Page 13 - The Language of Humour

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move on to the subject of the humour. The superiority theory explains
our tendency to laugh when someone we despise is the target. Seeing
which groups are the targets of humour can give a snapshot of that
society’s attitudes. Unit 4 looks at the ways in which these attitudes are
established or challenged by language use, and the ways in which the
response is affected by the stance of the joke-teller or the audience.
The psychic release theory explains laughter as caused by the sense of a
taboo being broken. The focus in Unit 5 is not on the reason why certain
areas are taboos but on which areas are considered ‘unspeakable’ and
how the humour is created—through either taboo words or innuendo.
The remaining three units examine texts from the genres of literature,
radio, television and stand-up comedy. Since much humour is a matter
of personal taste, and contemporary humour may have a short ‘shelf-
life’, the texts are there to represent a range of examples and indicate
ways of investigating them. The aim of the book is to outline a framework
of analysis that can be applied to any humour in speech or writing. It
was a challenge to say anything revealing about the strangest, and
funniest, examples from the 1990s: Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer on
television, the cartoons of Gary Larson and the stand-up comedy of Eddie
Izzard. By the year 2000 there will be new humour which is equally
tricky to analyse. This is the essence of humour: surprise, innovation
and rule-breaking.