De Gruyter Handbook Of Humor Studies

The De Gruyter Handbook of Humor Studies consolidates the cumulative contributions in theory and research on humor from 57 international scholars representing 21 different countries in the widest possible diversity of disciplines. It organizes research in a unique conceptual framework addressing two broad themes: the Essence of Humor and the Functions of Humor. Furthermore, scholars of humor have recognized that humor is not only a universal human experience, it is also inherently social, shared among people and woven into the fabric of nearly every type of interpersonal relationship. Scholars across all academic disciplines have addressed questions about the essence and functions of humor at different "levels of analysis" relating to how narrowly or broadly they conceptualize the social context of humor. Accordingly, the editors have organized each broad thematic section into four subsections defined by "level of analysis." The book first addresses questions about individual psychological processes and text properties, then moves to questions involving broader conceptualizations of the social context addressing humor and social relations, and humor and culture. By providing a comprehensive review of foundational work as well as new research and theoretical advancements across academic disciplines, the De Gruyter Handbook of Humor Studies will serve as the foremost authoritative research handbook for experienced humor scholars as well as an essential starting point for newcomers to the field, such as graduate students seeking to conduct their own research on humor. Further, by highlighting the interdisciplinary interest of new and emerging areas of research the book identifies and defines directions for future research for scholars from every discipline that contributes to our understanding of humor.

This book attempts to discuss selected but thorny issues of humor research that form the major stumbling blocks as well as challenges in humor studies at large and thus merit insightful discussion. Any discourse is action, so the text-creation process is always set in a non-verbal context, built of a social and communicative situation, and against the background of relevant culture. On the other hand, humor scholars claim that humorous discourse has its special, essential features that distinguish it from other discourses. The pragmatic solution to the issue of potential circularity of humor defined in terms of discourse and discourse in terms of humor seems only feasible, and thus there is a need to discuss the structure and mechanisms of humorous texts and humorous performances. The chapters in the present volume, contributed by leading scholars in the field of humor studies, address the issues from various theoretical perspectives, from contextual semantics through General Theory of Verbal Humor, cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, sociolinguistics, to Ontological Semantic Theory of Humor, providing an excellent overview of the field to novices and experts alike.

To what extent can Cognitive Linguistics benefit from the systematic study of a creative phenomenon like humor? Although the authors in this volume approach this question from different perspectives, they share the profound belief that humorous data may provide a unique insight into the complex interplay of quantitative and qualitative aspects of meaning construction.

The book provides a definitive view of the field of humor research for both beginning and established scholars in a variety of fields who are developing an interest in humor and need to familiarize themselves with the available body of knowledge. Each chapter of the book is devoted to an important aspect of humor research or to a disciplinary approach to the field, and each is written by the leading expert or emerging scholar in that area.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor presents the first ever comprehensive, in-depth treatment of all the sub-fields of the linguistics of humor, broadly conceived as the intersection of the study of language and humor. The reader will find a thorough historical, terminological, and theoretical introduction to the field, as well as detailed treatments of the various approaches to language and humor. Deliberately comprehensive and wide-ranging, the handbook includes chapter-long treatments on the traditional topics covered by language and humor (e.g., teasing, laughter, irony, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, the major linguistic theories of humor, translation) but also cutting-edge treatments of internet humor, cognitive linguistics, relevance theoretic, and corpus-assisted models of language and humor. Some chapters, such as the variationist sociolinguistcs, stylistics, and politeness are the first-ever syntheses of that particular subfield. Clusters of related chapters, such as conversation analysis, discourse analysis and corpus-assisted analysis allow multiple perspectives on complex trans-disciplinary phenomena. This handbook is an indispensable reference work for all researchers interested in the interplay of language and humor, within linguistics, broadly conceived, but also in neighboring disciplines such as literary studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. The authors are among the most distinguished scholars in their fields.

About a decade ago we edited The Psychology of Humor. Besides the summary chapter and bibliography of about 400 items, the book contained eleven original papers that represented the state of knowledge at that time. We confess that it was not easy to fill that volume with first-rate contributions. In a few instances we invited contributors only on the basis of having heard through the grapevine that they were doing interesting work on humor. Our sources proved reliable and we were pleased with the results. We even made new friends as a result of these blind invitations. But the fact remains that in the early 1970s there was only a handful of social scientists studying humor and laughter. The history of humor research prior to the 1970s can also be characterized in terms of the short-term commitment to investigating humor among those who did venture out and try their hand at designing humor studies. For reasons that remain unclear, many investigators published only one or two humor studies before abandoning the area in favor of some other research domain. We have the impression that for decades social scientists have been very intrigued by the idea of studying humor. Psychologists have suspected for a long time that humor somehow is very important in the lives of people. We find laughter and humor occurring almost wherever we find people engaged in social interaction.

This is an updated edition of Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke, published in 2006. Using a combination of interview materials, survey data, and historical materials, it explores the relationship between humor and gender, age, social class, and national differences in the Netherlands and the United States. This edition includes new developments and research findings in the field of humor studies.