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Joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, and ends in a punch line, whereby the humorous element of the story is revealed; this can be done using a pun or other type of word play, irony or sarcasm, logical incompatibility, hyperbole, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition: It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners, the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humour—the shaggy dog story is an example of an anti-joke; although presented as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Practical Jokes
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. A person who performs a practical joke is called a "practical joker" or "prankster". Other terms for practical jokes include gag, rib, jape, or shenanigan. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks or hoaxes in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being talked into handing over money or other valuables. Practical jokes are generally lighthearted and without lasting effect; they aim to make the victim feel humbled or foolish, but not victimized or humiliated. Thus most practical jokes are affectionate gestures of humour and designed to encourage laughter. However, practical jokes performed with cruelty can constitute bullying, whose intent is to harass or exclude rather than reinforce social bonds through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punch Line
A punch line (a. k. a. punch-line or punchline) concludes a joke; it is intended to make people laugh. It is the third and final part of the typical joke structure. It follows the introductory framing of the joke and the narrative which sets up for the punch line. In a broader sense, "punch line" can also refer to the unexpected and funny conclusion of any performance, situation or story. Etymology The origin of the term is unknown. Even though the comedic formula using the classic "set-up, premise, punch line" format was well-established in Vaudeville by the beginning of the 20th century, the actual term "punch line" is first documented in the 1920s; the Merriam-Webster dictionary pegs the first use in 1921. Linguistic analysis A linguistic interpretation of the mechanics of the punch line response is posited by Victor Raskin in his script-based semantic theory of humor. Humor is evoked when a trigger, contained in the punch line, causes the audience to abruptly shift its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stand-up
Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, observations or a shtick that may incorporate props, music, magic tricks or ventriloquism. It can be performed almost anywhere, including comedy clubs, comedy festivals, bars, nightclubs, colleges or theatres. History Stand-up as a Western art form has its roots in the stump speech of American minstrel shows, which featured an actor in blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ... delivering nonsensical monologue to the audience. While the intention of stump speeches was to mock African-Americans, they also occasionally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-humor
Anti-humor is a type of indirect and alternative humor that involves the joke-teller's delivering something that is intentionally not funny, or lacking in intrinsic meaning. The practice relies on the expectation on the part of the audience of something humorous, and when this does not happen, the irony itself is of comedic value. Anti-humor is also the basis of various types of pranks and hoaxes. The humor of such jokes is based on the surprise factor of absence of an expected joke or of a punch line in a narration that is set up as a joke. This kind of anticlimax is similar to that of the shaggy dog story. Warren A. ShiblesHumor Reference Guide: A Comprehensive Classification and Analysis (Hardcover) 1998 In fact, some researchers see the "shaggy dog story" as a type of anti-joke. Anti-humor is described as a form of irony or reversal of expectations that may provoke an emotion opposite to humor, such as fear, pain, disgust, awkwardness, or discomfort. Examples The yarn, als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Humor
The history of humor on the Internet begins together with the Internet itself. Initially, the internet and its precursors, LANs and WANs, were used merely as another media to disseminate jokes and other kinds of humor, in addition to the traditional ones ("word of mouth", printed media, sound recording, radio, film, and TV).Limor Shifman"Humor in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Continuity and Change in Internet-Based Comic Texts" ''International Journal of Communication'', vol. 1, 2007, ''Quote'': " A content analysis of 400 humorous texts from eight salient humorous websites shows that the Internet functions both as a ‘carrier’ of old humor types such as jokes and cartoons and as a ‘generator’ of new humor types." In lockstep with the progress of electronic communication technologies, jokers took advantage of the ARPANET,Eric S. Raymond, ''The Art of UNIX Programming''p. 44 ''Quote'': "Software, ideas, slang, and a good deal of humor flowed over the experimental ARPANET l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riddle Joke
A riddle joke, joke riddle, pseudo-joke or conundrum is a riddle that does not expect the asked person to know the answer, but rather constitutes a set-up to the humorous punch line of the joke.Mac E. Barrick, "Racial Riddles & the Pollack Joke", ''Keystone Folklore Quarterly'', Volume 15, Issue 1, 1970p. 3-15/ref> It is one of the four major types of riddles, according to Nigel F. Barley.Nigel F. Barley, "Structural Aspects of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle", ''Semiotica'' 10 (2) (1974) There are many cycles of jokes in the form of a conundrum, such as Elephant jokes, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and lightbulb jokes. Joke cycles implying inferiority or other stereotypes of certain categories of people, such as blonde jokes, or ethnic jokes (such as Pollack joke) have a considerable amount of joke riddles. Examples * Elephant joke * Lightbulb joke * Newspaper riddle * "Why did the chicken cross the road?" * Radio Yerevan jokes Abstract riddles In areas which have historical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comic Timing
Comic timing emerges from a performer's joke delivery: they interact with an audience— intonation, rhythm, cadence, tempo, and pausing—to guide the audience's laughter, which then guides the comedic narrative. The pacing of the delivery of a joke can have a strong impact on its comedic effect, even altering its meaning; the same can also be true of more physical comedy such as slapstick. Comic timing is also crucial for comedic video editing to maximize the impact of a joke, for example, through a smash cut. History The use of comic timing can be first observed in the comic plays of the ancient Greeks. Specifically, Aristophanes indicated brief pauses in his works, such as ''The Clouds'', in order to elicit laughter from the unfolding events. William Shakespeare, along with comic playwrights before him, also utilized comic timing in much of his plays. For example, Cleopatra's strategic interjections during Mark Antony's speech in Act 1 Scene 2 of '' Antony and Cleopatra' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedians
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish (as in slapstick), or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian. A popular saying often attributed to Ed Wynn attempts to differentiate the two terms: "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny." This draws a distinction between how much of the comedy can be attributed to verbal content and how much to acting and persona. Since the 1980s, a new wave of comedy, called alternative comedy, has grown in popularity with its more offbeat and experimental style. This normally involves more experiential, or observational reporting (e.g., Alexei Sayle, Daniel Tosh, Malcolm Hardee). As far as content is concerned, comedians such as Tommy Tiernan, Des Bishop, Kevin Hart, and Dawn French draw on their background to poke fun at themselves, while others such as Jon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humour
Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (Latin: ', "body fluid"), controlled human health and emotion. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. Most people are able to experience humour—be amused, smile or laugh at something funny (such as a pun or joke)—and thus are considered to have a ''sense of humour''. The hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the behaviour to be inexplicable, strange, or even irrational. Though ultimately decided by personal taste (aesthetics), taste, the extent to which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, Maturity (psychological), maturity, level of education, inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaggy Dog Story
In its original sense, a shaggy dog story or yarn is an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax. Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience's preconceptions of joke-telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner. A lengthy shaggy dog story derives its humour from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listeners for a long time (such jokes can take five minutes or more to tell) for no reason at all, as the long-awaited resolution is essentially meaningless, with the joke as a whole playing upon humans' search for meaning. The nature of their delivery is reflected in the English idiom '' spin a yarn'', by way of analogy with the production of yarn. Archetypal story The eponymous shaggy dog story serves as the archetype of the genre. The story builds up a repeated emphasizi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laughter
Laughter is a pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can rise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered an auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness, or relief. On some occasions, however, it may be caused by contrary emotional states such as embarrassment, surprise, or confusion such as nervous laughter or courtesy laugh. Age, gender, education, language, and culture are all indicators as to whether a person will experience laughter in a given situation. Some other species of primate (chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) show laughter-like vocalizations in response to physical contact such as wrestling, play chasing or tickling. Laughter is a part of human behavior regulat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toilet Humour
Toilet humour, or potty or scatological humour (compare scatology), is a type of off-colour humour dealing with defecation, diarrhea, constipation, urination and flatulence, and to a lesser extent vomiting and other bodily functions. It sees substantial crossover with sexual humour, such as dick jokes. Toilet humour is commonly an interest of children and young teenagers, for whom cultural taboos related to acknowledgement of waste excretion still have a degree of novelty. The humour comes from the rejection of such taboos, and is a part of modern culture. Music Toilet humour is sometimes found in song and rhyme, particularly schoolboy songs. Examples of this are found in Mozart and scatology, and variants of the German folk schoolboys' song known as the ''Scheiße-Lied'' (English: "Shit-Song") which is indexed in the German ''Volksliederarchiv''. A children's Spanish musical duo, Enrique y Ana, made a song called "Caca Culo Pedo Pis", which literally translates to "Poop Butt Fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
