Abstract
In this chapter, I define the cognitive component of amusement by critically assessing incongruity theories. In Section 1, I assess Early Incongruity Theory from Chapter 3, in Section 2, I assess unsuccessful refinements of the concept of incongruity, in Section 3, I propose a bisociation refinement of incongruity, in Section 4, I propose a resolution refinement of incongruity and, in Section 5, I combine my bisociation and resolution refinements to define the cognitive component of amusement. Finally, in Section 6, I summarise the key claims of this chapter.
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- 1.
As Noël Carroll (2014, 51) points out, ‘one doubts that there would be comic amusement without these perceived incongruities, since revealing self-portraits, such as those of Rembrandt, do not evoke comic amusement’.
- 2.
Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson (2006, 194–195) similarly observe that if the concept of incongruity is left too vague, then ‘the incongruity theory … is ultimately undone by the need to expand its central notion so as to accommodate more of what people find amusing’.
- 3.
A precise and widely accepted definition of ‘social norm’ is given by Cristina Bicchieri (2005), but proponents of the norm-violation refinement use the word ‘norm’ in a much wider sense.
- 4.
As Alexander Pope (2008, 8) observed, ‘true wit is nature to advantage dress’d, what oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d’.
- 5.
Raskin (1985) denies that SSTH is a bisociation theory but others disagree (Attardo 1997; Oring 2016). The SSTH was later developed into the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) by Attardo and Raskin (1991). However, since the central bisociation concept remains the same in SSTH and GTVH, an exposition of just SSTH will suffice for my purposes.
- 6.
Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with how meaning is assigned to words and sentences.
- 7.
Graph theory is the branch of mathematics which studies graphs composed of nodes connected by links. Visually, these graphs can be represented as a collection of points connected by a network of lines.
- 8.
Two words are hyponymous when one has its meaning included in that of the other. For example, ‘scarlet’ is a hyponym of ‘red’.
- 9.
Graeme Ritchie (2004, 51–52) outlines this problem with Koestler’s (1964) bisociation theory as follows:
There is still not a clear formal definition of Koestler’s terminology (‘frames’, ‘perceive in’, ‘habitually incompatible’) which would allow researchers to predict whether particular stimuli (e.g. specific texts) would count as manifesting bisociation or not … The answer to ‘what is a frame?’ is ‘(virtually) anything’.
- 10.
A truth-value is the value assigned to a sentence in respect of its truth or falsity. If a sentence is true, then it has a positive truth-value, and if a sentence is false, then it has a negative truth-value.
- 11.
This is assuming, of course, that both interpretations assign the usual meaning to the phrase ‘is British’.
- 12.
Arguably, the punch-line ‘The Aristocrats!’ is mildly ironic and so could activate two interpretations. However, the punch-line is clearly not the main cause of amusement in the joke since the listener is typically most amused during the obscene description and before the punch-line has occurred.
- 13.
- 14.
An inference is invalid when it is possible for all the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
- 15.
Jyotsna Vaid et al. (2003) conducted an experiment investigating whether the simultaneous activation view or successive activation view is the correct one, but the results were inconclusive.
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Roberts, A. (2019). The Cognitive Component of Amusement. In: A Philosophy of Humour. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14382-4_4
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