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Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor, self-aware humor, or meta humor, is a type of
comedic expression that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is
self-referential
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philoso ...
in some way, intentionally
alluding to the very person who is expressing the
humor in a comedic fashion, or to some specific aspect of that same comedic expression. Self-referential humor expressed discreetly and
surrealistically is a form of
bathos
Bathos ( ;''Oxford English Dictionary'', 1st ed. "bathos, ''n.'' Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1885. grc-gre, , "depth") is a literary term, first used in this sense in Alexander Pope's 1727 essay " Peri Bathous", to describe an ...
. In general, self-referential humor often uses
hypocrisy,
oxymoron, or
paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...
to create a contradictory or otherwise absurd situation that is humorous to the audience.
History
Old Comedy
Old Comedy (''archaia'') is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with the ...
of Classical Athens is held to be the first—in the extant sources—form of self-referential comedy.
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his for ...
, whose plays form the only remaining fragments of Old Comedy, used fantastical plots, grotesque and inhuman masks and status reversals of characters to slander prominent politicians and court his audience's approval.
Self-referential humor was popularized by
Douglas Hofstadter who wrote several books on the subject of self-reference, the term ''
meta'' has come to be used, particularly in art, to refer to something that is self-referential.
Classification
Meta-jokes
Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor, self-aware humor, or meta humor, is a type of comedic expression that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is self-referential in some way, int ...
are a popular form of humor. They contain several somewhat different, but related categories: ''joke templates'', ''self-referential jokes'', and ''jokes about jokes'' (meta-humour).
Joke template
This form of meta-joke is a
sarcastic jab at the endless refitting of joke forms (often by professional comedians) to different circumstances or characters without a significant innovation in the humor.
Self-referential jokes
Self-referential
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philoso ...
jokes must refer to themselves rather than to larger classes of previous jokes.
Jokes about jokes ("meta-humor")
''Meta-humour'' is humour about humour. Here ''meta'' is used to describe that the joke explicitly talks about other jokes, a usage similar to the words
metadata (data about data),
metatheatrics
A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes c ...
(a play within a play, as in ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
''), and
metafiction.
Other examples
Alternate punchlines
Another kind of meta-humour makes fun of poor jokes by replacing a familiar punchline with a serious or nonsensical alternative. Such jokes expose the fundamental criterion for joke definition, "funniness", via its deletion. Comedians such as
George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of countercu ...
and
Mitch Hedberg
Mitchell Lee Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 30, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian known for his surreal humor and deadpan delivery. His comedy typically featured short, sometimes one-line jokes mixed with absurd elements and non se ...
used metahumour of this sort extensively in their routines.
Anti-humor
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 so ...
is a type of indirect and
alternative comedy that involves the joke-teller delivering something that is intentionally not funny, or lacking in intrinsic meaning. The humor of such jokes is based on the
surprise factor
The surprise factor is a technique used in storytelling to produce a visceral reaction from the audience. It is created by telling a story in a way which creates a certain perception of events which is then revealed to be false often in exact oppo ...
of absence of an expected
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...
or of a
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 ...
in a narration that is set up as a joke.
[ Warren A. Shibles]
Humor Reference Guide: A Comprehensive Classification and Analysis
(Hardcover) 1998 It depends upon reference to the audience's expectations on what a joke is.
Breaking the fourth wall
Self-referential humor is at times combined with breaking the
fourth wall
The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...
to make explicit reference directly to the audience or to make self-reference to an element of the medium the characters should not be aware of.
Class-referential jokes
This form of meta-joke contains a familiar class of
joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...
s as part of the joke.
''Bar'' jokes
Comedian jokes
The process of being a humorist is also the subject of meta-jokes; for example, on an episode of ''
QI'',
Jimmy Carr
James Anthony Patrick Carr (born 15 September 1972) is a British-Irish comedian, presenter, writer, and actor. He is known for his deadpan delivery of controversial one-liners and distinctive laugh, for which he has been both praised and criti ...
made the comment, "When I told them I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed. Well, they're not laughing now!"— a joke previously associated with
Bob Monkhouse
Robert Alan Monkhouse (1 June 1928 – 29 December 2003) was an English comedian, writer and actor. He was the host of television game shows including ''The Golden Shot'', '' Celebrity Squares'', '' Family Fortunes'' and '' ''Wipeout'.
Ear ...
.
Limericks
A
limerick
Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2016 ...
referring to the anti-humor of limericks:
W. S. Gilbert wrote one of the definitive "anti-limericks":
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and politi ...
's anti-limerick from ''
Travesties
''Travesties'' is a 1974 play by Tom Stoppard. The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing '' Ulysses'' ...
'':
Metaparody
Metaparody
Metaparody is a form of humor or literary technique consisting "parodying the parody of the original", sometimes to the degree that the viewer is unclear as to which subtext
Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced expl ...
is a form of humor or
literary technique consisting "parodying the
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...
of the original", sometimes to the degree that the viewer is unclear as to which
subtext
Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced explicitly (by characters or author), but is implicit, or becomes something understood by the audience. Subtext has been used historically to imply controversial subjects without ...
is genuine and which subtext parodic.
RAS Syndrome
RAS syndrome
RAS syndrome (where "RAS" stands for "redundant acronym syndrome", making the phrase "RAS syndrome" homological) is the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym (or other initialism) in conjunction with the abbreviated f ...
refers to the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
or initialism with the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating one or more words. However, "RAS" stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome; therefore, the full phrase yields "Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome" and is self-referencing in a comical manner. It also reflects an excessive use of
TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms).
Examples
Hedberg
Stand-up comedian
Mitch Hedberg
Mitchell Lee Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 30, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian known for his surreal humor and deadpan delivery. His comedy typically featured short, sometimes one-line jokes mixed with absurd elements and non se ...
would often follow up a joke with an admission that it was poorly told, or insist to the audience that "that joke was funnier than you acted."
Rehnquist
Marc Galanter
Marc Galanter is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Previously he was the John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and LSE Centennial Professor at t ...
in the introduction to his book ''Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture'' cites a meta-joke in a speech of
Chief Justice William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from ...
:
I've often started off with a lawyer joke Lawyer jokes, which pre-date Shakespeare's era, are commonly told by those outside the profession as an expression of contempt, scorn and derision. They serve as a form of social commentary or satire reflecting the cultural perception of lawyers. ...
, a complete caricature of a lawyer who's been nasty, greedy, and unethical. But I've stopped that practice. I gradually realized that the lawyers in the audience didn't think the jokes were funny and the non-lawyers didn't know they were jokes.
See also
*
Indirect self-reference
Indirect self-reference describes an object referring to itself ''indirectly''.
For example, define the function f such that f(x) = x(x). Any function passed as an argument to f is invoked with itself as an argument, and thus in any use of that a ...
*
In-joke
*
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>Hal ...
*
Irony
*
Dadaism
Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
*
*
*
*
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References
{{Reflist
Humour
Self-reference
Jokes