Humor Studies
What makes something funny? It is shockingly difficult to explain humor without losing the humor of the thing, and yet that's exactly what these faculty members do in their research. Not only are our faculty members widely published in humor studies, but they also host the annual North East Texas Humor Research Conference, where you can see humor research in action.
Featured Publications
The paper discusses the changes in humor that have occurred since the advent of the internet, in the past quarter of a century. The cognitive mechanisms that produce humor have not changed. However, since 2000, roughly when the Internet 2.0 (social web) is said to have started, there have been some minor changes at the level of slang, and especially the introduction of emojis, emoticons, and emotes. At the discursive level, the introduction of large group conversations (polylogues) is a major difference. Internet humor tends to be short. Probably the most significant innovation of humor since 2000 is the introduction of memes (“image macros” i.e., images plus text) and meme cycles (i.e., groups of memes that are thematically or formally related). Another interesting phenomenon is the blurring of the distinction between online satirical texts and fake media, to the point that it is sometimes hard to distinguish between parodies, actual news stories, and constructed stories (fake news). This has contributed in part to the widespread use of humor as a cover to spread white suprematist or neonazi propaganda. Another significant change is the advent of the participatory culture of social media, where the users (the audience of traditional media) become prod-users (i.e., they produce the media themselves), taking advantage of the affordances of the media. Yet another change is the blending of mirth and embarrassment, two emotions that were considered incompatible until “cringe humor” became popular in internet humor. In particular, the paper focuses on transmedial humor. Humor is found to be a transmedial constant, however the inter semiotic translation process required to transfer the text from one modality to another is found to affect in small but not indifferent ways the humor itself.
Read More: “Humor in the Age of the Internet: The Case of Transmedial Humor”
Linguistic Theories of Humor appeared thirty years ago. It attracted a lot of attention and ended up being one of the most quoted books in the linguistics of humor. Partly due to its broad coverage which includes both theoretical and socio-pragmatic aspects and partly due to the depth of its bibliography it remained an indispensable reference in many areas, despite the growth of the field. The original fully corrected text is supplemented by a long essay, in which the author revisits the topics of the book to discuss how three decades have shifted the perspective of the field.
Mode adoption is a term used primarily in pragmatics and linguistics which refers to responses to verbal irony that: a.) converge with (or ‘adopt') the humor frame and, b.) add a similar element of ironic humor. This paper argues that mode adoption is a form of high-level accommodation. In order to mode adopt, respondents must converge with the speaker’s verbal content, their humorous intent, as well as the form this intent is taking. Respondents can, therefore, display convergence/divergence along each of these dimensions with each response to verbal irony falling along a scale of humor convergence. Scholars have suggested that differences in mode adoption may be based on familiarity between the speakers, however, this hypothesis has not been tested experimentally, and CAT has not been directly applied in this context. Over two studies, (N = 430) participants were asked to think of a specific person from their life and type exactly how they would respond to instances of ironic overstatement from this person in a hypothetical text message interaction. Regression analyses revealed that perceived relational closeness predicted humor convergence in study two but not study one. Awareness of the irony was significant predictor of convergence in study one, a finding not replicated in study two. In line with previous CAT research, liking and relative power were also found to predict convergence in humor. These studies provide support for CAT within the domain of humor in texting, clarify important predictors for humor convergence, and argue that definitions of accommodation should explicitly include both behavioral and cognitive elements of communication.
Read More: “Comedic Convergence: Humor Responses to Verbal Irony in Text Messages”
In this paper we discuss two development of the smiling intensity scale (SIS), a scale developed to assess the intensity of smiling (with laughter as the upper end of the scale). SIS has several advantages, vis-à-vis using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), including being simpler and faster to implement and notably cheaper, while being equally detailed. Two new versions of SIS, which are considerably simpler to implement than the original SIS (SIS-1) are presented. SIS-1 was implemented training in FACS judges who then ranked the smiles using the holistic SIS choices. SIS-2 presents a visual scale of smiling persons which is used for ranking. SIS-3 is based on a set of yes/no questions, such as “is this person's mouth open?” Thus, both SIS-2 and SIS-3 require minimal training. Both SIS-2 and SIS-3 were tested and found to be very reliable. Use of a training video before rating using SIS-3 did not improve performance, thus showing that training judges for SIS-3 is unnecessary. SIS-2 and SIS-3 are freely available.
This study investigates the function of smiling intensity as a nondiscrete marker of humor in conversation. The smiling intensity of participants in eight conversational dyads was measured relative to the occurrence of humorous and nonhumorous events in the conversation. A relationship was found between higher smiling intensity and the occurrence of humorous event across conversations, thus confirming the value of smiling as a marker of humor. The results show that the occurrence of humor correlates positively with an increase of smiling intensity relative to the nonhumorous stretches of talk, and it is foreshadowed by a localized increase of smiling both generally and when humor is predictable. Moreover, during humorous events participants displayed framing smiling patterns, often preceded or followed by smiling accommodation or inverted smiling gestures, which are representative of the conversational dynamics of the dyad and the ongoing negotiation of meaning.
Read More: “Smiling and the Negotiation of Humor in Conversation”
This paper considers the alleged incompatibility of humour and religion, identifies the need for a multifaceted approach to the study of humour and religion, and spotlights important scholarship on humour and religion. It also outlines how this special issue emerged from an online symposium organized by the editors (Nicole Graham and Paul S Martin) in 2020 titled: The Sacred and The Profanity: Humour, Religion and Ritual, hosted by the University of Bristol and the University of Kent and introduces the various papers which are spread across both the globe and historical periods and which engage various media.
Read More: “Introduction to the Special Issue: Humour and Religion, ‘You Must Be Joking?!'”
Chapter 8 examines occurrences of embarrassment and laughter in natural dyadic conversations during the completion of a complex task (assembling a Tetris-like puzzle). The authors consider embarrassment as an emotional response to a social or moral transgression, thus, situating this study within the sociopragmatic approach viewing face management, emotional stance, and alignment as an integral component of the multimodal communicative exchange. Analysis of the correlation between laughter and embarrassment conclusively shows that laughter and felt smiling occur frequently with embarrassment, and contests previous research suggesting embarrassment is largely accompanied by unfelt smiles or that laughter is strictly a marker of humour. Further, a significant number of embarrassment episodes show laughter as a source or co-component of mitigation. The authors then develop a sociopragmatic typology of embarrassment situations: self-embarrassment, vicarious embarrassment (a participant is embarrassed for another participant), and joint embarrassment (both participants are embarrassed). Additionally, The authors identify a strategy to resolve the embarrassment episode and return to a normal exchange through self-absolution. Finally, the authors offer some tentative considerations on the relatively underexplored area of embarrassment and personality type.
Read More: “Laughter and Embarrassment in a Complicated Task”
This special issue reflects numerous opportunities presented by the pandemic for research spanning different cultures, outcomes, and disciplines/methodologies. The studies presented in this special issue include populations and material from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Poland, Belarus, Australia, and Israel. These articles examine humor in the form of memes, late-night comedy, and other media messages; in addition to instances of humor, one article also explores the role of sense of humor. These articles further come from a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, communication studies, and folklore, and employ the many methods that accompany those disciplines. The remainder of this paper seeks to outline a number of promising research agendas to inspire a more diverse pool of future submissions, possibly for a second, post-pandemic special issue.
Read More: “Humor in the Age of Coronavirus: A Recapitulation and a Call to Action”
Although American news satire trends towards the left side of the political spectrum, satire is not unique to liberal viewpoints. Conservative news satire, published by outlets such as The Babylon Bee, lend evidence to the ability for right-wing views to be advanced using satirical methods. Despite political differences, existing comparisons of left- and right-wing news satire suggest a high degree of structural similarity. In contrast, qualitative content-based analyses suggest clear political biases which differentiate the satire from these sources. In this study, we compare left- and right-wing American news satire across different structural and content-based features using a combination of quantitative, computational, and qualitative approaches. Our results mirror those of prior studies, indicating similarities in terms of structure but not content. These results further speak to the importance of taking conservative satire seriously, as well as to the necessity of a multi-pronged approach when studying the complex nature of satirical discourse.
Read More: “Satire, Honey and Tears: How The Onion and The Babylon Bee Do Satire”
