National Styles of Humor, Book by Avner Ziv
Introduction
Humor and laughter make life more bearable, sometimes even enjoyable. L. Weiss "Philosophie et vie" ( 1951)
Humor and the physiological response to it, laughter, are universal. As Rabelais is quoted in the article on French humor: "Laughter is what characterizes man." While laughter, the main response to humor, can be defined, measured and described, humor itself is an elusive concept. As with many psychological concepts, precise definitions are impossible. If you are asked to think about and name someone who has humor and someone who doesn't, you can do it easily. But when you try to define humor, it becomes much more difficult. For a scholarly example about the difficulties inherent in definitions, one can read the article in which Robert Miles tried to define the concept definition. He arrived at twelve perfectly valid definitions of the term ( 1957).
If concepts in humanities are not easy to define, theories proposing to explain them are even more difficult. However, this did not stop some of the most brilliant philosophers from proposing theories of humor. Their work is fascinating but never completely satisfying. George Mikes, the British humorist, expressed it rather nicely. Talking about philosophers' efforts to create theories, he wrote: "The philosopher is like a good athlete on the double bar; his movements are beautiful; his skill is breath--taking; his achievement admirable. But when he jumps off, he is where he was before he started: he had achieved nothing, he had progressed nowhere. . . . There is not one single statement--however simple, innocuous and self-evident--onwhich philosophers agree" ( Mikes, 1971, P. 19).
Theories on humor have a long history. Since Plato and Aristotle, philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hobbes, writers such as Baudelaire and George Eliot, and even humorists such as Leacock and Mikes have proposed theories to explain why people laugh. Diligent people have summarized and presented these theories in learned books ( Greig, 1923; Piddington, 1933; Bergler, 1956; Keith-Spiegel, 1972). There are more than a hundred such theories, some of course following the classicacademic dictum on innovative research: "Give old phenomena new names."
In full awareness of the danger, I shall nonetheless define humor, knowing perfectly well that not all will agree with the proposed definition. The definition is necessary in order to make the reader aware of what we, the writers of this book, mean by humor and the physiological phenomena most frequently accompanying it: laughter and smiling.
Introduction
Humor and laughter make life more bearable, sometimes even enjoyable. L. Weiss "Philosophie et vie" ( 1951)
Humor and the physiological response to it, laughter, are universal. As Rabelais is quoted in the article on French humor: "Laughter is what characterizes man." While laughter, the main response to humor, can be defined, measured and described, humor itself is an elusive concept. As with many psychological concepts, precise definitions are impossible. If you are asked to think about and name someone who has humor and someone who doesn't, you can do it easily. But when you try to define humor, it becomes much more difficult. For a scholarly example about the difficulties inherent in definitions, one can read the article in which Robert Miles tried to define the concept definition. He arrived at twelve perfectly valid definitions of the term ( 1957).
If concepts in humanities are not easy to define, theories proposing to explain them are even more difficult. However, this did not stop some of the most brilliant philosophers from proposing theories of humor. Their work is fascinating but never completely satisfying. George Mikes, the British humorist, expressed it rather nicely. Talking about philosophers' efforts to create theories, he wrote: "The philosopher is like a good athlete on the double bar; his movements are beautiful; his skill is breath--taking; his achievement admirable. But when he jumps off, he is where he was before he started: he had achieved nothing, he had progressed nowhere. . . . There is not one single statement--however simple, innocuous and self-evident--onwhich philosophers agree" ( Mikes, 1971, P. 19).
Theories on humor have a long history. Since Plato and Aristotle, philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hobbes, writers such as Baudelaire and George Eliot, and even humorists such as Leacock and Mikes have proposed theories to explain why people laugh. Diligent people have summarized and presented these theories in learned books ( Greig, 1923; Piddington, 1933; Bergler, 1956; Keith-Spiegel, 1972). There are more than a hundred such theories, some of course following the classicacademic dictum on innovative research: "Give old phenomena new names."
In full awareness of the danger, I shall nonetheless define humor, knowing perfectly well that not all will agree with the proposed definition. The definition is necessary in order to make the reader aware of what we, the writers of this book, mean by humor and the physiological phenomena most frequently accompanying it: laughter and smiling.
