To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Laughter.
Journal articles on the topic 'Laughter'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 journal articles for your research on the topic 'Laughter.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Inoue, Akira, Yoshimune Hiratsuka, Atsuhide Takesue, Jun Aida, Katsunori Kondo, and Akira Murakami. "Association between visual status and the frequency of laughterin older Japanese individuals: the JAGES cross-sectional study." BMJ Open Ophthalmology 7, no. 1 (2022): e000908. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjophth-2021-000908.
Full textAbstract:
ObjectiveAlthough the beneficial effects of laughter are abundantly reported, the physical function that is required as a premise for laughter has not been studied. The aim of this study is to investigate the association between visual status and frequency of laughter in a population-based sample of older adults.Methods and analysisWe analysed cross-sectional data of community-dwelling independent individuals aged ≥65 years (n=19 452) in Japan. The outcomes were frequency of laughter and number of opportunities to laugh. We used multivariable logistic regression analysis with multiple imputations to investigate the association between visual status and laughter.ResultsThe number of participants who laughed almost every day was 8197 (42.1%). After adjusting for individual covariates in the multivariable logistic regression analysis with multiple imputations, visual status was found to be significantly associated with the frequency of laugher and the number of opportunities to laugh (p for trend <0.01). Compare to ‘normal vision’, while excellent/very good vision was associated with increased frequency and number of opportunities to laugh (ORs: 1.72 and 1.25, respectively), poor vision decreased the frequency and number of opportunities to laugh (ORs: 0.86 and 0.87, respectively).ConclusionsThere is a link between visual impairment and laughter, with poor vision having a negative impact while good vision has a positive effect. Improving vision may lead to laughter promotion.
2
Almeida, Abilio, and Helena Sousa. "The Power of Laughter: Emotional and Ideological Gratification in Media." Societies 14, no. 9 (2024): 164. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/soc14090164.
Full textAbstract:
This study examines the role of laughter in media content, focusing on traditional non-humorous entertainment talk shows with hosts, guests and a studio audience. The analysis, which documents over 20,000 instances of laughter in just 60 episodes (one laugh every 20 s), highlights the central role of laughter in this reality. The study concludes that: (1) hosts laughed more than guests and studio audiences; (2) in the programmes analysed, female hosts generated almost twice as much laughter as male hosts; (3) laughter followed a recognisable ‘U-shaped’ pattern, peaking at the beginning and end of the programme; (4) jokes with sexual connotations elicited the highest levels of laughter; (5) public service episodes had fewer instances of laughter; and (6) the programme with the host who laughed the most had the largest audience. In conclusion, laughter provides not only emotional, but also ideological gratification, based on the (post)modern concept of happiness.
3
O’Connell, Daniel C., and Sabine Kowal. "Laughter in Bill Clinton’s My life (2004) interviews." Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 15, no. 2-3 (2005): 275–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.15.2-3.06con.
Full textAbstract:
Two types of laughter of Bill Clinton and his interviewers – as an overlay of words spoken laughingly and laughter of the ha-ha sort - were investigated. The corpus consisted of 13 media interviews, all of which took place after the publication of his book My life (2004). Bill Clinton’s laughter was found to be dominantly an overlay of words spoken laughingly, whereas his interviewers’ laughter was dominantly of the ha-ha sort. In general, ha-ha laughter occurred as interruption or back channeling 30 % of the time and hence did not necessarily punctuate speech during pauses at the end of phrases and sentences as claimed by Provine (1993). Analyses of the topics laughed about indicated that Bill Clinton laughed mainly about his personal problems and his personal life, whereas his interviewers laughed mainly about politics and Clinton’s book. Accordingly, Bill Clinton’s laughter in these interviews was peculiarly monological and self-absorbed: It was generally not shared with the interviewers, either simultaneously or successively, in a genuinely contagious and dialogical fashion. Laughter did not follow upon “banal comments,” as Provine (2004: 215) has claimed, nor reflect either the “nonseriousness” claimed by Chafe (2003a, b) or the uncensored spontaneity noted by Provine (2004: 216). Instead, laughter reflected in every instance the personal perspectives of both Bill Clinton and his interviewers and was used, especially by Clinton, as a deliberate, sophisticated, and rhetorical device.
4
Fauzan, Aris. "SENYUM DAN TAWA NABI SULAIMAN DI LEMBAH SEMUT: TELAAH KRITIS ATAS KISAH NABI SULAIMAN DALAM AL-QUR’AN." TASHWIR 10, no. 1 (2022): 53–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.18592/jt.v10i1.7442.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract: Smiling and laughter are psycho-physical activities that occur in human beings and primates. Laughter is native to every human being, even primates. Theories of laughter and humor originated in ancient times with the view that laughter is an expression of feelings of superiority over another person. Theories of laughter and humor date back to ancient times, holding that laughter is an expression of feelings of superiority over others. Nietzsche's view that laughter is the appropriate response to the ultimate liberation of an individual. This confirms that anyone who laughs is actually free, because honest laughter is a spontaneous expression of the soul and is not bound by any rules. While Samuel Johnson wrote: Men have been wise in many different modes, but they have always laughed the same way. In terms of laughter, they have the same way.Keywords: Smiling; Laughter; Expression of the Soul. Abstrak: Senyum dan tawa merupakan aktivitas psiko-fisik yang terjadi pada makhluk jenis manusia dan primata. Tawa itu merupakan asli setiap manusia, bahkan primata. Theories of laughter and humor originated in ancient times with the view that laughter is an expression of feelings of superiority over another person. Teori tawa dan humor berasal dari zaman kuno berpandangan bahwa tawa adalah ekspresi perasaan superioritas atas orang lain. Nietzsche's view that laughter is the appropriate response to the ultimate liberation of an individual,tertawa itu menggambarkan puncak kebebasan seorang individu. Ini menegaskan siapa pun orang yang tertawa sejatinya dirinya terbebas, karena tertawa yang jujur itu merupakan ekspresi jiwa yang spontan dan tidak terikat oleh aturan apapun. Sementara Samuel Johnson, menuliskan: Men have been wise in many different modes, but they have always laughed the same way,dalam kearifan manusia memiliki banyak cara yang berbeda, tetapi dalam soal tertawa mereka memiliki cara yang sama. Kata Kunci: Senyum; Tawa; Ekspresi Jiwa.
5
Humphrey, David. "‘Can mom laugh?’: The production of the Japanese television family, 1960s–80s." East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 8, no. 2 (2022): 245–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00077_1.
Full textAbstract:
In this article, I examine the history of audience laughter on Japanese television and its role in producing and sustaining the image of an intimate, family-like public during the medium’s early decades. With a focus on the progressive gendering of audience laughter on Japanese television from the 1960s onwards, I demonstrate how the move to procure female laughter on the medium reflected broader ideological expectations that women and their laughter might unify a family-like, national audience. I argue that Japanese television sought to leverage female laughter – both concretely through paid waraiya ‘laughers’ in the audience and through the gender ideology surrounding laughter – to negotiate television’s foundational tensions between the public and the private. More broadly, I suggest that the history of television laughter and its gendering can throw into relief television’s co-imbrication with discourses on gender, nation and consumption.
6
O’Connell, Daniel C., and Sabine Kowal. "Laughter in the film The third man." Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 16, no. 2-3 (2006): 305–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.16.2-3.07con.
Full textAbstract:
Two types of laughter were investigated in both the English- and the German-language versions of the film noir The third man (Korda, Selznik, & Reed 1949, 1962): ha-ha laughter and laughter overlaid on spoken words. The present authors’ transcripts constituted the database of the investigation. These were compared with other available versions: In English, the original novel (Greene 1950), the screenplay (Greene 1984), and a www.geocities.com transcript; in German, the novel in translation (Greene 1962) and a partial transcript (Timmermann & Baker 2002). Very little laughter is noted in any of these other versions, and what does occur is innocuous (embarrassed, ironic, humorous, or pleasant) laughter. The authors’ transcripts in both the English- and German-language versions, however, reveal abundant negative (cynical, hypocritical, or mendacious) laughter on the part of the criminal characters: The first (Baron Kurtz), the second (Mr. Popescu), and above all, the third man (Harry Lime). This laughter constitutes a notable change from both the medial and conceptual literacy of the novel and other written versions to the medial and conceptual orality of the film itself as a portrayal of spontaneous spoken dialogue. Laughter always reveals the personal perspective of the laugher and is used deliberately and skillfully as a rhetorical device. With the help of the villain’s sardonic laughter, the third man’s evil character is established in less than twelve minutes of dialogue. Such laughter is a far cry from the “instinctive, contagious, stereotyped, unconsciously controlled” ha-ha laughter described by Provine (2004: 215), from his “curious hybrid” (ibid.: 216) thereof (laughter overlaid on spoken words), and from the nonseriousness of laughter postulated by Chafe (2003a).
7
Gruner, Charles R. "Audience's Response to Jokes in Speeches with and without Recorded Laughs." Psychological Reports 73, no. 1 (1993): 347–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1993.73.1.347.
Full textAbstract:
Two speakers made videotaped speeches containing apt humor twice before a live audience; in one presentation the live audience laughed at the jokes and in the other there was no laughter. 64 students saw one tape with laughter, then one without and rated each speaker on ethos scales and on “interestingness” and “funniness.” They preferred the speaker who elicited laughter, but a significant order of speakers made the main findings conditional.
8
Hizi, Mohamed Nejib. "The Politics of Laughter in Eugene O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed." Eugene O'Neill Review 46, no. 1 (2025): 16–44. https://doi.org/10.5325/eugeoneirevi.46.1.0016.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACT Eugene O’Neill’s Lazarus Laughed (1927) is an important incorporation of the Nietzschean philosophy of laughter, essentially as posited in The Birth of Tragedy and Thus Spake Zarathustra. Raised from the dead, Lazarus curiously returns as a Zarathustrian Messiah, preaching among the mobs a laughter springing from a Dionysian exultation and an Apollonian seriousness. O’Neill’s conceptualization of laughter, which has an array of implications, remains, however, a somewhat neglected topic. This article proposes to analyze the political underpinnings of the psychology of laughter in this equally understudied play. In the first place, it outlines the ideological, cultural, and historical foundations of O’Neill’s philosophy of laughter, basically derived from Nietzsche. Second, it traces its attendant dynamics of political hierarchy in the drama. The article concludes by showing how the medium of laughter is intertwined with Modernist, essentially solipsistic, theatrical aesthetics, which are equally Nietzschean.
9
Yanagisawa, Eiji, Martin J. Citardi, and JO Estill. "Videoendoscopic Analysis of Laryngeal Function during Laughter." Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology 105, no. 7 (1996): 545–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000348949610500710.
Full textAbstract:
Although commonly encountered in all human cultures, laughter remains poorly understood. In order to examine laryngeal function during laughter, telescopic and fiberscopic videolaryngoscopy was performed on five subjects, who laughed in the different vowels, at various frequencies, and in several voice qualities. During laughter, the vocal folds were found consistently to undergo rhythmic abduction and adduction. At the end of these specific phonation tasks, all subjects were able to gain voluntary control of paramedian vocal fold positioning. This study better defined laryngeal function during laughter. These results have important clinical implications. Voluntary vocal fold positioning has important applications in speech therapy for dysphonias, such as vocal fold nodules, in which the primary cause is vocal fold hyperadduction. Patients suffering from these hyperadductive dysphonias may be able to utilize laughter to correct them.
10
Rodnyi, Oleg V. "LAUGHTER TAXONOMY DISCOURSE IN THE RENAISSANCE LITERARY CONSCIOUSNESS." Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology 1, no. 23 (2022): 8–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.32342/2523-4463-2022-1-23-1.
Full textAbstract:
The article is devoted to the analysis of the comic Renaissance literature through the prism of individual works in order to identify the main comic functions. The Renaissance laughter culture formation is one of the urgent and underdeveloped problems of modern humanities adressed to the study of the Renaissance. The purpose of our work and the tasks dictated by it – in the context of the «laughter word» of the Renaissance to reveal the main comic functions in the literature of this period that were formed by a new worldview and new relationships amoung people. The stated goal determines the need to use hermenegutic (analysis of literary texts), typological (comparison of various comic functions), historical (solution of a literary problem in the context of a historical epoch) research methods. The “discovery of the world and man” that was characteristic of the Renaissance also took place in fiction. Renaissance realism turned it’s face to the everyday life of a person, and literature willingly accepted a new theme for itself including comedy. The article highlights various social functions of laughter that were used in Renaissance literature. Recreational laughter function is the original and oldest one. Laughter is evidence of pleasure, relaxation, rest. This laughter’s function is necessary for the normal functioning of not only an individual, but society as a whole. Such works as fables, schwankis, facies, “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais, “Don Quixote” by Cervantes, comedies by W. Shakespeare, their main task was entertaining first of all. Their laughter is a clear evidence of inner freedom and healthy vitality. Laughter is a social phenomenon, and therefore it must meet the well-known requirements of people livihg together. Therefore, one of the main of functions is social. Laughter should be a kind of social gesture; it frees society from mechanical rigidity. We single out this function in Luigi Pulci’s poem “Morgante”. Funny and serious, faith and disbelief, naivety and scientific coexist side by side in this work, defining its heroic-comic character. The ontological aspects of laugher are closely related to cognitive ones. The cognitive laughter function has a great importance in revealing social negative aspects, in bringing them to the point of absurdity and thereby revealing their inconsistency and the obligation to eliminate them. This laughter function is represented in Sebastian Brant`s poem “The Ship of Fools”, in Rotterdams satire “The Praise of Folly”, in F. Rabelais` novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel”. Laugh as an effective social sanction (the sanctioning function of laughter) is presented in Cervantes` novel. The main thing in Don Quixote is not so much a parody of chivalry as a realistic disclosure of new social conditions and worldview discoveries, which was a parody of a past life. At the end of the novel, realizing his madness, Don Quixote thereby frees himself from his comic. The novel takes on a pronounced tragic connotation. The title character recognizes his doom and ceases to be pathetic, he becomes a knight of the “sad image”, he dies not a pathetic madman, but a humble Christian. The various functions of laughter, presented in the Renaissance literature were an effective tool in the fight against the remnants of the Middle Ages and the establishment of a new worldview.
11
Emmerson, Phil. "Thinking laughter beyond humour: Atmospheric refrains and ethical indeterminacies in spaces of care." Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 49, no. 9 (2017): 2082–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308518x17717724.
Full textAbstract:
Despite the range of subjects tackled by affective and emotional geographers, laughter has received relatively little attention. Those who do discuss laughter, do so for the most part in terms of the “humorous” moments that precede it. This paper proposes a distinctly different approach: shifting focus away from humour to foreground laughter as an analytical category. Through this, I argue that we can understand laughter as a phenomenon in its own right, without reducing it to humorous intentionality (even when there is humour present). This allows further analytical precision within discussions of laughter particularly around the ways in which it affects bodies and spaces. The paper first discusses laughter as more-than-representational; as having transpersonal and atmospheric spatialities, capable of affecting and being affected beyond its relationship with humour. The refrain is then deployed as a conceptual means through which we can grasp laughter’s indeterminate capacities to generate spaces, atmospheres and subjectivities. Drawing on insights from three months of ethnographic research spent working in nursing care homes, I illustrate these conceptions of laughter in terms of the ways it can enact, disrupt, and reconfigure different relationships between bodies and space. This case study thus prompts discussion of the ethical implications of thinking laughter in this manner, particularly the need to develop an ethos for laughter that remains open to its potential for multiple (and often unexpected) outcomes.
12
Sarmi, Ni Nyoman, Kheista Sasi Kirana, Kusuma Wijaya, and Rommel Utungga Pasopati. "Authenticity and Its Discontent as Reflected on Heinrich Böll’s The Laugher." LET: Linguistics, Literature and English Teaching Journal 13, no. 1 (2023): 68. http://dx.doi.org/10.18592/let.v13i1.8523.
Full textAbstract:
People are justified to be original but it could hinder people from their freedom as stated by Jean-Paul Sartre. The Laugher is Heinrich Böll’s short story of someone whose job is to laugh in various platforms. His laughter must be heard as original but his own life is full of pessimistic conditions. Then, how may being authentic be contested through Böll’s The Laugher? Through qualitative method on cultural studies, this paper puts tensions between being authentic by Sartre and reality of Böll’s story. The laugh seems to be authentic, but it is set to trigger other laughter, yet he is not happy though he laughs every time. He is demanded to laugh, but the laugh is bad faith as supported by Sartre. Authenticity in Böll’s story shows its own discontent. In conclusion, the story shows how laughter is done in a timed set. His laugh is not freedom since his own life is full of sad conditions.
13
Toledo, Jhonna G., and Araceli C. Doromal. "Laughter and Well-Being: The Transformative Experiences of Working Mothers." Philippine Social Science Journal 7, no. 3 (2024): 74–84. https://doi.org/10.52006/main.v7i3.1027.
Full textAbstract:
This study explores how laughter therapy transforms the experiences of working mothers, impacting their stress, resilience, and well-being. Six participants engaged in unstructured interviews, analyzed through a descriptive phenomenological approach. Findings revealed that both genuine and simulated laughter offer therapeutic benefits, improving optimism, stress management, and sleep. Laughter's contagious nature strengthens social bonds and promotes shared joy. The therapy fosters emotional resilience, enhances health, and nurtures spirituality, contributing to inner peace. Accessible and holistic, laughter therapy empowers working mothers to face challenges with resilience and optimism, ultimately improving their quality of life.
14
Lecón, Mauricio. "What Is Wrong with Laughing? Faulty Laughter as a Case of Negligent Omission." Philosophy of Humor Yearbook 3, no. 1 (2022): 209–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/phhumyb-2022-007.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract In most academic works laughter is praised because of its social, religious, and psychological benefits. However, when laughter’s morality has been historically discussed it usually has been condemned. To assign human responsibility to the act of laughing, it must be acknowledged as voluntary. However, studies indicate that laughter is not a voluntary action, but rather a neurophysiological reaction. If this is so, there is no basis on which to ground the moral relevance of laughter. In this article, I will put forward an argument that can help to ground the ethics of spontaneous laughter at least. I claim that humans have the power to avoid laughing or suspend it because they can voluntarily prevent some of the circumstances that are necessary for it to happen. If humans fail to do so when they are expected to, laughter becomes relevant as a kind of negligent omission.
15
Yamamoto, Yasunori, Shinya Furukawa, Aki Kato, et al. "The Association between Laughter and Functional Dyspepsia in a Young Japanese Population." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 9 (2022): 5686. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095686.
Full textAbstract:
The potential health benefits of laughter are recognized in relation to several chronic diseases. However, no study has yet investigated the association between laughter and functional dyspepsia (FD). The purpose of this study was to investigate this issue in a young Japanese population. Methods: This study was conducted on 8923 Japanese university students. Information on the frequency of laughter and types of laughter-inducing situations, digestive symptoms (Rome III criteria) were obtained through a self-administered, web-based questionnaire. Results: The percentage of respondents who laughed out loud almost every day was 64.3%. On the other hand, 1.8% of the subjects reported that they rarely laughed. No association was found between the total frequency of laughter and FD. Laughing while talking with family and friends almost every day was significantly inversely associated with FD (adjusted odds ratio (OR): 0.47 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.28–0.81); p for trend was 0.003). On the other hand, laughing while watching TV or videos and laughing while looking at comics or magazines independently showed a positive correlation with FD (TV or videos: adjusted OR, 1–5 times a week: 1.74 (95% CI: 1.16–2.60); comics or magazines: adjusted OR, 1–5 times a week: 1.78 (95% CI: 1.08–2.81)). Conclusion: In this young Japanese population, no association between laughter frequency and FD was observed although laughing while talking with friends and family was independently and inversely associated with FD.
16
Pankowska, Krystyna. "Wokół śmiechu i jego funkcji wspólnotowych w życiu społecznym i w sztuce. Rozważania z perspektywy antropologiczno-pedagogicznej." Nauki o Wychowaniu. Studia Interdyscyplinarne 18, no. 1 (2024): 66–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2450-4491.18.06.
Full textAbstract:
The aim of the study which adopts an anthropological and pedagogical perspective is to reflect on the community functions of art that uses comedy eliciting laughter. The subject of interest is therefore comedy-related laughter perceived as a socio-cultural phenomenon. The article examines various forms of comedy that cause laugher, and discusses their conditions and transformations. Selected examples from the field of art (literature, theater, film, visual arts) are used for exemplification. The considerations presented in the text arose from the questions about the reasons for the marginal interest in comedy and laughter, including in its community functions, in the theory of aesthetic education and in the contemporary discourse of art pedagogy.
17
Jones, Peter J. A. "Laughing with Sacred Things, ca. 1100–1350: A History in Four Objects." Church History 89, no. 4 (2020): 759–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640721000019.
Full textAbstract:
Exploring the range of circumstances in which medieval Christians laughed with, against, at, and through religious topics, this article investigates four objects: an ivory cross, an ampulla of a saint's blood, a preaching codex, and a pilgrim's badge. While these objects are taken to illustrate a diversity of attitudes to religious humor, they are also, in light of recent work citing the productive power of medieval matter, scrutinized as agents in their own right. The article suggests two significant patterns. On the one hand, the objects point to laughter's use as a unique mode of spiritual practice. Through amusing miracles, through the provocative work of comic sermons, and through the playful humor of pilgrimage badges, Christians from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries were able to use humor to relate to their faith in sophisticated and often counterintuitive ways. Yet as the four objects and their use also attest, these modes of comic relation were also subjected to clerical reduction and regulation. Harnessing the pedagogical potential of laughter especially, preachers, hagiographers, and clerics all worked to redirect more anarchic forms of religious humor toward functional ends. While tracing how laughter with Christian topics was increasingly encouraged, the article suggests that the price of this encouragement was that laughter was often brought into a more policed domain of orthodox Christian practice.
18
Parvulescu, Anca. "Kafka's Laughter: On Joy and the Kafkaesque." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 130, no. 5 (2015): 1420–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2015.130.5.1420.
Full textAbstract:
In a letter Franz Kafka wrote to Felice Bauer in January 1913, he describes himself as a “great laugher.” Although Kafka is conventionally associated with anxiety, gloom, even terror, his laughter is joyful.
19
AKASAKA, Norio. "When Tragedy and Laughter Meet." Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 16, no. 1 (2023): 4–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2023.16.1.4.
Full textAbstract:
Sorrow secretly harbors laughter. In the Japanese literary tradition, there was an indispensable and invisible manner that connects sadness and laughter. There, the experiences of cruelty and resentment or ressentiment seldom gave birth directly to the literature of grief. It is necessary to observe the fate of the weak closely.Kadokawa Genyoshi’s “The emergence of tragic literature (Higeki Bungaku no Hassei)” is a pioneering study about the occurrence of tragedy in Japanese literature. Although Orikuchi Shinobu had a great influence on this work, it was the originality of Genyoshi himself, and the archetype of the storyteller as the bearer of the literature of sorrow was told. The losers and their clans who were burdened with grief brought out laughter from others by telling comically their histories as losers.The literature of laughter and the literature of tragedy arose together hand in hand. There, a man who willingly tries to play a role that will be laughed at, Houkan, appears. He brought out the repose of souls and purification through laughter. So, there was a melancholy in this laugh.We must strain our eyes on the cruelty and loneliness that laughter hides.
20
Simon, Elliott M. "Thomas More’s Humor in his Religious Polemics." Moreana 53 (Number 203-, no. 1-2 (2016): 7–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/more.2016.53.1-2.3.
Full textAbstract:
Thomas More’s humor was influenced by his studies of Greek Old and New Comedy and Lucian’s Dialogues. He was fascinated by the multiple ways human follies could be exposed to provoke laughter. Although aware of the “anti-laughter” tradition of the Early Church Fathers, he asserted that the intellectual, moral, and spiritual superiority of “the man who laughed” justified using humor to provoke “critical laughter” as an effective rhetorical strategy to ridicule the comic incongruities and corruption of “the inferior man who was laughed at.” In his religious polemics: Responsio ad Lutherum, Supplication of Souls, Dialogue Concerning Heresies, and Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, More enjoyed using invectives, lampoons, and scholastic parody to denigrate Lutherans and their heretical doctrines. He considered laughter an appropriate response to heresy, and his vituperative humor provided a rhetorical punishment of derision as an alternative to the horrifying physical punishment of execution proscribed for heretics. More’s humor was intended to discourage his readers from accepting Lutheran doctrines, but it also invited them to share his joyful superior affirmation of faith in the tenets of the Catholic Church that will lead them to “the eternal merriment of heaven.”
21
Ramos, Iván A. "Breaking Down, Breaking Together: Xandra Ibarra’s Nude Laughing and the Violence of the Encounter." differences 36, no. 1 (2025): 66–86. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-11788704.
Full textAbstract:
This essay considers the fragility of social relations through an understudied action that reveals the limits of sociality: laughter. In Latina artist Xandra Ibarra’s performance piece Nude Laughing, the artist’s manic fit of laughter goes on for several minutes, suggesting that to face the contorted body of another subject laughing is to face the uneasy reality of encounter. Analyzing three iterations of Nude Laughing across geographic locales, the essay focuses in particular on a performance in Mexico City that culminated in an act of male aggression. The author reads this instance of woman’s laughter that resulted in violent retribution from men who fear being laughed at to conclude that the encounter with an/other’s body made strange through laughter, especially across difference, offers a radical possibility to engage with a feminist and queer ethics of encounter.
22
Monin, Joan, Jennifer Tomlinson, and Brooke Feeney. "Laughter and Short-Term Blood Pressure Reactivity in Spousal Support Interactions." Innovation in Aging 4, Supplement_1 (2020): 649. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2236.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Individual effects of laughter in reducing stress are well-documented. However, no research has examined dyadic associations between laughter and blood pressure in spousal support interactions. This study examined the hypotheses that individual and shared laughter would be associated with lower blood pressure and distress during a support interaction for both the “support-seeker” and the “support-provider”. Two hundred and seventy-one older adult couples were video-recorded and their blood pressure was monitored during a baseline, a discussion about the support-seeker’s greatest fear related to aging, and while playing a game in the laboratory. Both spouses reported their distress after the support interaction. Laughter was coded by trained observers. According to the Actor Partner Interdependence Models, the more the support-seeker laughed, the lower the support-provider’s systolic blood pressure was during the support interaction (partner effect). Also, laughter was associated with less distress for both spouses during the support interaction (actor effects). Part of a symposium sponsored by Dyadic Research on Health and Illness Across the Adult Lifespan Interest Group.
23
Mežek, Špela. "Laughter and humour in high-stakes academic ELF interactions: an analysis of laughter episodes in PhD defences/vivas." Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 7, no. 2 (2018): 261–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2018-0014.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract This study investigates the uses and functions of laughter and humour in a corpus of nine PhD defences/vivas. The data include the PhD defences in their entirety, including monologic and dialogic talk by participants from a variety of research cultures. The defences were video-recorded and transcribed, and laughter episodes analysed according to who laughed, who the source of “the laughable” was, what the reason for laughing was and at what point laughter occurred. The analysis reveals that a majority of laughter was non-humorous, produced by one person, and had the function of mitigating face threats to speakers and others. Humorous laughter was usually produced by more than one person and had the function of relieving tension, creating a non-adversarial atmosphere and building a community. These results are connected to the communicative purposes of the participants; the participants’ mutual aim is to examine an academic work and confirm the candidate’s membership in their chosen specialisation, which requires cooperation from all parties. Furthermore, although the participants come from different research cultures where humour can have a different presence and function, this study shows that laughter and humour are frequent and fill an important function in ELF interactions in high-stakes academic situations.
24
Halliwell, Stephen. "The Uses of Laughter in Greek Culture." Classical Quarterly 41, no. 2 (1991): 279–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009838800004468.
Full textAbstract:
The proposition that man is the only animal capable of laughter is at least as old as Aristotle (Parts of Animals 673a8). In a strictly physical sense, this is probably false; but it is undoubtedly true that as a psychologically expressive and socially potent means of communication, laughter is a distinctively human phenomenon. Any attempt to study sets of cultural attitudes towards laughter, or the particular types of personal conduct which these attitudes shape and influence, must certainly adopt a wider perspective than a narrowly physical definition of laughter will allow. Throughout this paper, which will attempt to establish part of the framework of such a cultural analysis for the Greek world of, broadly speaking, the archaic and classical periods, ‘laughter’ must be taken, by a convenient synecdoche, to encompass the many behavioural and affective patterns which are associated with, or which characteristically give scope for, uses of laughter in the literal sense of the word. My concern, then, is with a whole network of feelings, concepts and actions; and my argument will try to elucidate the practices within which laughter fulfils a recognizable function in Greek societies, as well as the dominant ideas and values which Greek thought brings to bear upon these practices. The results of the enquiry will, I believe, give us some reason to accept a rapprochement between the universalist assumption for which my epigraph from Johnson speaks (and which most grand theorists of laughter appear to have made) and the recognition of cultural specificity in laughter's uses for which many anthropologists would argue, as emphatically asserted, from a Marxizing point of view, in the quotation from Vladimir Propp.
25
Ruch, Willibald, and Sonja Heintz. "On the dimensionality of humorous conduct and associations with humor traits and behaviors." HUMOR 32, no. 4 (2019): 643–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/humor-2018-0119.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract The aim of the present study is to explore higher-order dimensions of humorous conduct derived from 100 non-redundant and comprehensive statements. These dimensions are validated in self- and other-reports and their criterion validity is assessed by relating them to other humor concepts (temperamental basis of the sense of humor, attitudes towards laughter and being laughed at, humor appreciation and creation). Four broad dimensions (mean-spirited/earthy, entertaining, inept, and reflective/benign) were supported in self- and other-reports, and two narrower dimensions (laughter and canned) were found in self-reports. These dimensions covered affective, cognitive, and dysfunctional aspects of humorous conduct and spanned across humorous temperament, attitudes towards laughter and being laughed at as well as humor appreciation and creation. These six dimensions can serve as a reference framework and higher-order categories to which humor scales could be assigned. Future studies need to test the comprehensiveness of these dimensions and conduct further validation studies.
26
Orlova, N. V., and O. E. Bogomolova. "WHAT'S SO FUNNY? A COMPARATIVE LOOK AT THE HUMOROUS INTENTIONS OF THE TEXTBOOK AND THE STUDENT." Bulletin of Kemerovo State University, no. 3 (July 28, 2016): 63–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.21603/2078-8975-2016-3-63-69.
Full textAbstract:
A section of a school textbook on literary reading “Jokingly and seriously” was compared with the written memories of 3rd-grade students of “Lyceum № 29” (Omsk) about the situations in which they laughed. The objects of comparison were such aspects of humorous discourse as the object of the ridicule, the tone of the comic, values and concepts; the presence/absence of humor in the linguistic component. General research approach is the discourse analysis. A positive correlation between age features of the humor, the humorous intentions of the textbook and interview data were revealed, which allows to ascertain the productivity of learning strategies. Spontaneous laughter communication is dominated by good-natured laughter over the animals, the concepts of causeless laughter, wit, intelligence, being-grown-up, etc., which corresponds to “student humor”. On the other hand, more efforts are needed to develop children's linguistic humor (language skill games) and the attention to situations in which laughter can produce conflict communication.
27
Chapell, Mark, Michael Batten, Jael Brown, et al. "Frequency of Public Laughter in Relation to Sex, Age, Ethnicity, and Social Context." Perceptual and Motor Skills 95, no. 3 (2002): 746. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.2002.95.3.746.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigated the frequency of public laughter in a total of 10,419 children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults. Females laughed significantly more than males, and younger people generally laughed more than older people.
28
Adebiyi-Adelabu, Kazeem. "Dictatorship, Trauma, and Scriptotherapy in Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters." Research in African Literatures 53, no. 4 (2023): 75–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.53.4.06.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACT: This article examines how Remi Raji, a third-generation Nigerian poet, reenacts the social pains and “dis-eases” of the military dictatorship era in Nigeria in A Harvest of Laughters as traumatogenic, as well as how the poet writes himself out of the trauma. While the article espouses the extant critical notion that the poet offers laughter to the victims of structural violence, social pains, and “dis-eases” of the military rule era in the country as a balm, it complicates the view by arguing that the poet’s versification in the volume and, more importantly, his infatuated exploration of laughter is readable as scriptotherapy. The poems titled “Introit,” “I rise now,” “Gift,” “Black Laughter,” “Silence,” “Silence II,” “Orphan Cry”, and “Harvest I–VI” are used to demonstrate this. The analysis draws anchor from Laura Brown’s and Stef Craps’s conceptions of trauma and Geri Chavis’s and some other psychological therapists’ insights on writing and therapy.
29
Adebiyi-Adelabu, Kazeem. "Dictatorship, Trauma, and Scriptotherapy in Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters." Research in African Literatures 53, no. 4 (2023): 75–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/ral.2023.a905362.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACT: This article examines how Remi Raji, a third-generation Nigerian poet, reenacts the social pains and “dis-eases” of the military dictatorship era in Nigeria in A Harvest of Laughters as traumatogenic, as well as how the poet writes himself out of the trauma. While the article espouses the extant critical notion that the poet offers laughter to the victims of structural violence, social pains, and “dis-eases” of the military rule era in the country as a balm, it complicates the view by arguing that the poet’s versification in the volume and, more importantly, his infatuated exploration of laughter is readable as scriptotherapy. The poems titled “Introit,” “I rise now,” “Gift,” “Black Laughter,” “Silence,” “Silence II,” “Orphan Cry”, and “Harvest I–VI” are used to demonstrate this. The analysis draws anchor from Laura Brown’s and Stef Craps’s conceptions of trauma and Geri Chavis’s and some other psychological therapists’ insights on writing and therapy.
30
Biraben, A., E. Sartori, D. Taussig, A. M. Bernard, and J. M. Scarabin. "Gelastic seizures: video‐EEG and scintigraphic analysis of a case with a frontal focus; review of the literature and pathophysiological hypotheses." Epileptic Disorders 1, no. 4 (1999): 221–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1684/j.1950-6945.1999.tb00328.x.
Full textAbstract:
ABSTRACT We report scalp EEG and SPECT findings in a young patient who experienced gelastic seizures; clinical, EEG and scintigraphic data strongly suggested a frontal focus in a context of cryptogenic epilepsy. Few cases of gelastic seizures originating in the frontal lobe have been reported in the literature, most of them involving a diencephalic hamartoma or a temporal focus although, no clinical pattern has been found to be specific for each of these three anatomical regions. The ictal laughter is of variable nature, unmotivated or associated with feelings of mirth, forced or natural, except in the case of a frontal focus where the laughter seems consistently described as forced and unmotivated. However, mirth and laughter are two dissociable clinical elements; their genesis probably involves distinct mechanisms. Anatomical considerations lead to several hypotheses concerning laughter generation: it could be a simple reactional behavior in response to a modified cognitive process, an automatic behavior or a forced action. In a few cases with a temporal focus, laughter seems directly related to a disorganization of the associative temporal cortex and may be considered as a reactional behavior. In cases with frontal focus, anterior cingulate and orbital structures would be particularly implicated in laugher genesis, although with possible different pathophysiological routes: in the first case by disconnection within the premotor mesial system or by an imbalance between premotor mesial and premotor lateral systems, and in the second case by activation of a previously conditioned orbital region.
31
Westburg, Nancy G. "Hope, Laughter, and Humor in Residents and Staff at an Assisted Living Facility." Journal of Mental Health Counseling 25, no. 1 (2003): 16–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.17744/mehc.25.1.g128feq7x21xxbfe.
Full textAbstract:
Possessing hope and utilizing laughter and humor to cope with life's stressors and losses are especially important to elderly people as they experience a decline in their independence. In this study, hope levels and laughter and humor experiences of 24 elderly residents (ages 69 to 96 years) and 21 staff at an assisted living facility were assessed and compared. Hope was defined as a two-factor cognitive construct that involves (a) Pathways, an individual's ability to set goals and devise multiple plans to reach them, and (b) Agency, an individual's inner determination to implement these plans and overcome obstacles to the goals. Both residents and staff had high total Hope and Pathways scores, but residents' Agency scores were significantly higher than staff's. Residents and staff reported numerous benefits from humor and laughing, but differences arose between the two groups about the sources and frequency of humor and laughter. Differences were found between more-hopeful and less-hopeful respondents in regards to sources of laughter, benefits of laughing and playing more, and the last time they laughed. Implications for mental health counselors are discussed.
32
Weeks, Mark. "Affect philosophy meets incongruity: about transformative potentials in comic laughter." European Journal of Humour Research 8, no. 1 (2020): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2020.8.1.weeks.
Full textAbstract:
The emergence of philosophical affect theory, sourced substantially in Continental philosophy, has intensified scholarly attention around affective potentials in laughter. However, the relationship between laughter’s affect and the comic remains a complicated one for researchers, with some maintaining that the two should be studied separately (Emmerson 2019, Parvulescu 2010). While there is a credible academic rationale for drawing precise distinctions, the present article takes an integrative approach to laughter and the comic. It analyzes, then synthesizes, points of convergence between key texts in affect philosophy and certain elements of incongruity-based humour theory. Specifically, the article seeks to demonstrate that some integration can bring insight and clarity to discussion of transformative potentials sometimes attributed to forms of comic laughter, especially within cultural studies and social science following the philosophy of Deleuze. This approach may also usefully complicate the concept of incongruity itself.
33
Răban-Motounu, Nicoleta. "LAUGHTER AND EMPATHY." Current Trends in Natural Sciences 10, no. 20 (2021): 192–202. http://dx.doi.org/10.47068/ctns.2021.v10i20.026.
Full textAbstract:
At a biological level, laughter was found to help in dealing with pain and suffering. From a psychological perspective, its effects have been studied both at intrapersonal and interpersonal levels. At an intrapersonal level, laughter contributes to self-regulating emotions (especially lowering the trait anxiety), diminishing the expression of anger, internally or externally, the same time with increasing self-acceptance. At interpersonal level, laughing together builds trust, while being laughed at may be traumatic. In the present study, the objective was to investigate the effects of laughter on empathy, awareness, and acceptance of personal experience. The participants in the study, all women, watched a situational comedy for 1.5 hours, with different life situations which may seem negative, but presented in an amusing manner, and, very important, with a happy end. At the end, they completed the empathy and awareness questionnaires. Statistical analysis, comparing their scores with those in a non-treatment condition, showed that laughing at the situational comedy significantly influenced almost all aspects of empathy, significantly decreasing the personal distress from empathizing with others, but also sensitivity and emotional interest towards them, without significant influence on awareness and acceptance of personal experience.
34
McKenzie, Kevin. "Vicissitudes of laughter." Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 27, no. 2 (2017): 257–300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/prag.27.2.04mck.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract This paper is concerned with the way that laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation in talk among humanitarian aid workers as they describe their professional activities in settings of armed conflict. I first set out to situate my analysis within the tradition of work in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM), exploring how that approach differs in significant ways from work in pragmatics and related traditions of discourse analytic research. Unlike the latter approaches, EM examines laughter for the intelligibility it is deployed by speakers to furnish, so that the presumption of laughter’s revelatory nature which characterizes a pragmatically-oriented analysis is seen as a participant resource for rendering the situated significance of actions visible by and for the involved parties of a given episode of interaction. Following this, I examine talk from open-ended interviews with aid agency operatives who work in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, exploring how laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation where the potential accusation of opportunism arises in accounts of personal job satisfaction as against the legitimacy otherwise afforded with an appeal to altruism and self-sacrifice. Where speakers attend to the criticism of humanitarian activity for its significance in affecting outcomes of warfare, the management of these different demands is accomplished in reflexive work to ironize their own and others’ formulations of motivation for pursuing humanitarian work.
35
Lundberg, Anna. "Laughter." lambda nordica 26, no. 4-1 (2022): 188–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.34041/ln.v26.770.
Full text
36
&NA;. "LAUGHTER." Gastroenterology Nursing 35, no. 2 (2012): 135–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/sga.0b013e31824ed403.
Full text
37
Ror Wolf and Eva Bourke. "Laughter." Sirena: poesia, arte y critica 2010, no. 1 (2010): 89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sir.0.0324.
Full text
38
McMurray, Janice. "Laughter." Activities, Adaptation & Aging 14, no. 1-2 (1989): 123–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/j016v14n01_21.
Full text
39
Benzel, Ed. "Laughter." World Neurosurgery 184 (April 2024): xix. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2024.02.080.
Full text
40
Farfán Cabrera, Teresa, and Javier Meza G. "From wild laughter to domesticated laughter." Tramas. Subjetividad y procesos sociales, no. 58 (June 1, 2022): 189–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.24275/tramas/uamx/202258189-218.
Full text
41
Nieland, Justus. "Editor's Introduction: Modernism's Laughter." Modernist Cultures 2, no. 2 (2006): 80–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/e2041102209000203.
Full textAbstract:
This special issue of Modernist Cultures is animated by two claims. First, that modernism is funny, and the moderns inveterate laughers, gigglers, joke-pullers, and devastating wags. Second, that modernism's ubiquitous laughter is overlooked, undertheorized, and downright gagged by the aura of high seriousness that still infuses critical descriptions of modernism: of its heroic gambits to shore up a besieged world of authenticity, plenitude, and presence; of its aristocratic disdain for the enervating banality of quotidian modernity; of its arch and unfeeling formalism.
42
Ivanova, Alyona, Ekaterina Stefanenko, and Sergey Enikolopov. "Russian attitudes towards humour and laughter." European Journal of Humour Research 5, no. 2 (2017): 80. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2017.5.2.ivanova.
Full textAbstract:
Different phenomena related to humour and laughter, such as humour styles, gelotophobia, gelotophilia and katagelasticism, were investigated in a series of psychological studies in Russia. As far as the samples were rather heterogeneous in regard with age, gender, region of Russia, and included besides big cities also small towns and villages, the data allows to discuss not only psychological, but also a certain cultural perspective. It is concluded that self-defeating humour style plays an important role in the structure of Russian cultural attitude towards humour and laughter. The most adaptive affiliative humour style is highly connected with self-defeating and aggressive styles. Similar pattern was shown for humour and laughter perception: a fear of being laughed at paradoxically provokes active involvement into exchange of jokes. A comparison between the two Russian capitals and regional sample revealed more similarities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg with western data than with the regional Russian sample which is supposed to reflect more of traditional national character.
43
Hanks, Elizabeth. "A cross-linguistic comparison of the propositional content of laughter in American English and Central Thai." Intercultural Pragmatics 19, no. 2 (2022): 233–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ip-2022-2004.
Full textAbstract:
Abstract Research suggests that laughter can serve several communicative functions beyond indicating mirth, and as such, may hold propositional meaning. The present study analyzes cross-linguistic differences in the propositional content of laughter in American English and Central Thai television shows. A framework for classifying laughter by propositional content was first developed by drawing on existing literature and bottom-up analysis of the laughter found in American English and Thai shows. The framework includes categories of positive valency, negative valency, and humor, along with subcategories of disbelief, support, expressive, and pride. A multi-modal corpus of laughter was then created by compiling all laughter instances in the first 100 min of three American English television shows and three Thai television shows. The meanings of all 848 laughter instances in the corpus were categorized by propositional content of laughter. Results show that humor laughter and negative-support laughter are more frequent in American English, and positive-support laughter and negative-pride laughter are more frequent in Central Thai. These findings provide further evidence that laughter contains propositional content because they indicate that laughter use is subject to cross-linguistic variation that aligns with existing linguistic patterns and cultural values.
44
Rosyid, Nur, and Dhimas Unggul Laksita. "The Aural Experience of Laughing and the Sociality of Sound (Re)Production in Communication." Komunitas 10, no. 2 (2018): 213–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.15294/komunitas.v10i2.8428.
Full textAbstract:
This paper explores laugh as an aural and hearing experience in our everyday communication. So far, most of studies understood laugher by its causality explanation and has been paying less attention to the context that laughter is a form of non-verbal and aural experience. We assume that laughter has certain indexicality dimension and social significance to convey meanings and certain sociality in communication. This research tries to develop the method to use audio/ sound in research and how it will be presented in our academic writing and discourses. This study uses ethnographic methods to emphasize the direct subject participation by recording the conversation process. After that, these recordings are transformed into phonography—since this transcription itself is problematic—to understand the intentions and attentions of laughter as well as to decipher the meaning of sound. The results show that laughter has an indexicality dimension to convey implicit meaning. It appears from the intentions of laugh level present(ed) in each specific moment in communication. As we found in some cases, there are different levels of intention to provoke particular attention: audience’s sign to the performer, lessen the formality in a formal meeting, mediating and recalling memory in everyday conversation, and the intention to make friends. Therefore, laugh has different social significances and intentions in everyday interaction and communication. It is not only serve as the sound of liberation or something to make someone feels freer.
45
Nsabi, Farah, Amal Essafi, Imane Agdai, Ouissal Redouane, Adil El Ammouri, and Yassine Benhaddouche. "WHEN LAUGHTER GAS NO LONGER BRINGS LAUGHTER." International Journal of Advanced Research 11, no. 12 (2023): 803–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.21474/ijar01/18047.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction: Nitrous oxide (N2O), also dubbed the laughing gas or proto, is a gas used therapeutically in the medical field. However, a recreational trend has emerged, involving the inhalation of N2O from culinary capsules or canisters. Clinical Case: This involves a 23-year-old patient, Hospitalized for psychomotor agitation, the patient has a history of cardiac arrest following extensive inhalation of laughing gas. The patient presented with a manic syndrome that resolved within 2 days. Biological tests returned normal results, including vitamin B12. Brain MRI revealed bilateral bi-fronto-parietal cortical cerebral atrophy. The patient underwent a neurological etiological assessment, which came back normal. Discussion: The majority of literature reviews on the psychiatric complications of NO2 use have indicated that the most frequent symptoms are delirium, hallucinations, and confusion. The prognosis is often favorable, with symptoms typically resolving under antipsychotic treatment. Conclusion: The consumption of nitrous oxide is a recreational practice that is on the rise, and especially among young people. With easy access and low cost.Cases of intoxication are increasing with serious medical complications which can lead to death, regardless of the type of exposure.
46
Nam, Sung-sook. "Morrison's Laughter: Function of Language and Weapon of Discourse." Convergence English Language & Literature Association 8, no. 3 (2023): 1–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.55986/cell.2023.8.3.1.
Full textAbstract:
Morrison's laughter is different from that of any other literary work. Morrison uses laughter as a weapon for a discourse that dismantles the contradictions of Western conventions built up by dichotomous and rationalistic thinking. She uses laughter as a linguistic function to represent her discourse and a weapon of the discourse. By presenting the characteristics of African American laughter, that is, autonomous, unconscious, lasting for a long time, having a healing function, and combining with tears and dance, Morrison proves cultural differences and also shows the linguistic function of laughter. In addition, Morrison uses the recovery of laughter as a stepping stone to prepare for the future regarding the loss of their unique laughter as the loss of a foundation for life or the loss of the will to live.
 Morrison creates laughter as a weapon of discourse that resists dominant thinking prevents violence, and transcendent and universal discourses that break away from rationalism. This kind of laughter represents a difference rather than a language-to-language discourse and shows that there can be a variety of substitutes for language. The invention of imaginary and unrealistic laughter expands the horizons of laughter to unknown areas. Morrison's laughter does not create comedy but contains elements of both comedy and tragedy, transcends the limits of language, evokes empathy beyond language, and embraces a broader scope than the space-time contained in language. Morrison's invention of laughter means that laughter is not fixed, but changes and is created anew like language. The use of laughter allows Morrison’s extraordinary discourse as social, philosophical and cultural views to be flowered in a high level of literary art.
47
Rahman, Md Shahinoor, and Farida Binte Wali. "The effect of laughter yoga on working memory." European Journal of Humour Research 10, no. 3 (2022): 78–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.597.
Full textAbstract:
A growing body of evidence suggests that there is a link between laughter and memory. However, no research has been done to show a link between simulated laughter (laughter yoga) and the enhancement of working memory. Because laughter has numerous benefits, we examined whether simulated laughter can improve healthy adults’ working memory (WM). A total of 30 participants (15 experimental and 15 control) were enrolled in this study. The research design was experimental and pretest-posttest with a control group. Participants in the laughter yoga intervention group had eight sessions twice a week for four weeks, whereas the control group received no intervention. We assessed all participants before and after laughter activity with the WM measures (Corsi Block Test and Digit Span). The laughter intervention programme focused on simulated laughter (laughter yoga) without relying on humour, jokes, or comedy. The results revealed a significant improvement in the memory of both visual and verbal WM performances in the experimental group after the intervention programme. In contrast, the study found no significant differences in the control group. Simulated laughter intervention is the easiest, practical, and cost-efficient method that seems to affect WM positively.
48
Vershyna, V. A., and O. V. Mykhailiuk. "Laughter as a Semiotic Problem." Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, no. 20 (December 28, 2021): 5–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i20.248949.
Full textAbstract:
Purpose. The article is aimed to substantiate the view on the phenomenon of laughter as a subject of semiotic analysis, which leads to the following tasks: to reveal the possibilities of semiotics application in the study of laughter nature; to analyze the phenomenon of laughter as a cultural and natural phenomenon, as a sign and as an attribute; to consider the place of laughter in culture, which is understood as a sign system. Theoretical basis. The semiotic approach proceeds from the fact that human lives in the world of signs, all the surrounding reality can be interpreted as a sign system. The basic concept of semiotics is the concept of a sign. The theoretical basis of the article is understanding the culture as a sign-symbolic system. Laughter is considered as a phenomenon ontologically rooted in human culture. At the same time, laughter is on the edge of culture. The research is based on the work of semiotic authors, cultural researchers, and the researchers of laughter. Originality. The originality lies in the application of the semiotic method to the research of laughter phenomenon, consideration of the dialectics of natural and cultural, signedness and non-signedness, manifested in the phenomenon of laughter. Conclusions. Laughter is considered as a psychophysiological phenomenon (attribute) and as a cultural phenomenon (sign). Laughter acts as an emotional manifestation, a physiological reaction, but socially and culturally mediated. In any case, laughter indicates an emotional or cognitive state of a human. Laughter acts as a process and result of the interpretation of a sign, a reaction to a sign. Laughter is a form and a means of communication. Being a natural phenomenon, in the process of social evolution, laughter acquires signedness, is integrated by culture as a sign system, and, at the same time, maintains a connection with nature. Thus, laughter occupies an ambivalent position between nature and culture. In the phenomenon of laughter, the dual state of human is revealed. In laughter, boundaries are blurred, the unity and opposition of natural and cultural, biological and social, soul and body, thought and feeling, sign and attribute are manifested.
49
Vershyna, V. A., and O. V. Mykhailiuk. "Laughter as a Semiotic Problem." Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, no. 20 (December 28, 2021): 5–15. https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i20.248949.
Full textAbstract:
<strong>Purpose.</strong> The article is aimed to substantiate the view on the phenomenon of laughter as a subject of semiotic analysis, which leads to the following tasks: to reveal the possibilities of semiotics application in the study of laughter nature; to analyze the phenomenon of laughter as a cultural and natural phenomenon, as a sign and as an attribute; to consider the place of laughter in culture, which is understood as a sign system. <strong>Theoretical basis.</strong> The semiotic approach proceeds from the fact that human lives in the world of signs, all the surrounding reality can be interpreted as a sign system. The basic concept of semiotics is the concept of a sign. The theoretical basis of the article is understanding the culture as a sign-symbolic system. Laughter is considered as a phenomenon ontologically rooted in human culture. At the same time, laughter is on the edge of culture. The research is based on the work of semiotic authors, cultural researchers, and the researchers of laughter. <strong>Originality.</strong> The originality lies in the application of the semiotic method to the research of laughter phenomenon, consideration of the dialectics of natural and cultural, signedness and non-signedness, manifested in the phenomenon of laughter. <strong>Conclusions.</strong> Laughter is considered as a psychophysiological phenomenon (attribute) and as a cultural phenomenon (sign). Laughter acts as an emotional manifestation, a physiological reaction, but socially and culturally mediated. In any case, laughter indicates an emotional or cognitive state of a human. Laughter acts as a process and result of the interpretation of a sign, a reaction to a sign. Laughter is a form and a means of communication. Being a natural phenomenon, in the process of social evolution, laughter acquires signedness, is integrated by culture as a sign system, and, at the same time, maintains a connection with nature. Thus, laughter occupies an ambivalent position between nature and culture. In the phenomenon of laughter, the dual state of human is revealed. In laughter, boundaries are blurred, the unity and opposition of natural and cultural, biological and social, soul and body, thought and feeling, sign and attribute are manifested.
50
Brown, Judith. "A Certain Laughter: Sherwood Anderson's Experiment in Form." Modernist Cultures 2, no. 2 (2006): 138–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/e2041102209000240.
Full textAbstract:
Judith Brown (Indiana University - Bloomington) reads Sherwood Anderson's 1925 novel “Dark Laughter” in the context of the explosion of theoretical treatments of laughter that emerge in the early 1920s in the traumatic wake of the Great War. Recuperating the disruptive potential of modernist laughter, Brown reads the novel through the scene of redemptive collective laughter that concludes Preston Sturges' film “Sullivan's Travels” (1941). Whereas Sturges offers the salve of a collective laughter as a fantasy of nondifferentiation from laughing others, Andersons dark laughter preserves the uncertain play of difference, undermining the alleged superiority of the laughter.