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Definition: humour from Collins Dictionary of Sociology

amusement, laughter, and the like created by the paradoxical, ironic outcomes of social situations, language, and the portrayal of these in literature, art and the theatre. Although humour is a universal feature of human societies and a diverse literature exists (not least the work of Freud), the treatment of humour, has been only fragmentary within sociology, despite its importance in social life. See M. Mulkay, On Humour (1988).

Humor

From The Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology
Humor refers to a rather broad set of phenomena associated with the creation, perception, and enjoyment of amusing, comical, or playfully incongruous ideas, situations, or events. The word humor is variously used to refer to an amusing stimulus (e.g., a joke, witty comment, or comedy film), the cognitive process involved in the creation or perception of funniness, the mirthful emotion that is associated with it, and a personality characteristic having to do with the tendency to enjoy humorous incongruity or the ability to amuse others and make them laugh. The term was used more narrowly in the nineteenth century to refer only to benevolent and sympathetic forms of amusement (“laughing with”), and was sharply distinguished from wit , which was viewed as more aggressive and less socially desirable (“laughing at”). Today, however, humor is a broad umbrella term referring to comedic amusement involving all sorts of verbal and nonverbal, intentionally and unintentionally funny events, …
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Full text Article HUMOUR

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
While literature, cinema and popular culture are teeming with every species of comedy, philosophy - and especially the history of philosophy - rarely considers humour as a serious topic. There is thus surprisingly little written of humour in the philosophical canon (and there is even less humour in…
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Full text Article Humor

From Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender
Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods - Japanese Proverb I. Background II. The Neural Control of Humor III. Humor and Health IV. What Is Funny? V. Gender Differences in Humor Glossary Comedy A ludicrous, farcical, or amusing event or series of events. Conversational joking Informal…
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Full text Article Humor

From Encyclopedia of Adolescence
Humor has become a serious topic. Research now identifies its importance for adolescents, as it has been found to be, for example, an important coping mechanism. Humor, and its accompanying laughter, also has been linked to important health benefits. Humor, however, can link to negative outcomes, …
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Full text Article Humor

From The Encyclopedia of Aging
Humor about aging can have several functions (Freud, 1905/1960 ; Nahemow, McClusky-Fawcett, & McGhee, 1986 ). It may reduce the anxieties or fears about growing older. It may be a way of dealing with an otherwise taboo subject, such as aging and death. It can defuse touchy situations, expose…
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Full text Article Humor

From Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology
Humor is the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous. Famed Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) considered humor an outlet for discharging pent up psychic energy and diminishing the importance of potentially damaging events. Since…
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Full text Article humor

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
American humor really begins after the Revolutionary War. For, though people dwelling or traveling in America wrote humorously from the beginnings of European settlement here (and Native Americans presumably said and did funny things even earlier), written humor that can be clearly identified as…
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Full text Article HUMOR

From Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions
The term “Jewish humor” is problematic for a number of reasons. The word “humor” itself has had various meanings over the course of history, and in order to examine humor historically, an unvarying meaning must be specified that can be uniformly applied at all points in time. In the context of this…
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From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Humor includes comedy (the literary form characterized by a happy ending like marriage), wit, satire, irony, farce, nonsense, black humor, burlesque, parody, farce: in essence, anything likely to provoke laughter or quiet amusement. Other terms used to analyze English literary humor are humor of…
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From Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World
© ALEXANDRA GARCIA, BEN DE LA CRUZ/THE WASHINGTON...
There is no classical Muslim definition of humor, but Franz Rosenthal, a leading twentieth-century scholar of Semitic languages and Arabic and Islamic history, offers one that attempts to be universally inclusive. In his Humor in Early Islam (1956, 1), Rosenthal suggests that the hallmark of humor…
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Full text Article Humors

From The Classical Tradition
Fluids, saps, and juices, whose imbalance or blockage was thought by many Greeks and Romans to be responsible for illness. The theory that there were only four humors in the body—blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile—was first formulated around 400 bce and well before the second century ce was…
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