THE CREATION OF VERBAL HUMOUR*
THOMAS R. SHULTZ AND MAUREEN B. SCOTT McGOl University
ABSTRACT
The structural features of humour have been specified in terms of incongruity and resolution. Previous research indicated that the recipient of a joke first notices the incongruity and then resolves it perhaps by relating it to the hidden meaning of a linguistic or conceptual ambiguity. The present experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that the creation of verbal humour begins with the detection of ambiguity followed by the construction of an incongruity based on a response to the hidden meaning of the ambiguity. It was found that subjects created better jokes when presented with resolution information than with incongruity information.
ONE OF THE MOST FRUITFUL APPBOACHES to the area of exploratory behaviour and aesthetics has been Berlyne's (1960, 1963, 1972, 1974) theory of collative motivation. Structural properties involving the collation or interrelation of different pieces of information have been identified as important sources of interest and pleasure. Incongruity and resolution have been proposed as the two important structural features of humour (Jones 1970; Shultz 1970; Suls 1972). Consider as an example the joke where the teacher asks, "What do you know about French syntax?" and the student answers, "Gosh, I didn't know they had to pay for their fun." A person hearing or reading this joke would find the student's response to be incon- gruous or surprising and then would resolve the incongruity by returning to the teacher's question and detecting the ambiguity of "syntax." On the first hearing, "syntax" would be interpreted only as "grammar" but in the context of resolution it would receive the second interpretation of "a tax on sin." This particular resolution is based on a phonological ambiguity involving a combination of homonymic and word boundary confusions:
"syntax" sounds very much like "sin tax." Other joke resolutions are based on lexical and syntactic ambiguities as well as on non-linguistic devices (cf. Shultz 1974a, b; Shultz & Horibe 1974). Whatever the precise form of the resolution, it is generally true that the resolution information is not processed until after the incongruity information (Shultz, 19746).
The only substantial exception to this is in cartoons with very explicit resolutions; these explicit resolutions are as likely to be detected before the incongruities as after them. It has been proposed that the incongruity in a joke increases one's level of cognitive arousal and the resolution reduces
•This research was supported in part by Grant No. S72-0771 from the Canada Council. Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas R. Shultz, Department of Psychology, McGill University, P.O. Box 6070, Station A, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3G1.
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this arousal back to baseline. This rapid sequence of arousal induction and reduction is thought to produce the pleasure involved in humour appre- ciation (Shultz 1970; Berlyne 1972). Although it has not yet been possible to measure these changes in arousal at a physiological level, a number of studies have documented the importance of incongruity and resolution in mediating the humour response (Jones 1970; Shultz 1972, 1974a; Shultz
&Horibel974).
In contrast to this growing literature on the reception of humour, there has been no research into the cognitive aspeots of the creation of humour.
Interviews with a number of people who had just created a joke suggested to the authors that the processes involved in the creation of humour may be just the reverse of those involved in the reception of humour. These introspective accounts indicated that the creator first notices an ambiguity (either linguistic or conceptual) and then creates an incongruity by responding to the hidden rather than the intended meaning of the ambi- guity. As an example, consider the hypothetical student who .created the
"French syntax" joke discussed above. The idea for the joke may have begun with his noticing the phonological ambiguity of "syntax." Although knowing very well that his teacher intended "syntax" to mean "grammar,"
he could have created an incongruity by responding to the hidden mean- ing of "a tax on sin." The response he chose "Gosh, I didn't know they had to pay for their fun" is quite apt as it would strike any listener as extremely incongruous, yet it cleverly suggests only a misinterpretation of the teacher's question.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate experimentally the implications of this model of humour creation. Subjects were asked to create jokes from partial joke information. They were provided with either the incongruity or resolution information from actual jokes and asked to use this information to create as many funny jokes as they could. Provision of the resolution information (in the form of an ambiguity) more closely approximated the theoretically optimal conditions for joke creation. Thus it was expected that resolution information would facilitate joke creation to a greater extent than would incongruity information.
METHOD Subjects
The subjects were 32 undergraduate psychology students haphazardly selected from a departmental subject pool.
Joke Materials
Four jokes resolved by phonological ambiguity and four resolved by lexical ambiguity were used to design the partial information forms. In each of these jokes, the ambiguity
1974] THE CREATION OF VERBAL HUMOUR 423 was contained in the first line and the incongruity consisted of the relation between the first line and the surprising second line. Each joke was broken down into two forms - incongruity and resolution. The incongruity form left the second line intact and substituted the intended meaning for the ambiguity in the first line, e.g., "What do you know about French grammar?" "Gosh, I didn't know they had to pay for their fun." The resolution form left the first line intact and substituted a congruous response for the second line, e.g., "What do you know about French syntax?" "Gosh, not much."
The 16 resulting items (4 jokes X 2 ambiguity types X 2 information forms) were compiled into four booklets, four items per booklet. Each booklet contained two phonological jokes, one in the incongruity form and one in the resolution form, and two lexical jokes, one in the incongruity form and one in the resolution form. Each joke appeared once in its incongruity form and once in its resolution form but the two forms always appeared in different booklets. There was one item on each of four pages of the booklet. The order of the four items in each booklet was arranged so that incongruity and resolution forms alternated.
Procedure
Eight subjects were haphazardly assigned to receive each of the four booklets. Each subject was tested individually in a small, quiet room. Written instructions were printed on the cover of the booklet. The subject was asked to create and write down as many funny jokes as he could using each of the four pieces of information in his booklet. He was instructed to use the information provided but was also told that he could change the information in any way that he wanted.
R E S U L T S A N D DISCUSSION
Each response was scored as to whether or not it was incongruous and whether or not the incongruity was resolved. Resolutions were also classi- fied according to type as phonological, lexical, or non-linguistic. An exam- ple of a resolved incongruity given to the resolution form of the "syntax"
item was: "What do you know about French syntax?" "Gosh, not much."
"Well, as you know, in the reign of Henry vm all church lands were appropriated. The church was faced with bankruptcy. To increase their income they initiated a new tithe called 'syntax' which was collected at time of confession." An example of an unresolved incongruity given to the same item was: "What do you know about French syntax?" "Not much, but I'd like to meet her." In both of these examples, the last line is clearly incongruous with the preceding lines but only in the first example is the incongruity resolved. In this case, the resolution is based on the phono- logical ambiguity of "syntax."
All responses were scored by two independent raters, one of whom was naive to the purposes and design of the study. The other rater was the junior author. Inter-rater reliability was computed according to the for- mula: (# agreements/#agreements + # disagreements) and was found to be 0.88 over all three variables. Instances of disagreement were settled by discussion if possible. When consensus could not be reached, the naive
TABLE I
NUMBERS OF RESOLVED INCONGRUITIES, UNRESOLVED INCONGRUITIES, AND NON-INCONGRUOUS RESPONSES
GIVEN TO RESOLUTION AND INCONGRUITY INFORMATION
Response Resolved incongruities Unresolved incongruities Non-incongruity
Information Resolution
30 2212
Incongruity 6 17 41
rater's scores were used. Jokes that were not related to the information provided and were obviously recalled rather than created were excluded from further analysis.
The structural quality of each response was quantified on a three-point scale which awarded a score of two for a resolved incongruity, a score of one for an unresolved incongruity, and a score of 0 for anything other than an incongruity. In those few cases where more than one response was given to a single item, only the highest level response was coded for further analysis. These scores were subjected to a repeated measures information form X ambiguity type analysis of variance. The only significant effect to emerge was that of information form, F(l,31) = 29.26, p < 0.001. The mean for the resolution form was 1.125, while the mean for the incongruity form was 0.453.
The numbers of responses of each type given to the resolution and incon- gruity forms are presented in Table i. It is clear from the table that more resolutions and more incongruities were created to the resolution form than to the incongruity form, X2(2) = 22.59, p < 0.0001. Of the 30 resolved incongruities created to resolution information, 22 employed the resolution that was provided. Of the 36 resolved incongruities created in the entire experiment, 17 were resolved by lexical ambiguity, 10 by phonological ambiguity, and 9 by non-linguistic means.
Both the analysis of variance and the contingency analysis indicate that resolution information was more facilitative of the creation of verbal jokes than was incongruity information. This finding provides support for the hypothesis that the creation of jokes involves an order of cognitive process- ing which is just the reverse of that involved in the reception of jokes. The creator proceeds from the resolution to the incongruity while the recipient proceeds from the incongruity to the resolution. Paradoxically, it seems that the creator of a joke has an idea of how the incongruity will be resolved even before he constructs the incongruity.
1974] THE CREATION OF VERBAL HUMOUR 425
R E S U M E
Les proprietes structurales de lliumour sont deja definies par l'existence d'une incon- gruite et de sa resolution. Les recherches anterieures ont montre que celui qui entend raconter une histoire commence par remarquer l'incongruite qu'elle contient et a resout ensuite peut-etre en la mettant en rapport avec le sens cache d'une ambiguite linguisti- que ou conceptuelle. L'experience rapportee ici examine une hypothese voulant que la creation de l'humour verbal commence par la detection de Fambiguite, apres quoi inter- vient la construction d'une incongruite fondee sur une reaction au sens cache de l'am- biguite. Les resultats montrent que les sujets inventent de meilleures histoires quand les informations fournies portent sur la resolution de l'incongruite plutot que sur l'in- congruite elle-meme.
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(First received 18 March 1974)