Humor, Language, and Metaphor

Mio, Jeffery Scott; Graesser, Arthur C.

doi:10.1207/s15327868ms0602_2

Cited by 25 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Metaphors evoke more humor appreciation when they unfavorably compare a high-status entity to a low-status entity rather than vice versa. For example, participants rated “My surgeon is a butcher among doctors” as being funnier than “My butcher is a surgeon among meat cutters” (Mio & Graesser, 1991). Similarly, a computer program that attempted to create funny one-line phrases (e.g., “which part of town would you be in?”) by changing one of the words in the phrase was more successful when the new word was considered taboo (e.g., fart instead of part ) rather than nontaboo (e.g., cart instead of part ; Valitutti et al, 2016).…”

Section: What Are the Antecedents Of Successful Comedy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other studies measured, but did not manipulate, a violation appraisal (e.g., Deckers & Carr, 1986; Kuhlman, 1985; Vettin & Todt, 2005; studies 3–5 in Warren & McGraw, 2016a). Finally, a third group of studies relied on a limited range of stimuli, such as puns (Valitutti et al, 2016), analogies (Mio & Graesser, 1991), simple verbal statements (Purzycki, 2011), an athletic feat (studies 1a, 1b in Warren & McGraw, 2016a) or a scripted social interaction (study 6 in Warren & McGraw, 2016a). Although each individual study is limited, collectively we believe that they provide convincing support that a violation appraisal is a necessary condition for humor appreciation.…”

Section: What Are the Antecedents Of Successful Comedy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Metaphors evoke more humor appreciation when they unfavorably compare a high-status entity to a low-status entity rather than vice versa. For example, participants rated "My surgeon is a butcher among doctors" as being funnier than "My butcher is a surgeon among meat cutters" (Mio & Graesser, 1991). Similarly, a computer program that attempted to create funny one-line phrases (e.g., "which part of town would you be in?")…”

Section: Violation Appraisalmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

What Makes Things Funny? An Integrative Review of the Antecedents of Laughter and Amusement

Warren

Barsky

McGraw

2020

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

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Despite the broad importance of humor, psychologists do not agree on the basic elements that cause people to experience laughter, amusement, and the perception that something is funny. There are more than 20 distinct psychological theories that propose appraisals that characterize humor appreciation. Most of these theories leverage a subset of five potential antecedents of humor appreciation: surprise, simultaneity, superiority, a violation appraisal, and conditions that facilitate a benign appraisal. We evaluate each antecedent against the existing empirical evidence and find that simultaneity, violation, and benign appraisals all help distinguish humorous from nonhumorous experiences, but surprise and superiority do not. Our review helps organize a disconnected literature, dispel popular but inaccurate ideas, offers a framework for future research, and helps answer three long-standing questions about humor: what conditions predict laughter and amusement, what are the adaptive benefits of humor, and why do different people think vastly different things are humorous?

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Section: What Are the Antecedents Of Successful Comedy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Are the Antecedents Of Successful Comedy?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Violation Appraisalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Makes Things Funny? An Integrative Review of the Antecedents of Laughter and Amusement

Warren

Barsky

McGraw

2020

Pers Soc Psychol Rev

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“…While the humorous potential of euphemistic lexemes and paradoxes has not been widely discussed so far, several authors have observed the humorousness of metaphor which typically evinces novelty (Fónagy 1982, Mio and Graesser 1991, Pollio 1996, Grady et al 1999, Attardo 1994, Veale 2003, Veale et al 2006. According to the interpretative model advocated here, incongruity is manifest between the literal meaning of a metaphor and the hearer's cognitive model of reference encompassing the hearer's view on the speaker's communicative intention in a given context, while its resolution coincides with discovering the implied meaning, predicated on the logical rule of finding the tertium comparationis, the common feature of the source domain relevant to the target domain.…”

Section: Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

Humorous phenomena in dramatic discourse

Dynel

2013

EJHR

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The paramount goal of this paper is to tease out a number of universal communicative phenomena which carry humour appreciated by the recipient of a drama series, based on data culled from a famous medical drama series, "House". This broad-range study aims to shed light on the humorous phenomena in dramatic discourse, which evinces greater similitude than comedy discourse. It is argued that conversational humour is prevalent in dramatic discourse, manifesting itself in rhetorical figures (e.g. creative metaphor or irony) and pragmatic types (e.g. teasing), which can also be categorised depending on whether or not they display genuine aggression. Two more humour types are also presented as part of conversational humour, namely: non-verbal expression and (non-)parodic impersonation. Additionally, several other sources of humour are distinguished, such as: a character's quirky behaviour (including participatory behaviour and impoliteness), uncanny events, situational irony, and deception. While the humorous capacity of such concepts has already been recognised, their position in the research on film discourse and in humour studies is not yet well-established. It will be argued that these phenomena manifest humorousness to the hearer on the second communicative level, the recipient, and are not necessarily humorous at the characters' level. All the humour forms distinguished are neatly captured by incongruity theory, specifically the incongruity-resolution model, coupled with superiority theory in the case of disaffiliative humour.

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“…However, quite recent psychological observations appear to confirm that items of disparaging humour tend to get the highest ratings for funniness (Graesser et al 1989), and disparaging metaphors are perceived to be funnier than others (Mio and Graesser 1991). David Ritchie (2005) calls upon researchers to rediscover broader social backgrounds from behind frame-shifting and other purely cognitive constructs.…”

Section: In Lieu Of a Conclusion: Back To Methuselah?mentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Similarity and Distinguishability of Humour and Figurative Speech

Krikmann¹

2009

Trames

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Abstract. The article aims to discuss the relationships between (verbal) humour and figurative speech, primarily focusing on the current theoretical dispute between the representatives of the 'classical' linguistic theories of humour (particularly Salvatore Attardo) and the younger generation of cognitive linguists (Kurt Feyaerts, Gert Brône, Tony Veale), and some contemporary psycholinguistic achievements (particularly Rachel Giora). The main conclusions suggested by the present state of the research are: (1) The cognitive similarity between metaphor and verbal humour is easy to recognize, but it is difficult to devise clear-cut theoretical criteria to distinguish between the two. (2) Considering the conceptual structure (interpretation, 'construal') of a narrower area, the following rule of thumb seems to hold: of the two incompatible scripts (~ schemas ~ frames ~ isotopies) involved in both metaphor and punchlined joke in the case of metaphor the first (overt, redundant) script 'wins', but in the case of joke the second (hidden, informative) prevails. (3) As the same conceptual tools are applicable to explain the perception of both funniness and figurativeness, these perceptions are definitely not discrete or exclusive, but continuous and gradual. To come closer to an 'ecologically valid' means of distinguishing between them, the cognitive theory should perhaps pursue a closer integration with researchers of the cultural and social aspects of human communication.

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Humor, Language, and Metaphor

Cited by 25 publications

References 29 publications

What Makes Things Funny? An Integrative Review of the Antecedents of Laughter and Amusement

What Makes Things Funny? An Integrative Review of the Antecedents of Laughter and Amusement

Humorous phenomena in dramatic discourse

On the Similarity and Distinguishability of Humour and Figurative Speech

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