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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jayanthah" data-source="post: 4427961" data-attributes="member: 54616">Please participate in a vote to determine the future copyright terms of Wikimedia projects (vote ends May 3, 2009). Vote now! Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2009 are now open. Apply now!  [Hide] [Help us with translations!]  JokeFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, searchNot to be confused with The Joke."Jokes" redirects here. For the filmmaker, see Jokes Yanes.For the given name, see Joke (given name).A joke is a short story or ironic depiction of a situation communicated with the intent of being humorous. These jokes will normally have a punch line that will end the sentence to make it humorous. A joke can also be a single phrase or statement that employs sarcasm. The word joke can also be used as a slang term for a person or thing which is not taken seriously by others in general. A practical joke or prank differs from a spoken one in that the major component of the humour is physical rather than verbal (for example placing salt in the sugar bowl).Jokes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers. The desired response is generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen flat".Contents [hide]1 Antiquity of jokes 2 Psychology of jokes 3 Jokes in organizations 4 Rules 4.1 Precision 4.2 Synthesis 4.3 Rhythm 4.4 Comic 4.5 Wit 4.6 Humour 5 Cycles 6 Types of jokes 6.1 Subjects 6.2 Styles 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links  Antiquity of jokesJokes have been a part of human culture since at least 1900 BCE. A fart joke from ancient Sumer is currently believed to be the world's oldest known joke[1]A recent discovery of a document called Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) gives us an insight into ancient humour. Written in Greek by Hierocles and Philagrius, it dates to the third or fourth century AD, and contains some 260 jokes. Considering humour from our own culture as recent as the 19th century is at times baffling to us today, the humour is surprisingly familiar. They had different Stereotypes, the Absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath were favourites. A lot of the jokes play on the idea of knowing who you are:a barber, a bald man and an absent minded professor take a journey together. They have to camp overnight, so decide to take turns watching the luggage. When it's the barber's turn, he gets bored, so amuses himself by shaving the head of the professor. When the professor is woken up for his shift, he feels his head, and says "How stupid is that barber? He's woken up the bald man instead of me.Another joke goes: "A man tells a well-known wit: "I had your wife, without paying a penny". The husband replies: "It's my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?"There is even a version of Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch: a man buys a slave, who dies shortly afterwards. When he complains to the slave merchant, he is told: "He didn't die when I owned him." Comic Jim Bowen has presented them to a modern audience. "One or two of them are jokes I've seen in people's acts nowadays, slightly updated. They put in a motor car instead of a chariot - some of them are Tommy Cooper-esque."[2]Psychology of jokesWhy we laugh has been the subject of serious academic study, examples being:Immanuel Kant, in Critique of Judgement (1790) states that "Laughter is an effect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing." Here is Kant's 218-year old joke and his analysis: "An Englishman at an Indian's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale being opened, and all the beer, turned to froth, rushed out. The Indian, by repeated exclamations, showed his great amazement. - Well, what's so amazing in that? asked the Englishman. - Oh, but I'm not amazed at its coming out, replied the Indian, but how you managed to get it all in. - This makes us laugh, and it gives us a hearty pleasure. This is not because, say, we think we are smarter than this ignorant man, nor are we laughing at anything else here that it is our liking and that we noticed through our understanding. It is rather that we had a tense expectation that suddenly vanished..."Henri Bergson, in his book Le rire (Laughter, 1901), suggests that laughter evolved to make social life possible for human beings. Sigmund Freud's "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious". (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten). Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation (1964), analyses humour and compares it to other creative activities, such as literature and science. Marvin Minsky in Society of Mind (1986). Marvin Minsky suggests that laughter has a specific function related to the human brain. In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms for the brain to learn nonsense. For that reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as funny when you hear them repeatedly. Edward de Bono in "The Mechanism of the Mind" (1969) and "I am Right, You are Wrong" (1990). Edward de Bono suggests that the mind is a pattern-matching machine, and that it works by recognizing stories and behaviour and putting them into familiar patterns. When a familiar connection is disrupted and an alternative unexpected new link is made in the brain via a different route than expected, then laughter occurs as the new connection is made. This theory explains a lot about jokes. For example: Why jokes are only funny the first time they are told: once they are told the pattern is already there, so there can be no new connections, and so no laughter. Why jokes have an elaborate and often repetitive set up: The repetition establishes the familiar pattern in the brain. A common method used in jokes is to tell almost the same story twice and then deliver the punch line the third time the story is told. The first two tellings of the story evoke a familiar pattern in the brain, thus priming the brain for the punch line. Why jokes often rely on stereotypes: the use of a stereotype links to familiar expected behaviour, thus saving time in the set-up. Why jokes are variants on well-known stories (e.g. the genie and a lamp and a man walks into a bar): This again saves time in the set up and establishes a familiar pattern. In 2002, Richard Wiseman conducted a study intended to discover the world's funniest joke [1]. Humour and Jokes have also been concluded to be logic that is completely random or vice versa.[citation needed] Laughter, the intended human reaction to jokes, is healthy in moderation, uses the stomach muscles, and releases endorphins, natural "feel good" chemicals, into the brain.Jokes in organizationsJokes can be employed by workers as a way to identify with their jobs. For example, 9-1-1 operators often crack jokes about incongruous, threatening, or tragic situations they deal with on a daily basis.[3] This use of humor and cracking jokes helps employees differentiate themselves from the people they serve while also assisting them in identifying with their jobs.[4] In addition to employees, managers use joking, or jocularity, in strategic ways. Some managers attempt to suppress joking and humor use because they feel it relates to lower production, while others have attempted to manufacture joking through pranks, pajama or dress down days, and specific committees that are designed to increase fun in the workplace.[5]RulesThe rules of humour are analogous to those of poetry. These common rules are mainly timing, precision, synthesis, and rhythm. French philosopher Henri Bergson has said in an essay: "In every wit there is something of a poet."[6] In this essay Bergson views the essence of humour as the encrustation of the mechanical upon the living. He used as an instance a book by an English humorist, in which an elderly woman who desired a reputation as a philanthropist provided "homes within easy hail of her mansion for the conversion of atheists who have been specially manufactured for her, so to speak, and for a number of honest folk who have been made into drunkards so that she may cure them of their failing, etc." This idea seems funny because a genuine impulse of charity as a living, vital impulse has become encrusted by a mechanical conception of how it should manifest itself.PrecisionTo reach precision, the comedian must choose the words in order to provide a vivid, in-focus image, and to avoid being generic as to confuse the audience, and provide no laughter. To properly arrange the words in the sentence is also crucial to get precision. An example by Woody Allen (from Side Effects, "A Giant Step for Mankind" story [2]):“ Grasping the mouse firmly by the tail, I snapped it like a small whip, and the morsel of cheese came loose. ” SynthesisThat a joke is best when it expresses the maximum level of humour with a minimal number of words, is today considered one of the key technical elements of a joke.[citation needed] An example from Woody Allen:“ I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. ” Though, the familiarity of the pattern of "brevity" has led to numerous examples of jokes where the very length is itself the pattern breaking "punchline".[citation needed] Numerous examples from Monty Python exist, for instance, the song "I Like Traffic Lights", and more modernly, Family Guy contains numerous such examples, most notably, in the episode Wasted Talent, Peter Griffin bangs his shin, a classic slapstick routine, and tenderly nurses it whilst inhaling and exhaling to quiet the pain. This goes on for considerably longer than expected.[vague] Certain versions of the popular vaudevillian joke The Aristocrats can go on for several minutes, and it is considered an anti-joke, as the humour is more in the set-up than the punchline.[vague]RhythmMain articles: Timing (linguistics) and Comic timingThe joke's content (meaning) is not what provokes the laugh, it just makes the salience of the joke and provokes a smile. What makes us laugh is the joke mechanism. Milton Berle demonstrated this with a classic theatre experiment in the 1950s: if during a series of jokes you insert phrases that are not jokes, but with the same rhythm, the audience laughs anyway. A classic is the ternary rhythm, with three beats: Introduction, premise, antithesis (with the antithesis being the punch line).In regards to the Milton Berle experiment, they can be taken to demonstrate the concept of "breaking context" or "breaking the pattern". It is not necessarily the rhythm that caused the audience to laugh, but the disparity between the expectation of a "joke" and being instead given a non-sequitur "normal phrase." This normal phrase is, itself, unexpected, and a type of punchline.ComicIn the comic field plays the 'economy of ideative expenditure'; in other words excessive energy is wasted or action-essential energy is saved. The profound meaning of a comic gag or a comic joke is "I'm a child"; the comic deals with the clumsy body of the child.Laurel and Hardy are a classic example. An individual laughs because he recognizes the child that is in himself. In clowns stumbling is a childish tempo. In the comic, the visual gags may be translated into a joke. For example in Side Effects (By Destiny Denied story) by Woody Allen:“ "My father used to wear loafers," she confessed. "Both on the same foot". ” The typical comic technique is the disproportion.WitIn the wit field plays the "economy of censorship expenditure"[7](Freud literally calls it "the economy of psychic expenditure".); usually censorship prevents some 'dangerous ideas' from reaching the conscious mind, or helps us avoid saying everything that comes to mind; adversely, the wit circumvents the censorship and brings up those ideas. Different wit techniques allow one to express them in a funny way. The profound meaning behind a wit joke is "I have dangerous ideas". An example from Woody Allen:“ I contemplated suicide again - this time by inhaling next to an insurance salesman. ” Or, when a bagpipe player was asked "How do you play that thing?" his answer was:“ Well. ” Wit is a branch of rhetoric, and there are about 200 techniques (technically they are called tropes, a particular kind of figure of speech) that can be used to make jokes.[8]Irony can be seen as belonging to this field.HumourIn the comedy field, humour induces an "economized expenditure of emotion" (Freud literally calls it "economy of affect" or "economy of sympathy". Freud produced this final part of his interpretation many years later, in a paper later supplemented to the book.).[7][9] In other words, the joke erases an emotion that should be felt about an event, making us insensitive to it.e.g: "yo momma" jokes. The profound meaning of the void feeling of a humour joke is "I'm a cynic". An example from Woody Allen:“ Three times I've been mistaken for Robert Redford. Each time by a blind person. ” This field of jokes is still a grey area, being mostly unexplored. Extensive use of this kind of humour can be found in the work of British satirist Chris Morris, like the sketches of the Jam television program.Black humour and sarcasm belong to this field.CyclesFolklorists, in particular (but not exclusively) those who study the folklore of the United States, collect jokes into joke cycles. A cycle is a collection of jokes with a particular theme or a particular "script". (That is, it is a literature cycle.)[10] Folklorists have identified several such cycles:the elephant joke cycle that began in 1962 the Helen Keller Joke Cycle that comprises jokes about Helen Keller[11] Viola jokes[12] the NASA, Challenger, or Space Shuttle Joke Cycle that comprises jokes relating to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster[13][14][15] the Chernobyl Joke Cycle that comprises jokes relating to the Chernobyl disaster[16] the Polish Pope Joke Cycle that comprises jokes relating to Pope John Paul II[17] the Essex girl and the Stupid Irish joke cycles in the United Kingdom[18] the Dead Baby Joke Cycle[19] the Dingo Joke Cycle that comprises jokes relating to the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance the Newfie Joke Cycle that comprises jokes made by Canadians about Newfoundlanders[20] the Little Willie Joke Cycle, and the Quadriplegic Joke Cycle[21] the Jew Joke Cycle and the Polack Joke Cycle[22] the Rastus and Liza Joke Cycle, which Dundes describes as "the most vicious and widespread white anti-Negro joke cycle"[23] the Jewish American Princess and Jewish American Mother joke cycles[24] the Wind-Up Doll Joke Cycle[25] Chuck Norris facts Tom Swifties In Soviet Russia... Aggie jokes honor Texas A&M University and its students' lack of intelligence.[26][27][28][29] Gruner discusses several "sick joke" cycles that occurred upon events surrounding Gary Hart, Natalie Wood, Vic Morrow, Jim Bakker, Richard Pryor, and Michael Jackson, noting how several jokes were recycled from one cycle to the next. For example: A joke about Vic Morrow ("We now know that Vic Morrow had dandruff: they found his head and shoulders in the bushes") was subsequently recycled about Admiral Mountbatten after his murder by Irish Republican terrorists in 1980, and again applied to the crew of the Challenger space shuttle ("How do we know that Christa McAuliffe had dandruff? They found her head and shoulders on the beach.").[30]Berger asserts that "whenever there is a popular joke cycle, there generally is some widespread kind of social and cultural anxiety, lingering below the surface, that the joke cycle helps people deal with".[31]Types of jokesJokes often depend on the humour of the unexpected, the mildly taboo (which can include the distasteful or socially improper), or playing off stereotypes and other cultural beliefs. Many jokes fit into more than one category.SubjectsPolitical jokes are usually a form of satire. They generally concern politicians and heads of state, but may also cover the absurdities of a country's political situation. A prominent example of political jokes would be political cartoons. Two large categories of this type of jokes exist. The first one makes fun of a negative attitude to political opponents or to politicians in general. The second one makes fun of political clichés, mottoes, catch phrases or simply blunders of politicians. Some, especially the "you have two cows" genre, derive humour from comparing different political systems.Professional humour includes caricatured portrayals of certain professions such as lawyers, and in-jokes told by professionals to each other.Mathematical jokes are a form of in-joke, generally designed to be understandable only by insiders.Ethnic jokes exploit ethnic stereotypes. They are often racist and frequently considered offensive.For example, the British tell jokes starting "An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman..." which exploit the supposed parsimony of the Scot, stupidity of the Irish or rigid conventionality of the English. Such jokes exist among numerous peoples.Racially offensive humour is often considered unacceptable, but similar jokes based on other stereotypes (such as blonde jokes) are often considered acceptable.Religious jokes fall into several categories:Jokes based on stereotypes associated with people of religion (e.g. nun jokes, priest jokes, or rabbi jokes) Jokes on classical religious subjects: crucifixion, Adam and Eve, St. Peter at The Gates, etc. Jokes that collide different religious denominations: "A rabbi, a medicine man, and a pastor went fishing..." Letters and addresses to God. Self-deprecating or self-effacing humour is superficially similar to racial and stereotype jokes, but involves the targets laughing at themselves. It is said to maintain a sense of perspective and to be powerful in defusing confrontations. Probably the best-known and most common example is Jewish humour. The egalitarian tradition was strong among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in which the powerful were often mocked subtly. Prominent members of the community were kidded during social gatherings, part a good-natured tradition of humour as a levelling device. A similar situation exists in the Scandinavian "Ole and Lena" joke.Self-deprecating humour has also been used by politicians, who recognize its ability to acknowledge controversial issues and steal the punch of criticism - for example, when Abraham Lincoln was accused of being two-faced he replied, "If I had two faces, do you think this is the one I’d be wearing?".Dirty jokes are based on taboo, often sexual, content or vocabulary.Other taboos are challenged by sick jokes and gallows humour; to joke about disability is considered in this group.</blockquote>

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