Download George Meredith`s ode “To the Comic Spirit.”

Humour as Rhetorical Tool
“The sacred chain/ Of man to man”
George Meredith’s ode “To the Comic
Spirit.”
• Aristophanes, Chaucer, Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson,
Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Molière, Flaubert,
Austen, Dickens, Clemens/Twain, Wilde, Joyce,
Beckett, Amis, Capote, George Carlin, Hunter S.
Thompson, Tom Wolfe, O’Rourke, Coupland,
Sedaris, Will and Ian Ferguson, Rick Mercer.
• Aristotle argues in the Poetics that comedy arises
from a perceived defect or ugliness that should
not be so painful that we feel compassion, since
compassion is the enemy of laughter.
• Gorgias’s maxim, referenced by Aristotle in the
Rhetoric, “that one should spoil the
opponents’ seriousness with laughter and
their laughter with seriousness”
• Historically, the study of humour has been
interdisciplinary; various fields such as
philosophy, rhetoricians, linguists,
psychologists, sociologists, literary theorists,
communications theory, and marketing have
examined its purpose and utility.
• 3 ways of categorizing or understanding
humour: Incongruity, Superiority, and Relief.
Linguistic Theories of Humour by
Salvatore Attardo
• Cicero in De Oratore understood jokes as
differentiated by being verbal or referential,
according to what is said or in regarding a thing.
His distinction underscores humour as either a
play on words or a play on situation.
• Cicero went on to identify two types of
witticisms, those of words and those of content.
Witticisms of content are anecdotes or witty
stories, whereas witticisms of words are to be
found in puns and “sharp-witted” comments.
Incongruity
• In 1790, Kant defined “laughter as an affection
arising from sudden transformation of a strained
expectation into nothing.” Our expectation fails
to match with the association presented.
• Schopenhauer builds upon this by describing
laughter as “the sudden perception of the
incongruity between a concept and the real
objects which have been thought through in
some relation.”
• Barbara Bush was invited to deliver the
commencement address at Wellesley in 1990.
“Somewhere out in this audience may even be
someone who will one day follow in my
footsteps, and preside over the White House
as the President’s spouse—and I wish him
well.”
• Incongruity subverts your expectations and
gives you pleasure with the surprise.
Incongruity in J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of
the Western World
• Christy Mahon:
“Well, it’s a clean bed and soft with it, and it’s
great luck and company I’ve won me in the
end of time—two fine women fighting for the
likes of me—till I’m thinking this night wasn’t I
foolish not to kill my father in the years gone
by.”
Superiority
• Plato and Aristotle recognized a deformity in
humour as a method of cruelty and act of
aggression.
• Hobbes “sudden glory,” humour as a verbal
way to trump/defeat
• Sociologists characterize “exclusive humour”
as part of a corrective to maintain social
stratification.
• Reagan and Mondale in 1984.
• Lloyd Benson and Dan Quayle 1988.
• Example on page 393 about the student
grading a professor’s op-ed piece.
• “Playing the Dozens” uses insulting humour
competitively. “Your mama’s so fat she sweats
Ragu.”
• Ridiculum acri fortius et melius magnas
plerumque secat res.
“For ridicule often decides matters of
importance more effectually and in a better
manner, than severity.”
--Horace Sermones (1.10.14-15, c. 35 BCE)
Relief
• Humour reduces psychological stress and
offers an escape from proper social conduct
and anticipation. Humour acts as a liberation
from the law of language.
• Freud tacitly accepted the verbal/referential
model of humour.
• Humour and laughter may be separated.
• One of the early proponents of release theory
is that of the ethical and aesthetic philosopher
Shaftesbury (1727). His Sensus Communis: An
Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour. His
theory is that when people are constrained by
the world around them, whether physically or
by words, they will use buffoonery, burlesque
or mimicry to relieve the sense of constraint.
Freud discussed the power “tendentious” jokes,
made with aggressive or sexual provocations, to elicit
strong emotional response.
• Freud considered humour to be rebellious, a
defence mechanism, a means of establishing
mutuality and it involves the superego.
• He was particularly interested in "broken
humour", which he defined as "the humour that
smiles through tears". He argued that this kind of
humorous pleasure arises from the prevention of
an emotion. A sympathy that the reader has
prepared is blocked by a comic occurrence, and
transferred on to a matter of secondary
importance.
Political, Moral and Aesthetic
Component to Humour
• Michael Billing argued in “Freud and the
Language of Humour” that humour contains
both rebellious and conservative utility. It also
reveals repression.
• Scolds Freud for playing it safe.
For instance: Two Jews meet outside a bathhouse. One asks the other,
‘Have you taken a bath?’ ‘No,’ replies the
second, ‘why, has one gone missing?
Humour forges group identity
• Garrett (1993) analysed the strategies and
effects of ritualized humour games among
African-Americans and gay men. She found
that these groups used humour “not just for
pleasure but to construct a community, to
create an alternative source of egoreinforcement, and to sharpen a weapon to be
wielded against the outside world.”
To Joke or Not to Joke: A Diplomatic
Dilemma in the Age of the Internet by Peter
Serracino Inglott
“It takes you to an apparently unreasonable
point from which the main road along which
you have been travelling does not appear to
be the only one. A joke is the best device to
get you on the side track from where you can
see that there are other ways of getting about
than just the contraries forward or backward,
or right and left. Joking involves glimpsing the
improbable and using upside down logic. “
• A pure joke is one where anyone who knows
the language of the joke will understand it.
Conditional jokes are those that require
something beyond basic language to be
shared between the teller and the audience.
The two types of conditional jokes are the
hermetic joke (there must be common
knowledge) and the affective joke (there must
be a common emotional disposition).
“During an interfaith banquet, a Catholic priest
told a Rabbi: ‘When are you going to give up
your antiquated customs and eat some of this
delicious ham?’ The Rabbi replied: ‘At your
wedding, Father.’"
The Rule of 3 in Writing
• Humour/comedy, folklore, film, plays, and
television rely on using three items in a series
because three is the smallest number of
elements required to make a pattern.
• Three act play or movie script, three blind
mice, three little bears, three little pigs, three
stooges, novel trilogy, “on the count of three,”
Cinderella and Pan’s Labyrinth.
• “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned
way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to
my house, we had an enormous feast, and
then I killed them and took their land.”
--John Stewart
http://www.humorpower.com/artrulethree.html
• Same category/same category/different category
“I have t-shirts of my trips to world-class cities:
Paris, Tokyo, Fargo.”
• Expected trait/expected trait/different trait
“She was pretty, she was shapely, she was a man.”
• Something beloved/something beloved/
something hated “A Las Vegas wedding package
contains everything you will need: music, flowers,
a divorce document.”
• Ordinary/Ordinary/Ridiculous “I go to Las Vegas
to see the shows, eat at the buffets and visit my
money.”
• Extreme/Extreme/Ordinary “Speaking to
thousands, appearing on Oprah, taking a nap.”
• Rhyme/Rhyme/Rhyme (rhyming sets a pattern
and can disguise or add a special twist to the
third-item punchline). "The answer is…three
things that describe Suzie Smith. And the
question is, what are Nifty, Thrifty and Fifty."
George Carlin
• “There’s a thing called shaken-baby syndrome
that people get upset about. Personally, I
think you have to give ‘em a good shake, or
they don’t bake uniformly.”
• “Why do they bother with a suicide watch
when someone is on death row? “Keep an eye
on this guy. We’re gonna kill him, and we
don’t want him to hurt himself.”
Rick Mercer’s blog September 28
• http://www.rickmercer.com/blog/index.cfm/2
008/9/28/Who-can-survive-a-good-googling
• Chris Reid, the recently dumped Conservative
candidate in Toronto centre believes socialism has
turned us into a nation of effeminates. How else, the
longtime conservative activist argues, can we explain
how a deranged killer managed to decapitate someone
on a greyhound bus? It turns out that it's not the
killer's fault. It is the fault of the limp wristed schmucks
who were trying to catch some shut-eye between
Portage la Prairie and Brandon, Manitoba. The
solution, Mr. Reid believes, is to simply arm the
population – or at least the women and homosexuals –
with concealed handguns.
• Personally, I'm hoping that in the future this
bright young man takes a run for the
Conservative party leadership. It would make for
an interesting campaign – homosexuals of
Canada, lay down your Botox needles and pick up
a Colt .45.
Are we a nation of effeminates as Reid suggests?
I'm not sure. I do know that if I'm ever on a bus
when the stabbing starts – call me whatever you
want because I'll be the one screaming like a girl
and heading for the exits.
“You can throw someone out of the library for
how they sound but not for how they smell. A
new law in San Luis Obispo says librarians can
evict homeless people for their smell. Hey,
lonely librarians—don’t think of them as
homeless; think of them as single. I know
most librarians won’t see much of a future
with some babbling drunk with a drug habit
and messiah complex, but hey, it worked for
Laura Bush.” –Bill Maher.
http://afunnyguy.theledger.com/defau
lt.asp?item=2264199
• During the Aug. 30 call, Ritz called the
outbreak "a death by a thousand cuts " or
should I say cold cuts. “ And when told about
a new death in Prince Edward Island, he
blurted: "Please tell me it's Wayne Easter,"
referring to the Liberal agriculture critic.
--Gerry Ritz, Agricultural Minister.
Will & Ian Ferguson’s 12 ways to say
“I’m sorry”
•
•
•
•
•
•
The simple sorry.
The essential sorry.
The occupational sorry.
The subservient sorry.
The aristocratic sorry.
The demonstrative sorry.
•
•
•
•
•
•
The libidinous sorry.
The ostentatious sorry.
The mythical sorry.
The unrepentant sorry.
The sympathetic sorry.
The authentic sorry.
• Use humour in your argument to build your
character and establish goodwill with your
audience.
• Use it to diffuse conflict and/or emotion.
• Be careful not to offend your audience and
make sure that your humour is appropriate.
• “Brevity is the soul of wit” as Polonius told
Hamlet. Concision is required to make
humour effective.
• Like every other facet of life, humour has been
historically gendered.
• Christopher Hitchens claimed only men are
funny.
• Women as punchlines: Take my Wife, please.
• Women “reported” to take more pleasure in
them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/nov/08/s
cience.research
Satire
• Uses humour in an argument to reveal and
illustrate social ills.
• Rhetorical art of ridiculing a subject as a
corrective to human vice and folly. Satire uses
language as a weapon.
• Sarcasm and irony are often present.
• Often employs an absurd logic in order to
establish a new perspective or point of view.
• “A Modest Proposal” (1729) by Jonathan
Swift:
• Dave Chappelle’s “Racial Draft” satire:
http://www.videosift.com/video/ChappellesShow-The-Racial-Draft
Parody (Spoof, Lampoon, Burlesque)
• An argument conducted by using an existing
example and twisting it to a ridiculous length for
comic effect. A parody is only humorous if the
audience recognizes the connection between the
original and the imitation.
• http://jezebel.com/5060321/sarah-haskins-fiberis-secret-code-for-making-you-poop
Sarah Haskins has humorous parodies of
commercials in a series called “Target Women.”
Puns
• Play on words.
• Homonym: One of two or more words spelled
and pronounced alike but different in meaning
(as cleave meaning "to cut" and cleave meaning
"to adhere.” Or pool of water vs. game of pool.
• Homophone: One of two or more words
pronounced alike but different in meaning or
spelling (as the words to, too, and two)
• “Fangtasia” bar in last week’s “True Blood.”
“Let’s talk about a very tattoo subject”—
Ali G’s malapropism
• “Hanging is too good for a man who makes
puns; he should be drawn and quoted.” --Fred
Allen.
• "In the beginning was the pun.“—Samuel
Beckett.
• Max: I like your nurse's uniform, guy.
Peter: Actually these are O.R. scrubs.
Max: Oh, are they? --Rushmore
Overstatement and Understatement
• A hyperbole overstatement which can be used to
exaggerate facts for either serious, ironic, or
comic effect. “You call that well done? I’ve seen
cows hurt worse than that get well.”
• A meiosis or “lessening” is the reverse. Twain's
“The rumours of my death are greatly
exaggerated.”
• Litotes (Greek for “plain” or “simple”) expresses
an affirmative by negating its opposite. “I was
not a little upset.”
Amplification
• Methods for expanding your argument,
explanation, description.
• “Our Perfect Summer” by David Sedaris.