In this Book
- Engaging Humor
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: University of Illinois Press
Exploring the structure, motives, and meanings of humor in everyday life
In Engaging Humor, Elliott Oring asks essential questions concerning humorous expression in contemporary society, examining how humor works, why it is employed, and what its messages might be. This provocative book is filled with examples of jokes and riddles that reveal humor to be a meaningful--even significant--form of expression.Oring scrutinizes classic Jewish jokes, frontier humor, racist cartoons, blonde jokes, and Internet humor. He provides alternate ways of thinking about humorous expressions by examining their contexts--not just their contents. He also shows how the incongruity and absurdity essential to the production of laughter can serve serious communicative ends.
Engaging Humor examines the thoughts that underlie jokes, the question of racist motivation in ethnic humor, and the use of humor as a commentary on social interaction. The book also explores the relationship between humor and sentimentality and the role of humor in forging national identity. Engaging Humor demonstrates that when analyzed contextually and comparatively, humorous expressions emerge as communications that are startling, intriguing, and profound.
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- pp. vii-viii
- 1. Appropriate Incongruity Redux
- pp. 1-12
- 2. The Senses of Absurd Humor
- pp. 13-26
- 3. Joke Thoughts
- pp. 27-40
- 4. The Humor of Hate
- pp. 41-57
- 7. The Joke as Gloss
- pp. 85-96
- 8. Colonizing Humor
- pp. 97-115
- 9. Sigmund Freud's Jewish Joke Book
- pp. 116-128
- 10. The Context of Internet Humor
- pp. 129-140
Additional Information
Copyright
2002