interpretationâthe one influenced by her weightâis that she thinks four slices means fewer calories. The other interpretation, the right one, is that strokes of the knife have nothing to do with calories or the amount of cake.
Pretty tedious, huh? After such an analysis, itâs clear why dissecting humor is often likened to analyzing a spiderâs web in terms of geometry. It loses its grace.
I apologize for breaking down such a bland joke, and I promise not to do it again. But itâs important to recognize that joke construction is complicated. To compare contrasting meanings, we need a scientific way to characterize all the false assumptions involved in the joke. We need a way to measure distances between intended and unintended meanings to get an idea how funny a joke can be. And, perhaps most importantly, we need to understand why people laugh at some incongruitiesâsuch as a woman thinking four large slices of fruitcake are healthier than eight small onesâwhen much bigger incongruitiesâsuch as a woman walking into a diner and ordering an entire fruitcakeâare seemingly ignored. To do that, we need to understand scripts.
After graduating from the University of California with a PhD in psychology, I initially worked as a postdoctoral researcher with computer scientist and neurologist James Reggia. I was excited to work with Reggia because he was interested in nearly everything. He studied not only hemispheric laterality (my own specialty) but also language and memory. He specialized in artificial intelligence and chaotic swarming, an emerging field that uses artificial life to examine large-scale problem spaces. He even taught classes on machine evolution and expert systems. In short, he was the kind of person who knew something aboutnearly everything. So, when we first met in a restaurant in Columbia, Maryland, his first words to me were a surprise.
âIâm looking forward to working with you. Iâve never worked with a boxologist before.â
Though I had no idea what he meant, when he explained I not only understood but agreed with Reggiaâs characterization, and weâve become close friends. Reggia meant that we psychologists, by nature, love drawing boxes. We take complex cognitive and social phenomena, and to understand them we break components into processes and surround them with boxes. We draw arrows between the boxes to show how they influence each other, and when we get especially spirited we take the boxes away to make more room, leaving only words and arrows. It can seem silly at times, but often we have no choice because what we study is complex. Which is why I would like to direct you to the joke in Figure 2.3 and let you see just how boxy our analyses can be.
Iâm guessing that, again, you didnât laugh. If you did, then you should stop reading now because I have nothing more to offer you. Now, how about if I present the joke in a format youâre more accustomed to?
F IGURE 2.3. Graphic representation of the joke starting âIs the doctor home?â Get it? Adapted from Humor, the International Journal of Humor Research. Band 15, Heft 1, Seiten 3â46, ISSN (Online) 1613â3722, ISSN (Print) 0933â1719, DOI: 10.1515/humr.2002.004, De Gruyter Berlin/Boston, January 2006.
              âIs the doctor home?â the patient asked in a bronchial whisper.
              âNo,â the doctorâs young and pretty wife whispered in reply. âCome right in.â
Though this second presentation looks starkly different from the first, the joke is the same in both cases. The first is just a graphic representation of all the jokeâs key elements, as identified by Salvatore Attardo. A linguist at Texas A&M University, Attardo is one of the most prolific humor researchers in the world. His primary contribution to the field is
Pretty tedious, huh? After such an analysis, itâs clear why dissecting humor is often likened to analyzing a spiderâs web in terms of geometry. It loses its grace.
I apologize for breaking down such a bland joke, and I promise not to do it again. But itâs important to recognize that joke construction is complicated. To compare contrasting meanings, we need a scientific way to characterize all the false assumptions involved in the joke. We need a way to measure distances between intended and unintended meanings to get an idea how funny a joke can be. And, perhaps most importantly, we need to understand why people laugh at some incongruitiesâsuch as a woman thinking four large slices of fruitcake are healthier than eight small onesâwhen much bigger incongruitiesâsuch as a woman walking into a diner and ordering an entire fruitcakeâare seemingly ignored. To do that, we need to understand scripts.
After graduating from the University of California with a PhD in psychology, I initially worked as a postdoctoral researcher with computer scientist and neurologist James Reggia. I was excited to work with Reggia because he was interested in nearly everything. He studied not only hemispheric laterality (my own specialty) but also language and memory. He specialized in artificial intelligence and chaotic swarming, an emerging field that uses artificial life to examine large-scale problem spaces. He even taught classes on machine evolution and expert systems. In short, he was the kind of person who knew something aboutnearly everything. So, when we first met in a restaurant in Columbia, Maryland, his first words to me were a surprise.
âIâm looking forward to working with you. Iâve never worked with a boxologist before.â
Though I had no idea what he meant, when he explained I not only understood but agreed with Reggiaâs characterization, and weâve become close friends. Reggia meant that we psychologists, by nature, love drawing boxes. We take complex cognitive and social phenomena, and to understand them we break components into processes and surround them with boxes. We draw arrows between the boxes to show how they influence each other, and when we get especially spirited we take the boxes away to make more room, leaving only words and arrows. It can seem silly at times, but often we have no choice because what we study is complex. Which is why I would like to direct you to the joke in Figure 2.3 and let you see just how boxy our analyses can be.
Iâm guessing that, again, you didnât laugh. If you did, then you should stop reading now because I have nothing more to offer you. Now, how about if I present the joke in a format youâre more accustomed to?
F IGURE 2.3. Graphic representation of the joke starting âIs the doctor home?â Get it? Adapted from Humor, the International Journal of Humor Research. Band 15, Heft 1, Seiten 3â46, ISSN (Online) 1613â3722, ISSN (Print) 0933â1719, DOI: 10.1515/humr.2002.004, De Gruyter Berlin/Boston, January 2006.
              âIs the doctor home?â the patient asked in a bronchial whisper.
              âNo,â the doctorâs young and pretty wife whispered in reply. âCome right in.â
Though this second presentation looks starkly different from the first, the joke is the same in both cases. The first is just a graphic representation of all the jokeâs key elements, as identified by Salvatore Attardo. A linguist at Texas A&M University, Attardo is one of the most prolific humor researchers in the world. His primary contribution to the field is
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