We explain what a joke is and the different types of jokes that exist. Also, why are they funny and what are their stereotypes.
What is a joke?
We call a type of joke, joke or facecia narration brief, usually oral, fictitious and humorous in content, the understanding of which provokes laughter. Its content can be satirical, ironic, burlesque, even cruel, expressed through a verbal game or ideas, which to be fully understood requires certain common references and a certain common idea of what is funny between who tells the joke and those who they listen to it.
The joke is a very old human invention. The earliest known compilation of jokes comes from ancient Greek, and is thePhilogelos, an anthology of 265 jokes made around the 4th century AD. by Hierocles and Filagrio, supposedly.
Most jokes respond to a structure quite fixed, initiated by a narrative introduction that raises the situation in which, later, the play or grace, which is a complication of the situation whose resolution invites laughter.
The joke should not be confused with the joke or with other humorous genres, in which a real situation is prepared to make fun of or have fun with third parties, or with non-verbal humor (calledgag) so characteristic of the comedy physical orslapstick.
Joke types
According to their content, we can classify jokes into:
- Innocent or white jokes. This is the name given to the most harmless, childish or appropriate jokes for all audiences.
- Green or red jokes. Also called "spicy", they have a sexual or erotic content in their narration, either explicit or suggested.
- Black jokes. They are so called because they belong to black humor or cruel humor, whose narrations are sarcastic, ironic or cruel with people in disadvantaged situations or illnesses.
- Political jokes. They include in their narrative elements belonging to the politics local or international, to recognized personalities or situations that concern universal history.
Why do we find jokes funny?
There are many explanations for this. Some theories, such as those of Marvin Misky (in hisSociety ofthe Mind), who proposes the joke as the human mechanism to learn the absurd, or even more so those of Edward de Bono (The Mechanism ofthe Mind YYo soyright you arewrong), who suggests that the human brain works from patterns of thought to recognize family stories and tales.
When one of the thought patterns breaks and is replaced by a new connection, as in jokes, you tend to laugh in response. This would explain why after hearing them several times, the jokes lose their humor.
Sigmund Freud also investigated this matter inThe joke and its relation to the unconscious. According to the famous psychoanalyst, jokes (as well as failed acts) allow the unconscious content to emerge disguised in the light of consciousness, through word games, meaning shifts and other strategies of masking the deep message. That is, it is a way of violating social and self-censorship, which would lead to a manifestation of pleasure (laughter).
Stereotypes in jokes
Most jokes operate, in your need for a knowledge or a common referent between the one who tells it and the one who listens to it, with stereotypes or social archetypes, which are forms of universal, prior (at times they can be prejudices) and rapid consideration, which attribute certain cartoonish characteristics to certain types of people, certain nationalities or certain races.
There are sexual, racial, religious, national and all kinds of stereotypes, which serve to generalize and superficially characterize a group, which perfectly lends itself to the exercise of the joke. However, in many cases the management of these stereotypes can become prejudice and turn the joke into a gesture of aggression, of discrimination or violence against the other.