The sense of humour is a uniquely human skill and understanding humour is an important and rewarding part of social interaction. This thesis begins by discussing the definition of humour, followed by a review of the evidence we have that humour is an evolved and adaptive behaviour. Humour may play an important role in helping individuals to bond and signal cooperation, which may be further communicated by the humour style which is used to communicate. Research has also demonstrated that humour is an attractive quality in a mate, though the precise reasons for this are currently debated (Chapter 1). Empirical work in the first section of the thesis is consistent with evidence demonstrating that humour is attractive and sexually selected for. Chapter 2 tests the influence of modality and relationship context in an effort to further our understanding of why humour is attractive and provides evidence that more attractive people are rated as being funnier than less attractive people. Humour was also found to be more attractive for short-term relationships than long-term relationships, possibly due to the similarity between funniness and flirtatiousness. In Chapter 3, attractiveness ratings of vignettes in the style of personal advertisements, which contained either aggressive or affiliative humour, demonstrated the importance of humour style. An affiliative humour style was more attractive for long-term relationships whereas an aggressive humour style was more attractive for short-term relationships. Further testing provided evidence that humour styles were associated with personality traits which are highly relevant in a mating context, helping to explain the functions of different humour styles. The second section of the thesis examines the relationship between humour, cooperation, and dominance as an alternative explanation for the evolution of humour. Chapter 4 contains an extended introduction to the physical, verbal, and nonverbal cues to dominance and the sex differences that exist in expressive behaviours. Chapter 5 continues this theme and elaborates further on the function of humour in group situations, before providing empirical evidence of how humour is used in the context of a competitive ‘desert-island’ style conversation between same-sex dyads. Chapter 6 further expands on this line of research as empirical evidence presented in this chapter demonstrates that males may be using humour as a way of communicating the desire to cooperate with other males who are of a similar level of dominance. The communication of dominance is further examined in Chapter 7, where ethological evidence showed that males who were more physically dominant tended to knock doors with greater frequency than males who were less physically dominant. In the final chapter of the thesis (Chapter 8), the evolution of humour is discussed in light of the evidence presented in Chapters 2-7. The thesis presents evidence to suggest that humour production is an important skill for males for two reasons. Firstly, a good sense of humour is a highly attractive quality to females and may be a cue to genetic quality or good partner qualities, depending on the humour style used. Secondly, it may be important for males to use humour to signal cooperation to other males in order to form alliances. In females, the evidence presented in the thesis suggests that humour production may be a way for females to demonstrate romantic interest or flirtatiousness but the function of humour use between females remains largely inconclusive.

This thesis contributes primarily to answering two broad questions within the current scholarship on ‘everyday life’ in the Soviet Union: (1) How did Soviet citizens perceive, understand, and adapt to the 1930s? And (2) What were the principal associational structures of Soviet society in these years? These issues are not easily separated, with the second constituting a vital element of the first. They are therefore explored simultaneously in the first three chapters, which examine, respectively, the nature and possibilities of joke-telling in the 1930s; the principal targets of that humour; and, thirdly, its implicit assumptions, values and thematic proclivities. The fourth chapter concentrates on the structure and nature of sociability in the 1930s, and the final chapter incorporates those conclusions in order to address the larger question of how Soviet citizens came to understand and adapt to life in these years – for they did so together, rather than alone as old totalitarian theories of ‘atomisation’ proposed. The thesis makes two principal arguments. Firstly, all unofficial associational ties in this decade were necessarily underlaid by (and hence reliant upon) trust; therefore, the fundamental social unit in the 1930s was the trust group (small groups of citizens bound together by trust). Secondly, citizens adapted to the 1930s via an intricate blend of acceptance and criticism or, rather, of acceptance through the process of criticism. By criticising that which could not be changed, ‘ordinary’ Soviet citizens could retain some agency of their own and shared these interpretive acts with those whom they trusted. Rather than forming a critical ‘resistance’ or ‘dissent’, these processes created a pathway to adaptation without becoming simply crushed or brainwashed by ideology, and simultaneously shaped a complex, mutually affective interaction between popular values and official ideology.

Le rire est un comportement humain indiscutablement universel. Abondamment traité par la psychologie et les neurosciences, il demeure néanmoins le laissé-pour-compte de l’anthropologie. Si les connaissances empiriques accumulées à ce jour ont permis de bien le caractériser à des niveaux proximaux d’analyse, la question de son origine évolutionniste est, en contrepartie, souvent évacuée. Or, toute tentative sérieuse de comprendre ce comportement requiert une investigation de sa fonction adaptative et de sa phylogénèse. Le projet entrepris ici consiste en une analyse de cinq hypothèses ultimes sur le rire et l’humour, desquelles sont extraites des prédictions qui sont confrontées à des données empiriques provenant de disciplines diverses. En guise de conclusion, il est tenté de formuler un scénario évolutif qui concilie les différentes hypothèses abordées. / Laughter is a universal and ubiquitous human behavior. Widely investigated by psychology and neuroscience, it is still largely ignored by anthropology. While humor and laughter are well caracterised at proximate levels of explanation, the question of their evolutionary origins remains relatively unexplored. A number of recent hypotheses have yet attempted to shed light on the potential adaptive significance and phylogeny of these behaviors. This project consists of an analysis of five of these ultimate explanations, by confronting their predictions to empirical data from a large array of disciplines. In the end, I propose an evolutionary framework that synthesizes and reconciles these hypotheses.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

New Ways To Express Old Hatred is a sociological account of the consistencies and changes comic racist discourse has experienced over the past forty years in British popular culture, accounting for both content and communicative form in relation to the ethics and aesthetics of humour. The main focal point of the study concerns a case study representative of the communicative changes installed by the digitalisation of media in the cultural public sphere. Sickipedia.org which demonstrates a contemporary, participatory comic community that is simultaneously representative of popular culture. Sickipedia.org circulates explicit comic racist material on a large scale across several formats including its main website, several smart phone applications and a range of social media including Facebook and Twitter. This contemporary emergence of comic racism is discussed in relation to the historical context of wider comic racism in British popular culture, comparatively evaluating the form and content of material from the 'clubland' humour of the 1970s, the anti-racist tradition of 1980s Alternative comedy, the thematically fragmented popular comedy of the 1990s through to prejudicial liquidity evident in more recent comedy. The central argument being asserted is that comic racist discourse has been consistently reproduced for the last forty years. However its communicative form, aesthetic presentation and in some cases its content has undertaken a process of transformation in order for it to be circulated in contemporary popular cultural products unchallenged by both social critics and institutional authorities. Critical humour studies stresses that ridicule-based humorous discourse must be treated critically, especially if that ridicule is directed at groups who are socially marginalised. Comic racism represents the discursive stability of traditional racist discourses that have circulated in society since the Enlightenment, reproducing the ideological perspectives of white supremacy, social exclusion of 'Others' and the perceived, amalgamated biological and cultural inferiority of non-white 'races'. Drawing from content analysis and critical discourse analysis of Sickipedia.org, this study, on a textual level, with reference to theory and history, critically discusses the persistent reproduction of comic racism in the cultural public sphere of the UK, deconstructing the hateful messages embedded in racist jokes and providing an original contribution to critical humour studies.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise s’intéresse aux quatre tomes de La frousse autour du monde de Bruno Blanchet, qui sont étudiés à partir d’un double paradoxe. L’humoriste affirme, au sujet de ses récits de voyage, souhaiter surprendre son lecteur en évitant de suivre une recette. Des chercheurs associent pourtant son humour à une recette. Qu’en est-il dans La frousse autour du monde ? Par ailleurs, Blanchet publie ses récits à une époque où les guides touristiques abondent et où le monde semble être « rincé de son exotisme » (Henri Michaux). Alors que les écrivains voyageurs recourent bien souvent à des solutions rhétoriques convenues et semblables, Blanchet parvient-il à écrire des récits de voyage originaux ? Le mémoire est divisé en deux chapitres. Le premier chapitre se concentre sur les représentations de l’ailleurs dans La frousse autour du monde. Bien que Blanchet utilise plusieurs stratégies rhétoriques pour décrire l’ailleurs, deux sont particulièrement récurrentes. Il s’agit de la déconstruction des idées reçues et du détournement vers le voyageur. L’auteur emploie aussi quelques procédés humoristiques de façon fréquente. Le deuxième chapitre s’intéresse à la représentation de l’Autre dans les récits de l’humoriste. Blanchet recourt à des préjugés séculaires pour dépeindre l’étranger, mais également à une façon plus nuancée. Blanchet déploie les mêmes stratégies humoristiques que celles qu’il utilise pour représenter l’ailleurs pour faire rire son lecteur.

UNIVERZITA KARLOVA V PRAZE FAKULTA SOCIÁLNÍCH VĚD Institut komunikačních studií a žurnalistiky Klára Follová Genderová stereotypizace v sitcomu Comeback Diplomová práce Praha 2011 2 Abstract In sitcoms we can find gender stereotypes, as well as other kinds of stereotypes. They are the same as those, which are incorporated in structures of real society. The reason of their existence in sitcoms is the fact that they are incorporated in models of characters, which mutual conflicts are what the sitcom humour is being built on. Because of the fact that the primary aim of sitcom is humour and not the reflexion of society, stereotypes are not as problematical as in the real society: sitcom uses them, but also criticizes them by its humour. On the case of the analyzed Czech sitcom "Comeback" I have found that confirming or denying gender stereotypes has no unified or systematical form in this kind of television output; so, in one single episode of some sitcom we can find both confirmation and denial of the same one stereotype. The reason of it is that stereotypes are used to build up comic situations, which is the main aim of sitcoms; therefore the main frame area of a sitcom is one scene leading to a point. Usually, sitcoms use to be based on situations of common life, therefore in building a joke they must remind...

This diploma thesis focuses on the problematic aspects of the journalistic profession nowadays, namely on the example of the penetration of the mystifying jokes to the mainstream media. In three specific cases where the authors of the mystifying pranks managed to penetrate the media, the work illustrates the most common mistakes journalists can make and focuses on trends, which stand for these tendencies. Part of this work is the analysis of the mystifying contents that appeared on jokes websites, on Facebook or in the context of interpersonal communication, and subsequent analysis of the media in which these mystifying reports appeared in the form of the real events. The interviews with both stakeholders - authors of the hoax contents and media representatives - will subsequently serve for the illustration of the overall issue and the final conclusion.

Selon la théorie de Suls (1972), les situations humoristiques doivent mettre en scène une incongruité qui provoque un effet de surprise. La résolution de cette incongruité déclencherait le rire. Cette théorie ne permet pas d'identifier suffisamment les différents aspects émotionnels mis en œuvre par le traitement cognitif d'une situation humoristique. Aussi, l'enjeu de cette thèse est de montrer l'importance des relations entre les éléments cognitifs et les éléments émotionnels engagés dans le traitement des situations humoristiques. Cette importance commence à apparaître dans la littérature sur l'humour qui a été recensée. Grâce aux thématiques transgressives mises en scène par l'humour noir, il a été possible d'examiner les évaluations cognitives et la variabilité des réactions émotionnelles provoquées par ce type d'humour comparativement à un humour plus standard. Pour clôturer cette thèse et en complément au modèle de Suls (1972), nous avons élaboré un nouveau modèle procédural. Notre objectif était de synthétiser les données de la littérature et certains de nos résultats, tout en ouvrant des pistes favorisant l'étude des relations entre les aspects cognitifs et émotionnels mobilisés par la compréhension et l'appréciation de l'humour. / According to Suls (1972), humor relies on the perception of a situation from two self-consistent but normally incompatible frames of reference, leading to incongruity. The subsequent resolution of the incongruity triggers positive emotional states such as mirth. Yet, the emotional experiences triggered by humorous situations are mostly disregarded in Suls' model. The aim of the present dissertation is to highlight that the relation between cognitive and emotional elements is crucial in the examination of the humor process. Indeed, a growing focus on the interrelation between cognition and emotion can be found in the literature. Because black humor relies on social norm transgression, it allows us to examine both the cognitive assessment and the variability of emotional responses triggered by this humor style, compared to nonblack humor. Finally, we propose a cognitive-emotional model to promote the study of the relationships between the cognitive and emotional aspects of humor.

This paper focuses on the translation of audiovisual humour. I have analysed Petr Palouš's translation of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The translator of audiovisual humour has to deal with the same issues and problems as the translator of literature, that is he has to find equivalents to word plays, idioms, register and so on, but at the same time he also has to comply with the restrictions of audiovisual medium. I have identified the most common translation problems when translating humour and audiovisual texts and possible strategies of their translation into the target language, and then analysed how Palouš dealt with these cruces translatorum when translating the Flying Circus.