Morreall Notes, Chapter 2

Humor originally did not mean funniness until the end of the 17^th c, only in the 18^th c was it associated with amusing, funny, or comic.  Up to this point humor was connected to laughter and believed to be an emotion.

Morreall spends considerable time distinguishing between humor and emotions

Emotions require engagement and adaptation.  Humor requires disengagement and no adaptation.  Humor does not involve cognitive or practical engagement of beliefs, desires, and adaptive actions.

We often have a disinterested (or disengaged) attitude towards things we laugh at.

Henri Bergson: humor requires a “momentary anaesthesia of the heart.”

Another Bergson, “Who feels, cries; who thinks, laughs.”

Or Horace Walpole: “this world is comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.”

Humor does not motivate any specific actions.  When we are afraid or angry, we are ready to run or attack (fight or flight); when we are amused, we are disengaged.

Humor requires disengagement.

Laughter can break up emotional engagement.

Humor offers pleasure, and we naturally seek to repeat pleasurable feelings.

Humor is a form of play, spontaneous activity that provides disengaged amusement.

According to Aquinas, humor and play “are words and deeds in which nothing is sought beyond the soul’s pleasure.”

When joking, we do use words in a “non-bona-fide way.”  We exaggerate, use sarcasm, express one thing but mean the opposite, break rules of conversation.

Bona-fide uses of language involve locutionary (direct communication), illocutionary (indirect communication), and perlocutionary (action prompted from indirect communication) acts.  Joking stops at the locutionary act.

I was only joking—indicates a rogue use of language.

Humorous uses of language can often imitate bona-fide uses of language—assertions, warnings, or advice (often using the same words), but they are used for amusement.  But such uses (joking) take place in a special play mode.

How to tell the difference?  There is a danger of misinterpretation.  Humor always requires a signal of play (cues) that suspends the ordinary rules of communication.

Ethnologists and anthropologists suggest that laughter evolved as a play signal.  Two groups Neanderthals suddenly encountering each other in the forest—fight or flight?  Grins and laughter could be used to defuse the situation.  Facial displays in early primates.

There are conventional markers used in most forms of humor and play.  Also context is important.  Need for play signals are crucial.  Animals play aggressively.

Laughter evolved as a play signal.  Laughter is overwhelmingly a social experience.  Laughter is a social gesture that signals we are friendly and relaxed.