HUMOR

BY: WU, DELA HOSTRIA AND ADANA

DEFINITION

• Humor is a literary tool that makes audiences laugh, or that intends to induce
amusement or laughter.
• Break the monotony, boredom, and tedium, and make the audience’s nerves
relax.
• Often found in literature, theater, movies, and advertising, where the major
purpose is to make the audience happy.
FUNCTION

• Humor is one of the most effective literary weapons to please the audience, as it
develops characters and makes plots useful and memorable.
• It arouses interest among readers, sustains their attention, helps them connect
with the characters, emphasizes and relates ideas, and helps the readers picture
the situation.
• Improve the quality of their works by pleasing the audience
• Provide surprise, which not only improves quality, but improves
memorable style of a literary piece.
TYPES

• Hyperbole/Exaggeration
• Incongruity
• Slapstick
• Surprise
• Pun
• Sarcasm
• Irony
HYPERBOLE

• Hyperbole, derived from a Greek word meaning “over-casting,” is a figure of speech that
involves an exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis.
• It is a device that we employ in our day-to-day speech.
• Therefore, a hyperbole is an unreal exaggeration to emphasize the real situation.
• And also, hyperbole is a type of exaggeration
EXAGGERATION

• We all exaggerate. Sometimes by spicing up stories to make them more fun, or simply to
highlight our points. Exaggeration is a statement that makes something worse, or better,
than it really is. In literature and oral communication, writers and speakers use
exaggeration as a literary technique, to give extra stress and drama in a work or speech.
• FUNCTION OF EXAGGERATION: is to lay emphasis and stress on the given idea,
action, feature, or feeling by overstating it. Through exaggeration, writers describe an
action or a feature in a remarkable and heightened manner. Sometimes, they also use it
sarcastically and ironically to bring humor to their works. In poetry, on the other hand,
poets use it by adding images, similes and metaphors.
INCONGRUITY

• The juxtaposition of two not-quite-related ideas; something that is out of harmony with
expectations.
SLAPSTICK

• Primarily a physical kind of comedy based around pratfalls and mild comic violence —
smacks in the head, pokes in the eyes, people falling down, etc.
SURPRISE

• Occurs when the reader laughs at something unexpected

• A mundane set-up followed by an unexpected conclusion.
PUN

• A pun is a joke based on the interplay of homophones- (words with the same
pronunciation but different meanings) which produces a humorous effect by using
a word that suggests two or more meanings, or by exploiting similar sounding
words that have different meanings.
SARCASM

• Sarcasm is a literary and rhetorical device that is meant to mock, often with satirical
or ironic remarks, with a purpose to amuse and hurt someone, or some section of
society, simultaneously.
• FUNCTIONS OF SARCASM: Mask or Defensive Mechanism
• Types of Sarcasm
1. Self-Deprecating Sarcasm
2. Brooding Sarcasm
3. Deadpan Sarcasm
4. Polite Sarcasm
5. Obnoxious Sarcasm
6. Manic Sarcasm
7. Raging Sarcasm
IRONY

• In simple words, it is a difference between appearance and reality.

• Brings about some added meanings to a situation.
• Types of Irony
1. Verbal irony involves what one does not mean.
2. In situational irony, both the characters and the audience are fully unaware of the
implications of the real situation.
EXAMPLE OF HUMOR: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (BY
JANE AUSTEN)

• Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice is one of her most popular
works. Throughout the entire novel, Jane Austen uses humor. She
presents a very hilarious scene between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Mrs.
Bennet endlessly breaks down and makes complaints for her husband’s
lack of understanding her nerves, and then he responds by saying:
• “You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old
friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”
• He constantly pokes fun at her. Likewise, Austen bursts with humor in the
case of Elizabeth and Darcy as, upon their first meeting, both feel a sense
of disgust for one another. However, later they enjoy teasing each other.
REFERENCES

• https://literarydevices.net/humor/