Facetious
Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are considered to have a "sense of humour."
The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which stated that a mix of fluids known as humours (Greek: χυμός, chymos, literally juice or sap; metaphorically, flavour) controlled human health and emotion.
(This theory has since been found to be counterfactual.)
A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, although the extent to which an individual will find something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, intelligence, and context. For example, young children may possibly favour slapstick, such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons (e.g., Tom and Jerry).
Satire may rely more on understanding the target of the humour, and thus tends to appeal to more mature audiences. However, both "humour" and "comic" are often used when theorizing about the subject.
The connotation of "humour" is more that of response, while "comic" refers more to stimulus. "Humour" also originally had a connotation of a combined ridiculousness and wit in one individual, the paradigm case being Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff.
The French were slow to adopt the term "humour," and in French, "humeur" and "humour" are still two different words, the former still referring only to the archaic concept of humours.
Western humour theory begins with Plato, who attributed to Socrates (as a semihistorical dialogue character) in the Philebus (p. 34–35), suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour.
In ancient Sanskrit drama, Bharata Muni's Natya Shastra defined humour (hāsyam) as one of the eight nava rasas, or principle rasas (emotional responses), which can be inspired in the audience by bhavas, the imitations of emotions that the actors perform.
They viewed comedy as simply the "art of reprehension" and made no reference to light and cheerful events or troublous beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. Henri Bergson attempted to perfect incongruity by reducing it to the "living" and "mechanical."
An incongruity like Bergson's, in things juxtaposed simultaneously, is still in vogue.
This is often debated against theories of the shifts in perspectives in humour; hence, the debate in the series Humor Research between John Morreall and Robert Latta. Morreall presented mostly simultaneous juxtapositions, with Latta countering that it requires a "cognitive shift" created by a discovery or solution to a puzzle or problem. This view has been defended by Latta (1998) and by Brian Boyd (2004). Boyd views the shift as from seriousness to play.
Nearly anything can be the object of this perspective twist; it is, however, in the areas of human creativity (science and art being the varieties) that the shift results from "structure mapping" (termed "bisociation" by Koestler) to create novel meanings. Arthur Koestler argues that humour results when two different frames of reference are set up and a collision is engineered between them.
Tony Veal, who is taking a more formalised computational approach than Koestler did, has written on the role of metaphor and metonymy in humour, using inspiration from Koestler as well as from Dedre Gentner's theory of structure-mapping, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of conceptual metaphor, and Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier's theory of conceptual blending.
Some claim that humour cannot or should not be explained. Both a social etiquette and a certain intelligence can be displayed through forms of wit and sarcasm.
Effectively, it explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter." The theory further identifies the importance of pattern recognition in human evolution: "An ability to recognize patterns instantly and unconsciously has proved a fundamental weapon in the cognitive arsenal of human beings. The humorous reward has encouraged the development of such faculties, leading to the unique perceptual and intellectual abilities of our species."
Humour formulae
A comic that derives its humour by a character behaving in an unusual way
Humor can be verbal, visual, or physical.
Root components:
appealing to feelings or to emotions.
similar to reality, but not real.
some surprise/misdirection, contradiction, ambiguity, or paradox.
Methods:
hyperbole
metaphor
reductio ad absurdum or farce
reframing
timing
Rowan Atkinson explains in his lecture in the documentary "Funny Business" that an object or a person can become funny in three different ways.
They are:
By behaving in an unusual way
By being in an unusual place
By being the wrong size
Most sight gags fit into one or more of these categories.
Humour is also sometimes described as an ingredient in spiritual life. Some synonyms of funny or humour are hilarious, knee-slapping, spiritual, wise-minded, outgoing, and amusing.