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Questions related from Don L. F. Nilsen
Voladamir Zelinsky started out as a comedian and satirist. As a man of the people, he even entered a dancing with the stars competition. So when Ukraine was invaded by Putin, Voladamir Zelinsky...
01 January 1970 3,620 99 View
Since the 1800s, linguistics have been using Reed-Kellogg diagramming to teach about English syntax, but in 1916 we have Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Langue vs. Parole.” In 1954 we have John Gumpers’s...
01 January 1970 1,310 20 View
Carl Jung said that there are archetypes and shadow archetypes related the end of the journey (the ruler, the magician, the sage, and the wise fool). The Ruler moves from taking responsibility for...
01 January 1970 8,269 2 View
Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere. Republicans form censorship committees and read them as a group. Democrats name their children after popular sports figures,...
01 January 1970 6,389 14 View
Old Comedy of the 6th & 5thCenturies BC often made fun of a specific person and of current political issues. Middle Comedy of the 5th& 4th Centuries BC made fun of more general themes such...
01 January 1970 3,182 3 View
Much of the humor on “America’s Got Talent,” and on “Britain’s Got Talent” is Physical Humor. So also is the humor of Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte,” France’s “Comédie Française,” “Punch and Judy”...
01 January 1970 6,766 10 View
Whenever there is a paradigm shift because of changing technology, religion, politics, culture, etc., new concepts are brought into the language. And when there are no words to talk about these...
01 January 1970 1,453 11 View
LINGUISTIC HUMOR AND LANGUAGE PLAY There are many different types of linguistic humor: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. There are Oxymorons (Civil War), Metaphors...
01 January 1970 6,202 8 View
Linguistic or conceptual body-part metaphors relate not only to Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, Knees, but also to Eyes, Ears, Mouth and Nose and other human body parts. Here are a few English...
01 January 1970 4,109 6 View
In discussing the History of English, we must consider such terms as assimilation, dissimilation, umlaut, ablaut, Grimm's Law, Verner's law, and in the case of Old English becoming Middle English...
01 January 1970 7,997 19 View
CASE GRAMMAR: A MERGER OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS Charles Fillmore’s Deep Cases are determined not by syntax, but rather by semantics. Rather than having Subject, Indirect Object and Direct Object,...
01 January 1970 4,742 15 View
01 January 1970 9,513 0 View
HUMOROUS ARCHETYPES, AND SHADOW ARCHETYPES Northrup Frye said that the Romance presents an idealized world, the black-and-white world of our desires, where good things are really good, and bad...
01 January 1970 4,115 0 View
AFRICAN-AMERICAN HUMOR The contributions of African Americans to the overall humor of the United States—and to the world—has been very significant, especially if we consider the elements of...
01 January 1970 7,984 0 View
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR AND ANIMAL PLAY Animals have their own behaviors, and their special ways of playing. Compare and contrast the behaviors and play of canines, felines, equines, primates, etc. More...
01 January 1970 9,350 0 View
HUMOR AS IT RELATES TO RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND DISCOURSE The classical rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome were concerned with the “five canons of rhetoric: 1. Invention, 2. Arrangement, 3....
01 January 1970 1,890 8 View
01 January 1970 7,940 0 View
HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND HUMOR Humor is often used to get people through tragic events, so it is no surprise that humor was used to get us through the Covid 19 pandemic. Here are a few...
01 January 1970 4,473 0 View
01 January 1970 6,540 9 View
Ambiguity AMBIGUITY PARADOX: “Everything is ambiguous; however, nothing is ambiguous.” Almost all words and sentences are ambiguous, if they are not seen or heard in the larger context. However,...
01 January 1970 339 13 View
PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND HUMOR John Morreall says that when laughter is mentioned in the Bible, it is associated with one of three things. In descending order, they are: Hostility, Foolishness,...
01 January 1970 3,072 6 View
PHYSICAL HUMOR AND PLAY Much of the humor on “America’s Got Talent,” and on “Britain’s Got Talent” is Physical Humor. So also is the humor of Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte,” France’s “Comédie...
01 January 1970 419 2 View
HUMOR IN MUSIC AND THE PERFORMING ARTS Humor in classical music has a long tradition as shown by such playful vocabulary items as the French gavotte, which like the Irish and English gigue or jig...
01 January 1970 6,694 23 View
01 January 1970 7,683 4 View
It is amazing how many ways we have of displaying and presenting various types of lexical and pragmatic information. These displays and presentations are at various levels of abstraction, detail...
01 January 1970 2,237 7 View
01 January 1970 7,983 0 View
HUMOR AND AGING In order to commemorate her 79thbirthday, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of AARP. One of the musical numbers she...
01 January 1970 959 4 View
American Slang Slang is constantly changing, and so is jargon. This is because both slang and jargon are used to determine which people can use it properly, and which people can’t. Slang is the...
01 January 1970 860 3 View
THE HISTORY OF HUMOR Old Comedy of the 6th & 5thCenturies BC often made fun of a specific person and of current political issues. Middle Comedy of the 5th& 4th Centuries BC made fun of...
01 January 1970 9,711 5 View
LEGAL ISSUES AND HUMOR The Media Law Journal (April 24, 2013) stated, “it’s not that the law clearly protects humorous speech and satire. The question is a bit vexed.” “With cases involving...
01 January 1970 4,586 4 View
THE BREAKING OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES (RULES OF POLITENESS) Here are H. P. Grice’s rules of politeness (conversational implicatures), while other social groups tend to break or flaunt these...
01 January 1970 6,609 4 View
GERONTOLOGICAL HUMOR In order to commemorate her 79thbirthday, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of AARP. One of the musical numbers she...
01 January 1970 3,598 19 View
HUMOROUS GENRES, ARCHETYPES, AND SHADOW ARCHETYPES Northrup Frye said that the Romance presents an idealized world, the black-and-white world of our desires, where good things are really good, and...
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01 January 1970 5,937 0 View
Children’s songs tend to be lively and playful, but as we grow older we try to be more serious. It’s therefore important that we rekindle our childhood sense of fun, creativity, and play. Some...
01 January 1970 5,189 4 View
01 January 1970 3,494 0 View
INTERNATIONAL HUMOR A world-wide telephone survey was conducted and the only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about possible solutions to the food shortage in the...
01 January 1970 7,425 1 View
01 January 1970 3,005 11 View
CREATIVITY AND HUMOR In his The Act of Creation (1964), Arthur Koestler suggests that there are three types of creativity: Type I: Artistic Originality: A work of art is a distortion of reality...
01 January 1970 6,915 0 View
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01 January 1970 8,371 12 View
PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMOR Many psychologists use Traits, States, and Behaviors in contrasting seriousness with playfulness. Serious people tend to engage; while playful people tend to...
01 January 1970 9,059 4 View
Solopova, O. A., Don Nilsen, and Alleen Nilsen. “The Image of Russia through Animal Metaphors: A Diachronic Case Study of American Media Discourse” Russian Journal of Linguistics 27.3 (2023), pp....
01 January 1970 8,696 0 View
01 January 1970 5,560 2 View
GALLOWS HUMOR: A VERY DARK FORM OF WORD PLAY Gallows Humor in Real Life: Sometimes gallows humor is grounded in reality. In 1883 Judge M. B. Gerry sentenced Alfred E. Packer to death for...
01 January 1970 2,817 0 View
SOCIOLOGY AND HUMOR Humor “breaks the ice” between strangers, and unites people in different hierarchical positions. It creates a sense of “shared conspiracy” as when gossiping or joking about...
01 January 1970 536 2 View
DISCOURSE HUMOR Tough language (Aristotle's Ethos) is the language of the novel. It tends to be written in a first-person (I, me, mine, we, us, our) narrative; it is subjective and informal or...
01 January 1970 8,332 4 View
01 January 1970 5,399 3 View
Accidental Humor Yogi Berra was the catcher for the New York Yankees baseball team. He said: “I want to win 100 or 105 games this year—whichever comes first.” “It’s déjà vu all over again.” “It...
01 January 1970 663 0 View
In his The Act of Creation (1964), Arthur Koestler suggests that there are three types of creativity: Type I: Artistic Originality: A work of art is a distortion of reality ranging from dada to...
01 January 1970 8,612 12 View
RADIO AND TELEVISION HUMOR In the 1950s, many people purchased TV sets just so as not to be left out of the fun of the sit-coms on television. Water pressure in New York City was influenced by...
01 January 1970 3,574 2 View
SARCASM More than 2,000 years ago, the Roman rhetorician Quintilian concluded that there three types of irony or sarcasm. These occur whenever the literal meaning of a statement does not fit with...
01 January 1970 5,652 0 View
SATIRE The word satire comes from the Latin satura meaning a dish filled with mixed fruits. This was the usual dessert tray after a banquet, and an early meaning for the word was “to be well fed”...
01 January 1970 4,482 0 View
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LAUGHTER Robert Provine says that most laughter is not a response to jokes or other formal attempts at humor. Salvatore Attardo adds that laughter may be caused by all sorts of non-humorous...
01 January 1970 2,262 4 View
01 January 1970 9,563 0 View
JOKES AND JOKING BEHAVIORS Very often jokes occur in joke cycles. Consider the following joke cycles. Acronym jokes are often found on vanity license plates or bumper stickers: 10SNE1 (tennis...
01 January 1970 3,525 5 View
01 January 1970 4,552 0 View
In his Ethnic Humor around the World, Christie Davies charts the joking targets in 28 different countries. The ones given below are the most recognizable: Americans consider Poles, Italians, and...
01 January 1970 1,051 2 View
01 January 1970 6,593 0 View
STANDUP COMEDY Standup Comedy has a long history. During the Renaissance, the royal jesters were chosen by the king, and he chose people who looked ridiculous; they had bug-eyes, and humped backs,...
01 January 1970 5,088 0 View
RELIGION AND HUMOR John Morreall says that when laughter is mentioned in the Bible, it is associated with one of three things. In descending order, they are: Hostility, Foolishness, and Joy. For...
01 January 1970 7,322 4 View
Embodiment and the V.A.R.I.E.S. Model of Language and Culture Variation Don and Alleen Nilsen are suggesting the VARIES acronym to explain how embodiment affects language variation. The VARIES...
01 January 1970 2,852 4 View
01 January 1970 1,511 2 View
MOVIE HUMOR Because they are not language-dependent, silent movies have a universal appeal that the talkies don’t have. For example, every year in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, there is a humor festival in...
01 January 1970 7,313 0 View
JEWISH HUMOR In 1978, psychologist Samuel Janus conducted a study which found that although Jews constituted only 3 percent of the U.S. population, 80 percent of the nation’s professional...
01 January 1970 7,346 2 View
01 January 1970 664 3 View
POLITICAL CARTOONS Caricatures are probably the oldest form of pictorial humor, where caricare in Latin means “to overload, or exaggerate.” The main stylistic devices here are distortion and...
01 January 1970 7,955 0 View
FIGURES OF SPEECH The MASTER TROPES include: 1. Metaphor (Seeing Something in Terms of Something Else): Using “my lover is a rose” to represent the beauty and pleasure of my lover; 2. Irony...
01 January 1970 3,328 4 View
IRISH HUMOR Like Jewish humor, Irish humor developed out of pain and tragedy that resulted in a diaspora. Irish humor like Jewish humor contains much word-play, and like Jewish humor much of Irish...
01 January 1970 2,012 0 View
01 January 1970 5,762 0 View
TELEVISION HUMOR In the 1950s, many people purchased TV sets just so as not to be left out of the fun of the sit-coms on television. Water pressure in New York City was influenced by when the...
01 January 1970 6,176 4 View
COMPARE AND CONTRAST CHILD PLAY, ADULT PLAY, AND ANIMAL PLAY! Babies play peek-a-boo, and tickle games. Children use language play, and toilet humor. But we teach children to be serious, so by the...
01 January 1970 5,170 0 View
PRAGMATICS AND HUMOR It is amazing how many ways we have of displaying and presenting various types of lexical and pragmatic information. These displays and presentations are at various levels of...
01 January 1970 8,245 0 View
SCOTTISH HUMOR The Scotch-Irish Hillbillies made stills and brewed “moonshine.” They used words like “afeared,” “damnedest,” “chaw u’ tabacker,” “hex,” “plum right” or “plum crazy.” And they’re...
01 January 1970 9,026 0 View
HUMOROUS NAMES IN J. K. ROWLING’S HARRY POTTER BOOKS In the Harry Potter books, J. K. Rowling uses new spellings and different names to establish the fact that she is taking readers to a world...
01 January 1970 4,412 0 View
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01 January 1970 4,076 1 View
PARODY In the New Yorker, Wolcott Gibbs wrote that parody is the hardest form of creative writing because the style of the subject must be reproduced in slightly enlarged form, while at the same...
01 January 1970 2,861 4 View
01 January 1970 659 4 View
LDS (MORMON) Humor This PowerPoint investigates some of the stereotypes that are prevalent in Mormon culture and Mormon humor. Patty Perfect lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she is married and...
01 January 1970 5,885 3 View
01 January 1970 4,690 0 View
Humorous English Syntax. There are two kinds of ambiguity—lexical ambiguity and syntactic ambiguity. All of the following sentences are syntactically ambiguous: Smoking grass can be...
01 January 1970 3,521 8 View
01 January 1970 7,154 3 View
HUMOROUS ENGLISH SEMANTICS “There’s glory for you!” “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory.’” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s...
01 January 1970 565 2 View
01 January 1970 5,483 0 View
HUMOROUS MORPHOLOGY In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Gryphon used the word “uglification,” and Alice asked the Gryphon what the word meant. The Gryphon was amazed that...
01 January 1970 1,588 2 View
Phonetics and Phonology: Which English Sounds Are Funny, and Why Words like “snap,” “crackle” and “pop” are funny because they are onomatopoeic. In Germany, these words become “schnap,” “Krakkle,”...
01 January 1970 8,499 4 View
01 January 1970 6,929 4 View
ONOMASTIC CREATIVITY IN THE LEMONY SNICKET BOOKS Daniel Handler’s Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events is filled with sarcasm, condescension, parody, and smart allusions. The rhetorical...
01 January 1970 193 2 View
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Pulitzer Prize Winning Political Cartoonists Lalo Alcaraz: 2021 Nick Anderson: 2005 Tony Auth: 1976 Darrin Bell: 2019 Clay Bennett: 2002 Steve Benson: 1993 Barry Blitt: 2020 Herbert Block:...
01 January 1970 7,205 0 View
01 January 1970 1,343 1 View
SPANISH-AMERICAN CONTACT HUMOR L. Dabène said that in the case of the first generation, Code Switching is often used as a remedial strategy to not knowing the correct English word. However in the...
01 January 1970 2,641 0 View
01 January 1970 5,197 3 View
PARADOX This PowerPoint begins with the Ambiguity Paradox: Everything is ambiguous; however, nothing is ambiguous.” Perhaps all words and sentences are ambiguous, if they are not seen or heard in...
01 January 1970 9,826 2 View
Metaphors We Live By George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner suggest that literary metaphors and linguistic metaphors are not the same. In many ways they are opposite of each other....
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REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS This PowerPoint discusses phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic differences in New England, the South, the South West, California (Valley-Girl, and...
01 January 1970 1,873 0 View
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HUMOR AND PHILOSOPHY There are many philosophical conundrums in American culture: Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing? Why does "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same...
01 January 1970 1,269 0 View
01 January 1970 370 1 View
Humorous English Spelling Our English alphabet has only 26 letters to represent 45 different sounds. And some of our letters (like C, Q, H, and X) aren’t very useful. English has five vowel...
01 January 1970 440 6 View
01 January 1970 8,423 3 View
Archetypes, Shadow Archetypes, and Stereotypes Related to the Beginning of the Journey: Northrup Frye says that the Romance presents an idealized world, the black-and-white world of our desires,...
01 January 1970 9,425 2 View
Archetypes Related to the Journey: The Seeker, The Creator, The Destroyer, and The Lover Archetypes Related to the Journey include the Artful Dodger, the Billionaire, the Bourgeois Gentilhomme,...
01 January 1970 8,752 0 View
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NATIVE AMERICAN HUMOR In Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Smoke Signals), James Many Horses signs his letters as “James Many Horses III.” He’s the only James Many...
01 January 1970 6,538 0 View
01 January 1970 2,270 0 View
Humorous Archetypes, Shadow Archetypes, and Stereotypes Related to the End of the Journey: The Sage, The Ruler, The Magician, and the Wise Fool Carl Jung said that there are archetypes and shadow...
01 January 1970 1,461 0 View
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English Animal Metaphors Linguistic or conceptual animal metaphors in English and other languages fall into three categories: 1. Domestic (Cats, Chickens, Cows, Dogs, Donkeys, Goats, Horses, Mice,...
01 January 1970 8,692 2 View
Compare and Contrast Body-Part Metaphors in English and Other Languages Linguistic or conceptual body-part metaphors relate not only to Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, but also to Eyes, Ears,...
01 January 1970 3,602 5 View
“Irony and Paradox” Linguistic irony is based on language, and requires both a sender and a receiver, while situational irony requires only an observer with a clever mind, as when Lily Tomlin buys...
01 January 1970 4,200 0 View
OPTICAL ILLUSIONS Psychologists know that we see as much with our brains as we do with our eyes. That’s why psychologists are interested in Rorschach Tests, and they’re also interested in Optical...
01 January 1970 8,361 1 View
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Clothing Metaphors in English and in Other Languages There are many linguistic or conceptual clothing metaphors in English. The outskirts and skirting an issue are marginal. “Girdle” relates to...
01 January 1970 5,362 4 View
Discuss Comparison- and Contrast-Metaphors in English and in Other Languages Many English prefixes and suffixes occur in antithetical pairs relating to 1. Evaluation: Eu-Dis, Bene-Mal, 2....
01 January 1970 3,443 0 View
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HUMOROUS ASPECTS OF PROTOTYPE THEORY: 11 Ways that Words Can Relate to Each Other: 1. Family Resemblance: e.g. Soccer is a “game” but so is “dice” 2. Better Example e.g. “robin” vs. “penguin”...
01 January 1970 3,531 0 View
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Here are some linguistic or conceptual metaphors based on the number seven: 7 (lucky number): Agent 007 (James Bond), heptagon, heptathalon, in seventh Heaven, September, Septagenarians,...
01 January 1970 8,656 0 View
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Compare and Contrast Metaphors Related to Our Six Senses in English and in Other Languages: Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, and Taste Here are some examples of Conceptual Metaphors related to the...
01 January 1970 6,682 0 View
Compare and Contrast Plant and Food Metaphors in English with Those in Other Languages Here are some English proverbs based on plants and food: 1. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. 2. He...
01 January 1970 1,320 0 View
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Here is the Ambiguity Paradox: Everything is ambiguous; however, nothing is ambiguous.” Perhaps all words and sentences are ambiguous, if they are not seen or heard in the larger context. However,...
01 January 1970 9,747 0 View
“How can AI deal with Irony, Paradox, and Parody?” Linguistic irony is based on language, and requires both a sender and a receiver, while situational irony requires only an observer with a clever...
01 January 1970 8,144 0 View
Physical Humor and Play Much of the humor on “America’s Got Talent,” and on “Britain’s Got Talent” is Physical Humor. So also is the humor of Italy’s Commedia dell’Arte,” France’s “Comédie...
01 January 1970 8,051 3 View
01 January 1970 7,666 5 View
Star Trek: A Study in Ethnic Diversity: In 1964, Gene Roddenberry wrote a proposal for a science-fiction series. The proposal was influenced both by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and by the...
01 January 1970 2,453 1 View
Humor in Names and Naming A great deal of linguistic humor and word play is based on the following categories of Names and -nyms. ACRONYMS: radar, unesco ANTONYMS: boy-girl, black-white APTONYMS:...
01 January 1970 7,761 2 View
TYPES OF SATIRE The word satire comes from the Latin satura meaning a dish filled with mixed fruits. This was the usual dessert tray after a banquet, and an early meaning for the word was “to be...
01 January 1970 2,497 4 View
01 January 1970 8,640 0 View
Onomastic Irony in Orson Scott Card’s ENDER’S GAME Andrew Wiggin (aka Bastard, Ender, Fart Eater, Pinbrain, Pin Prick, Scrunchface). Bernard called him “Maladroit.” (48). When Ender tells Mick...
01 January 1970 4,611 0 View
WORD-PLAY AND ART-PLAY IN POKÉMON AND IN AUGMENTED-REALITY POKÉMON GO Pokémon is a game for all ages and all genders—fathers, mothers, boys, girls, grandparents, family relatives and...
01 January 1970 6,363 0 View
Humor in Philosophy and Ethics There are many philosophical conundrums in American culture: Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing? Why does "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the...
01 January 1970 3,601 7 View
Game of Thrones: A Dialogue between Grandparents and Grandchildren By Don Nilsen In 1994, five of my graduate students in the field of linguistics asked me to teach an override course in gallows...
01 January 1970 2,358 0 View
Comics, Comix, and the Graphic Novel The original Captain Marvel was published by Fawcett Comics and outsold Superman in the 1940s. Ironically, DC Comics in the 1970s purchased the original...
01 January 1970 6,253 3 View
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Types of Parody By Don Nilsen and Alleen Nilsen, Arizona State University In his Poetics (ii.5), Aristotle said that Hegemon of Thasos (who flourished during the Peloponesian War) was the inventor...
01 January 1970 144 0 View
PRAGMATICS, HUMOR, AND TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE It is amazing how many ways we have of displaying and presenting various types of lexical and pragmatic information. These displays...
01 January 1970 8,686 0 View
Nilsen, Don L. F. and Alleen Pace Nilsen. “Conceptual Metaphors (Metaphors We Live By).” in Cambridge Encyclopedia of English as a Foreign Language, Edited by Xu Wen. Cambridge, England: Cambridge...
01 January 1970 4,581 5 View
Humor in Music and the Performing Arts Humor in classical music has a long tradition as shown by such playful vocabulary items as the French gavotte, which like the Irish and English gigue or jig...
01 January 1970 7,318 4 View
Humor in Psychology and Emotion Studies Many psychologists use Traits, States, and Behaviors in contrasting seriousness with playfulness. Serious people tend to engage; while playful people tend...
01 January 1970 2,475 3 View
We will time-travel to the time of Christ by looking at the language and culture of Afghanistan. In this PowerPoint, you will see a student’s wooden chalk board to help Afghan children learn...
01 January 1970 3,674 7 View
Humor in Literature and Poetry Romances present idealized and exaggerated worlds with plots focusing around what Joseph Campbell called “The Journey.” The journey does not have to be literal, but...
01 January 1970 6,465 11 View
GALLOWS, CRINGE, AND DARK HUMOR Gallows Humor in Real Life: Sometimes gallows humor is grounded in reality. In 1883 Judge M. B. Gerry sentenced Alfred E. Packer to death for cannibalism after a...
01 January 1970 2,240 0 View
Humor in Rhetoric, Composition, and Discourse Studies The classical rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome were concerned with the “five canons of rhetoric: 1. Invention, 2. Arrangement, 3....
01 January 1970 1,782 2 View
THREE TYPES OF CREATIVITY: ARTISTIC, SCIENTIFIC, AND COMIC In his The Act of Creation (1964), Arthur Koestler suggests that there are three types of creativity: Type I: Artistic Originality: A...
01 January 1970 1,177 2 View
01 January 1970 5,747 1 View
LITERATURE AND HUMOR Romances present idealized and exaggerated worlds with plots focusing around what Joseph Campbell called “The Journey.” The journey does not have to be literal, but it does...
01 January 1970 7,896 0 View
Humor in Medicine and Health Humor is often used to get people through tragic events, so it is no surprise that humor was used to get us through the Covid 19 pandemic. Here are a few...
01 January 1970 4,598 8 View
Humorous Aspects of Speech-Act Theory Any speech which is designed to cause action is called a “Speech Act.” The speaker wants the listener to do something. In order for a speech act to be...
01 January 1970 8,888 2 View
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Compare Metaphors Related to Life, and Death in English and in Other Languages One reason there are so many Latin and Greek words for birth, life, and death is that the Christian missionaries from...
01 January 1970 7,991 0 View
Humor in Religion John Morreall says that when laughter is mentioned in the Bible, it is associated with one of three things. In descending order, they are: Hostility, Foolishness, and Joy. For...
01 January 1970 6,595 2 View
Linguistic Humor and Language Play There are many different types of linguistic humor: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. There are Oxymorons (Civil War), Metaphors...
01 January 1970 4,035 0 View
HUMOR IN GOTHIC CATHEDRALS: Notre Dame Cathedral is on the Isle de la Cité in Paris France. At the entrance is the sculpture of a beheaded Christian martyr (St. Denis) holding his own head....
01 January 1970 7,701 2 View
Humor in Geography and International Studies A world-wide telephone survey was conducted and the only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about possible solutions to the...
01 January 1970 1,801 0 View
Don and Alleen Nilsen have prepared PowerPoints for each chapter of their Language of Humor (Cambridge University Press, 2019). If you would like to receive the PowerPoint related to any of the...
01 January 1970 948 2 View
Irony in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) Lewis Carroll was a master of parody. G. W. Langford’s poem not only preached at parents, but...
01 January 1970 8,133 6 View
The Innateness Hypothesis: Noam Chomsky Debates B. F. Skinner Noam Chomsky reviewed B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior in Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of America and convincingly...
01 January 1970 7,682 4 View
Humor in Anthropology and Ethnic Studies In his Ethnic Humor around the World, Christie Davies charts the joking targets in 28 different countries. The ones given below are the most recognizable:...
01 January 1970 9,795 3 View
01 January 1970 1,384 0 View
A SOURCE-BASED APPROACH TO VOCABULARY TEACHING: HOW CAN WE DISTINGUISH BETWEEN PUNS AND METAPHORS? The basic assumptions of a source-based approach to vocabulary teaching include the following:...
01 January 1970 2,092 0 View
Humorous Names in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street The House on Mango Streetis a series of vignettes about a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. The people who live...
01 January 1970 3,058 0 View
01 January 1970 8,261 2 View
Compare and Contrast Child Play with Adult Play and Animal Play. Babies play peek-a-boo, and tickle games. Children use language play, and toilet humor. But we teach children to be serious, so by...
01 January 1970 8,621 0 View
Star Wars as a Comedy of Humours: As an over-the-top melodrama, Star Wars is a parody of science fiction, as well as a “Comedy of Humours.” The exaggerated characters are sanguine, bilious or...
01 January 1970 4,796 0 View
Standup Comedy has a long history. During the Renaissance, the royal jesters were chosen by the king, and he chose people who looked ridiculous; they had bug-eyes, and humped backs, and were short...
01 January 1970 3,739 2 View
History of English: How English Changed from a Synthetic Language (Many Suffixes) to an Analytic Language (Fewer Suffixes), and How English Has Become the “Lingua Franca” of the Modern World In...
01 January 1970 4,003 6 View
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Humorous Names in Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Sherman Alexie uses names for ethnic identification, character development, plot development, and...
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Humor in Sociology and Social Issues Humor “breaks the ice” between strangers, and unites people in different hierarchical positions. It creates a sense of “shared conspiracy” as when gossiping or...
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Humorous Names in Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi Pi’s father was the manager of the Zoo in Pondicherry, India so we know that 16-year-old Pi has grown up with animals and knows a lot about them, but...
01 January 1970 6,837 2 View
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Humor in Politics, and the Military In January of 2018, when President Donald Trump bragged that his State of the Union viewership—45.6 million—was “the highest number in history. But in fact,...
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Humor in Education and Child Rearing In the classroom, humor and play do the following things. They Foster analytic, critical, and divergent thinking. They catch and hold students’ attention. They...
01 January 1970 7,737 5 View
Linguistic Rules of Politeness (Conversational Implicatures): Why do some people break or flaunt them? Here are H. P. Grice’s rules of politeness (conversational implicatures), while other social...
01 January 1970 4,394 8 View
Ambiguity and Puns AMBIGUITY PARADOX: “Everything is ambiguous; however, nothing is ambiguous.” Almost all words, phrases, and even sentences are ambiguous, if they are not seen or heard in the...
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Humor in Gerontology and Aging Studies In order to commemorate her 79thbirthday, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of AARP. One of the...
01 January 1970 9,054 2 View
Humor in Journalism and Reporting Journalists often allude to children’s literature, because in our diverse culture, memories of classic children’s books are what we all have in common. Nursery...
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Clowns and Court Jesters Renaissance Court Jesters tended to be small, physically deformed, wore motley clothes and cap and bells. But by being marginalized, they were empowered to tell the king...
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TYPES OF SARCASM More than 2,000 years ago, the Roman rhetorician Quintilian concluded that there three types of irony or sarcasm. These occur whenever the literal meaning of a statement does not...
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PARADOX Here is the Ambiguity Paradox: Everything is ambiguous; however, nothing is ambiguous.” Perhaps all words and sentences are ambiguous, if they are not seen or heard in the larger context....
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Humor in Law and Legal Issues The Media Law Journal (April 24, 2013) stated, “it’s not that the law clearly protects humorous speech and satire. The question is a bit vexed.” “With cases involving...
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Urban Legends, like Hip Hop and Rap, exhibit many features of literature: · They are dramatic, and play on such emotions as fear or embarrassment. · They are filled with such rhetorical devices...
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HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR HUMOR STUDIES 1987 in Tempe, AZ (Don & Alleen Nilsen, ASU) 1988 in West Lafayette, IN (Victor Raskin, Purdue University 1990 in Laie, HI (Margaret...
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From 1967-1969, Alleen and Don Nilsen lived in Afghanistan, where Alleen taught in the American International School of Kabul, and Don taught in the English Department of Kabul University. During...
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Humor in Computers and Science Victor Raskin is a linguist, and linguists tend to deal with one sentence at a time. But Rasin used Script Model Grammar to deal with longer utterances. Script Model...
01 January 1970 2,987 11 View
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Theories of Humor: Philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s “Superiority Theory” said that we laugh at someone else’s inferiority. Later philosophers, including Frances Hutcheson, argued that what we are...
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SEMANTIC GAPS AND SOURCES OF NEW WORDS Whenever there is a paradigm shift because of changing technology, religion, politics, culture, etc., new concepts are brought into the language. And when...
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Irony in the Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books: Beginning in 2002, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books have been competing with J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books for the # 1 ranking in the New York...
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AFGHAN HUMOR II: We will time-travel to the time of Christ by looking at the language and culture of Afghanistan. In this PowerPoint, you will see a student’s wooden chalk board to help Afghan...
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Humor in Gender and Embodiment Issues Emily Toth is responsible for the first Humane Humor Rule: "Never target a quality that a person can't change. The original humane humor rule appeared in...
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Roald Dahl (1916-1990) James and the Giant Peach (1961) James is a young boy who lives by the sea in England. For his birthday, his parents plan to take him to New York to visit the Empire State...
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IRONY AS A MASTER TROPE THE UBIQUITY OF IRONY IN DAILY LIFE: We are constantly surrounded by the ironies of daily life. Banks leave their vault doors open while they chain the pens to the...
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Humor in Art, Cartooning, and Architecture Artists often incorporate the humor, parody, paradox, exaggeration (caricature) and irony in their art. This especially true in the art of Salvador Dali,...
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