new connection is made. This theory explains a lot about jokes. For example::*Why jokes are only funny the first time they are told: once they are told the pattern is already there, so there can be no new connections, and so no laughter.:*Why jokes have an elaborate and often repetitive set up: The repetition establishes the familiar pattern in the brain. A common method used in jokes is to tell almost the same story twice and then deliver the punch line the third time the story is told. The first two tellings of the story evoke a familiar pattern in the brain, thus priming the brain for the punch line.:*Why jokes often rely on stereotypes: the use of a stereotype links to familiar expected behavior, thus saving time in the set-up.:*Why jokes are variants on well known stories (eg the genie and a lamp): This again saves time in the set up and establishes a familiar pattern.
*In 2002,
Richard Wiseman conducted a study intended to discover the
world's funniest joke [
1].
Laughter, the intended human reaction to jokes, is healthful in moderation, uses the
stomach muscles, and releases
endorphins, natural
happiness-inducing chemicals, into the
bloodstream.
One of the most complete and informative books on different types of jokes and how to tell them is
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), which encompasses several broad categories of
humor, and gives useful tips on how to tell them, whom to tell them to, and ways to change the joke to fit one's
audience.
Jokes often depend for humour on the unexpected, the mildly
taboo (which can include the distasteful or socially improper), or the playing on
stereotypes and other cultural
myths. Many jokes fit into more than one category.
Subjects
Political jokes are usually a form of
satire. They generally concern politicians and heads of state, but may also cover the absurdities of a country's political situation. Two large categories of this type of jokes exist. The first one makes fun of a negative attitude to political opponents or to politicians in general. The second one makes fun of political cliches, mottos, catch phrases or simply blunders of politicians. Some, especially the
you have two cows genre, derive humor from comparing different political systems.
Professional humor includes caricatured portrayals of certain professions such as lawyers, and in-jokes told by professionals to each other (e.g.
Medical humor).
Mathematical jokes are a form of
in-joke, generally designed to be understandable only by insiders.
Ethnic jokes exploit racial stereotypes. They are often racist and frequently offensive. Ethnic jokes are common, for example:
*
American jokes about
Canadians or
Poles and
West Virginians.
*Canadian jokes about
Newfoundlanders, Quebecois, Americans, or Native Americans
*
Irish jokes. the British joke about everyone, particularly the Irish.
*
Germans tell jokes about
Ost-Frieslanders.
*
French and
Dutch tell jokes about
Belgians.
*
Argentinian jokes are about
Spaniards, called
gallegos =
Galicians.
*
Iranian jokes about Turks in Iran
*
Australian jokes often involve fellow Australians from the states of
Queensland and
Tasmania, as well as the British and
New Zealanders*New Zealand jokes about Australians
*
Brazilian jokes about the
Portuguese*Portuguese jokes about both the Brazilian and
Africans people, especially
Mozambican and
Angolan people
*
Romanian jokes about Turks
*
Russian jokes about
Chukchi*
Greek jokes about
Pontian Greeks*
Indian jokes about
Sikhs
*
Colombian jokes about
Pastusos, or residents of the southern city of
Pasto and the surrounding areas
*Spanish jokes about "Leperos" (people from the town of Lepe)
*
Finnish jokes about Swedish people
The English also tell jokes starting "
an Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman..." which exploit the supposed parsimony of the Scot, stupidity of the Irish, or some combination.
Racially offensive humor is increasingly unacceptable, but there are similar jokes based on other stereotypes such as
blonde jokes.
Religious jokes fall into several categories:
*Jokes based on stereotypes associated with people of religion (e.g.
Nun jokes and Jewish jokes)
*Jokes on classical religious subjects:
crucifixion,
Adam and Eve,
St. Peter at The Gates, etc.
*Jokes that collide different religious denominations: "A
rabbi, a
medicine man, and a
pastor went fishing..."
*Letters and addresses to God.
Self-deprecating or self-effacing humor is superficially similar to racial and stereotype jokes, but involves the targets laughing at themselves. It is said to maintain a sense of perspective and to be powerful in defusing confrontations. Probably the best-known and most common example is
Jewish humor. The egalitarian tradition was strong among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in which the powerful were often mocked subtly. Prominent members of the community were kidded during social gatherings, part a good-natured tradition of humor as a leveling device. A similar situation exists in the Scandinavian "
Ole and Lena" joke.
Self-deprecating humor has also been used by politicians, who recognize its ability to acknowledge controversial issues and steal the punch of criticism - for example, when
Abraham Lincoln was accused of being two-faced he replied, "If I had two faces, do you think this is the one I'd be wearing?".
Dirty jokes are based on
taboo, often
sexual, content or vocabulary. Many dirty jokes are also sexist.
Other taboos are challenged by
sick jokes and
gallows humor; to joke about
disability is considered in this group.
Surrealist or minimalist jokes exploit cognitive dissonance, for example:
Q: What's red and invisible? A: No tomatoes..
Anti Jokes are jokes that aren't funny in normal sense, and often can be decidedly unfunny, but rely on absurdity, surrealism and abstractness of the joke or situation to provide entertainment.
Styles
The question / answer joke, sometimes posed as a common
riddle, has a supposedly straight question and an answer which is twisted for humorous effect;
puns are often employed. Of this type are
knock-knock joke,
lightbulb joke, the many variations on "
why did the chicken cross the road?", and the class of "What's the difference between..." joke, where the punch line is often a pun or a
spoonerism linking two apparently entirely unconnected concepts.
Some jokes require a
double act, where one respondent (usually the
straight man) can be relied on to give the correct response to the person telling the joke. This is more common in performance than informal joke-telling.
A
shaggy dog story is an extremely long and involved joke with a weak or completely nonexistent punchline. The humor lies in building up the audience's anticipation and then letting them down completely. The longer the story can continue without the audience realising it is a joke, and not a serious anecdote, the more successful it is. Shaggy jokes appear to date from the 1930s, although there are several competing variants for the "original" shaggy dog story. According to one, an advertisement is placed in a newspaper, searching for the shaggiest dog in the world. The teller of the joke then relates the story of the search for the shaggiest dog in extreme and exaggerated detail (flying around the world, climbing mountains, fending off sabre-toothed tigers, etc); a good teller will be able to stretch the story out to over half an hour. When the winning dog is finally presented, the advertiser takes a look at the dog and states: "I don't think he's so shaggy".
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Comedy*
Funny*
Insult*
Internet humor*
Jester*
Punch line*
World's funniest joke*
joke chess problem
