My problem with a number of different theories is that they assume certain elements of intentionality, which I’ve discussed before as assuming the comic’s only goal is to create humor. Here, the assumption is that the comic wants to create humor in specific ways, and that there are a finite number of them. It’s the audience’s job to “get the joke.” This form of intentionality often has (at least) four sub-assumptions:
- That the comic wrote the joke a particular way, so
- The audience has to “get it” in exactly that way to laugh; thus,
- When they laugh, they are always laughing in the way the comic wanted, and
- We know what that intention was/is.
These are the assumptions of bona fide persuasion. Victor Raskin mentions the idea of bona fide communication early in his discussion of Script Theory, and says he rejects it, but the traces are still there. These assumptions are based on the Classical Greek persuasive model of the syllogism and its equivalent, the enthymeme, and the concept of verbal irony [I’ll have more to say on this soon].
Syllogisms & Enthymemes
Aristotle proposed a way of breaking down an argument into three component parts:
Major premise – Usually known, overarching truths, or we might say, “common sense” or scripts- Minor premise – Particular truths about the situation or object discussed
- Conclusion – The logical result of the two premises
So the classical example (of a categorical, one type of syllogism) is:
- All men are mortal
- Socrates is a man
- Thus Socrates is mortal
If we accept that all men are mortal, and that Socrates is a man, then we must conclude that he is mortal.
The enthymeme can either be a syllogism where one or more premise is not necessarily true, but only probable (e.g. All men are mortal, and Socrates is probably a man, therefore…), or it can be a truncated syllogism, where one piece is missing (e.g. Socrates is a man and therefore mortal [–because we know, “All men are…”]).
Truncated enthymemes are thought to be more persuasive because the audience must do the leg work; they supply the missing piece, making the argument work for them (or fail to), and thus, in a sense, they convince themselves.
Political Potential
The problem, as I’ve argued elsewhere, is that if we allow that audience’s convince themselves, then they have a lot of the power in the exchange. They have the freedom to “get” things the author didn’t intend – in short, to supplement the text – and to “not get,” miss, or overlook things the author did.
Especially when jokes are complex – we could use big words like polysemic (having multiple possible meanings) and polyvalent (having multiple possible ways of evaluating them) – we might never be able to pin down which part–if any–of those the author intended the audience “got.” Their laughter gives us no clue, as it seems uniform, and thus comics and critics assume everybody “got” the same thing. But they might not have; see my discussion of Victor Raskin’s Script Theory for just two examples.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Aristotle, The Rhetoric
Ceccarelli, Leah. “Polysemy: Multiple Meanings in Rhetorical Criticism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 395-415.
Fiske, John. Television Culture. New York: Routledge, 1987.
Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Boston: 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.
