Humor is a universal phenomenon shared by all people. People are able to laugh for something interesting no matter how different of their sex, age, country, culture and many other aspects. Many scholars and researchers have given definition of humor from different perspectives, but scholars still cannot give a commonly satisfactory definition of it. From the etymological perspective, the English word “humor” came from the Latin word in ancient times which means “fluid” or “liquid” (Attardo, 1994, p. 6).
Attardo, Salvatore. (1994). Linguistic Theories of Humor. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
scholarsMcGhee(McGhee, 1979)
McGhee, Paul E. (1979). Humor and Its Development. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.
emphasizes humor is not a characteristic of some events such as cartoons, jokes, and clowning behavior, nor is it a behavior such as laughing and smiling, he states that humor is
something in our mind and not in the real world. Psychologically, “humor is essentially a masked aggression, which gives one the gratification one desperately craves (Freud. 1976, p. 299)”.
Freud. (1976). Jokes and Their Relation to Unconscious. Ed. Angela Richards. London: Penguin Books.
And Palmer thinks that “humor is everything that is actually or potentially funny and the processes by which this “funniness” occurs.” (Palmer, 1994, p. 3)
Palmer, J. (1994). Taking Humor Seriously. New York: Routledge.
Even though definitions of humor are various from different perspectives, we can find something in common: the basic and essential factors for humor is that human participants are able to produce and interpret the funny and interesting phenomenon and something happening must be a funny stimulus which can amuse or entertain people.
The study concerning the humor is a multi-disciplinary field. People have been working on
humor in many fields of research like psychology, philosophy and linguistics, sociology and literature. Especially in the context of computer science (or Artificial Intelligence) humor research aims at modeling humor in a computationally tractable way. In our daily life, there are many situations in human-human interaction where humor plays an important role in keeping the conversation going.
There are three main traditions in the study of humour across disciplines that form a background for all studies of humour: the relief/release theory; the incongruity theory; and the superiority/aggression/disparagement theory (Attardo, 1994)
Superiority Theory\
The Superiority Theory is based on the assumptions that, in nature, all human has a winner and a loser, and we, human beings, have the tendency to ridiculer about others’ misfortune. Through history humans have used humor to “compete” with other persons, making them the target of their humorous comment. The “winner” is the one that successfully makes fun of the “loser”. By doing so, we establish a sense of self-superiority. This theory can be foun
d in the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes
[BAR92].
Barnes, Clive. Comedy in Dance. In: Sorrell, Walter (ed.) The Dance Has Many
Faces. 3rd ed. Pennington: a cappella books, pp87-95, 1992
Plato suggests that humor is some kind of malice towards people that are being considered relatively powerless. Hobbes further explains that humans are in a constant competition with each other, looking for the shortcomings of other persons. He considers laughter as an expression of a sudden realization that we are better than others, an expression of “sudden glory”. Charles Gruner reformulated this theory as the Superiority Theory of Humor.
Gruner, Charles. The Game of Humor: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We
Laugh. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997.
His theory contains a three-part thesis:
  “  Every humorous situation has a winner and a loser.
Incongruity is always present in a humorous situation.
Humor requires an element of surprise”.
1.3 Relief Theory
The Relief Theory has a clear physiological or psycho-physiological nature [RUT97]. It views humor as a release from stress or mental pain caused by social constrains.
Rutter, Jason. Stand-Up as Interaction: Performance and Audience in Comedy Venues. University of Salford, 1997, chapter 2.
this theory is popular among those who believe that laughter is beneficial for one’s health. Freud, the most leading exponent, explains that our body contains a “psychic energy” which is built as an aid for suppressing feelings in taboo areas, like sex or death. Freud claims that our brain creates so-called “censors” in order to create barriers that prevent us f
rom thinking “naughty” or “forbidden” thoughts. When we are able to break these barriers by means of a joke, we experience a sudden release of “psychic energy” and this energy is released in the form of laughter. This theory could explain why we laugh about childish jokes with double meanings and why we laugh about sexual and aggressive jokes in general.When this energy is released we experience laughter, not only because of the release of this energy, but also because these taboo thoughts are being entertained.

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