MODELING THE STRUCTURE OF HUMOR

I first began seriously studying humor after I read Elton Trueblood’s book, The Humor of Jesus. Trueblood was the first person I read who highlighted the joking and teasing in the words of Jesus. (Later I found more of Jesus’ humor in the writings of J.B. Philiips and C.S. Lewis.) But to see and experience the humor in Jesus I discovered that I first had to take off my “serious” glasses. It was funny how the lens I was using as my worldview set me up to interpret things as I did. And for me, as I suspect for lots of others, “seriousness,” “being professional,” and other such beliefs or meta-states blinded me from the humor that was there.

Some years after I learned the NLP model, I made a study of humor. That’s when I first read the theoretical and research works on humor and learned about the leading theories of humor. The four big theories at the time where the 1) Relief theory, 2) Superiority theory, 3) Incongruence theory, and 4) Surprise theory.

Relief Theory was Freud’s view, the idea that humor was a catharsis of energy, biological and emotional energy. Here humor is viewed in terms of the venting of pent up energies and feelings—kind of like a burp or the other ways the body can relieve itself. Even though I don’t think this theory is accurate at all, I always liked the term, “Relief Theory” as a theory of humor—at lest it is itself humorous. As with most things, Freud mostly thought of humor as a sick part of human nature—aggressive, ugly, sarcastic, making fun of people, etc.

Superiority Theory originated with Plato who thought that laughter was an evil and folly. This theory views humor exclusively in terms of laughing at people for their weaknesses and inferiority, deriding and mocking them. While this theory does explain how humor can degenerate into something malicious and harmful, it fails to see the bright side of humor.

Incongruity Theory says we laugh and find things humorous which mismatch and do not fit. When ideas, expectations, beliefs, feelings, etc. do not match, humor is the perceived mis-match. This fits the classic theory of Aristotle about humor. “Humor is that which is out of place in time and space, without danger.” This theory explains how exaggerations, distortions, and weirdness contributes to creating humor.

Surprise Expectations Theory is like a mental tickle and so creates a joy or delight in us. It delights us, that is, if there is no danger. If you are safe, then it’s funny. If you are not safe, it is not funny, but threatening. The Surprise theory speaks about humor in terms of the surprise you experience when you expect one thing and then realize that something else happened. It is this theory that explains the humor of tickling, why you can’t tickle yourself, and of the importance of timing in humor.

Now my first writing on humor was in early 1992 (2 ½ years before the discovery of the Meta-States Model). I wrote an issue of Metamorphosis with the title of, “Humor as an Enhancing Resource.” In that issue, I attempted to identify the structure of humor but a I re-read it today, I see that I missed it by a long-shot. True enough, I was able to identify many of the key components: incongruity, safety, surprise, joy, relief, quick shifts, etc. But without the Meta-States model all I could attempt to do in structuring it was to identify the representational steps. “First see two incongruous images, or hear a play on words, then say to yourself X ...”

The problem is that the experience of humor involves meta-levels or meta-states (Meta Reflection #39). In the experience of humor, we have a sense of transcendence as we step back and recognize an incongruity, a paradox, an exaggeration, a silliness, a playfulness, and so on. It is in the stepping back, gaining perspective, and enjoying the experience that we create within ourselves the sense of humor. So in “humor” we rise above ourselves. In humor we gain a perspective that we do not have and that we often lose when we get seriously involved in an engagement.

This corresponds to a newer theory of humor—The Semantic Theory. This theory is a script-based semantics theory from linguistics which puts the emphasis on the context. In this theory, something becomes “funny” when we understand a context and then recognize exaggeration of it, a juxtaposition of incongruity with it, a playfulness of words inside it, etc. “Context” in this theory is the same as “frame” in Neuro-Semantics.

What this means is that to understand a joke or why something is considered funny, we have to know the context as the frame of reference. That’s why in order to create a joke, we first have to set the stage for it by setting up a context that unfolds—words, ideas, metaphors, suggestions, premises, etc. that set up a context. Once we have the context set, we can then violate that context. We violate it by shifting to another stage, exaggerating, playing with words, combining a different category, and so on. The result is humor—a state of humor.

This theory suggests that every word of a sentence evokes or creates a script or context. The joke or funny point occurs when we suddenly shift from one context to another, from one frame to another. The switch is the “punchline.”

“Is the doctor in?” the patient asked in his bronchial whisper. “No,” the doctor’s young and pretty wife whispered in reply. “Come right in.”

This joke involves the overlap of two distinct scripts. There is the “Doctor” script and the “Lover” script. Which is it? The ambiguity of the two possible scripts set up the possibility. It is when the listener searches for a solution, to find out what the person means. When the second script is chosen, then the meaning is that a young pretty woman is inviting a man into the house while her husband is away.

Two very young children ask their grandmother, “Grandma, where do babies come from?” “Well, you were brought here by a stork one night,” she says. The children exchange a look, and the girl asks her brother, “Should we tell her?” “Nah,” the boy says, “Let the old fool die in peace.”

This sudden shift from one frame to another explains why “timing” is so important in the telling of jokes. You have to set a person up to expect one thing . . . one line of thinking, one direction for the brain to go, and then you have to pull the rug of meaning out from under the person by highlighting another frame that was there in possibility at all along. And if the context interpersonally and relationally is “safe,” if there is rapport and understanding, then humor happens.

W.C. Fields was once asked, “Mr. Fields, do you believe in clubs for children?” He answered, “Only when kindness fails.”

Here the shift is with a pun on the word “club.” What script shall we use to understand the term? The script about social communities or the script about weapons?

“Mr. Fields, don’t you like children?” “Yes, when they are well-done.”

So what is the structure of humor and jokes, and fun, and playfulness?

It is a meta-state structure of playing one contextual frame off against another and of being able to gain perspective (or awareness, insight) by stepping back and recognizing the incongruity within the ambiguous as we play, safely, with words, ideas, and meanings.

There’s more as you’ll see in the next Meta Reflection. To the unleashing of your humor and enjoyment of life!