Wit and humor in discourse processing

Long, Debra L.; Graesser, Arthur C.

doi:10.1080/01638538809544690

Cited by 200 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Earlier studies suggested that irony takes no more time to process than literal meaning (for example, sarcastic indirect requests such as Why don't you take your time washing the dishes?) require less processing time than do literal statements; (Gibbs, 1986), suggesting that speaker meaning might be accessed without full processing of the literal meaning and its incongruity (e.g., Gibbs, 1986;Long & Graesser, 1988). Against this view are a number of recent studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Understanding of Literal Truth, Ironic Criticism, and Deceptive Praise Following Childhood Head Injury

et al. 2001

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Understanding of Literal Truth, Ironic Criticism, and Deceptive Praise Following Childhood Head Injury

et al. 2001

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“…A case in point is the trumping retort disrupting the customary interrelation of two parts of an adjacency pair and thus flouting the Gricean maxim of relation, solely for the sake of obtaining humour. Once triggered, conversational humour distracts interlocutors from the ordinary flow of conversation, urging them into a play frame to render the conversation more pleasurable (Norrick 1993 In the same vein, the notion of social play (Long and Graesser 1988) may be introduced. The tenet holds that "the camaraderie generated through such play may function to strengthen social bonds and foster group cohesiveness" (Long and Graesser 1988: 57).…”

Section: Defunctionalisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

No Aggression, Only Teasing: The Pragmatics of Teasing and Banter

Dynel

2008

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics

101

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A bone of contention among researchers is whether the primary function of humour is the expression of aggression against the hearer or the promotion of solidarity between the interlocutors. It is commonly averred that teasing boasts a dichotomous nature, i.e. malignant and benevolent. The former coincides with the potential for criticising, mocking and ostracising the interlocutor, whereas the latter accounts for playfulness and bonding capacity.The overriding goal of the paper is to expound the rapportbuilding function, which is here postulated to be inherent to teasing. First and foremost, I will determine the scope of interest differentiating between putdown humour and teases, which may assume the form of retorts and develop into multi-turn teases, i.e. banter. Subtypes of teasing will be discussed with a view to proving that it is inherently devoid of genuine aggressiveness. The underlying premise is that teases, even if ostensibly aggressive, i.e. face-threatening, are geared towards solidarity, in conformity with the framework of politeness, including mock impoliteness, holding between intimates. Also, teases fulfil a few subordinate functions such as defunctionalisation or mitigation of face-threatening messages they may carry.

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“…Both female and male raters showed this preference for male writers, although the preference was significantly greater among male raters, t Content analysis Given the differences, albeit slight, in the success of male and female writers, and the differences, again slight, in their success with male and female raters, we performed a rough investigation of the content of the cartoon captions. Two research assistants independently flagged each of the 640 captions for the presence of each of 25 different categories of content, drawn from theories of humor (e.g., puns or self-deprecation, Long & Graesser, 1988; benign violations, McGraw & Warren, 2010). With the data from these two coders, aggregate measures of category usage were calculated for male and female authors.…”

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confidence: 99%

Who’s funny: Gender stereotypes, humor production, and memory bias

et al. 2011

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It has often been asserted, by both men and women, that men are funnier. We explored two possible explanations for such a view, first testing whether men, when instructed to be as funny as possible, write funnier cartoon captions than do women, and second examining whether there is a tendency to falsely remember funny things as having been produced by men. A total of 32 participants, half from each gender, wrote captions for 20 cartoons. Raters then indicated the humor success of these captions. Raters of both genders found the captions written by males funnier, though this preference was significantly stronger among the male raters. In the second experiment, male and female participants were presented with the funniest and least funny captions from the first experiment, along with the caption author's gender. On a memory test, both females and males disproportionately misattributed the humorous captions to males and the nonhumorous captions to females. Men might think men are funnier because they actually find them so, but though women rated the captions written by males slightly higher, our data suggest that they may regard men as funnier more because they falsely attribute funny things to them.Keywords Humor effect . Humor . Stereotype . Gender . Source memory It seems a truth-while perhaps not universally acknowledged, at least widely shared-that men are funnier than women (see, e.g., Lewis, 2000). Such a view has been expressed by men and women, and often in conjunction with firm assertions that men's humor advantage, if such it be, is not part of any general intellectual superiority (Greer, 2009;Hitchens, 2007). Presuming a reliable gender difference in humor production, various theories have been offered, including suggestions that humor, like the head butting of elk, is done to impress potential mates (Bressler, Martin, & Balshine, 2006). Consistent with such a notion, females indicate a preference for mates who makes them laugh, whereas males prefer a mate who laughs at their humor (Li, Griskevicius, Durante, Jonason, Pasisz & Aumer, 2009). There is also evidence that both genders comply, with women laughing more, and men making people laugh more (Provine, 2000, p.27; but see Kothoff, 2006). However, this evidence does not require that men actually be more capable of being funny, but could be due to some combination of emotional responsivity, differential effort, and pity. There are no direct tests of assertions about gender differences in the ability to be funny.In this article, we explore explanations for the impression that men are funnier than women. It could be that the stereotype exists because it is true, and people have correctly observed the world. The impression could also exist without the stereotype's being true, if people's view of the world is systematically biased. In two studies, we explore these two possibilities. In the first, male and female participants wrote, or at least tried to write, funny captions to accompany cartoon images, and raters, also male and female, evaluated ...

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Wit and humor in discourse processing

Cited by 200 publications

References 16 publications

Understanding of Literal Truth, Ironic Criticism, and Deceptive Praise Following Childhood Head Injury

Understanding of Literal Truth, Ironic Criticism, and Deceptive Praise Following Childhood Head Injury

No Aggression, Only Teasing: The Pragmatics of Teasing and Banter

Who’s funny: Gender stereotypes, humor production, and memory bias

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