Communication Theory

Review by Giovanni Varazzani

Theory of humour? What? I don’t believe that. Well I still susceptible even after I found an article on the net, part of the book “Communication Theory” written by John C. Meyer, professor in the United States, where he explain how humour works.
The title of the chapter is “Humour as a Double-Edge Sword: four Functions of Humour in communications”. It has included three subchapters: Theories of Humour Origin, The Function of Humour in Messages, The paradox of Dual Humour Functions.
My believe was that humour is something that cannot have explanation, a powerful energy from the silly mind of a bunch of people (comedians, pro and not) but now reading through this article I have to change my idea.
This article will help me in my essay because it analyzes and then understand all the mechanisms able to make people laugh. And then how those mechanisms will be applied to a cartoon or animation. I will use it to clarify, probably in the introduction, the meaning of humour (what a task!) in general.
Basically it is possible to find humour in any kind of situation that life shows to the people. Even from sad moments. Well talking about humour it really depends from each person so the argument is quite variable.
And my questions are: will this article make me laugh more to jokes and funny cartoons? Will it make me understand jokes I didn’t understand before? It will explain why my jokes never work? I really don’t know.