Why (or why not) are some signs funny? Please go to the following web site and find one of the signs you think is funny (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-lansky/best-funny-signs_b_788407.html#s192126).
Based on what you now know about the psychology of humor, discuss in as much detail as you can why it is funny and how that ties into the research and information presented to you in the text book.
Throughout this class we have learned that incongruities play a major role in what we find to be funny. Something that is surprising, unusual, and different from what we normally expect is incongruent. Sign number 3, "Anyone who drowns will be severely punished," demonstrates incongruities. As many of us know, most aquatic centers have signs such "No Diving," or "No Running." However, this sign states the obvious as if swimmers needed to be instructed to not drown. Our minds take notice to the sign because it is a mismatch or clash of concepts that our sensory perception has knowledge of. This sign is incongruent to our expectations.
Another reason why sign number 3 is funny is because "No drowning" does not compute with our schema of aquatic center signs. Most of us have past experience of visiting a public swimming pool and therefore we know what signs we can expect to see. Our schemas help us organize knowledge based on past experiences and develop set expectations about our surroundings. Since this sign is incongruent to our mental model(schemas) of swimming pool signs, we find it humorous.
"No drowning" is also a form of cognitive play. Our text presents cognitive play as a framework for thinking about interactions between language and ideas that are unusual and different. For example, "No Drowning" allows us to play with the idea of the two words(No and Drowning) and the overall concept in a way that they are not normally associated. As I said before, normally we see signs such as No Diving or No Running. However, sign number 3 presents a new idea that we aren't familiar with which allows us to cognitively play with the idea.
Terms: Incongruities, schemas, cognitive play
For this assignment, the sign I chose is the one consisting of the street signs one of which says “New Life Lane” and the other “Dead End.”
Although I don’t know how the street names came about, I think it would be funnier if they were a product of something accidental that was then later realized rather than it just being purposeful. I feel this way because I am the type of person who prefers spontaneous conversational humor rather than canned jokes. Because of this, I really didn’t find any of the signs funny enough to elicit laughter, but I do think that the sign I chose is a little humorous due to its incongruity.
Incongruity definitely best defines why people find signs such as this one funny. Obviously, “new life” and “dead” are both contradicting therefore making it ironic that there is a dead end on New Life Lane. When thinking of new life, you have a specific schema in your head which has nothing at all to do with death, so when you are presented with the dead end sign, your schema is thrown off and a new one is added to the mix.
All of the signs that were on this site had some element of incongruity, which is probably why they have become increasingly popular on the internet and even talk shows!
The sign I found funny is the “No Drowning” sign. I went through a process of figuring out why I think this is funny. Initially, I thought that the sign’s funny because whoever made the sign and displayed it is a jerk. Why would someone drown on purpose? That’s not typically something that one actively participates in. Unless this pool has had some amount of suicides in the pool, this sign is not appropriate.
After this initial analysis I thought about ways I could explain why I think this is funny in specific terms and give a greater explanation for the humor in this sign. The first thing that came to my mind was incongruity. The incongruity comes from the sign basically being an order to not do something that people don’t want to do and typically are not controlling if it is happening to them. For example, if someone who cannot swim falls into the pool, in an area where they cannot reach the bottom, they can’t just not drown.
The next thing that came to my mind was my personality type and the type of humor I like. I usually am very sarcastic and I often use humor to make points. I’m the type of jerk that would say something like this to someone in the pool area. It’s meant to be funny but not really. Using “no drowning” and meaning it to be somewhat humorous is kind of a way of keeping with social norms also. If you say “no drowning” meaning it completely seriously, it’s not really a normal thing to say in general. If you said it jokingly then it would be more acceptable even if you were kind of serious (like a parent talking to their children).
There are also cognitive processes that go along with finding this sign funny. If English is not your first language than you may not cognitively process this sign as “wrong” and therefore it would not be funny. This example could also be seen as social because of the cultural difference.
Overall, I think the incongruity plays the main role in the humor of the sign. It doesn’t match what we typically view as normal. No drowning without any added words just isn’t a rule we typically see so it’s funny that someone would make such a rule (sign).
I chose the second picture of the sign “small minds of tomorrow” displayed on the building. The picture doesn’t show what kind of business it is or where it is at but it looks like it is in a strip mall. The unknown location in this picture is one of the reasons why it is funny. Usually, the name of a business is supposed to draw customers in and be memorable to get business. Obviously, this sign is memorable because it doesn’t fit the schema of a name of a business.
Incongruity also plays a large role in why this sign is humorous. Since this sign is surprising, and is different than what we normally expect then it is therefore humorous. The incongruity of the sign comes from the unknowingness of why someone would name their business that, and that it is different from our expectations.
Also, this sign is funny because of the aggressive humor used in the comments made by other bloggers. After skimming through the pictures, I decided to look at the comments. One blogger said, “small minds of tomorrow, the future GOP.” The criticism accompanied by the ridicule in this message makes the statement humorous, even though some may find it offensive. A fair amount of the comments made about this sign were about politicians and the teasing of the different parties. Again, this is a form of humorous joking and teasing; no one was taking the comments seriously. If they were to take it seriously then it would cross the thin line of being healthy to unhealthy.
I chose the Small Minds of Tomorrow picture. This was one of the pictures that I felt was more funny, and not just ironic. It is also a place I would like to actually go just to see what it entails. If it’s a store, or coffee shop or restaurant?
I think this is funny because small-mindedness is not a complement. So the idea that people opened a store or shop of some kind promoting it is incongruous because as a society we are not supposed to promote small-mindedness. From a linguistic approach this fits in with the Script-Based Semantic Theory. A script tells a social norm, what is allowed and not allowed in specific settings. In our society we typically like to think of ourselves as educated, worldly people. So small mindedness activates a script that says: Unaccepted. However seeing this as a name of a shop shows it being very much accepted. Also funny in an incongruous way is the idea that people would go there. What kind of people, only small minded people? Or if it’s a coffee shop do people go there to do homework and have intellectual conversations about politics and world hunger? The incongruity of intelligent people going to a place named for small minds of tomorrow, is kind of funny because of the two opposite scripts activated.
Also because I associate small mindedness with more conservative and old fashioned views which made it all the more funny when I read the caption of the picture, which is “Legacy of Busch’s Education Policy?” I used to be an education major and had to do a report on the pro’s and con’s of George Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Needless to say it was far easier to come up with con’s for this project. So as a registered Democrat I associate small minded ideas as being more likely to come from the Republican party. This made it funnier because of the horror it would be if Small Minds of Tomorrow became a complement to someone.
This form of humor could be used as a social interaction by group identity and cohesion in a few ways. First, in going back to my political party theory, it could solidify the more liberal “open minded” thinkers by bringing us together and being able to point at the conservative “small minded” thinkers and laugh at them for their lack of acceptance. This would go along with Grunners Superiority/Aggression theory because it would be liberals putting down conservatives in an aggressive way, making themselves look better through humor. It could also be the conservatives solidifying by making a mockery of liberals, sort of a “Yea we’re small minded, look at this!”
Terms: Incongruity, Grunner's Superiority/Aggression theory, Script Based Semantic Theory
I choose the third picture which was the sign that stated “No drowning.” I laughed out loud the moment I saw this. I thought about why I thought this was funny and I think because I used to be a lifeguard and our job was to keep people from drowning made this funny to me. Typically we see signs around that would say “No lifeguard on duty” to give people the idea that there wasn’t someone there to specifically watching out in case someone was to drown. The sign itself looks really crappy and in poor condition which made me wonder what type of facility this was posted. In relation to psychology of humor, this is funny because we have preconceived notions of the way things are. Schemas describe general characteristics of an object or event and contain variables or slots that can assume different values in particular instances. In a place where we would expect to see a sign like this we don’t expect to see a sign stating the obvious. Of course no one expects to drown when they go swimming. If only it were that easy to just not drown as if by drowning someone is breaking a rule. Incongruity theories can also explain why this sign is funny. Incongruity theories suggest that perception of incongruity is the crucial determinant of whether or not something is humorous: things that are funny are surprising, peculiar, unusual, or different from what we normally expect. What we normally expect to see at a pool are not signs that state “no drowning” with a small visual of a person. Psychology of humor allows for many explanations as to why some things are funny.
Terms: Schemas, Incongruity theories
I thought that the first sign with the gun was pretty funny. Especially now that it's the holiday season, there's probably a lot of people scratching their heads looking for the perfect gift. What could be a better gift for someone you love, something that is meant to destroy other people or animals. There's obviously a lot of incongruity going on here. People usually associate the holidays with warm fuzzy feelings of family and togetherness and being nice to each other. Guns on the other hand are associated with fear, destruction, blood, etc. Guns aren't really an item that would make a good gift, because if people feel like they need one, they'll get one. It's not one of those things where a person goes out shopping and thinks to themselves that their brother or sister might really want a gun. When I saw this sign, I pictured like a happy family gathering where it's Christmas Eve they're opening presents and someone opens up a gun. What kind of message does that send to the person receiving the gun? Or the people watching? If anyone in my family gave someone else a gun as a gift, I think we'd all regard that person kind of cautiously from then on. I think only people in the market of selling guns would think that marketing guns as a "perfect gift" for the holidays is a good idea.
I thought the dead end and new life lane sign was pretty funny, because its somewhat incongrous. For one hey your new life is right down this road but you'll end up hitting a dead end soon....sorry!
Furthermore, I think its one of the funnier signs compared to the others because of its incongruity because one street is a great new life whereas the other street is the other end of your time line which is your dead end. This is one of those sings were people might think God is trying to tell them something otherwise they might believe it to be ironic if they ran into this sign.
How would you like to be proud to call these street signs as part of your address, I think people would think you were trying to make a joke out of it, cause not many signs correlate this well together which makes this picture funny.
In addition, I do agree with Kayla in the fact that all these signs do show incongruity because we do not expect these sorts of things to appear, but if you watch Jay Leno's show he has so many newspaper articles, picture clippings and so forth that people find and send to him, which makes me think are there really that many incongrous or mistakes people post without realizing it? I did a little searching and did find a sign at a bar I though was pretty funny. The bar is called Johnny Macks and underneath the sign it says "parking in rear" haha which most people probably don't assume to be humourous since there is actually parking in the back of the bar, but thats just one example.
The sign that I thought was funny was the sixth: Advancements in Bovine Literacy. I think that the incongruity factor plays a big part in why this is funny. Signs are for human communication because humans are the only species that can read or have the cognitive abilities to interpret what a sign is suppose to convey. So when this sign says “Cows! Please keep gate closed,” it written like it’s for the cows to read—telling the cows to keep the gate closed, which is funny. When really, the exclamation “Cows!” is suppose to be telling people that there are cows around, so keep the gate closed. So I think that the fact that this sign is out of the ordinary, and has kind of an ironic message on it, makes it incongruous, and it’s funny (in my opinion).
I choose the sign about Cows. This is sign was particularly interesting to me because of the cognitive play with schemas. We all form schemas from a young age about objects, the book describes a bird, our schema would include wings, feet and beaks. Our schema for a cow would include things like spots, hoofs, even maybe things like a cow bell. However we do not think of them reading signs or opening gates for themselves, because they cannot. The sign is obviously incongruity between our schema of a cow and what the sign suggests the cow can do. I see this as irony.
The book states that to understand the ironic statement, the interpreter must understand both the literal non-humorous meaning of the sign and the humorous intent. Further, understand the incongruity between this meaning and the humorous intent of the message for the irony to be funny. Which I think the humorous message is kind of what the book describes as sarcasm, or kind of aggressive humor. “Like duh, close the gate because the cows obviously cannot”.
I chose the sign that say’s use hand brake. On the sign there is a picture of a foot pushing down on a brake pedal. A picture of a foot does not fit into the schema of hand brakes. If the sign just said use brake then this would not be funny. The incongruity theory plays a role in why this could be looked at as funny. According to Beattie “laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage”. This seems to fit this sign well. The sign has 2 parts that are incompatible. It says hand and shows a picture of a foot. The sign is lacking consistency between the words and the pictures. Another theory that could explain why this is funny is the superiority theory. This theory focuses on the aggression in humor. My first thought when I saw the sign was someone’s an idiot. I laughed, but at the expense of whoever made and posted the sign. Therefore, the humor that I was experiencing was in an aggressive form.
I chose the first sign that displays a gun with a big bow on it and the saying, “great for all seasons.” To me this is funny because of the incongruity that is present. Incongruity occurs when concepts or what we know about something clash. A gun clashes with my idea of the holiday season. A gun does not fit into my schema for Christmas. The schema or mental representation for Christmas usually consists of Christmas trees, decorations, presents and Santa Clause a gun does not fit into this mental model. A gun schema would usually consist of criminals, violence, and death. Christmas is a celebration of life while a gun has the ability to take a life therefore these two incompatible schemas creates incongruity which makes this sign funny. Over the course of this class I have learned that incongruity is almost necessary in order for something to be funny.
Also while looking at this sign I noticed that the web site located at the bottom is silverbulletfirearms.com. When I read this it reminded me of silver bells which is the title of a popular Christmas song. I found this funny because of the unintentional word play. The word bells and bullets look and sound somewhat familiar although the definition of these two words are not similar with the word silver in front of bullets on a sign with a Christmas theme it could easily be mistaken for bells.
Terms: Incongruity, Schema, Wordplay
I think the funniest sign is the one that has the street sign for "New Life Lane" with "Dead End" underneath it. Naturally, as everyone else has commented on, the apparent source of the humor seems to be the incongruity between the words 'new life' and 'dead end'. When we read "new life lane" our positive, proactive, optimistic schema is initiated and then forcibly colides with the negative, depressed, pessimistic schema initated by 'dead end.' Although I think this is common to all forms of humor I think that many of the theories and ideas we've discussed help to explain why people may experience the incongruity in different ways. I'll just pick a couple examples.
If humor is a communication tool allowing us to 'play' with the versatility inherent in our symbolic english langauge in order to further our goals (whether they are to entertain people, avoid or initiate a fight, pursue or deter away various mates, etc. etc.) than there may indeed be numerous ways that this incongruity might be experienced.
We can imagine a 'clueless' city worker who totally missed the incongruity when he put the signs so close and laugh (exhibbiting some form of superior theory) at how silly he is and how we would not have done the same. Similarly we can laugh at bureaucracy in general and how things like this seem to pop up all over and 'rules' of government aren't sensitive enough to see the common sense notion that an exception should have been made in this case.
Some people may simply enjoy the incongruity, as such, without a specific further explanation or rationalization for the incongruity. This may relate more towards understanding what a 'sense of humor' is than what makes something humerous in general.
If sense of humor is understood as the skill, as it may be for various comedians, than they might enjoy these types of accidental humor because they recognize that it took a clever mind (i.e. someone with a skillful sense of humor) to recognize and properly frame this incongruity. Similarly a sense of humor may just refer to an overall tendency to experience events as more mirthful than others. This type of person would enjoy this sign because it represents yet another example of how humor can be found in any situation.
TERMS: incongruity, schema, superiority, sense of humor,
The sign I found to be the most funny was the sign that said, “Cows! Please Keep Gate Closed.” This sign is funny because it takes into account cognition and social context. One weakness of the incongruity-resolution theories is that the theories try to explain the cognitive processes involved in joke comprehension without taking the social context of the joke into account. If this sign was set up in the middle of someone’s backyard, it would not be nearly as funny. This sign is funny because the person reading it is assuming that the sign is set up outside a gate that is enclosing a herd of cows. Without that social context, the sign would seem less funny because the message that is trying to be conveyed would be lost, leaving the reader unable to resolve the incongruity of the joke.
A second reason this sign is funny is because the sign accounts for a certain amount of cognition in order to find the humor of the joke. According to our book, Koestler developed the idea of bisociation. Bisociation occurs when a situation, event, or idea is simultaneously perceived from the perspective of two self-consistent but normally compatible or disparate frames of reference. In this situation, the sign is telling the people outside the fence to keep the gate shut because there are cows inside the fenced in area. However, according to bisociation, there is a different interpretation of the joke that implies the sign is telling the cows to shut the gate. The presence of the bisociation of the message on the sign is what gives the sign its humorous cognitive context. Similarly, according to the Superiority Theory, Gruner would say that we are laughing at the stupidity of the person who wrote the sign who seems to be telling the cows to remember to shut the gate. Therefore, this sign is made out to be funny because of the social context of where the sign is located and the presence of bisociation that incorporates a double and incongruent meaning for the sign.
Terms: Social context, cognitive context, bisociation, Superiority Theory, Koestler, Gruner, incongruity, and resolution
I chose the sign about the elevator. I chose this sign because it reminds me of another famous translation error. This error came in the form of a Korean video game named "Zero Wing". It's famous quote "All your base are belong to us." is an epic translation error (along with the entire games translation). Immediately when I saw this elevator pictures and how they ask that you "please not scramble it" the schema of Zero Wing popped into my mind. I laughed out loud because I thought back to how much I laughed at "All you're base are belong to us!" and other terrible translations like "They set us up the bomb!" (Here's the link if you're curious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qItugh-fFgg&feature=related)
Raskin's Semantic Script Theory relates to this picture well. Two separate scripts are activated when i look at this picture. Firstly, I see the terrible translation and relate it back to the Zero Wing game, nextly, I can relate it to anyone who might not be able to understand the native language and is trying to read it in english, it would be absolutely absurd. Thus, these two scripts are activated in my head, sorted through, and the end result is laughter.
schemas, semantic script theory, raskin