The bases for the classification of humor have been established. We will now take a closer look at the various kinds of humor. There are as many kinds of humor as there are mistakes that we can make. An examination of each type will show how it works and also how to create humor.

(Alice in Wonderland)

This is an accident. If it is seen as harmless it fits our formula for humor: Humor is produced by the assessment that there is a mistake, but one which is not bad or harmful. In the Alice in Wonderland example above, the accident seems harmless enough. His teeth seem not to have been knocked out, and no one says the cup is precious. The mistake is as follows: There is deviation from what we expect. We expect a sip, not a bite. There is deviation from purpose, that of drinking tea. When people slip on jello they go flying about in the air. That is not the usual or best way to walk. The result looks like disorder or chaos. A new, funny, or odd, unexpected, purposeless, chaotic world is created. There is purposelessness in a supposedly purposeful world. There is deviation from, or defeat of, our intentions. It can be humorous to see a dignified person harmlessly slip on common, insignificant jello. This would be called "sinking humor." But if one breaks a leg, it is taken seriously and ceases to be humorous. There may be other reasons why someone may not laugh at any joke. They may have assessments about other things at the time. Whether or not we laugh depends upon all of our observations, not just the assessment that there is a mistake.

We may laugh because the person who accidentally slips is someone we do not like. In this case, we may laugh at the person, rather than at the mistake. This is not humor. It is like saying, "She made a mistake and that is good, and it serves her right." It is more revenge than the acceptance needed for humor. It is more like laughter of the cruel, mad people in the comics. They laugh when cities burn. Laughing at people is not humor. And it does not fit the definition of humor given earlier. For humor, we need positive, accepting assessments. Fear, blame, revenge, and other evaluations and emotions, block humor.

The world of humor is like a strange mirroring of our own world. Whatever is seen is backwards, upside down, inside out, and sure to be such that no matter what happens it has to be wrong, nonsense, or unexpected. Correct answers are unheard of, and order does not exist at all. Making sense and accomplishing a task never happen. Sound a lot like the everyday world? The usual laws of science do not apply in this world (like the world of religion). The usual actions, feelings, statements, rules are all mirrored out of this world. They are all replaced here by the strange science-of humor.

In this world there is no fighting, no anger, and no hatred. It just is not allowed. It cannot survive for a moment. That is because to be humorous we have to accept and evaluate the mistakes are OK. If there is fear, or the thought that something is bad, there can be no humor. So it is a laughing-place just like that described in Uncle Remus (Harris 1972:53): "It is: a sure-enough place that the four-footed creatures had found necessary for their comfort and convenience."

It is a world of friendliness and love, joy, and acceptance, where nothing can be bad. The ugly and horrible are destroyed in an instant, and turned into warmth and cheer. The impossible is one of the easiest things to do. "He is so unlucky that he runs into accidents which started out to happen to somebody else." (Don Marquis) Problems are all solved by means of a smile. Here, humor yields all knowledge, happiness, and fun. Accident humor helped us to stumble into such a world. A banana peel has associations with mischief and monkeys. It is a bright, yellow color and stands out or contrasts with things around it. That is, it is an interesting image, as is the image of one suddenly flipping on one's head like a monkey. Thus, visual imagery and contrasts also make this a funny scene. And the banana is a slimy thing, enough to send a mischievous chill up any child's spine.

The humor of this, as any situation, is not simply due to one type of humor or a single assessment. The humor, as with any emotion, partly describes: the evaluations involved, the feelings, the actions, and the situation. There can be one or more deviation from each of these at the same time. One person may laugh at the banana peel example for one reason, and another person laugh at it for other reasons. We may laugh mainly because we want to see someone else get hurt. But, if so, this would not be humor.

Thus, one can have nearly the same assessments in two relatively similar circumstances, yet have different emotions in each. This is because the feeling may differ. Or one could have similar feelings and context, but have different emotions because the assessments differ. Accident can occur in each factor. There may be humorous verbal, perceptual, physical, or contextual accidents. Some people do not think that slipping on a banana peel is funny, even if no one is hurt. The assessments here may possibly be: "This is no surprise anymore. I've seen this happen too often." "I don't like slapstick humor. There is not much to it." "I can't be concerned with comedians like this when I have serious work to do." "I'm preoccupied with my own problems and cannot be involved with anything else right now."

Nevertheless, all this is complex. It may be that some people laugh at the banana joke each time it is presented no matter how many times they have seen or heard it. They have, in effect, a positive assessment and acceptance of that sort of humor. They are always ready to say, "I like humor and enjoy it." A fearful, negative or overserious person would tend not to laugh at any kind of humor. They would lack this kind of humanity. They do not have an accepting attitude. The people who did not enjoy the humor because preoccupied with their problems may be shaken out of their preoccupation and laugh anyway. They may soon experience the pleasurable "It's O.K." aspect of humor and these pleasurable, accepting factors may block out their serious, fearful thoughts.

We said the person slipped on a banana as an accident. If, however, someone purposely put the banana there to be slipped on, it would be no longer strictly an accident. The viewer put it there, planned it, intended, and expected one to slip. This would be a practical joke and classified under that type. The resulting humor would differ from accidental humor. Stage humor cannot be strictly accidental, because it is planned to look accidental. The humorist intended to slip and so it is not genuinely harmful. We often react to it as if it were accidental anyway.

One use of accidental humor is to show how important it is for us to be careful. It may teach us a lesson or reinforce us if we are already careful. It gives us a vivid image, a yellow peel and person both spinning in air, which we may think of when we are not being careful. But one of its main uses is to give pleasure. Thus, each kind of accident would need to be analyzed separately to determine the kind of appraisal, feeling, action, and situation involved. In each case of humor we must know each of these for the specific person and situation. A small child may laugh even when someone's legs break, because the child does not realize that it is a quite painful, hurtful thing.

Freud (1960), in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, suggested that accidental slips, jokes, combinations of words, reveal something about us. They tell us things about ourselves which we may not otherwise admit or reveal. For example, one university Dean said at a faculty meeting, "I believe in committees, and whenever I get a chance I sit on them." This is an unintended ambiguity or double meaning pun type joke. It may be that he revealed his true intention of wishing to "sit on" or "squelch" the committees. It may, of course, have just been a simple error, not signifying anything more. Lying takes concentration. The lie can easily or accidentally slip out to reveal itself as a lie. This is the main point of courtroom cross-examination. The errors can reveal our actual desires rather than what one might wish people to believe and thereby produce humor.

A nonsexual sentence may accidentally take on a double and sexual meaning or reference. We tend to slant things in terms of our needs, desires and beliefs. They show in our humor. This would suggest that what appears to be slips or accidents may rather be intended. If the slip is truly accidental it may tell us very little except that the person says accidental things to a certain degree. One may even learn to create verbal accidents. This may also be suggestive for analyzing the banana example. Some who slip on bananas may be accident-prone. We may laugh because they seem to slip quite often. That they slip shows that perhaps they are not well-coordinated, or not well organized and we may (inhumanely) laugh at them or hold them up to ridicule.

Analyzing humor is not straightforward and simple. In one sense, then, there is no such thing as pure accidents. The accidents were determined by our desires, habits, hastiness, methods of thinking, beliefs, etc. Accidental humor shows or tells something about the kinds of thought and associations we make. The fact that we have accidents tells us something about ourselves. We may laugh at people who are involved in an accident, partly because they are deviating from ideal behavior. We may laugh "at" them as ridicule, or merely laugh because of their actions, but not laugh at them as a people. We may, in accidental humor, be laughing at a person's ignorance. We may laugh when a cat "spooks" or scares itself. We may laugh at accidents because it makes us feel fortunate or lucky. To laugh because one appraise-feels superior may be faulty reasoning and be "laughing at," rather than humor, but one laughs anyway. We may also inhumanely laugh if our "enemy" or someone we dislike has an accident. We only deceive ourselves if we think this is humor.

Metaphors may be accidentally created by means of a computer which randomly combines two or more words. We tend to find it difficult to combine unlike things because they seem so unlike, or because we do not associate one with another. By having it done accidentally, or by a computer, it breaks through that difficulty. Some computer writing programs use this kind of metaphorical juxtaposition. We may, then, select which accidentally combined metaphorical combinations seem especially interesting to us. The combinations may be produced by juxtaposing cards with words on them, such as one card giving the formula, "x below y," and two other cards with words on them such as "once" and "time," thus yielding "once below time." The poet, Dylan Thomas, once used this phrase. Metaphors are often enjoyable or even humorous because of the deviations they produce. Accidental humor is also related to other types of humor, such as, slapstick, defeated expectation, behavioral deviation, mistake, sinking and practical jokes.

I THINK THEY PUT US TOGETHER WRONG.

Humor is an aesthetic object. Jokes are works of art. Gaut 1998:52

Humor is a form of art and aesthetics. We can say, "That is a beautiful joke." In the sense that aesthetics of painting, music, dance, etc. are based on and presuppose thought and by thought we mainly mean language use, humor as a largely linguistic medium, like poetry and prose, can involve the aesthetic more than other forms of art. There is, also, however less verbal humor such as the perceptual, cartoons, and behavioral humor. Humor is found as an important part of music, painting, dance and the other arts as well. The aesthetic is especially exemplified in the section on metaphor. Humor could be taught as one of the fundamental arts along with poetry and music. It is a great oversight in our education that humor, emotion and critical thinking are not taught in the schools at any level. Comedy is sometimes taught in theater and literature, but it is narrow in comparison with the larger field of humor. (For the teaching of humor in the university see Wycoff 1999) only discipline devoted to critical thinking, philosophy, is taken by only a few people and not a basic requirement as is mathematics. Just as there is music appreciation, there can be humor appreciation. We can enjoy humor as we enjoy art. But humor has an even more universal appeal. A cartoon is as much a form of art as a Picasso, Magritte, Dali, Rembrandt, or Bruegel. Black humor is the fundamental basis of one genre of novel. (See section on Black Humor) Humor and art both often require distancing for appreciation. And there is good and bad humor as there is good and bad art. (See section on god and bad humor.) Both humor and art involve a positive cognition which causes bodily feeling. (cf. Shibles 1995bcde) The types of humor will be seen to usually be types of art because metaphor is fundamental to both. (cf. Nilsen 1993:244) Gaut states, "Jokes can be elegant, expressive, complex, original, an exercise of creative imagination, etc, which count towards their status as art." (1998:65) Yuri Borev (in Dziemidok 1993:26) saw humor as a form of aesthetic insight: "The comical in art is a means to uncover the contradictions of reality and as such is an aesthetic form of critique."

Mike Martin's (in Morreall 1987:172-186) claim that only if an incongruity is enjoyed for it's own sake is it aesthetic, must be rejected. "For it's own sake" is unclear, a fallacy of abstractionism, and itself a kind of joke. Suppose one says, "I like this ice-cream for its own sake." What does this mean? Could one reply, "Oh, then you don't like it for me?" or "I like it for you." Jean Paul held a similar view, "The joke knows no other goal than its own existence." (in Haberland 1971:115-116) If this were the case, then "sick" and black humor would not be objectionable because they are only enjoyed only for their own sake. There is, however, some truth in this view. (See section on black humor.) Tsur (1989:253) sees humor as an aesthetic quality of a shift from one script to another.

Allegory is a type of metaphor and so a use of figurative language. "Allegory" derives from the Greek word allegorein, meaning "to speak figuratively." It is a use of symbol, of symbolic figures or actions to represent human actions and traits. It is saying one thing, but symbolically meaning another. One meaning derivation of "allegory" is "to speak other." It is, therefore, a kind of irony and satire and so is related to irony humor and satire humor.

Allegory is an intentionally false or disguised way of saying something. It is, therefore, a conscious mistake, deceit, or literal falsity. With allegory one seems to be saying one thing, but rather says another. This, like irony, creates humor. Metaphor connects unlike things which do not usually go together, thereby resulting in the enjoyment or humor of metaphor. Allegory can be an enjoyable kind of metaphor. With allegory the characters of a story may stand for some general truth or concept such as kindness or reason or temptation or pleasure, e.g. George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Owen Barfield (1964) regards allegory as a kind of false metaphor, a hypostatization and synthesis. Demetrius (ca. 100 B. C.) in On Style (1965), stated that allegory is a kind of metaphor which renders mystery. Max Eastman (1913) regarded allegory as a "direct metaphor" if there is no explanation of the symbols of the allegory. Maurice Evans (1953), pointed out that allegory was once thought of as the religious notion of universal analogy, but that it no longer is. Paul Feldkeller, in "Die Einstellungsmetapher" (1928), saw allegory is a kind of subjective metaphor which cannot be explained by purely objective, conceptual thought. Thomas Gibbons, in Rhetoric (1767/1969), thought of allegory as a chain of metaphors. Gracián (1642), uses metafora to refer only to extended metaphor or allegory. Quintilian (1921), also refers to allegory as extended metaphor. Alexander Jamieson (1818), refers to allegory as a "strained" metaphor. William Tindall (1962) says that allegory is an incomplete analogy, a symbolic work of which the meaning is not completely clear. This gives meaning to Demetrius' view above, according to which allegory renders mystery.

Allegorical humor is sometimes regarded as an expanded metaphor or extended metaphor. In this book "expanded metaphor humor" is listed as a separate type of humor because one can expand a metaphor without it being allegory. Myth and fable are kinds of allegory or very similar to allegory. Myth and fable involve purposely telling what is not true, or giving a false or fanciful account as if it were true. The humor involved is that of the apprehension of a seeming contradiction. It is something you are asked to believe which you do not believe. This raises philosophical questions, as does religious belief. Is such belief believing what you do not believe? One may strongly wish to believe, but if one has insufficient evidence how can one honestly believe or deceive oneself? This is the paradox which leads to humor, absurdity, as well as insight. It is Kafkaesque.

Allegories are works of fiction, for example, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Dante's Divine Comedy, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Swift's Gulliver's Travels. But allegory may, nevertheless, represent and give profound insight into scientific and philosophical truths. It may also present heuristic hypotheses. Allegorical humor may serve as a critical and satirical tool in order to criticize existing institutions and beliefs, as well as to propose new models and theories for consideration. John MacQueen (1970) believes that allegory and satire are intimately connected; one may gain a better understanding of an allegory by considering it as a satire, and vice versa.

In "moral allegory" a character represents an abstract idea. As such, it is a kind of personification and will be discussed under "personification humor." In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the Duchess says, "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it." (1960:84) Presumably, even this statement has a moral. We can look for a moral in every leaf, stone, tree, and word. Not that a moral is there, but as with all ethics, as Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Hamlet ii.2.256) We can give anything a second level allegorical meaning-allegorize every word, act, and object. Thus, in Alice in Wonderland, we could carry this too far and ask for the moral of such a statement as, "I think it will rain." Carroll may here be giving a humorous extension of the moralizing of Aesop's fables.

In this sense, Greek myths and religions, as well as more recent religions, are based on myth, on allegorical, symbolic, or pseudoscientific explanations of the world. Such "explanations" are on the positive view humorous (or on the negative view ridiculous and harmful) to those who are not religious or belong to a different religion. To a nonbeliever, "God created the world," is a perverse, indoctrinative joke; to the scientist, as scientist, it is a pure fantasy. On the other hand, to a believer, "People resemble and came from an ape," is a joke and much of science is regarded as being merely humorous (or on the negative side, annoying).

Symbol and signs of a supposed second mystical reality or world are notoriously unintelligible and arbitrary. A star on the flag only arbitrarily stands for a state. The intricate design of a leaf held up to the sun is no more evidence for a creator than it is evidence for control and creation by a God-of-Humor inhabiting a jack-in-the-box (cf. Chapter 10 on religious humor). Symbols are a priori assertions or are arbitrary. They do not constitute evidence or causal explanation. Thus, allegorical symbols may be graciously laughed at, however seriously people may take them. Astrology and numerology are laughable extended metaphors or allegories. So also are metaphysical theories and extended religious metaphors.

The number three, for example, seems to be a magical number. We become captivated by it and expand the metaphor. For example: three parts of state, three souls, three parts of humans (mind, body, soul), holy trinity, Hegelian logic, Kantian philosophy; logic with its major premise, minor premise and conclusion; Freudian categories of id, ego, superego; transactional analysis with its parent, adult, child; in funeral ceremony three handfuls of dirt are thrown on the casket, and casket-bearers walk three steps at a time, etc.

Myth and religion are entertaining and fun unless taken seriously or followed in practice. They are like comic strips. To think of people as witches on Halloween is fun; unless we take seriously the witch trials based on the Bible's "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Many of the concepts in religion and myth are so perverse that they are difficult to take in any humorous way (e.g. the concept of hell, or prohibition of abortion). The notion of "soul" is often regarded as a joke even by Christians. In some cultures or periods of culture some believe in three souls. Others believe in one. Some believe trees have a soul. Recently, merchants picked up on the idea and sold "pet rocks" which supposedly have emotions, feeling, and perhaps even-a soul. The Menabe tribe of Madagascar supposedly believes that the soul of a king passes into a large snake. In Bali, a bamboo tube, extends from a body temporarily buried until cremation, to allow the soul to escape. When Cardinals choose a Pope the windows are sealed with lead to prevent evil spirits from coming in and influencing the decision. To many of us, such allegories or extended metaphors are absurdly humorous. Others take them as serious or literal truth.

Plato distrusted language and thus thought that we can only present truth in myth, extended metaphor, and allegory. For humor and for insight one may create elaborate, fantastic, extended metaphors or myths. It is often remarked that most people will listen to a myth before they will listen to a true statement. This may be partly because myths are a form of enjoyment and humor. They are fun. Thus, if we wish to present a serious point it is ironic that one the most effective ways of presenting it is through humor, allegory, or myth. We must sing and burn candles even for scientific inquiry-scent the laboratory with incense and perfume. Children's books must have rhymes, pictures, and fantastic creatures which no one has or will ever see.

Because allegory can be taken in two ways: one humorous, one serious, it is a way of sugarcoating the pill. One can say things and be critical in this indirect way where serious, direct presentation would be unacceptable either because of its lack of evidence or because the reader would be offended. Allegory in the sixteenth century led to emblem books and pictorial iconology. This is symbolism or metaphorical imagery of a perceptual sort. Here, allegory combines with "perceptual humor." It is as if art or certain perceptual objects have some mystical meaning-the "evil eye," for example. Just as symbol may be question-begging, unfounded, or arbitrary, emblems and icons may be illusory. There may be no universal meanings or mythical second world for symbol to represent. ("Anagogic" refers to symbols which supposedly refer to such universal meanings or myth-taken-seriously worlds.)

Each believer undermines the next believer's myth. Each sees the other's beliefs as a joke. The jokes become perceptual in the form of emblems and icons. One constantly seeks hidden or concealed meanings, signs from above and below, in a paranoid fashion. Looking for such allegorical meanings gradually lessened since the middle ages, at least outside of religious circles. The religious still wear their mythical crosses and charms. By so doing they reveal their comical indoctrination.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory may be thought of as allegory, looking for hidden meaning. He expands the metaphor of "conservation of energy" to apply to the id, ego, and superego. Theodore Sarbin (1964) wrote that Freud was captivated by his metaphors, and committed the metaphor-to-myth fallacy. He took his metaphors literally. Sarbin pointed out that a romantic mystique has evolved around Freud's colorful metaphors, but that experienced clinicians realize that the mystique is unjustified. Freud's model is itself a myth or allegory and, if taken literally, is a joke. The joke has been taken seriously and been pervasive throughout our thinking for generations. Unfortunately, it has until recently been the major model of therapy.

The research literature on puns is vast, but largely inconclusive. (Attardo 1994:111)

Puns can inspire momentous action, as well as narrative. They may also become the instrument of knowledge. ( Culler 1988:15)

Ambiguity humor is a mistake or clash of different meanings. It often involves double or multiple meanings, sounds, or gestures, which are taken in the wrong way, or in incongruous ways. They are thus a kind of category-mistake, contradiction, incongruity, or metaphor humor. A statement is not funny because it is a pun. It is funny because the clash of meanings brought together is incongruous, but seems to be congruous, or congruous but seems to be incongruous. Pun is only the rough characterization of the rhetorical device involved. Puns depend on other explanations for their humor. A behavioral or perceptual pun may involve taking a sign or gesture in the wrong way. James Brown stated that puns link two contexts, reconcile disparate meanings, and have a semimetaphoric status. (1956) in his article, "Eight Types of Pun." A double entendre is a pun in which one of the meanings alluded to is risqué. Example: "I want to make you............mine."

The pun is also a shift of context in a sense other than double meaning. It shifts our attention from the meanings to the words and sounds themselves. Puns and ambiguity often involve surprise that the word is being used in the wrong way. It may be thought of as ignorance of our language and so we laugh at someone's ignorance. Puns are often disliked. This may be because they form such an arbitrary and artificial connection. It is often thought to be merely verbal play. The German word, Der Kalauer, refers to both puns and stale jokes. Gracián (1642) says, that the conceit or farfetched metaphor involves subtlety of thought, whereas puns are merely verbal wit. Thought, however, we have seen has no meaning except as language-use so the thought vs. verbal distinction fails. However, it may be seen that virtually all humor involves assessing, because all emotion involves assessing. Even perception and behavior involves evaluation. Thus, it seems inaccurate to say that puns or verbal wit do not involve "thinking." Furthermore: "Puns are not a marginal form of wit, but an exemplary product of language." (Culler 1988:15)

McLuhan & Fiore (1989), in The Medium is the Massage, seem to base much of their thinking on metaphors and puns which they take literally, or are captivated by. They hold views seriously which seem rather to be absurd jokes. For example, they say that we "think linearly" because we read straight, consecutive lines. They say, "the medium is the massage" punning on the word "message." Some of their metaphors give insight, others are howlers. Compare their statements with: "Light bulbs communicate," "Light bulbs illuminate," "Plants wave at us." Pun and ambiguity can be used as critical tools with which to explore the language of McLuhan & Fiore.

Pun and ambiguity may also be seen to sometimes give insight, for example, by pointing out that the medium itself (e.g. the computer, TV) also is a kind of communication. The use of ambiguity here can also show us how fluid and confusing language can be. We can and do create puns and take words in the wrong sense, thereby making mistakes or creating category-mistakes. If, however, we are aware of our ambiguities and puns, we need not be led into error. It appears that McLuhan & Fiore are often misled by their own metaphors and ambiguities.

One humor-producing aspect of ambiguity is that it is not clear what is meant, and so our thinking goes into a state of anxiety or shock. If it is not seen to be harmful anxiety, this ambiguous state can lead to humor. We laugh because we are "up in the air." The information floats about and doesn't fit into any particular categories. The orderly world is suddenly chaotic. This aspect of ambiguity will be discussed when "free association humor" is presented. Ambiguity humor shares its vagueness with metaphor. Rudolf von Allers (1955), asserted that metaphor is almost always ambiguous. Metaphor relates unlike things and does not specify how these things are related. The relation is uncertain, and open for various interpretations. "The world is atomic," may be developed and expanded in many ways. For example, "ideas" were and are usually still regarded as mental atoms. Metaphor is often interesting or even humorous because of such ambiguity. "Humans are computers," is partly a joke and partly an interesting hypothesis, or metaphor, which may be expanded in order to gain insight.

Certain jokes, commonly but not kindly called "moron jokes," often involve ambiguity. They involve taking a double meaning word literally, or in the wrong sense. For instance, Q. Why did the moron bring bread and a knife when she went downtown? A. Because of the report of a traffic jam. "Jam" here has double meaning. It is used metaphorically in the sentence, but the comic takes it in its literal usage. "Jam" is used in a way which is inappropriate, but which seems to be appropriate. And the following statements are ambiguous: "Forty-three people were injured, none of them serious." "You need not worry about the future. It will be fine, but you do not have any." The experience of incongruity confronts us with something which seems to be both true and false at the same time. But we soon see that we do not clearly have both truth and falsity at once. However, it may not be especially interesting to us that "jam" can be used in two incongruous ways. It is called a "moron joke" because supposedly the person does not know of the error or incorrect meaning. We then laugh at the person. The pun joke may contain ridicule.

Ambiguity can also show confusion if taken in a negative sense. The person who made a pun may not laugh, but be quite confused, angry, or embarrassed. Ambiguity, if taken seriously, leads to anxiety, indecision, or anger. It is a form of the "fallacy of equivocation" in philosophy to use the word in the wrong sense without realizing the mistake.

The above analysis yields the first technique of creating puns: Take a double meaning term in the wrong sense. Thus, one may look up a word which has two senses, and use it in the wrong sense. If the two meanings are incongruous it is an incongruity pun. As words tend not to have contradictory meanings, they are more likely to be incongruous than contradictory. The more the incongruity, the more the humor in some cases.

Ambiguity combines with value deviation, blatant vice, or taboo humor when a person takes every word and gives it, even by force, a sexual connotation. A woman commends a male musician's musical technique. Our outrageous comedienne of puns then adds, "I'll bet he does have a nice technique." Farfetched conceit may be used in this type of pun. Accidental puns which reveal one's frustrations or desires relate pun to accident and insight humor. "I joined the Navy to see the world, and what did I see, I saw the sea." A pun may be accidental as in the following example. In his book on humor, Dziemidok (1993:85) unintentionally wrote "Taylor" for "tailor."

Behavioral pun might involve taking a sign or gesture in the wrong sense. An extended thumb may signify hitchhiking or that one should leave. If one is asked to leave by motioning with one's thumb, one may ask if the asker is hitchhiking. A sleepy nod may be taken as assent. The verbal equivalent is, "I can see by your nodding that you all agree with me."

Circularity humor also involves pun. There is a double meaning such that the statement may be taken in a circular sense and a noncircular sense. For example, "You get to see a lot if you keep your eyes open," may be taken in a literal or a metaphorical way. It is a circular pun. Incidentally, "lot" has two senses and is a pun also.

Traditional rhetorical devices indicate several types of ambiguity as follows:

antanaclasis: a word repeated with a shift in meaning, e.g. "Steal away to steal." A homonymic pun. "Learn a craft to avoid living by craft."

asteismus: a mocking reply, for example, by using the other's words in a different sense, e.g. "I'm first rank." "You are rank all right," or "Some smell." It involves a play on a word. A horse went into a bar and asked for a Martini and catsup. It then said to the bartender, "I suppose you think it's strange for me to walk in here and ask for that." The bartender replied, "No, I like them that way myself." Here the ambiguity is in reference to a previous statement. What is most strange is that a horse can talk. There is also "defeated expectation" and "sinking humor" in the bartender's reply.

paranomasia: repeated word with only similar meaning, e. g., "Out sword, and to a sore purpose." A play on words which only sound somewhat alike.

syllepsis: a word used with two different meanings, a faulty reference to two words. "He lost his hat and his temper. "

"I hate pizza," said Tom crustily.)

"I'll brew some coffee," said Tom perkily.

"I'll have the lamb," said Tom sheepishly.

"I'm being crucified," said Tom crossly.

"I'll have another sugar," she said lumpishly.

"Give it to me on the level," Tom said flatly.

"Thanks a lot," Tom said grossly.

"This boat leaks," said Tom balefully.

"Turn up the heat," said Tom coldly.

Children use the following sort of pun:

Adam and Pinch-Me went to sea in a boat. Adam fell off. Who was left? If you answer correctly you are in for it. Thus, this results in a trick or practical joke as well.

"Did you hear about the purse who stole the man? It got persecuted." This combines "persecuted" and "electrocuted" with "purse" and a sound likeness ambiguity of "pers-" and "purse." It is also reversal humor.

"Are you fond of tongue?" "Yes, and I like it still." Here one-term ambiguity combines with value deviation or blatant vice. One is able to say that one still likes tongue and that one wishes the person would be silent at the same time. More critical and philosophic is: "Can you see a visual field?" Here "field" is used literally and metaphorically, but the correct metaphorical use is being called into question and compared with literal use. That is, can one see a metaphorical (visual) field as one can see a regular field? Are we being misled or captivated by the term "field" if it is taken literally? Also, category-mistake may be involved because one does not see a visual field. It is just a range of seeing which one has. One sees fields, not visual fields. This is insight humor combined with pun, category-mistake, or context mistake, and taking-terms-literally type of humor. This is not a usual type of humor. One may have to learn to appreciate philosophical jokes. They are not accessible to everyone.

The following is even more difficult to understand: "Puns: Camus sees everything through the concept of absurdity." This means that Camus gives everything a double meaning. One is a correct meaning, the other a meaning that is an absurd meaning. The result is that Camus' double-interpretation is itself ambiguously absurd. It may be easier to think of it as a circularity joke and regard "absurdity" (a double meaning) as a synonym of "pun" (a double meaning). It is contradictory humor to say "All is absurd," because this statement itself would be absurd. Camus, then, says something and nothing at once.

Also, the absurd is, in a sense, the opposite of pun. Pun is an acceptable mistake. The absurd is sometimes ambiguously regarded as a synonym of fun nonsense, and sometimes as a negative statement. "The absurd is absurd," is a pun. This is also a case where the pun takes on an aesthetic quality, and may be called an aesthetic or poetic pun. And all of this is to show that the pun, which was sometimes called "false wit," can be a significant poetic and philosophic tool of inquiry, as well as being humorous.

James Joyce' (1947) Finnegan's Wake is filled with multimeaning puns. There are so many meanings for each word that the work is almost a history of civilization. There is a minimum of words with a maximum of references, so combined as to produce an "all is one" view, because all the congruous and incongruous meanings of a word are related. Metaphor, similarly, can function to relate unlike things until everything is related to everything else. This is presented in the form also of Joyce's circular, repetition view of history. The Wake is dominated by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker who is referred to throughout in many ways: HCE, Here Comes Everybody, Haveth Childers Everywhere, Howth Castle and Environs ( of Dublin), Haroun Childeric Eggeberth, etc. This combines pun with connotation. On the basis of mere initials, HCE, different things are identified. Whereas many words have limited meaning, names, initials and letters can take on unlimited meanings. Letter abbreviations can always be literally punned on. And this is suggestive for words as well, because we can arbitrarily stipulate meanings for words also and so pun on their stipulated meanings. The Wake begins with a polylingual thunderclap: "The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!)" (Joyce 1947:3)

You "Wipe you glosses [gloss and glasses] with what you know," in attempting to understand the puns and multimeanings. The statement also renders Kant's epistemology. There are themes and key words that provide surprising puns and associations in each paragraph. The puns relate to words in many languages: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Gaelic, Russian, Italian, French, German, Norwegian, and numerous other languages. The Wake begins with the following multimeaning paragraph: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." The book ends: "A way a lone a last a loved a long the…." The end of the book supposedly continues with the beginning of the book again to suggest that history will repeat itself.

"Riverrun" suggests the technique of allowing HCE and other characters to metaphorically and by stream of consciousness represent anyone and anything. It is also Dublin's River, Liffey, which flows past the church, "Adam and Eve's." Adam and Eve obviously suggests the myth of creation. "Swerve of shore" refers to the course of the river, but also to sensuous curves of an enticing island. The water reaches Hill of Howth and the latter becomes also HCE. It is also as if Ireland lures invaders as the waters beat against the Hill or Head of Howth. "Commodius vicus of recirculation" refers to Vico's (vicus) theory of history as repeating (recirculation) itself. "Vicus" is the Italian word for Vico and Vico was an Italian. Vico, in Italian, also means "street." Commodus refers to the decayed times of the Roman emperor, Commodus. "Commodious" suggests also spacious and easy, as well as the commode or decay, as well as the polluted fluid of the river. We end our analysis here before we barely begin. Joyce presents pun or ambiguity in a metaphoric and poetic mode to yield humor, insight, paradox, allegory, fantasy, etc. It's all there, the entire alphabet. His work may be studied in detail for techniques of creating puns and ambiguities. Joyce's own high-pitched reading of the Wake is also unusual, impressive and, depending on one's view, humorous. Numerous guides from that of Campbell & Robinson (1944) to more recent ones, exist to aid in the interpretation of Joyce. It is certain that looking for the possible multimeanings contained in the work will never end. And it would seem that he wanted it that way-the greatest pun of all. Our failure to find all the meanings signifies the never ending riverrun……

The Wake does have meanings, too many perhaps, but it sounds like nonsense. Humor arises from the fact that that which seems to make no sense at all, is so full of meaning. It is not that with which to start children off with, or read aloud to one's barber. The following paragraph illustrates. It is yours. No explanation will be given: "The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy." (Joyce 1947:3)

The following is an analysis of several puns and ambiguities. The analysis indicates also the linguistic technique involved.

"To ask if the fetus is in itself a person is a misconceived question." This insight pun suggests that it is erroneous to think of a fetus as we think of people. "Misconceived," meaning "mistake," is literal with "question" and the sentence, but has a second or metaphorical meaning as a "misconceived" (as a child wrongly conceived) question. It is an aborted question. "Misconceived" is metaphorical to the sentence as well as to the word "question." This metaphorical sense of "misconceived" connotes and is connoted by the word "fetus" and the process of birth. It involves connotation humor. Here the associated, connoted terms are "fetus" and "misconceived," as both are related to birth.

But there is also another level of meaning. The statement itself is about abortion and about the view that the fetus is a person, and so one should not abort because it would be killing. The statement and argument is turned around by the pun of using the word "abortion" to apply metaphorically to "question" as an "aborted" question. It states, in short, that the only justifiable abortion here is the abortion of the mistaken question not of the fetus. It is a reversal joke. The pun here is, then, the double meaning of the implied topic of the sentence with a metaphorical use of the term "misconceived." The sentence serves as an argument for abortion. In summary, the pun "misconceived" has:

a) a literal meaning as "mistake" which is literal to the sentence.

b) a metaphorical meaning which is suggested by "fetus" and so by the implied notion of birth.

c) a reversal joke and clash of double meaning resulting from moving from "aborted fetus" to "aborted question." There is an additional pun on "question" because it refers now to both 1) "Is the fetus a person?" and 2) the issue or abortion question.

"Not long ago he had a heart attack. Today he has a son." This is incongruity humor, but also "heart attack" may metaphorically mean that he fell in love, which lead to his having a family.

"An easy transition from scared to sacred and sacred to scared." The pun is created by showing that these terms which have similar sounds may well, in fact, have the same meaning in an analytic sense. That is, "sacred" means "being scared" of death and deity. A pun or double meaning is thus created yielding insight. It suggests how one may learn to become religious and fear that which supposedly eliminates fear. It produces contradiction humor.

"Where is dignity when you dig your grave?"

I wanted Stuttgart, but just got Streugut [grit]

Sign in laundry in Italy: Ladies leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time

To Mafia moll:What am I am getting you for your birthday? How about a neckless?

Sign at airport: We take your bags and send them in all directions.

Policeperson after catching a woman concealing books under her sweater: "It was the biggest bust of the year."

Die Ruhr is the not especially clean river Ruhr, but Ruhr also appropriately means dysentery.

There is a vas deferens between children and no children.

Hugh More (hu-mor)

Does the doctor use people as guinea pigs? He even uses guinea pigs as guinea pigs.

Education kills by degrees.

The fool is by no means a fool.

The British woman injured herself trying to slide down a barrister.

How to find a cat. Look in the catalogue.

All men eat, but Fu Manchu.

The man knows, the woman knows better. [Der Mann weiß, die Frau weiß besser.]

The horse barn doesn't look very stable.

I'll have a cup of tea and a tart.

Our lawyers never leave, they just lose their appeal.

You cannot be humorous if your name is not Hugh.

"What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?" "I don't know, and I don't care."

Their request for weapons was not greeted with open arms.

He quit teaching math when his parrot, "Polygon," died.

Only three people? If you don't have four, you can't have a forum.

The winter will stop them cold.

"Do you smoke after sex?" "I don't know, I never looked."

Automöbel. (in Möbel means clumsy thing or furniture)

(Re: Clark who is a Kantian) Who has a last name which begins with "c" but sounds like "k"?

Pick up line: Hello. I won't beat around the bush."

Love is a comedy of Eros. (Evan Esar in Cousins 1989:127)

The book is a portrayal of a boy who strayed from a trail (poor trail).

Thackeray, who said that humor is love, has the middle name of "Makepease."

"I want to commit suicide." "Okay, it's your decision, but you will have to live with it."

"Death is good enough for the common person." "Good enough" here means that it is "quite good." It also has the contradictory or ironical, opposite meaning of "not good at all." It is to suggest, perhaps, that if the common person never investigates or inquires into death and other things, but instead seeks mystical or dishonest approaches to death, then the uninquiring person is not really alive and so death is suitable.

"Louis got lewd." There is a double meaning of "lewd" here. "Lewd," by means of sound similarity, refers to "Lou" or "Louis." The interesting part of this is that it seems like this metaphorical "louing" makes sense, but it doesn't. It is appropriate, but isn't. It is absurd humor. One tries to imagine what it might be like to "lou." He is doing what any Louis would do.

"I read the author, then I read her book." A second or metaphorical meaning of "read" is stipulated here which suggests that to understand the reading, one must understand the author. It is similar to: "To obtain a high grade, study the teacher as well as the book."

"A writer must serve her sentence." Writers are prisoners and pushers of words. She does not just put thoughts into words. Language has epistemological primacy.

"Criminal justice is criminal justice." This seems circular but contains a second level of meaning, the insight that what goes for justice in the courtroom is often based on revenge.

"Ridicule is an offense mechanism." An insight pun. Ridicule is often a defense mechanism. It may involve laughing at others in order to make oneself feel superior. But, ridicule is also aggressive in being negative and forward. The various meanings all seem to apply quite well to the mechanism of ridicule. "Offense" even rhymes with "defense." In this example, the seemingly incongruous is seen to be congruous. A pun may be especially good if both meanings are true, but bad if one or both meanings are empirically or theoretically false.

In philosophy, close in form to pun and ambiguity are the fallacies of accentuated words, equivocation (using words in different senses and confusing them), many question fallacy (for example, "Have you stopped beating your dog?"), etc. Amphiboly is the fallacy arising from ambiguity of grammatical construction. The premise is proved on the basis of one interpretation, then falsely applied to the other. Also, there is the simple fallacy of ambiguity. The following are types of illogical fallacies.

"Some dogs have shaggy ears. My dog has shaggy ears. Therefore, my dog is some dog." "A crust of bread is better than nothing. Nothing is better than true love. Therefore, a crust of bread is better than true love."

Fallacy of composition is exemplified above and also in: "A plum is a fruit. Therefore, a large plum is a large fruit." To make the error obvious, compare: "A large mouse is a large animal."

The reader may practice analyzing the following nonoriginal puns. Identify the ambiguous word, sound, or statement. The same meaning may also be represented by two different words. A pun is often two different meanings for the same word. Circularity humor is two different words for the same meaning. The reader may show what types of humor the following puns involve as well as what the use or point of the joke is. Is the example good or bad? This could be tested on a scale of one to five from good to bad, and answered on computer sheets for scoring. Texts of this sort may be given to examine language defect, and dysfunctional personality, to see what may be learned both about the patient as well as about how humor works.

Because with pun one must understand the double meaning, double sound, or contextual aspects of meaning, examinations of puns may also serve as a test for the thorough understanding of a foreign language, or as a way to aid in teaching a foreign language. Here are the sorts of common-a-garden pun we usually encounter. If we find them quite good or bad, we may try to determine what makes them so: "Tourists taken in." (Road sign) "Woman's bawdy." "You may think as you please." Undertaker signs letter, "Eventually yours." The tire spoke. Her English teacher's name is Miss Pell. "We are the world," becomes "We arm the world." Q. "How did the bee break its leg?" A. "It fell off its honey." "Don't go into the jungle. You will just make a food out of yourself." In Alice the mouse makes the mistake of trying to get the wet ones present dry by telling them "dry history." Alice mistakes "knot" for "not," and the mouse's tail for a tale.

Such ambiguity adds force to the exposition of confusions which trap us in our thinking as we use language. We often, for instance, have the idea that the etymology of a word determines what its meaning really is. "Philosophy" means in Greek, "love of wisdom," but as a definition or a use of the word "philosophy" we may be quite misled by this-just as much as thinking that one cannot get "ill" in a "well." And this is another way in which language can mislead us. Because there is something called "faculty psychology," does not mean that there is "student psychology." One does not wake flowers out a flower bed. In Alice the Mock Turtle puns on his teacher who was called "Tortoise" because he "taught us." There is a pun on lessons which lessen by one hour every day, that being why they are called "lessons." In addition, the following subjects are taught: Uglification (multiplication), Ambition (addition), Reeling (reading), Writhing (writing), Distraction (subtraction), Derision (division), Mystery (history), Drawling (drawing), Stretching (sketching), Laughing and Grief (Latin and Greek), Seaography (geography, and Fainting in Coils (painting in oils). (Carroll 1960:91)

Q. What happens if you drop dynamite into a well? A. Noel (No well).

"Give me a hot dog with nothing on."

Esso when phonetically spelled in Japan means a stalled car.

"It's so nice out, I think I'll leave it out."

Boxer: "I'm going to play Picasso, and put you on the canvas."

"Lost: umbrella belonging to gentleman with bent rib."

Q. Should a woman have children after forty? A. No, forty's enough."

"The shooting of the hunters was finished quickly."

Q. Have an accident? A. No thanks, I just had one.

"Sit up Joe, take that sweet out of your mouth and put your feet in."

One reason why some puns are better than others is that they combine with uses such as gaining insight, allowing us to say what could not otherwise be said, etc. That is, they combine with other types of humor. What makes certain puns interesting is not merely that there is a double meaning, but that the meanings are interesting, as are the uses to which the pun is put. The enjoyment of the pun alone is based on reacting to the fact that words seem to say one thing, but say another incongruous thing. This alone may suffice for the enjoyment of puns. They become richer with the selection of specific meanings and combination with other types of humor. Basically, then, pure puns are enjoyed by those who like cleverness with words and language itself. Perceptual puns, e.g. in music and art, are also possible. The worst puns may be those which deal merely with forced, superficial, linguistic ambiguities, such as "punny," for "funny." There is no insight gained here, merely the show of the similarity of the sound of two terms very close in meaning.

Should dissimilarity puns be combined with insight or powerful argument, a superb pun may result. A poor pun may result if based on a bad argument. With pure pun humor alone we often feel cheated. We expect someone to say something, but find the person is only artificially playing with words. It is like a practical joke. The preference here may then be for humanistic, rational, philosophic, and poetic insight puns. An excellent insight pun is created especially when both of the double meanings are significant. This takes the pure pun mechanism of incongruous double meaning to turn it into a critical tool of language and meaning to produce new understanding. The pun is thus appropriate and avoids being farfetched, trivial, or a practical joke. This view is in opposition to those who hold that the pun is merely dysfunctional and trivial.

The gorilla Koko has a sense of humor. (Fry 1987:69)

Infants and animals without language cannot have humor in the same way as can humans. As they do not speak, we do not know what humor is for them. Does a rabbit, for example, have a sense of humor? Gamble (2001:173) stated about gorillas and chimpanzees, "Nothing that an animal could do would constitute unequivocal proof of a humor experience." Within this limitation it was found that gorillas can "make-believe": put on jewelry, fancy clothes, "pretend to talk on the phone or pretend to juggle with objects," tie the shoelaces of the researcher together and sign for "chase me," "joke" about cleaning one's teeth with one's foot, mislabel white as red, and even rhyme by signs: "flower pink, fruit stink." (Gamble 2001:173-4) Gamble argues that McGhee's stages of a child's development of humor is also seen in chimps, apes and gorillas. (168) I maintain that this is a personification and violates the principle that without our language we do not know how other animals think. However, we can find external patterns of symbol using just as we do with insects, bees, dolphins, birds, etc. Furthermore, we do see a kind of "communication" between humans and other animals. Koko does "mislabel" and a child of two likes to mislabel, for example, call a dog a cat. But we cannot say that they both mislabel in the same sense. Again, we should not personify this to think, for example, that our cat is laughing at us, or that our cat loves us (sorry). Gamble notes that a safe environment is needed for humor to take place. This coheres with the view that an acceptance of a deviation is needed for there to be humor.

Such humor, however, centers around action. It is mistaken, senseless, incongruous, or contradictory action. Behavioral humor is created merely by making a mistake or deviation in one's actions. Just do something wrong. Take any verb which describes action and perform the action incorrectly. This results in: walking like a duck, riding a bicycle backwards, etc. A guide to behavioral humor is the silent movies of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, etc. It is especially for those who enjoy action at the expense of the verbal. Almost anyone can understand a pie in the face. But behavioral humor can be extremely sophisticated as well. The slogan for behavioral humor is: If you must do something, do it wrong.

Behavioral humor is not good or bad in the same way as verbal humor is. Nor does it give the same sorts of insight. Behavioral humor gives a limited, or at least different, kind of insight. It is insight which involves how to do something, consequences of actions, associations of the symbolic language of movement and gesture. If it is to be especially good, it must produce insight, and if this is mainly produced verbally, then behavioral humor will not usually be as sophisticated. On the other hand, the insights of behavioral humor are those of the dance, acting, mime, the clown. Whatever intuition is contained in these areas can produce enriching humor as well. To perceive behavior requires assessment, and assessment is linguistic. Therefore, behavior presupposes language. There is no strictly nonverbal behavioral humor. In this sense we can ride a bicycle in French. Because behavior excludes the directly verbal, or relates to it by gesture and other ways, it would be useful to give behavioral examples of each type of humor.

Accident behavior humor: Woman accidentally walks into a men's restroom.

Allegorical behavior humor: An action represents or symbolizes something on a second level. Dance and acting provide examples, as does the extended acting-out of a pretense. Human flaws of personality may be revealed symbolically. One person may represent justice, and another vice. There is often humor in seeing a person represent an abstract term. Love, then, is seen eating breakfast. A person could symbolize an animal, or thing, but this will be presented under personification humor. Gestures are symbolic actions. Gesture sets up a new sort of language and in this way, behavior develops into a language of communication. Thus, behavior becomes verbal, and along with it gestural language humor. Gestures also often stand for verbal statements. Mistakes and deviations in the gestures create humor. Allegorical behavior is acting in one way, but really expressing another action symbolically. The humor is from the shift

Ambiguous behavioral humor: One pretends to reach for a cigarette on the cash register, but takes cash instead. Such gestures may be paradoxical as well. Beckoning with one's finger could mean things other than "come here." It may mean, "Well, now what are you up to?" or its meaning could simply be ambiguous. Suppose one beckons with one's little finger instead of the index finger. What does it mean? Behavioral pun involves the multi-meaning of gesture or action and may be analyzed as pun was analyzed.

Category-mistake behavioral humor: Socks worn as gloves.

Circular behavioral humor: Action whereby one tries hard, yet gets nowhere; one repeats the same action, such as cleaning a clean glass.

Conceit behavioral humor (farfetched behavior): A greatly exaggerated act or gesture. Beg on one's knees for a toothpick. Rob a bank to pay your parking meter.

Context deviation behavioral humor: A person returns from a long auto trip and makes a hand signal for a left turn before entering a room.

Contradiction behavioral humor: Smile when serious. Boil an egg without water. A judge picks the pocket of a thief. Rich person wearing old clothes. Incongruous characters are put together. Negativistic, psychiatric patients systematically do the opposite of what they are told to do.

Defense mechanism behavioral humor: Rests on acting out, escape, regression (acting like child), sublimation, strutting to try to show superiority, wish fulfillment, etc. An illustration would be having a nervous twitch, or compulsive behavior, such that one may needlessly repeat the same act of cleaning a room, washing one's hands, or compulsively stepping on every crack in the sidewalk.

Behavioral deviation from desires, familiar, ideal, practical, role, purpose, rule, tradition, the usual: Men dressed entirely in pink. Make a chess move by moving one's piece off of the table. Comb your hair with a fork. Drive a car in circles. Open can with screwdriver. Live in a furnace, library, or old junk car. The philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once washed his host's dishes in a bathtub. Wear half a moustache. Deviate from the way one normally eats. (Even a slight deviation can produce humor, but the amount of deviation can produce more up to a breaking point.) Suck a lollipop while teaching a university class. In the military, soldiers were required to hold a canteen of water until a bird came along to drink from it, or put a finger on a helmet on the ground and run around the helmet until told to stop.

Deviate from the way in which we usually hold a cigarette. We usually hold a cigarette between the first two fingers. Any deviation, even the slightest degree, is seen to be humorous, or weird. Raise the cigarette up or down an inch between our fingers and it creates humor. Change its angle and vary these changes as the cigarette is placed between each set of fingers. Then, turn the cigarette around with the burning side facing you; to take a puff, flip the cigarette over so the back of your fingers now face you, and suggest that this is the way tumblers smoke (connotation humor). Then deal with the deviations from the way smokers usually bring a cigarette to their lips, flick ashes, put out cigarettes, e.g. crushing them until they are completely destroyed. Vary the placement of the cigarette on the lips and push it in until only a half inch of cigarette sticks out. Let the cigarette stick to your lip allowing it to hang down. Vary the way to inhale and puff smoke. Every slight deviation can create humor unless it is done poorly.

Exaggeration behavioral humor: Child takes long strides as if he or she were an adult. Child tries to fly with propeller on his or her beanie.

Expand metaphor behavioral humor: In charades you have to represent a snake. After slithering and hissing, you bite someone's leg.

Defeated expectation behavioral humor: A performer is about to play the guitar, but each time before she begins, she talks instead. She never does play it.

Unexpected honesty behavioral humor: You mention to your job interviewer that you just discovered a hole in your sock.

Hopelessness behavioral humor: You laugh at a hopeless situation you are in, e.g. failing an exam or breaking a leg skiing.

(Expose) Hypocrisy behavioral humor: Heavy cosmetic smears. Two men and a woman are on a bench. Three people sit on a bench. One man has his arm around the woman, the other is holding hands with her behind the back of the first man. (possibly, just deviation)

Ignorance behavioral humor: Bring a cup when invited to tee off.

Improbable behavioral humor: Escape from jail with an umbrella.

Informal logical fallacies: Use anger to try to win an argument (very popular!). Makes one look foolish.

Insight behavioral humor: Where gesture creates a symbolic language of action, or stands for verbal statement, other possibilities of insight are created. Because assessment is verbal, behavior already implies the verbal. There is no nonverbal behavior as such. Behavior is perceived by evaluating and evaluating is verbal. It is not accurate to speak of nonverbal behavior in this sense. Therefore, behavioral insight and humor involve verbal insight and verbal humor as well.

Gracián (cf. MB:120) gives an example of what he calls "wit of action" as follows: Someone stated that anyone could discover America. In a rebuttal another asked, "Can you or anyone present make an egg stand on end?" No one could. The challenger then placed the egg on end by slightly flattening and cracking one end of the egg.

Cosmic irony behavioral humor: The opposite from the expected happens. It is a type of defeated expectation. It's just a matter of time before one drinks the ink instead of the coffee. The more kind you are to people the more hostile they are to you. Kafka provides many examples of cosmic irony.

Juxtaposition behavioral humor: The way various people walk is juxtaposed and also compared with the way animals walk. Truck driver sews delicate lace.

(Take) literally behavioral humor: People search the area because they heard a man had "lost his mind."

Mimic: You pretend to be others and/or exaggerate their characteristics.

Mistake behavioral humor: Attempt to leave the room, but go into closet instead. You are nearsighted and propose to the wrong person. You open a can from the cylinder side instead of the top.

Name-calling behavioral humor: This could take the form of gesture, such as rude gesture. The humor is due to the deviations of falsity involved.

Obvious behavioral humor: You carefully show a professional cook how to boil water or an egg.

Paradoxical behavioral humor: Hand rising up out of a small pail of water. She had the look of the interjection "Well."

Personification behavioral humor (includes dehumanization): Gobble like a turkey. Pretend to be a carrot or a robot. Act like an animal. Autos that speak. Woman plays a violin for mice.

Practical joke behavioral humor: Play catch with two raw eggs. Talk to people while staring at their ears.

Pretense behavioral humor: Pretending to be on vacation while at work.

Reversal behavioral humor: Walk backwards. Go in opposite direction one asks directions for. Reverse the direction of a film.

Self-deprecation behavioral humor: Laugh at one's own broken leg or other infirmity. (Because it is odd and there is nothing one can do about it.) Purposely dress shabbily. Kafka's (1988) story "Hunger Artist" portrays self-deprecatory behavior.

Simile behavioral humor: He is so poor he has to take baths with his grandmother.

Sinking behavioral humor: Give a person a package of peanuts as a birthday gift. Doff cap before milking a cow. Feed boyfriend with spoon as if he were a baby.

Stereotype behavioral humor: Compulsive behavior, fixed habit, or role behavior. Mechanic gets under a cow to milk it, as he or she would get under an automobile. Dog buries an ice-cube as it would bury a bone for later use. Thief steals no matter whether the object is wanted or not.

Substitution behavioral humor: Put pillow under bed covers so it will look as if you are sleeping there.

Synecdoche behavioral humor: Substitution of part for whole or whole for part. After years of battle and risking his life for his ideal woman, the chivalric hero obtains merely a kiss on the cheek from her.

Trick behavior or deceit humor: Magician's tricks.

Understatement behavioral humor: Give large man a small shirt.

(Wrong) use or purpose behavioral humor: Use corkscrew to open can. Use chainsaw to remove a chair leg.

Uselessness behavioral humor: Erase marks which are not there. Count grains of sand on the beach.

Value deviation behavioral humor: Any bodily function or action which is regarded as unacceptable. Burp at a formal dinner. (In China, however, this may be acceptable.)

(Blatant) vice behavioral humor: Clown in Hamlet (5, 1, 70) throws up a skull.

Now take, for example, Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit. They are not drawn as they should be. Not all of their whiskers are where they ought to be. In fact, the way they are drawn, they might as well be people, just like yourself. But it works both ways. Sometimes animals are drawn to seem like people, and at other times, people are drawn to seem like animals. This is personification. You never, never do see people walking around with the heads of chickens. Caricature distorts the way people really look. Often, faults or cute features are exaggerated. One's good or bad actions may be somehow represented. A miser may be shown putting pennies in tall unstable piles.

Narrow thinking may itself be represented as a horse with blinders on. It is only able to look straight ahead, or in one narrow direction. Caricature, then, can show insight or a truth about someone, or about a situation. The humor comes as a result of deviation, or seeing something as something else. Social and political cartoons (often by deviation) make humorous, yet critical, statements. Caricature also involves the suggestions made by means of visual lines, colors and shapes. There are visual associations which are communicated. Straight lines, for example, can be seen as being rational and logical. Curved, flowing lines are seen as being emotional. Each line, shape, color, and whatever it is that is seen or drawn must be examined closely.

Caricatures often involve exaggerations of facial, physical and behavioral features, as well as a humorous rendering of the personality of the subject of the caricature. Besides being a form of perceptual humor, cartoons may involve any of the other forms of humor. Those given here exemplify many of the different types of humor.

A. General Examples

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Satire: Absolute Freedom

C. Analysis of the Cartoons of Gary Larson by Type(1984) (The Far Side)

Black Humor (naive disastrous or fatal mistakes)

D. Analysis of the Cartoons of Abner Dean by Type

Circularity Humor (See also circular definitions of humor in section on theories of humor and circular theories of humor in Chapter 8..)

EXAMPLES: "At the moment it is just a Notion, but with a bit of backing, I think I can turn it into a concept, and then an Idea." (Woody Allen) Sick people do not feel good. The rich are wealthy. You cannot believe liars. Crooks cannot be trusted. Your everlasting patience will be rewarded sooner or later. The poor person eats potato soup, the rich person, vichyssoise. (Esar 1978:147) Death is fatal. Strange people are odd. Cows give milk because that is what cows do.

Circular statements are humorous because they seem to say something, but do not. It is a trick. And the joke may be on us when we do not realize that our own statement is really circular. EXAMPLES:

CONCEIT HUMOR (farfetched descriptions, extreme humor, exaggeration)

Connotation Humor (free association, conceit, all types of humor, metonymy)

A. Introduction. We find that everything we see or think, has many things which we associate with it. When we see an apple, we associate with it things such as: red, green, cider, teacher, orchard, worm, crunch, and so on. Even a period at the end of a sentence has associations. A period may be thought of as an end, a pause, death, raisin, an eye, the head of a nail, a nut, a hole, and so on. Connotation humor works by: a) deviating from usual associations. Example: Cats are meow boxes. b) combining unlike things on the basis of one or more similar connotations. Example: Your eyes are like jello. c) showing that similar things are really unlike. EXAMPLES:

As a test to show that we make associations which we are not aware of making: Give one of the following nonsense names to each of these figures: a) "krick", b) "boang." Which name goes best with which figure? The figures are: # and °

B. An Association Theory of Meaning. By "connotation" is meant nonmentalistic association. Also, we associate things which we are not aware of associating. When we deviate from such associations or when the associations are incongruous it can produce humor or irritation, depending on how we take it. Virtually all language involves association, so connotation relates to virtually all types of humor. Connotation humor may seem false in the main meaning of the terms, but true in the connotative or secondary meanings. It is truth-in-falsity humor. Or, people may seem to be doing something meaningless or absurd, but be seen, on associative analyses, to be doing something meaningful. Part of the interest in connotation humor is that it is sometimes puzzling and, like metaphor, must be figured out.

-- is rational

ÅÅ is emotional

/ is happy

\ is sad

ªªª is active

ð is pleasure loving (and computer friendly)

Each color has similar associations. Now, humor is produced by deviating from such associations. For example: Let: -- be emotional, let ÅÅ be rational.

EXAMPLES: In his unpublished notes, Wittgenstein gave the diagram:

examples: of connotation humor in German are: a) In Butter sitzen (literally "sit in butter") means "to be fine." b) Er hat große Rosinen im Kopf, (lit. "He has large raisins in his head.") meaning "His head is full of fantastic ideas." c) Mit ihr ist nicht gut Kirschen essen (literally "With her it is not good cherry eating.") meaning "She is difficult to get along with." d) Tingeltangel, means "music hall." The sound of the word suggests music. e) blaue Bohnen, (lit. "blue beans") meaning "bullets." f) grüne Bohnen, (lit. "green beans") meaning "French beans" or figuratively, "an inexperienced person."

Each typeface has connotations which are poetic, mundane, comical, etc. Some are called: Gorilla Milkshake, Ketchup Spaghetti, Rustproof Body, Shoplifters Unite, Sergeant Sixpack, Staggering Bob, Tasteless Candy, 12 Ton Goldfish, Typewriter from Hell, Vibrocentric.