Theory of Humor Series, part 9, Two Schools of Thought Become One Theory

This series of blog posts has as its ultimate goal an analysis of the comic quality of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, though I am not in any rush to get there. I am as much interested in developing a general theory of humor.

I have been rereading my blog entries from May to December of 2017, the first eight parts of this series, and I have discovered that I unconsciously practiced a sleight of hand, which I now want to point out and make explicit.

In Part 3 of this series, I tried to characterize the two main schools of theories of humor. At the end of the entry, I simply stated that theories that claim a.) humor deals with incongruity and b.) humor deals with disparagement are not incompatible. What I did not say was that the theory to which I myself subscribe includes both incongruity and disparagement.

In Part 4 of this series, I focused in on what I consider to be a core fact of human nature, that, because we are a social species, we naturally form status hierarchies within groups. I then argued that one can understand the disparagement aspect of humor within the context of small group status hierarchies. So I slipped quietly from saying, a.) "many theories of humor focus on disparagement," to saying, b.) "all humor does in fact have a disparaging aspect." I then added to my theory that humor acts as a social status regulator to Mulkay’s theory that the humor mode allows a diversity of interpretations of reality within a group.

In Part 5, I tried to define comedy, and I did so in the context of a theory of humor focused on small group social regulation. So I was applying a theory of humor that I hadn’t explicitly defined, but slid into sideways. In Part 6, I discussed the fact that some disparagement in humor can be oppressive, but emphasized that not all disparagement has to be oppressive. But again, I was presuming that all humor has a disparaging aspect. In Part 7, the topic was a comic device that employs incongruity, but I then discussed how it is often used in a context in which there is disparagement. In Part 8, I showed how stereotypes allow for convenient incongruity and disparagement, assuming a theory of humor that contains both.

So there you have it: the theory I use posits that all humor has two aspects: incongruity and disparagement, and that the disparagement can be used to regulate social status within a group. That regulation can be oppressive but does not have to be. I defined it very clearly in paragraph two of part 7, but I presented it as though I was simply recapping something earlier arrived at. Now I am stating clearly that that is the theory of humor I am using in this study.