Jokes

The paper will discuss the following subtopics: Arthur Koestler's bisociation theory of humour and its reception; Victor Raskin's script-based theory of jokes (SSTH) in his "Semantic Mechanisms of Humor; the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo and the attempt of testing GTVH by Willibald Ruch; Salvatore Attardo's Linear Theory of Humor (IDM); The analysis of puns by Attardo; Humour and pragmatic maxims (Raskin, Attardo, etc.); Attardo's Setup-Incongruity-Resolution -model (SIR); The further taxonomy of "logical mechanisms" (LM) of jokes by Attardo, Hempelmann, and Di Maio; the "Anti-Festschrift" for Victor Raskin.

В статье исследуется состояние изучения анекдота в зарубежной науке 2-й пол. ХХ – нач. XXI вв. В поле зрения находятся работы ученых из стран Западной Европы, Америки, а также постсоветского и постсоциалистического пространства. Анализируются объекты исследований и подходы к анекдоту как материалу изучения.

Les recueils de « rencontres », « reparties » et « apophtegmes » du roi de France Henri IV compilés entre les années 1580 et 1660 témoignent de la réputation de rex facetus attachée au premier Bourbon. Cette communication entend replacer ces collections dans l’histoire des pratiques de compilation et l’histoire des usages (notamment politiques et mémoriels) des paroles mémorables du prince à la Renaissance et au Grand siècle. Une césure est repérable dans la documentation autour des années 1620-1630. Jusque-là, la circulation des bons mots du prince était essentiellement orale et manuscrite, comme l’attestent les Journaux-registres de Pierre de l’Estoile. Ce dernier compile sur le vif les saillies du roi dans une démarche militante, qui témoigne de sa sensibilité royaliste et anti-ligueuse. Après la mort du prince, la publication de chroniques donne accès aux « particularités » du règne à un public élargi : une nouvelle génération de compilateurs utilise ces sources imprimées pour recueillir et rassembler les bons mots du prince. Les témoignages documentaires sont nombreux entre 1620 et 1660, et l’on observe une diversification des fonctions attribuées aux recueils : selon les cas, il s’agit de divertir et chasser la mélancolie, enseigner une langue étrangère, célébrer la mémoire et les vertus du roi défunt, instruire et édifier le prince, ou encore nourrir une honnête curiosité pour les particularités de l’histoire de France et de ses grands hommes. Ainsi, un même objet documentaire (le recueil de bons mots), issu de méthodes de compilation similaires, peut remplir des fonctions variées en fonction du medium utilisé (manuscrit ou imprimé), du public visé et de l’objectif assigné au recueil.

Freudian (1905 Wien; Der Witz und seine Beziehung sun VnbewuJten. Deuticke) and Salience (Goldstein, Sub and Anthony, 1972; The Psycho/ogy of Humor. Academic Press, New York) theory make opposite predictions about the effects of attitudes to sex and sexual behaviour on appreciation of sex humour. Male and female students (N = 115) answered a questionnaire of attitudes toward sex, a sexual behaviour inventory (Eysenck, 1976; Sex orid Personality. Open Books, London) and a humour test. The results generally supported a positive correlation between appreciation of sex humour and the sex scales (sexual libido, satisfaction, experience and pleasure), although the resulting pattern was very complex. Separation of sex humour according to the jokes structure yielded different predictor patterns. Funniness of humour based on nonsense correlated most frequently and most highly with the sex scales libido, experiences and pleasure. Low sexual satisfaction, low permissiveness, and prudishness were correlated with aversiveness of all types of humour. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that these variables are better predictors of enjoyment of sexual humour than the more general factors of conservatism and tough-mindedness (T) which turned out to be potent predictors in a recent study (Ruth and Hehl, 1986; Person. individ. 01% 7,861-874). It turned out that the predictive sex scales were located on the toughmindedness axis and were thus as predictive of sex humour as T itself. A refinement of the salience hypothesis was undertaken.

В статье определяется характер корреляции анекдота и смеховой культуры
(завершенность и незавершенность, соединение разрушительного и созидательного
потенциала и т. д.). Подчеркивается взаимозависимость анекдота и культуры (культура
дает материал для переворачивания, анекдот предотвращает «окостенение» культуры).
Выявляется реализация в анекдоте антиповедения на уровне персонажей и на уровне
собеседников. Определяются виды смеха, которые реализуются в анекдоте и в реакции на
него. Отмечается зависимость анекдота от переходного исторического периода на уровне
таких черт жанра, как циничность, абсурдность и т. д.

The form of Nigeria's stand-up comedy today-the use of microphones and formal congregation of audiences especially-took off from practices in the West, but it does not follow that everything about the industry has a foreign origin. Before the advent of colonialism certain performances that have similarity with contemporary nature of stand-up comedy existed within the different societies that now make up the country. They include Efe 1 in the southwest among the Yoruba, Yan Kama and Wawan Sarki 2 among the Hausa/Fulani in the north, and Njakịrị 3 as was practiced by the Igbo in the southeast of Nigeria. These performances are done mainly, as Roger Grainger observes, by "clowns, fools and jesters [who] are persons licensed by society not only to express things which are commonly unthought (and very often unthinkable) but to embody them, and under certain circumstances, within agreed interpersonal settings, to act them out" (23). He goes on to aver: Clowns [just like in wawan sarki] and carnival characters [as in efe] seize the nettle of humanity's inability to devise a painless way of organising itself by making it laugh at its own absurdity and defusing its pain, at least temporarily, by the creation of an alternative reality, one whose obvious unreality [emphasis in the original] detracts from the personal relevance of the subject matter it presents. (Grainger 23) In addition, the Njakịrị variant, even though bereft of professional clowns and specific season for its enactment like the duo of Efe and Wawan Sarki, can also perform the same functions of painlessly presenting satire. It is akin to Alfred Radcliffe-Brown's "symmetrical joking relationship" wherein two or more individuals involved exchange jocular insults and none is culturally allowed to take offence (195). Efe, among the Yoruba, has the main function of providing laughter through ridicule. Often performed by Gelede masked

Bangla jokes or Bengali funny jokes i.e. the prevalence of color-humor is not only today, jokes in bengali . If we look back to the past, we can see that this humor has been served differently in different countries. Behind this joke, many people hide their deep happiness, sorrow and pain.
There is. We see this joke in almost all the countries of the world. Of course, its expression is different in different countries.

A brief critical essay contrasting conventional AIDS jokes with the queer style of humor developed by gay men with AIDS and their communities in the first decade of the epidemic. I analyze form, content, discursive relationships and social function to trace how AIDS jokes serve to demonstrate and sustain hegemonic power, whereas queer AIDS humor enables resistance to this power by advancing agency and dignity for those affected by the disease.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

作为明清笑话书的代表作之一，清代笑话书《笑林广记》号称大成之作。因为其内容五花八门、无所不包，并且它包含着不同作者，甚至不同时代的笑话，所以我们可视之为中国各个朝代的笑话集的顶点。在最近几年学术界对幽默研究表示了前所未有的关注的背景下，本文试图按照若干西方文论而对《笑林广记》进行新颖的分析、解读。基于这种比较研究，本文的意图是将这部笑话书放置到比较文学的视野下，在某种程度上可以说，本文拟让《笑林广记》进入到比较文学学界。
第一章分析这部作品里的最突出、最显著的特点，即其可笑性。本文首先对“笑”字进行了初步的分析，展示出公开的笑、失笑以及一方之笑三个宏观范畴的不同作用。接下来，按照西方的优越理论、不协调理论以及释放理论而解释、分析《笑林广记》的可笑特点。
在第二章里我着重于笑话里的幽默特点。最初，本章力图展现出幽默与可笑的不同之所在，以便证明此两者是不一样的概念，含有不同的特点。之后，基于西方文学批评家对幽默的界定，我分析笑话里的幽默，为的是解释可笑之余的可悲以及可悲之余的可笑。在这一章里，我涉及到了幽默的三个主要组成部分，便是语言、人物、接受者。最后，我试图解释笑话的人物和情况所导致的异化效果。
第三章所关注的是讽刺。首先我简短地解释讽刺作品在中国和在西方的特点、它的起源以及发展；接着，以讽刺诗为主，我介绍《笑林广记》里的讽刺特点，并且分析这种文风的二元论，即“温和讽刺”与“辛酸讽刺”、“直接”与“间接”、“写实”与“夸张”之间的关系和张力。最后，我简短地介绍《笑林广记》若隐若现指出的社会问题。即便这部作品是在清代成书的，但是它所指出的不少问题其实是源于明代的，因此第三章的最后一部分是以明代的社会问题为主。
在第四章里我分析笑话里的狂欢以及怪诞元素。基于前苏联文学批评家米·米·巴赫金对这两个概念的界定，本章分析《笑林广记》里的广场语言及其怪诞身体的描述，尤其值得注意的是人身的废物、性器官以及降格。

The present paper tries to discover the position of sense of humor in personality space. Several definitions of humor are discussed and a review of studies relating personality and humor is given. The authors' conceptualization of humor is introduced and two studies are presented that tried to locate these humor dimensions within personality space. Our humor tests were given to two samples: these samples also had to answer several multidimensional personality inventories to cover the whole domain of temperament (e.g. EPQ, 16PF. FPI, STPI, SSS-IV and STAI). The Humor scores were correlated with each of the personality variables. The factor compositions of the best predictors for a humor category were used to arrive at a tentative hypothesis of the location of dimensions of humor in personality space. The results show that strong relationships between humor and temperament exist. Some of the hypotheses discussed in the literature were supported, but also some new hypotheses were derived from this study. All in all, the results show that the separation of appreciation of humor into the independent components ofjunniness and rejecrion is appropriate since they are located in different parts of the personality space.

This article explores the surprisingly decisive role that Kant's "incongruity theory" of laughter plays in his aesthetic and broader critical philosophy. First, laughter constitutes a highly specific form of aesthetic judgment in Kant. Laughter involves a discordant relation between the cognitive faculties characteristic of the sublime, but this relation obtains between the understanding and the imagination, the two faculties at play in judgments of taste on the beautiful. Second, laughter is the transcendental condition of possibility for both the beautiful and the sublime. While most commentators dismiss laughter as an afterthought of Kant's aesthetics, laughter in fact constitutes the most basic aesthetic judgment in Kant. Third, an account of aesthetic judgment that begins with laughter transforms how we understand Kant's argument that judgment unites nature and freedom. Namely, it reveals how an empirical world at odds with the subject's purposes can nevertheless advance the subject's rational vocation to think and act beyond the empirical. I conclude by arguing that Kantian critical philosophy is itself a philosophy of laughter.

A viccpártok eszmei előzményei, ideológiájuk és programjuk Mi köti össze a Cornelius nevű rinocéroszt, a sörivó sündisznót, a kétfarkú kutyát és a kilencágú macskát? Hogy mindegyik egy viccpárt nevében vagy lógójában szerepel. A viccpártok fontos funkciót töltenek be: a maguk módján levezetik a felgyülemlett feszültségeket a társadalomban. Van-e a viccpártoknak ideológiája? Érdemes-e komolyan venni őket? Erre keressük a választ elemzésünkben.

Memes are small units of culture, analogous to genes, which flow from person to person by copying or imitation. More than any previous medium, the internet has the technical capabilities for global meme diffusion. Yet, in order to spread globally, memes need to negotiate their way through cultural and linguistic borders. This article introduces a new broad method, Web memetics, comprising extensive Web searches and combined quantitative and qualitative analyses, to identify and assess: a) the different versions of a meme;

Can jokes win a hostile room, a hopeless argument, or even an election? You bet they can, according to Cicero, and he knew what he was talking about. One of Rome’s greatest politicians, speakers, and lawyers, Cicero was also reputedly one of antiquity’s funniest people. After he was elected commander-in-chief and head of state, his enemies even started calling him “the stand-up Consul.” How to Tell a Joke provides a lively new translation of Cicero’s essential writing on humor alongside that of the later Roman orator and educator Quintilian. The result is a timeless practical guide to how a well-timed joke can win over any audience.

As powerful as jokes can be, they are also hugely risky. The line between a witty joke and an offensive one isn’t always clear. Cross it and you’ll look like a clown, or worse. Here, Cicero and Quintilian explore every aspect of telling jokes―while avoiding costly mistakes. Presenting the sections on humor in Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator and Quintilian’s The Education of the Orator, complete with an enlightening introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Tell a Joke examines the risks and rewards of humor and analyzes basic types that readers can use to write their own jokes.

Filled with insight, wit, and examples, including more than a few lawyer jokes, How to Tell a Joke will appeal to anyone interested in humor or the art of public speaking.

"The article analyses the transformation of the genre of the political anecdote in post-Soviet Russia. Based on material from the pre-election PR project ‘Anecdotes from Zyuganov’ (2007), the author examines how the modern political anecdote functions, how it is created and is changing, who uses it in political battles and why. A comparison of Soviet and post-Soviet political anecdotes shows that this genre is maintains its opposition status, although its form is changing significantly: anecdotes are no longer told, but instead printed in newspapers and spread on the Internet. This work analyses the mechanisms for creating current political anecdotes (from adapting old texts to creating new ones) and traces the path of their spread in the media.

Keywords: modern folklore, politics, humour, political anecdotes, Zyuganov, the media, Internet, party, authority, opposition, PR, election, scandal, agitation"

Das ,Migrantenkino‘ - in seinen Anfängen ein von Tragik gekennzeichnetes Genre - wird immer mehr von humorvollen Inszenierungen geprägt. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird der 2011 erschienene Film "Alamanya" und seine vielen gewitzten Auf- und Abbrüche, Umwälzungen und Verschiebungen analysiert. Zwar thematisiert der Film viele interkulturelle Schwierigkeiten, doch wird mit den Techniken des Witzes (nach Sigmund Freud) den Kontroversen um Integration und Leitkultur ein Gegenimpuls geliefert.

Русские анекдоты о психиатрах — целый ряд текстов комического характера, объединенных действующими лицами. Однако сходство не ограничивается одними только участниками ситуации, а проявляется и в самом устройстве анекдота — структуре и характере отношений между его элементами — а) доктором, б) пациентом или его близким и в) собственно проблемой. Слушатель предполагает, что доктор должен заниматься лечением проблемы, а пациент или какой-то посредник — способствовать лечению, но обнаруживает, что отношения нарушаются. В большинстве известных анекдотов о психиатрах можно увидеть строго заданный принцип реализации комического эффекта нарушенного ожидания, связанный с тем, что посредник между врачом и проблемой, будь то сам пациент или его близкий человек, не выполняет по той или иной причине свою ролевую функцию — не способствует «лечению». В статье предлагается видеть в таком устройстве текста и специфике комического решения конструкцию, родственную объектам интереса грамматики конструкций.

Among Russian jokes (‘anecdotes’) there is a type devoted to psychiatrists and their practice. However, the similarity is not reduced to the characters alone, and can be seen in the structure of the situation itself. There are a) a doctor, b) a patient or a relative of theirs, and c) a problem. A listener supposes that the doctor will address the problem, and the patient will help to solve it, but this relationship turns out to be false. The comic effect — what makes us laugh — is the violated expectation: in the real world, one expects that a patient (or a relative of theirs) is to fulfill the role of a mediator, thus enabling a doctor to address the problem, whereas in the reality of the joke the assumed role of a mediator is not fulfi lled in any way. The article reveals that the principal common feature for these short stories is actually the underlying structure that resembles constructions, which are of interest for Construction Grammar.

Pissing putti, virtually always male, merrily populate the imagery of early modern visual culture, from illuminated manuscripts to tableware, frescoed walls to working fountains. Their very ubiquity and charm has perhaps inured us to the valence of masculine bravado conveyed by the imagery. In particular, the exuberant jet nearly always issues from a babe shown standing erect, and the discharge of fluid is accentuated by forcefulness and exhibitionism. Furthermore, in early modern European culture, the fluids emitted by the blatant male organ were often considered interchangeable, and visual as well as verbal jokes were made about urine, semen, water, and wine. In a medical system determined by attention to the physiology and variability of the humors alongside the fixed taxonomy of forms, the sexual economy was as much characterized by liquidity as it was obsessed with penile penetration. Pissing and standing might appear meaningless and uninteresting, but such overlooked acts, I argue, indicate that the somatics and semiotics of early modern masculinity consisted of more than sexual intromission or inhibiting anxiety, and that visual metaphors presented manliness in ways that were often humorous, usually public, and always assertive.

К сожалению, бóльшая часть исследований, посвященных отечественному политическому анекдоту, базируется исключительно на советском материале. Иногда постсоветские политические анекдоты бегло рассматриваются в такого рода работах в качестве своеобразного дополнения, обычно занимая там маргинальное место. Отдельных исследований, посвященных современным политическим анекдотам на постсоветском пространстве, пока сравнительно немного.
Задача настоящей статьи – рассмотреть, как функционирует современный политический анекдот в России, как он создается и изменяется, кто и зачем его использует в политической борьбе, наконец, как соотносится специфика бытования современного политического анекдота со спецификой бытования анекдота вообще. Заявленная в названии статьи форма очерков позволяет не претендовать на всеобъемлющее исчерпывающее исследование традиций современного политического анекдота, а сосредоточиться на отдельных сюжетах, которые кажутся знаковыми и показательными. В связи с этим статья состоит из трех частей разного размера: в первой части кратко описываются трансформации, которые пережил отечественный анекдот за последние несколько десятилетий, во второй – на материале анекдотов о бывшем мэре Москвы Ю. М. Лужкове рассматривается механизм формирования новых анекдотических сюжетов; в третьей – излагается история создания политического пиар-проекта «Анекдоты от Зюганова», основанного на манипулировании текстами современного фольклора, анализируются отдельные тексты «зюгановских анекдотов» и раскрываются механизмы их создания.
Хочется надеяться, что все три очерка будут взаимно дополнять друг друга и в совокупности позволят читателю представить более или менее цельную картину бытования политического анекдота в современной России.

[this is a draft of an article published in Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, (2012), 8: 137-150]

Leido desde una perspectiva narratológica, el cuentecillo cervantino del Quijote de 1615 sobre el licenciado que decía ser Neptuno resulta un relato de intencionalidad ambigua y cuestionadora respecto de la noción de la locura como esencia y como patología.

The file uploaded here is a final draft of the article. The published version can be found in Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, VIII, pp. 137-150.

ספרות ההומור העשירה של היישוב היהודי בארץ-ישראל במחצית הראשונה של המאה העשרים כמעט לא נחקרה עד כה, למרות ערכה ההיסטורי והספרותי כאחד. ספרות זו התבססה גם על עיתונות היתולית ענפה, שכללה חוברות רבות, ואלה שמורות היום בארכיון המכון לחקר התפוצות באוניברסיטת תל אביב ובמרכז לחקר הפולקלור באוניברסיטה העברית. המאמר מתמקד במחזור פופולרי ומייצג של בדיחות על משפחת בן-יהודה שפורסמו בעיתונות ההיתולית בתקופה הנדונה. הדיון עוסק בעזרת דוגמאות בשאלות מדוע עלה הצורך לציין את אחרותה של משפחת בן-יהודה? למה דווקא בהומור? ומה ניתן ללמוד מכך על היישוב היהודי בן הזמן?
עבור עורכי העיתונים ומחבריהם היה בן-יהודה יריב אידיאולוגי ופוליטי לא רק על רקע התחרות על ההון התרבותי הצנוע של היישוב, אלא גם בשל זיקותיו הסותרות לכאורה לקבוצות המרכזיות שפעלו בו באותה עת. הומור היה הכלי הלגיטימי ביותר לערער על סמכותו של בן-יהודה בלי לפגוע במוניטין של הכותבים, שכן הוא אפשר לעיתונאים להתנסות בעיתונות צהובה בלי לוותר על סגנונם ההגון. כך תרם ההומור לא רק לתיעול ביקורת פנימית, אלא גם להתבססותה של קבוצה חברתית חדשה ביישוב בעלת סדר יום תרבותי משלה.

Understanding jokes involves the challenge of incongruity-detection and resolution. Foreign language understanding involves significant processing difficulties, such as interpreting words within their sentence context.  An implication is that jokes in a foreign language will be more difficult to understand and therefore probably less humorous, compared to native language jokes. To study this question while preserving humor across translations, jokes were selected from Turkish and English websites to minimize language play and cultural references. Turkish university students rated both Turkish and English jokes for humor.  Perceived humor for foreign language jokes was influenced by English ability. L2-English jokes were perceived as more humorous, on average, than L1-Turkish jokes for the one-quarter of our sample with good English proficiency who were also preparing for an English-centric career such as English teacher or translator. This novel finding is consistent with achievement/satisfaction theory.  Students with the opposite characteristics, also approximately a quarter of our sample, rated L1-Turkish jokes as more humorous.  Ratings of ease-of-understanding influenced humor ratings in a graded manner similarly for native speakers rating their L1, and both low and high-proficiency foreign language learners.  This lends quantitative support to the theoretical view that L2 humor processing lies on a continuum with L1 humor processing.  Results also supported the inverted-U theory, which is that humor has an inverse relation to processing difficulty. This supports Raskin's sophistication theory and the concept of a "sweet spot" for humor processing that is shifted due to the inherent challenge of incongruity detection and resolution in a foreign language.

The focus of this work is on the formal construction of jokes within the popular form of entertainment, the televised workplace situation comedy. The narrative universe of a sitcom is a product of industry, and so it is created to have a mass appeal as well as to reinforce social norms. However, the smaller units of humor transmission within the sitcom, the jokes, enforce the reality of the constructed universe. What seems unremarkable to a character will seem absurd to an audience, and so the joke can be an instrument of challenging boundaries and social change.
Parallel to this analysis will be an exploration of the worlds created within these shows: how they operate and differ from our reality, how they reflect our society and in turn, how our society is informed by the power of these shared imaginary worlds. What is the impact on the collective imaginary and our relation to narratives when the barriers between them breech?
Specific objects of interest areThe Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1978), Murphy Brown (1988-1998), and 30 Rock (2006-2013). Despite the 40 year span of these works, each premise is centered around a white female protagonist living in a metropolitan area, balancing her domestic life with a career in the industry of television production. This dissonance of the boundary crossing examined is reflected in the shows within these shows (a live local news show, a weekly news magazine, and live variety show, respectively) revealing the both liberating and limiting act of constructing an aesthetic object that must present as authentic and authoritative.

This study analyses the concept and phenomenon of touch. It begins by demonstrating that touch is problematic for a "Science of Touch" and for human beings as well. In this context, the notion of embodiment is re-thought in order to open the discursive space for a study of touch that takes into consideration all the difficulties implied in it. The study identifies in the phenomenon of touch an element that makes the self-identity of a science of touch and of embodiment impossible. This element is the concept of self-difference.

Jokes and funny stories concerning outstanding witticisms and hilariously
foolish utterances, for the most part expressed in elegant Latin, were held
in high regard by humanists across Europe from the second half of the
fifteenth century onwards. It was thus as a matter of national and regional
pride that Heinrich Bebel (1472/73–1518), humanist poet and academic at
the south-west German University of Tübingen, compiled his three books of
facetiae (final authorized edition appearing in 1514). The resulting collection
of over four hundred anecdotes, quips and amusing proverbial expressions
constitutes an extraordinary literary record of what Bebel and his circle of
friends, including a number of convivial abbots and priests, found amusing
and worthy of their laughter. As a veritable treasure trove for those interested
in the history of joking and comedy, Bebel’s collection contains valuable
evidence pertaining to both the theory of and practices associated with
laughter on the eve of the Reformation in Germany, including the institution
of the court fool or jester. This first complete translation in English of Bebel’s
many jokes and funny anecdotes will provide readers with a window into a
Northern European culture of Renaissance laughter that is learned and yet
celebrates the popular, composed in Latin and yet not deaf to the vernacular.

Ajae frequently appears in popular media today. So-called ajae gaegeu, jokes (" gags ") made by male panelists in their mid-30s to mid-40s on television comedy programs and general entertainment programs, have been met with vociferous reactions from viewers. The popularity of ajae jokes has been accompanied by the birth of the ajae as a unique middle-aged male figure that has in turn become a common motif and theme in popular culture. Ajae jokes first drew attention when chef O Sedeuk, appearing on broadcaster MBC's My Little Television (마이 리틀 텔레비전) in 2015, came out with various puns, including holding up a piece of garlic and saying, " 형만을 위해 살아갈릭 " (I only live for you; the sentence contains two garlic-related puns, one each on the Korean and English words.). Since then, the ajae boss sketches on broadcaster SBS's entertainment program Laughter Seekers has featured the distress of company interns having to laugh at the jokes of their superiors, while the ajaessi section on KBS2's entertainment program Gag Concert (개그콘서트) delivers laughs through the jokes of an " ajae demon " character. In this article, I explore the socio-cultural significance of these jokes and the male characters typically associated with them.

This article makes use of theories of humor and play to analyze a corpus of jokes private equity investors tell about the work that they do. Private equity investors, at the time of a field project I conducted from spring 2012 through summer 2014, managed about US$3.5 trillion in mostly other people's money, to buy and sell whole companies as investments. By just about any measure, they're wealthy and powerful (they have lots of resources and can make many other people do things). I suggest that analyzing private equity investors' jokes and laughter allows us a way to understand what they think about the wealth and power they cultivate and the inequality they enable. I further suggest that private equity investors, in many ways, are ambivalent about the justification for their social status. In turn, my analysis and observations offer a critique of too rigid theories about the nature of present social inequality.

讀書是極其私人的活動，但讀左派書籍卻極易變成公共行為，以化作鐵與血的吶喊。遠在南方的馬來亞，左派作家深具煽動力的文學語言，一再讓南洋青年傾倒。這當然也引起馬來亞緊急狀態下的反共反赤，政學兩界的警惕。將四九年後染紅左傾的筆桿子，一概掃蕩為壞社會風俗，亂人心的根源。隨即受當地警備部門針對的抽查出版品，中共左派書籍查禁自是首當其衝。本文寫作所選定的時段，緊急狀態及其後的效應是書史研究的絕佳背景，尤其遭遇世變之時，所展現的槃根錯節與豐富細節，正是最好的範本。懲治機構試圖抄檢一切被認為威脅，擾亂或批判既有政治權力的一方，這使我們重新審視查禁政策施行之時，隱含的歧視與偏見。因此，從禁燬書史角度，關注知識人的回應，結合憲報上的書目撮其要義，探討書史意義上，如何聯繫著極其廣泛的在地與週邊的活動，反映的馬來亞社會文化裂變，特別是知識界對當時不同政見「左」閃「右」躲的態度，同時也映照出文化和思想界人物，對於寒夜閉門讀禁書「問題」的衝擊與反應。

關鍵詞：馬來亞緊急狀態；冷戰；中共；左派；禁書史

Reading normally is a private activity. However, reading leftist books will turn private activity into public. In order to keep left books from inciting young people to engage themselves in revolutionary work, publication censorship was tightened up. British authority kept a close watch on the leftists as they were prime mover in the revolt against the government, especially during the Malayan Emergency. Leading figure of Chinese leftist writers always become the top list of the selective examination. The selected research period, the Malayan Emergency and its subsequent effects, are the perfect background for the study. Malayan Emergency will be the main focus of this paper as it provides the most complicated and richest information in this case study. Discrimination against leftist books were common in that time. This paper hopes to unfold on the one hand the British Malayan and Malaysian publication censorship, with special examination of its policy to the communist printing. On the other hand, it analyses the ways intellectuals convey their "revolt" to the rigid policy.

Keywords: Malayan Emergency；Cold War；Chinese Communist Party；Leftist；History of Banned Books

#左翼 #馬共 #魯迅 #Darurat Tanah Melayu

壹、是不是禁書？
貳、解碼遊戲
叁、謔而虐
肆、反（中）共
餘論：馬共對罵

Dad jokes, I argue, are a manifestation of a much older fatherly impulse to tease one's children. On the surface, dad jokes are puns that are characterized by only violating a pragmatic norm and nothing else, which makes them lame and unfunny. Only violating a pragmatic norm and nothing else, however, is itself a violation of the norms of joke-telling, which makes dad jokes a type of anti-humor. Fathers (i.e., "dads") may in turn seek to embarrass their children by purposively violating the norms of joke-telling in this way, thus weaponizing the lame pun against their children as a type of good-natured teasing. Given their personality profile, it makes sense that fathers should be particularly prone to weaponize dad jokes teasingly against their children like this, with the phenomenon bearing an illuminating resemblance to the rough-and-tumble play that fathers have engaged their children in since before the dawn of our species.