Update!
Today’s update is on the three main theories that have emerged from philosophy, psychology and linguistics to explain humor (Berger; Meyer; Morreall; Raskin):
Relief and
You can read up on each of them.
A Theoretical Argument
These theories are generally used to try to explain humor, and theorists, philosophers, psychologists and critics of every stripe have argued for centuries about the supremacy of one theory over another. Incongruity is currently winning, as superiority and relief have fallen out of vogue. I don’t spend a lot of time on these, 1) because you can find longer descriptions elsewhere, and 2) because a lot of the finer points don’t relate well to stand up. Further, I refer to the “my theory is better than your theory” arguments as a quagmire that misses the point, which for me is: What do people think they are trying to accomplish when they make and consume humor?
Modes
I treat these theories as “modes,” or “a way or manner in which something occurs or is experienced, expressed, or done” When I’m reading people talk about stand-up, whether it be writing tips, reviews, or critiques, I see moments when people say things that sound very much like one of these modes.
What I try to do in my critiques is try to point out or highlight these moments, because I argue they have implications for what the humor is thought to do. I find that these theories are not abandoned by normal people when other models come onto the scene, but rather each new model comes to be understood through these older theories, creating permutations. This makes these modes central to understanding how humor is used, so here we go!
References:
Berger, Arthur Asa. “Humor: An Introduction.” American Behavioral Scientist 30.1 (1987): 6-15
Meyer, John C. “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication.” Communication Theory 10.3 (2000): 310-331.
Morreall, J. “Philosophy of Humor”Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/#RelThe, 2016.
Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Boston, MA: D. Reidel. 1985.
Wilson, Nathan. Was That Supposed to be Funny? A Rhetorical Analysis of Politics, Problems and Contradictions in Contemporary Stand-Up Comedy. Dissertation in partial completion of the Ph.D. August, 2008.
