No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This qualitative investigation of the use of humor in written expression of sixth-grade children was conducted with two major questions as focus: 1. Are there identifiable conventions of initiated usage in the types and frequency of humor expression in written work of sixth-grade gifted students? 2. Are there identifiable conditions which tend to elicit humorous written expression from sixth-grade gifted children? An analysis of three examples of written work by each of 169 students in five Gifted Center classes indicated considerable use of humor. Patterns of usage emerged, the most conspicuous pertaining to frequency of humor use in the three assignments. Frequency of humor use paralleled the continuum of intimacy of the assignments. Humor appeared most often in the most intimate assignment. Humor was used least in the least intimate assignment. Interpretations of this pattern are suggested in terms of societal awareness and self-disclosure. Wit appeared more often than any other category of humor technique, indicating a preference by these youngsters for that form of humor which involves the greatest amount of cognitive ability. The relatively little use of Dig, the biting humor technique, is viewed as possibly related to the absence of emotionally laden subject matter. Students identified as gifted in all areas with no distinguishable bent used humor more often than any other group. Although those students gifted in Math used Wit less than did any other group, this may not have indicated a lack of creativity in these high IQ children as Creativity was considered an attribute of intelligence. Children of working mothers used humor to a greater degree than did those whose mothers were at home, possibly related to the greater independence and lesser conformity fostered in the former. The teacher's manner of dealing with the behavior and work of students: informal, demanding, non-directive, traditional, appeared to be more highly related to student humor production than was the personality/style (static or dynamic) of the teacher. Implications for education were discernible and areas for future investigation became evident. / Ed. D.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: There are vanous definitions of the concept humour, each depending on the perception thereof. Such perceptions are influenced by shared experiences, culture, milieu and individual creativity. Pictorial humour is divided into various sub genres such as the caricature, cartoon and comic strip. Each one of these sub genres portrays an individual process of development, both locally and globally. The work of TO Honiball forms part of this tradition. His artistic personality and sense of humour is unmistakably portrayed in his creative work. Honiball became famous as a political cartoonist and played an important role in the rise of the National Party, seeing that his association with the Nasionale Pers provided him with a forum as opinion-former. It is said that his comic strips Oom Kaspaas, Jakkals en Wolf and Adoons-hulle influenced different age groups and even people who were not Afrikaners. It was however mainly Afrikaans-speaking people who strongly identified with these strips due to the strong Afrikaans character thereof. Various instances own Honniballiana, where it is being preserved and is available for research purposes. A number of marketing initiatives were launched to promote the work of Honiball, mainly by TO Honiball-Promosies. Despite the fact that much of his work is dated, new interest is generated by utilising his work in educational programmes. Honiball's body of work is a source for culture-historical research seeing that it offers references to the tangible and intangible culture of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans during his lifetime. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Etlike definisies bestaan van die begrip humor, afhangend van die persepsie daarvan. Sodanige persepsies word beïnvloed deur onder andere gedeelde ondervindings, kultuur, milieu en individuele kreatiwiteit. Pikturale humor word onderverdeel in verskillende sub-genres, soos die karikatuur, spotprent en strokie. Hierdie sub-genres toon elk 'n afsonderlike ontwikkelingsgang, plaaslik en globaal. Die werk van TO Honiball vorm deel van dié tradisie. Sy kunstenaarspersoonlikheid en humorsin word eweneens onmiskenbaar verbeeld in sy skeppings. Honiball het bekendheid verwerf as politieke spotprenttekenaar en het 'n belangrike rol gespeel in die opgang van die Nasionale Party, omdat sy verbintenis met die Nasionale Pers aan hom 'n forum gebied het om as meningsvormer op te tree. Daar word beweer dat sy strokiesreekse Oom Kaspaas, Jakkals en Wolf en Adoons-hulle verskillende ouderdomsgroepe en selfs mense van ander volksgroepe as die Afrikaner bereik het. As gevolg van die eg- Afrikaansheid daarvan het egter hoofsaaklik Afrikaanssprekendes sterk aanklank daarby gevind. Verskillende instansies is in besit van Honiballiana, waar dit bewaar word en beskikbaar is vir navorsingsdoeleindes. 'n Aantal bemarkingsinisiatiewe is geloods om Honiball se werk te promoveer, hoofsaaklik deur TO Honiball-Promosies. Ten spyte van die feit dat talle voorbeelde van sy werk gedateer is, word nuwe belangstelling gegenereer deur middel van die aanwending van sy werk in opvoedkundige programme. Honiball se oeuvre bied bronne vir kultuurhistoriese navorsing aangesien dit verwysings bied na die geestelike en stoflike kultuur van Afrikaanssprekendes gedurende sy leeftyd.

Celebrities such as Halle Berry, Dave Chappelle, Kathy Griffin, and Don Imus have recently evoked public ire for making what some people have seen as tasteless jokes. Their notorious humorous communication shares two notable qualities: the discourse was mass mediated and the “jokes” were all premised on stereotypes. This two-part dissertation addresses the complicated subject of understanding the meanings viewers co-create with humorous mediated communication that is premised on racial stereotypes. I focus on Chappelle’s Show as my primary text of analysis, but the findings here have applicability to the wider genre of humorous mediated communication that is premised on stereotypes. In the first part of the dissertation I survey humor theory and humor criticism, noting weaknesses in the ways that communication scholars have previously studied humorous mediated texts. I then suggest that humor scholarship can be improved through two principal methods: 1. humor scholars of various academic disciplines need to use a unified set of terms that refer to the humor stimulus, humor motivation, and the possible effects of the humor, and 2. critics of humorous mediated texts need to approach them as a unique genre, with a critical lens that accounts for the polysemy inherent in many humorous texts. In the next part of the dissertation, I model a multi-methodological approach to mining the mélange of meanings in Chappelle’s Show. My in-depth case study of racial stereotype-based humor in Chappelle’s Show incorporates textual analysis of a dozen sketches, qualitative analysis of viewer opinions about the show, and a quantitative analysis of viewing behaviors as well as the relationship between viewing the show and prejudice. This multi-methodological approach helps better mine the polysemic meanings of the text because it explores the spectrum of the communication model from stimulus to receiver. I conclude that Chappelle’s Show can both encourage and reduce prejudice. While inconclusive conclusions are an anomaly in media criticism, I advocate the pursuit of such conclusions in humor criticism. Stereotype-based mediated comedic texts demand an exploration of their multiple meanings, not a definitive statement about how they should be interpreted or how they affect an audience. / text

This thesis sought to demonstrate that humour and the grotesque are the primary tools by which Mda achieve his postcolonial strategies of &quot / writing back&quot / , that is, of asserting an identity in the face of colonial pressures, apartheid and the growing selfishness of many in the new, post-democratic South African society.

M.A. / South Africa is a multiracial and multicultural society, and the diversity of languages reflect a complex and differentiated nation. This investigative study attempts to show how South Africans from different cultural and linguistic groups experience the humour in the Madam & Eve comic strips and whether, to some extent, they share a common sense of humour. The study starts with an investigation into the relationship between culture and language through the Sapir and Whorf hypothesis. Furthermore the study discusses the relationship between culture, language and humour to show that humour is in many instances culture specific. In culture-specific humour, the humour tends to be at the cost of people from a different cultural group; thus “we” can laugh at “them”. The study also defines humour and investigates the working of humour through the superiority theory, the relief theory and the incongruence theory. The discussion shows that participants in humour need to share the right context and knowledge before they can enjoy the humour. The study looks at comic strips as a genre and how humour operates in comic strips. The investigation also discusses the background on and the characters in the Madam & Eve comic strips. The discussion shows the humour in the Madam & Eve comic strips depicts social issues, racial relationships, especially the relationship between the white Madam, her elderly mother and the black Eve, crime in South Africa and politics. An empirical survey serves as the vehicle to investigate how respondents from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds experience the humour in Madam & Eve. The different examples were chosen to see if respondents experienced certain types of humour depicted in the comic strips in a negative way. The study includes analysis of the different racial and linguistic groups’ experience of the humour depicted in the comic strips included in the questionnaire to show differences in different groups’ experiences. Although some of the respondents took a more neutral stance to some of the ethnic humour depicted in Madam & Eve, generally speaking the respondents experienced the humour depicted in the comic strips in a positive way.

"Investing in Stereotypes" unearths a tradition of humor that may initially sound counter-intuitive: it sees stereotypes as valuable. Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Charles Wright, and Suzan-Lori Parks reveal the way racial and sexual stereotypes paradoxically complicate their subjects in the very attempt to simplify them. The compulsive repetition of stereotypes and the contradictory meanings that stereotypes embody create absurdly comical effects that are, in the hands of these writers, surprisingly humanizing. To unveil the tensions in, say, Sambo, the happy plantation slave who is at once harmless and savage, completely known and enigmatic, is to invest in the stereotype's comic implication that the subjects it hopes to fix are endlessly changing and exhaustingly complex--that those subjects are, in fact, human. Departing from the most common techniques used to resist stereotypes (inversion, exaggeration, and modification), investment, as I theorize it, is a comic form of engagement that enacts Du Bois's concept of second-sight: the ability to perceive the blind-spots of another's cultural perspective from the vantage point of one's own. I begin the dissertation with Hurston because the sort of second-sight her characters practice is the precondition for Ellison's democratic America, Wright's empathic witnessing, and Parks's sovereign communities. Hurston uses tactics of trickery, even more nuanced than Henry Gates's field-framing concept of "Signifyin(g)," to encourage her readers to account for their cultural blind-spots by forcing them to move between the contradictions within a stereotype. For example, when the speaker of "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" vacillates between being "savage" and "cosmic" as she dons the Sambo stereotype, she creates epistemological uncertainty about the cultural knowledge the reader uses to racialize others. By helping people in conflicting positions of power understand their common humanity and their mutually limiting misrecognitions, comic second-sight can work to bridge social divides. "Investing in Stereotypes" shows why the humor of the oppressed deserves more than the scant scholarly attention it has received and also unearths a mode of oppositional consciousness crucial for the emancipationist project of African American literary studies.

Orientador: Tania Regina de Luca / Banca: Silvia Maria Azevedo / Banca: Laura Moutinho Nery / Resumo: A partir de 1860, dois personagens tornaram-se familiares aos leitores da imprensa fluminense: o Moleque e o Dr. Semana, figuras que se transformaram em sinônimo da publicação que lhes deu vida, a Semana Ilustrada. Nas edições semanais, o cenário urbano da corte ganhava traços caricaturais e o jovem escravo alfabetizado e seu senhor branco circulavam livremente pelas ruas, abordavam os rumos da política imperial, as apresentações artísticas dos teatros e denunciavam as condições precárias dos serviços públicos. Dentro de uma grande comédia dos cidadãos, os mendigos, ratoneiros, pretos tigres, leões do norte, políticos e sinhás namoradeiras estavam sujeitos a esbarrar no esperto menino de libré e seu ioiô de cabeça avantajada e cabeleira volumosa. Para compor um heterogêneo mapa citadino, a sociedade fluminense, suas relações sociais e seus hábitos públicos e privados eram expostos pelas crônicas e caricaturas que não deixavam de cultuar a fumaça industrial, as artes civilizadoras, os estudiosos da ciência e o tempo do progresso. Tendo em conta a longevidade da revista, que atravessou diversas conjunturas que particularizaram o Segundo Reinado, a Semana Ilustrada apresenta-se ao historiador como uma fonte instigante, que se entrelaçou à imprensa ilustrada oitocentista, à escravidão urbana do Rio de Janeiro, aos aspectos anatômicos, afetivos e morais dos habitantes e à lógica do riso e do humor da época / Abstract: From 1860, two characters became familiar to the readers of the Fluminense Press: the Moleque and Dr. Semana, figures that have become synonymous with the publication that gave them life, the Semana Ilustrada. Weekly editions, the urban setting of the Court wincaricature traces and the young literate slave and his white Lord freely circulated in the streets, talked about the imperial politics directions, the artistic presentations of theatres and denounced the precarious conditions of public services. Inside of large citizens of comedy, the beggars, lurchers, black tigers, lions of North, politicians and flirt ladies were subjects to bump the smart boy of liveryand your yo-yo, of a big head and voluminous hair. To compose a heterogeneous map city, the Fluminense society, their social relations and their publicand private habits were exposed by the chronics and caricatures that did not fail to worship the industrial smoke, civilizing arts, the scholars of science and the time of progress.Having regard to the longevity of the magazine, that crossed several times in the Second Reign, the Semana Ilustrada presents itself to the historian as an exciting source, that intertwined to illustrated press of 19th Century, to urban slavery of Rio de Janeiro, to anatomic, emotional and moral aspects of the inhabitants and to logic oflaughter and humor of the time / Mestre