The Importance of Not Being Earnest – The Feeling behind Laughter and Humor

Abstract

The thesis of this book is that neither laughter nor humor can be understood apart from the feeling that underlies them. This feeling is a mental state in which people exclude some situation from their knowledge of how the world really is, thereby inhibiting seriousness where seriousness would be counterproductive. Laughter is viewed as an expression of this feeling, and humor as a set of devices designed to trigger it because it is so pleasant and distracting. Beginning with phonetic analyses of laughter, the book examines ways in which the feeling behind the laughter is elicited by both humorous and nonhumorous situations. It discusses properties of this feeling that justify its inclusion in the repertoire of human emotions. Against this background it illustrates the creation of humor in several folklore genres and across several cultures. Finally, it reconciles this understanding with various already familiar ways of explaining humor and laughter. The feeling behind laughter and humor Table of Contents Preface xi – xii Symbols Used in Transcribing Laughter xiii Introduction 1 – 13 Part One: How we laugh The essential ingredients of laughter 17 – 23 Varieties of laughter 25 – 40 Laughing while speaking 41 – 49 Beyond the vocal tract 51 – 58 Part Two: Why we laugh The feeling of nonseriousness 61 – 71 Nonseriousness without humor 73 – 87 Unplanned humor 89 – 97 Planned humor in oral traditions 99 – 116 Planned humor in writing 117 – 125 Humor in other cultures 127 – 134 Part Three: Pulling things together Recapitulation 137 – 138 Reconciliation with other studies 139 – 155 Coda 157 – 158 References 159 – 164 Index