This study constitutes the first systematic investigation of the Mutual Vulnerability Theory (MVT) of laughter, through an exploratory examination of audience responses in Trevor Noah’s 2013 stand-up comedy segment “It Makes No Sense”. While classical humour theories— incongruity (triggering laughter through resolution of cognitive contradictions), superiority (eliciting laughter via perceived dominance over others’ misfortunes), and relief (producing laughter as tension release from repressed emotions)—have dominated scholarly discourse for centuries, the MVT presents a paradigm that conceptualises laughter as a communicative mechanism for negotiating social status hierarchies through the recognition and articulation of shared human vulnerabilities. The investigation examines three primary objectives: to evaluate the MVT’s explanatory capacity in accounting for observable laughter patterns within this specific comedic context; to assess the theoretical coherence and analytical utility of its vulnerability taxonomy; and to identify conceptual limitations requiring theoretical refinement. Employing systematic video analysis methodology, all 57 instances of audience laughter were documented and categorised according to MVT principles, with each episode analysed for antecedent vulnerability references across the framework’s four domains—physical, emotional, cognitive, and social areas. The empirical findings demonstrate that every documented laughter instance was preceded by the identification of at least one vulnerability type. This empirical examination provides supporting evidence for the MVT's explanatory capacity within this specific context while simultaneously illuminating theoretical tensions, particularly concerning the theory’s conceptualisation of vulnerability and its epistemological alignment with contemporary disability studies scholarship.
This study explores the role of intertextuality in shaping humorous responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter/X. Through an analysis of a corpus of 381 English-language posts from 2020-2021 tagged with leading COVID-19 humour hashtags, 72 posts were identified as containing intertextual references. These draw from diverse domains, including religion, culture, cinema, television shows, songs, popular icons, literature, sports, and history, to frame the pandemic through relatable narratives. By intertwining these varied elements, the posts present individual perspectives and reveal broader societal attitudes and concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Posters employ these references to entertain, express anxiety, critique authority, and foster solidarity. Parody, in particular, through imitation and exaggeration of the intertextual elements, comments on pandemic-related experiences. The findings reveal that intertextual humour functioned not only as entertainment but also as a means of cultural reflection during a time of global crisis.
This study explores how age influences the perception and appreciation of humour, particularly in cartoon formats aimed at children and adults. Although humour has been extensively studied through various theoretical lenses-such as incongruity, superiority, and relief theories-its developmental aspects remain underexplored. To address this, the study examines cartoons created by the same illustrators for two Turkish magazines: Penguen (targeted at adults) and Süper Penguen (targeted at children). A total of 264 cartoons were analysed based on three dimensions: the humour mechanism identified, the character representations, and thematic elements. In addition, a survey involving 20 participants (10 adults and 10 children) was conducted to evaluate perceived funniness and target audience accuracy. Findings indicate that incongruity-based humour dominates in both magazines, and animal characters are more prevalent in children’s cartoons. Notably, 48% of adults and only 34% of children correctly identified child-targeted cartoons, while some children’s cartoons received the highest funniness ratings from adults. These results challenge assumptions about “childish” humour and suggest that age is not a reliable predictor of humour appreciation. We argue that cartoons operate within a visual and symbolic language that transcends age when freed from content-based biases. By examining both textual elements and audience reception, this study contributes to humour research by demonstrating how shared cultural codes and cognitive development intersect in comedic perception across generations. At the same time, the study should be regarded as exploratory, given the small and homogeneous sample size, and its findings interpreted as indicative trends rather than generalisable results. Nevertheless, by comparing cartoons created by the same illustrators for different audiences, the study offers a novel contribution. These insights also connect to current debates on the social and educational functions of humour, underlining its potential to transcend generational boundaries.
The central question of this study is to examine whether the appreciation of dark humour depends more on the participants' Need For Humour (NFH) than on their gender. Dark humour jokes were selected on various topics (i.e., death, disease, victim suffering, alteration of body integrity) to be evaluated by men and women in terms of their understanding, funniness, the willingness to share them on social media platforms and the emotions they evoked (i.e., amusement and disgust). These participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire usually used to score their need for humour (i.e., high versus low in NFH). The main results show that participants' need for humour (rather than their gender) determines their appreciation of dark humour and their willingness to share this type of content on social media platforms. These results deepen the understanding of inter-individual differences in the appreciation of dark humour, emphasizing the importance of the need for humour over that one related to gender differences. Another contribution of this study relies on highlighting the value of comparing personal and interpersonal measures when considering the appreciation of dark humour. In addition, the emotional response to dark humour also shed light on the appreciation process in its interpersonal aspect (i.e., sharing dark humour contents on social media platforms). Overall, the findings underscore the need to go beyond gender as an explanatory factor, emphasizing that individual’s traits such as NFH better account for variations in dark humour appreciation.
Given that happiness is a pervasive social norm in Denmark and prompted by Alenka Zupančič’s assertion that “the happiness imperative” is “hostile to the comic spirit,” this study explores humorous and satirical manifestations of this norm in three Danish television series. Drawing on socio-historic perspectives on the happiness norm in Denmark, and on management theories concerning the use of humour and irony in work contexts, the analysis demonstrates how the three series portray the darker aspects of this social norm. This is achieved by satirising the incompetence of leaders and administrators within three of the country’s largest institutions: health, culture, and politics. The satire is consistently presented from the viewpoint of an outsider, a foreigner whose presence disrupts the Danes’ typically relaxed work culture, thereby generating a series of humorous scenarios often imbued with self-irony. The nature and function of this satire, which varies across the series, will be examined through the theoretical lenses of Zupančič’s psychoanalytic approach, Dieter Declercq’s view of satire as a form of mental therapy, and Carl Fox’s argument for satire as a form of political action. The relationship between Danish society and its prevalent forms of satire is encapsulated in the ‘campfire’ metaphor. This metaphor illustrates an inward-looking, ‘we-we’ national mentality, where irony and self-irony serve as common and safe mechanisms for conforming to the Danish happiness imperative.
This study examines the use of humour on Ghanaian social media through a multimodal lens, focusing on how content creators use different modes such as verbal and multimodal (images, memes, and cartoons) modes to engage the audience. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar framework as well Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour, the analysis explores how humour is constructed and understood within the context of Ghanaian cultural and linguistic diversity. English dominates as the primary language of humorous posts, though code-switching, Pidgin and local languages are also employed. The study identified four different modes used for humour presentation - verbal, photographs, cartoons and memes with the verbal overshadowing the others. In addition, the study identified a generous employment of exaggeration, irony, metaphor and sarcasm use by humourists. The findings highlight how social media humour reflects societal norms, fosters engagement, and serves as a tool for social commentary and cultural expression.
In Arabic language, a distinction is often made between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, fuṣḥā (formal language) and ʿāmmiyya (colloquial Arabic), and literary language and vernacular expressions. In this article, we reassess these frames to critically analyse the use of linguistic hybridity in Colloquial Jordanian Arabic (CJA), which mixes formal and vernacular Arabic expressions, and sometimes English loanwords, as a decolonial linguistic strategy, particularly in Jordanian satirical writing and culture-specific expressions. We argue that such a usage critiques both the concept of diglossia and dominant linguistic practices related to standard discourse or elite language. By focusing on Ahmad Hassan Al-Zou’bi as a significant case study in Jordanian satirical writing, we have found that CJA has challenged hegemonic frames of diglossia and marginalisation of local Jordanian colloquial expressions. It has echoed a ‘decolonial turn’ that has transformed Jordanian satirical writing into a site for denaturalising cultural knowledge production outside the colonial gaze and language power relations.
This paper examines the production of dark humour using the incongruity theory of humour. The study differentiates between two parallel but continuously interacting realms of human life: private and collective, where dark humour is created. In this paper, ‘private’ focuses on the protagonist’s experiences of conflict in the personal realm, whereas ‘collective’ refers to the social problems and issues affecting the wider community. Narratives set in conflict zones; dark humour can function as a mediating bridge between the alienated individual and the society. To illustrate this, this study looks at the novel, The Dance of the Deep-Blue Scorpion (2008) by the Palestinian writer Akram Musallam. The novel, written in a multilayered narration, explores Palestinian lives in conflict. This analysis reveals the making and employing of dark humour by using the incongruous elements which are inherent in human life.
As concern for student well-being grows, this research strived to investigate a cost-effective, engaging method to alleviate stress while enhancing mental health. Although peer-reviewed research on Laughter Yoga is limited, findings suggest benefits including stress reduction, improved mental well-being, and positive physiological effects. This study evaluated the effects of 14 online Laughter Yoga sessions (curated YouTube videos, maximum of one a day) on perceived stress, happiness, and mindfulness among university students. The participants (n = 75) followed sessions led by certified Laughter Yoga instructors: 31 students completed them in 2–3 weeks, while 44 took more than 3 weeks. Data was acquired from the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) both before and after the intervention. Paired samples t-tests revealed significant improvements across all measures, no matter how long was taken to watch all 14. Participants reported lower PSS scores and greater happiness and mindfulness post-intervention. Correlational analyses suggested that stress reductions were strongly associated with increased happiness and mindfulness. This study is one of the first to provide evidence for the utility of Laughter Yoga as an online, individual and low-cost intervention in post-secondary settings and suggests it could be integrated in future student wellness programmes.
Podcasts have become one of the most visible forms of online media, with especially rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their accessibility and interactive features—particularly on YouTube, where audiences engage through comments and messages—make humorous podcasts a valuable site for examining contemporary humorous communication. This article analyses two popular Lithuanian comic podcasts launched in 2020, Vėl tie patys and Dar tos čia, from the perspective of folklore studies, humour theory, and communication studies. The study addresses the question of whether humorous podcasts can be considered a new folklore genre or rather a digital performance environment in which humorous folklore is transformed and circulated. The qualitative analysis focuses on dominant topics, targets of ridicule, humour functions (entertainment, leadership, didactic framing, psycho-hygienic relief, and communication), and interactional dynamics between hosts and audiences. The findings show that both podcasts draw on traditional humorous folklore patterns, including stereotyping, self-mockery, and “us–them” oppositions, while adapting them to podcast-specific dynamics such as improvisational conversational formats, rapid responses to current social issues, and mediated audience participation. Gendered differences are also evident: the male-hosted podcast relies more heavily on taboo themes, swearing, and aggressive humour, whereas the female-hosted podcast demonstrates greater linguistic restraint and value-oriented reflection. The article concludes that humorous podcasts should not be treated as folklore in a strict sense, but function as a powerful contemporary medium for producing and transmitting humorous folklore in Lithuanian society.
This article explores the use of comedic strategies in Ousmane Sembene’s early cinema as a form of heterodox Marxist resistance to authoritarian and neocolonial power. Focusing on the relatively understudied Borom Sarret (1963) and Niaye (1964), alongside Mandabi (1968), we draw on concepts such as Bakhtin’s “grotesque realism” (1984)—understood as a “physiological” mode of comedy grounded in the disruption and inversion of symbolic order, power, and gender hierarchies—to offer the first systematic analysis of Sembene’s early films within the framework of humour studies. We argue that Sembene’s first comic strategies echo three traditions: Soviet dialectical montage, Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect), and the satirical mode of African theatre (Koteba). Through a plurality of benign, derisive, and dark humour strategies, Sembene functions as a gadfly, mobilising laughter as both an affective and cognitive force that exposes incongruity, conflict, and injustice while affirming popular vitality. His cinematic “grotesque realism”—directed at elites but also rooted in the comic-dramatic tensions and open contradictions of people’s everyday life—reveals the transformative and decolonial potential of humour as a comedic praxis, one that is irreducible to pre-established ideological certainties such as the dichotomies of good people versus evil elites, tradition versus progress, or entertainment cinema versus serious revolutionary cinema.
This article deals with representing the Holocaust through a humorous lens. After discussing the pros and the cons of using humour in different works since the 1990s to represent such a tragedy as the Holocaust, in the second section, we will present the author that our case study focuses on, Cătălin Mihuleac, and his novel Deborah. The other sections attempt to answer three main research questions: How does Mihuleac use humour in Deborah to depict the tragedy of the Jews in Romania, particularly the deportation to Transnistria? How can humour theories be applied to analyse this novel? What insights does this novel provide regarding Holocaust-themed humour in literature? The third section explains what happened in Romania during the Holocaust and why its memory is still difficult at present, since many Romanians refuse to understand that their nation was involved in such atrocious crimes. The fourth section is a synthesis of the humour theories that we will engage with. The last section brings examples of how Mihuleac approaches the various theories of humour and what kind of effects it has on the readers. We will eventually ask whether this way of narrating the story is efficient or not.
Humour studies in Nigeria have focused predominantly on stand-up comedy and situation comedy. Little attention has been devoted to humour in skit comedy, especially Nigerian prank comedy skits (NPCS). Therefore, this paper examines the construction of humour in NPCS, focusing on Zfancy (Ubani Zion Chibuike), Kun Zlim (Jimoh Wasiu Olawale), MC Makopolo (Mbam Uche Henry) and Teaser Prank (Emmanuel Okeke), with a view to determining the pragmatic features of their jokes and the societal issues foregrounded. Thus, Jacob Mey’s Pragmatic Acts Theory, in addition to Superiority Theory, was adopted for analysis. Data were collected from prank videos of the selected prank comedians on their YouTube channels. This study found that Nigerian prank comedians create humour for their audience through their targets’ reactions. Prank comedians trick their targets in their conversations to act on false belief and react in amusing ways. They deploy the pragmatic acts of threatening, requesting and implicating, in crime-related jokes; warning, in religious jokes; investigating, in linguistic/educational jokes; and inviting, in sexual jokes. The targets’ reactions to these practs create humour for the audience who are aware that the targets’ reactions are based on misconception. Noticeably, crime, religion, education and sexuality are the social themes highlighted in the jokes. The study corroborates the assertion of earlier studies that humour revolves around societal issues.
The trope of the stupid, and/or disingenuous, media ‘interviewer’ character invented and performed by comedians, from This is Spinal Tap, to Ali G, to Parks and Recreation, has been enormously popular. It also serves a more serious social commentary-satirical role, in ‘setting up,’ humiliating or generally undermining dominant social norms and ‘establishment’ experts. Employing both harmless self-deprecation and biting political mockery, these characters have been examined as major cultural influences who produce significant cultural artefacts. Using linguistic theories of humour studies, this paper analyses the Cunk persona, who, while ostensibly naïve and harmless, satirising and transgressing class-based establishment norms-targets, is actually a safe brand of humour which reflects and reproduces the very establishment it seeks to satirise in a class-based, racially privileged and safe adventure into British elitism and the status quo.
The research aims to identify the specificity of encoding German humour in real time based on the principles of cross-cultural and psycholinguistic analyses. The study employed the directed association test method, revealing peculiarities in the associations to the stimulus Deutscher Humor and structuring the reactions to it. The first group included 73 native speakers of different age groups from various regions of Germany. In comparison, the second group consisted of 94 non-native speakers, specifically students aged 20–34 from the Foreign Philology faculty of one of the universities in Ukraine. Typical and individual reactions to the stimulus were outlined with the aim of modelling elements of the paradigm of the humorous target linguo-culture, its comic product, and cultural code. Based on the quantitative analysis of associations at different language levels, productive semantic zones were identified that highlight the specificity of comprehending the conceptual component of the stimulus based on the interaction of linguistic, cultural, and psychic phenomena. The analysis of associative fields contributed to the formation of macro centres of stereotypical perceptions, mental representations, and linguistic thesauri. Idiomatic expressions with the component deutsch triggered both typical and individual reactions, as well as zero reactions. The identified reactions confirmed the practicality of conducting the word association test, which prompted respondents from both groups to engage psychomental mechanisms in perceiving the world to elicit associative reactions and immerse in active and passive vocabularies, and certified their speech competence and expertise.
This article examines how Greek satirists who produce and present television and online satirical newscasts legitimise their work at the intersection of journalism, humour and political advocacy. Focusing on programmes that mimic the format and aesthetics of newscasts, it situates their self-understandings within Greece’s Polarised Pluralist media system, shaped by prolonged crisis, low institutional trust and contested media freedom. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with six presenters, the study analyses their meta-discourse and self-positioning regarding genre definitions, professional identity, motivations and perceived roles in the public sphere, with a focus on producers’ self-understandings. Findings show that participants embrace a strongly critical, often Juvenalian style that they frame as morally warranted by perceived corruption and media capture. While rejecting the professional label of journalist, they portray their shows as both complementing and, at times, substituting for mainstream news, emphasising routines of verification, documentation and evidential display. They define objectivity in terms of method rather than neutrality, and describe their work as advocacy on behalf of “ordinary people,” while remaining sceptical about their capacity to change political behaviour. Importantly, they also describe pressures and costs associated with sustained critique addressed to political and media power, including professional precarity and reputational attacks. Overall, the study highlights the democratic potential, and the ambivalences, of satirical newscasts in a polarised media environment marked by distrust.
In an era of growing political disaffection, humour has become a powerful tool in the populist communication arsenal. This article argues that, particularly in democratic contexts marked by declining trust in institutions, populist politicians increasingly employ humour not merely to entertain, but to mobilise disengaged voters. Unlike traditional politicians who used jokes as rhetorical flourishes, a new wave of leaders — many with backgrounds in entertainment and comedy — have made humour central to their political personas. Drawing on the performative theory of populism provided by Moffitt and Tormey (2014), this article categorises comedic populists as politicians who embrace the disruptive elements of the populist performance. The article demonstrates the appeal of humour by examining the case study of Donald Trump who has utilised humour to build emotional connections, attack opponents, and dominate media narratives. It demonstrates that humour serves not only to express discontent but to create group identity and reinforce outsider status. However, the effectiveness of political comedy appears to diminish once these figures assume office, as the demands of governance clash with the disruptive ethos of comedic performance. Through a detailed case analysis of Trump’s utilisation of humour, this article explores humour’s evolving role in political communication and its implications for democratic engagement in the post-2008 political landscape.
One thing that any language provides for the speakers of every nation and society is humour. Humour and jokes are amongst the unique characteristics and features of any nation and its language. The type of jokes considering structure and content differ from one society to another. Also, even within one society, jokes differ from one era to another. Jokes in Persian have seen great changes since the past to present day and these changes have been both in structure and content. In this study, Persian jokes have been investigated from the very first cases of about a thousand years ago to the very present ones, considering their structural and conceptual features. As a result, Persian jokes were categorized into three generations: first generation (the old-fashioned stories), second generation (the patterns), and third generation (the new version). In the end, it was observed that jokes in Persian have gone through the right path over the passage of time.
Laughter has been extensively studied by Darwin (1890). Van Hooff (1972; 1989) traced the phylogeny of smiling and laughter to non-human primate "grin-face" and "play face", which signals non-serious attacks. Human cognition evolved beyond primate "play", with human laughter expanding to a wider range of social contexts (Gervais and Wilson 2005). Henceforth, smiling/laughter has been considered an expression of joy at varying intensities. The universality of this expression was studied by Ekman et al. (1982; 1990), identifying two universal kinds of smiles/laughs: felt (Duchenne) and fake (non-Duchenne)-the latter appearing in uncomfortable situations. Ekman and Friesen's (1976, 1978) Facial Action Coding System distinguishes 44 action units, with AU6 and AU12 being the Duchenne smile Preliminary observations noting signs of discomfort such as non-Duchenne smiles, and gaze aversion (Tangney 1999), showed Tunisians exhibiting such signs when speaking in Modern coexist (Ferguson 1959), whereby code-switching may be appraised as incongruous, a source of humour for observers (Ferguson, 1959). This may elicit hearer amusement (even laughter) and speaker embarrassment for violating sociolinguistic norms (Goffman, 1956). This paper hypothesises that switching to MSA, results in embarrassment, manifesting through non-Duchenne smiles (AU12 only; Ekman, 1990), an expression associated with social discomfort, along with other embarrassment signs. This social emotion may relate to a broader negotiation of an ethno-cultural pan-Arab identity, prompting a re-evaluation of MSA pedagogy.
This research note presents preliminary findings from an exploratory study examining the pedagogical potential of stand-up comedy in the context of sex education. As a U.S.-born sex educator and stand-up comedian based in Portugal, I conducted qualitative audience surveys during comedy shows in central Texas in the summer of 2023 to explore perceptions of stand-up comedy's role in teaching about sex and sexuality. Three prevalent themes emerged: (1) Comedy as non-threatening/more palatable sex education, (2) Comedy as conversation/stimulation for discourse, and (3) Comedy as sensitive/harmful terrain.
