34.1949, Review: Cognitive Science, Linguistic Theories, Psycholinguistics: Strasßburger (2022)

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Subject: 34.1949, Review: Cognitive Science, Linguistic Theories, Psycholinguistics: Strasßburger (2022)

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Date: 02-May-2023
From: Villy Tsakona [villytsa at otenet.gr]
Subject: Cognitive Science, Linguistic Theories, Psycholinguistics: Strasßburger (2022)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.2741

AUTHOR: Lena Strasßburger
TITLE: Humor and Horror
SUBTITLE: Different Emotions, Similar Linguistic Processing Strategies
SERIES TITLE: Humor Research
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Villy Tsakona

SUMMARY
The most common theory used by linguists to account for humor and
related phenomena (e.g. comedy, irony) is incongruity theory: humor is
based on an incongruity, namely on a violation of expectations in a
given context. Those who manage to resolve the incongruity, namely to
make sense of it and grasp its playful logic, manage to interpret
humor (on the incongruity-resolution model of humor, see Attardo 2020:
78-94 and references therein).

On the other hand, it is well-known among humor scholars that
incongruity (and its resolution) may not always lead to humor or be
perceived as humorous. Morreall (1983: 19) observes that “[n]ot all
incongruity that a person notices will trigger laughter […]. Fear,
pity, moral disapprobation, indignation, or disgust, Beattie [1779]
says, can override our tendency to laugh at incongruity”. He
elaborates on the idea by giving an illustrative example: the claim
that “the mere perception of incongruity is sufficient for humor […]
is clearly false, since negative emotions like fear, disgust, and
anger are also reactions to what violates our mental patterns and
expectations. Coming home to find your family murdered, for example,
is incongruous but not funny. Experiencing something incongruous can
also evoke puzzlement and incredulity” (Morreall 2009: 12-13). The
same scholar has also delved into the relationship between
comedy/humor and tragedy: they are both based on incongruity, but this
incongruity is framed differently in each of these modes/genres and
generates different emotions (Morreall 1998, 1999; see also Hamilton
2013: 202-251). In a similar vein, Marszalek (2020) has convincingly
demonstrated that comic narratives including incongruities intended to
be interpreted as humorous may not only amuse but also provoke
emotions such as anxiety, suspense, embarrassment, and distress.

In this context, a monograph on the similarities and differences
between humor and horror seems most welcome. Lena Straßburger sets out
to investigate why and how detecting and resolving an incongruity can
sometimes be hilarious and sometimes horrifying. Adopting a
psycholinguistic perspective, she attempts to explore potential
differences in processing costs and in the emotions generated by
humorous and scary incongruities.

In the Introduction of the book, the author frames incongruity and its
resolution as the common denominator between the two phenomena and
describes the research gap she intends to fill in with her research.
She also presents her research questions and provides a brief overview
of the chapters to follow.

In chapter 1, titled “Horror: How to scream because of incongruity”,
Straßburger provides a fascinating overview of art-horror, namely
horror as produced in works of fiction from 18th century Gothic novels
until contemporary horror movies and series. Art-horror seems to be
premised on incongruities between the real and the unreal, the normal
and the abnormal, the healthy and the sick, and safety and danger.
Moreover, the author explores the emotions caused by art-horror,
mainly fear, disgust, and surprise, and offers working definitions for
all such concepts. Then, she takes us through psychoanalytic and
cognitive approaches to horror. At the end of the chapter, the author
summarizes the main concepts and theories shaping her analytical
approach to art-horror and states that she “pursue[s] a cognitive
definition of art-horror and interpret[s] it as the union of
incongruous, cognitive concepts like life/death,
normality/abnormality, reality/unreality, or safety/danger which break
cultural categories and, thereby, cause cognitive processing costs and
the negative emotions of, in particular, fear and disgust, as well as
surprise and pleasure” (p. 36).

Chapter 2, titled “Humor: How to smile about incongruity”, contains a
detailed and critical overview of humor theories, paying particular
attention to incongruity theory. Straßburger begins with the classics,
namely with how ancient Greeks and Romans viewed humor and how they
set the foundations for later approaches to humor and related
phenomena. Her next stop is Renaissance and Early Modern times, when
the English term ‘humor’ acquires a sense similar to the one it has
today (at least among English-speaking people), and when Kant and
Schopenhauer provided us with the early modern version of incongruity
theory. Then, the author elaborates on contemporary versions of
incongruity theory as well as on their theoretical presuppositions.
Most of these theories are premised on concepts such as schemas,
frames, and scripts, or even relevance and informativeness. The author
extensively refers to the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH;
Raskin 1985) and the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH; Attardo
1994, 2001, 2020), as well as to attempts at expanding the scope of
these theories and at further specifying the central concept of
incongruity. Investigating different types and degrees of incongruity
may be the key to a contrastive analysis of humor and art-horror.

Drawing on observations of Bain (1876: 256) to the effect that
“[t]here are many incongruities that may produce anything but a laugh
[…] but they cause feelings of pain, anger, sadness, loathing, rather
than mirth” (p. 72; see also Morreall 1983, 2009 above), Straßburger
argues that “final criteria for a clear definition of humor are still
missing and […] humor theories are also suitable to explain fiction in
general and genres with threatening characteristics” (p. 72). To
illustrate her claim, she uses the GTVH to analyze horror
micronarratives (pp. 74-75) and concludes that incongruity represents
“the common denominator and tertium comparationis between humorous and
scary texts” (p. 76). At the same time, she suggests that the
difference between humor and art-horror may lie in the effects and
reactions caused by incongruity (e.g. fear or exhilaration) as well as
on the contexts of its occurrence, in particular, recipients’ value
systems and their evaluations of incongruity as dangerous/threatening
or not. Based on such an extensive but compelling discussion, the
author formulates the goal of her study at the end of Chapter 2 as
follows: “[t]his book searches for a cognitive incongruity model that
explains humor and art-horror, and that predicts processing stages,
verified by empirical data. It aims at determining peculiarities that
are related to only one of the phenomena and underlying, higher-level
mechanisms of incongruity processing” (p. 83).

Chapter 3, titled “Humor and horror: Processing incongruity”, further
contributes to the author’s argument for the necessity of an empirical
psycholinguistic investigation of the differences between humor and
art-horror. Straßburger reviews a significant number of experimental
studies mostly on the psycholinguistics of humor detection and
processing and less on art-horror detection and processing (the latter
being more limited in number anyway). The subject areas of this
overview include: (a) studies on the processing costs of humor and
art-horror: given that these phenomena involve unpredictable input for
the recipients, the latter are forced to update their mental
representations (see schemata, frames, or scripts above), to reanalyze
the respective texts, and eventually to come up with a ‘new’
interpretation that would resolve the humorous or horrifying
incongruity; (b) studies measuring recipients’ neuroelectric activity
during humor processing and revealing differences in such activity
depending on the processing stage (i.e. detection, resolution, and
emotional reaction); (c) studies on the emotional reactions to
incongruity: even though it is confirmed by relevant research that
emotions are triggered by the detection and/or resolution of
incongruity and hence follow them temporally, a number of studies
reveal that emotions may also influence the detection and resolution
of incongruity; and (d) studies in the individual differences in
incongruity processing, which show that various factors such as age,
gender, intelligence, language skills, world and expert knowledge,
attitudes, and cognitive disorders play a more or less significant
role in how individuals process incongruity. After such an extensive
literature review, Straßburger underlines that “[e]ven though humor
research often mentions similarities between humor and art-horror, a
detailed experimental comparison investigating a shared understanding
mechanism is missing. So far, art-horror has been analyzed from a
literary science perspective so that experimental results are rare”
(p. 111).

Chapter 4, titled “Humor and horror: An experimental comparison”,
includes the data description, the methodology of their collection and
analysis, the findings of the study, as well as their discussion in
view of previous research. The author reports on three experiments
conducted after two pilot studies, the latter aiming at producing a
questionnaire that would fit the purposes of the experiments. More
specifically, the first experiment measured the processing times of
humorous, scary, and coherent texts (the humorous and scary texts were
perceived as incoherent due to their incongruities). The findings show
that humor and art-horror texts elicit longer reading times and hence
incur increased processing costs compared to those of the coherent
texts. In addition, the processing costs of the first two categories
of texts are comparable, which may be an indication of “the same
underlying cognitive mechanism” (p. 138).

The second experiment investigated the emotions caused by the
different texts through the analysis of facial expressions using the
Facial Action Coding System (FACS). In particular, facial movements
showing exhilaration were expected from reading the humorous texts,
while facial movements of fear and/or disgust were expected from
reading the art-horror texts. Even though the results obtained were
quantitatively poor (thus pointing to non-significant trends rather
than strong claims; see p. 183), they show that exhilaration indeed
correlates with humor, while disgust and fear correlate with
art-horror. Interestingly, non-negligible variation is also documented
among participants, since some showed exhilaration for art-horror and
some showed horror-related reactions to humor. The limited number of
facial expressions documented puts into question the usefulness of
FACS methodology for experimental studies conducted in laboratory
settings. Thus, it would rather be used in social/interactional
contexts where emotions are more visibly expressed, as the author
notes (p. 157).

The final experiment was based on the method of electroencephalography
used to explore “whether art-horror evokes additional neuroelectric
processing costs, how far these costs reflect cognitive processing
functions and phases, and to what extent they differ from other
incongruity phenomena, like humor or irresolvable incongruities” (p.
173). The complex findings resulting from this experiment appear to
suggest that recipients resort to the same cognitive resources to
process both humor and art-horror incongruities, even though humor may
be perceived as “less surprising than art-horror” probably “due to
humor’s higher cultural acceptance and frequency” (pp. 173-174).
However, the three stages of incongruity processing (i.e. detection,
resolution, and emotional reaction) seem to be confirmed for the
processing of art-horror but not for that of humor.

The final chapter, titled “Discussion and conclusion”, summarizes the
content of the whole book, points out the limitations of the
experimental contrastive investigation of humor and art-horror, and
proposes some thought-provoking and worth-exploring ideas for future
endeavors. Most importantly, the author puts forward what she calls an
“Incongruity Processing Model of Humor and Horror” (pp. 187-191),
which is based on her own findings as well as on a few other studies
(mostly Rothbart 2017/1996 and Canestrari & Bianchi 2013).

EVALUATION

Lena Straßburger’s monograph has “conceptually and experimentally” (p.
176) addressed the intricate relationship between humor and
art-horror. It is indeed an original and most interesting monograph on
an under-researched topic. Its argumentation is supported by an
extensive and critical review of the relevant literature as well as on
meticulously designed and executed experiments. Chapters 1-2 are
must-read for anyone interested in working in any of the contemporary
versions of incongruity theory, as it offers extensive and critical
accounts of them. The author also makes sure that detailed
descriptions of the experimental procedures and compelling discussions
of their findings are provided. She also offers helpful and
reader-friendly summaries of the content not only at the end of each
chapter but also when a thematic unit is complete (in the middle of a
chapter) before moving on to the next one.

The book incites us to revisit methodological and analytical tools
that presuppose that incongruity alone might be enough to characterize
something as humorous. Given that art-horror is also based on
incongruity, other conditions or circumstances should apply in order
to have a humorous (and not scary) perception of incongruity. Generic
particularities, interactional settings, speakers’ identities and
sociocultural practices, among other things, may be equally important
to identify and resolve an incongruity in humorous terms (see Tsakona
2020). The book also prompts us to reconsider the linear three-stage
model for the processing of humor (i.e. detection, resolution, and
emotional reaction): it seems that these three stages do not follow
one another but may occur simultaneously, as emotions are generated
during the detection and resolution of humor and may influence both
(whether positively or negatively).

The proposed “Incongruity Processing Model of Humor and Horror” is
obviously comprehensive and meticulously constructed, but still
constitutes an idealization of how speakers’ cognition and emotions
work when faced with incongruities. Perhaps its most thought-provoking
and appealing dimension pertains to finding pragmatic or
sociolinguistic ways to empirically confirm (parts of) it by analyzing
authentic data coming from speakers processing humor and art-horror in
actual interactional settings outside the walls (and restrictions) of
laboratories. The distinction between humorous discourse and
art-horror may be culturally specific (e.g. what seems humorous to
somebody may seem horrifying to somebody else), while at the same time
speakers may employ diverse semiotic resources to signify a humorous
or horrifying uptake of incongruity. Consequently, further research
could concentrate on how speakers discursively frame social events as
scary or horrifying and how they metapragmatically comment on, or
react to, such framings. The questions of how and why some speakers
react to art-horror with laughter and exhilaration could also be
worth-exploring not only for humor scholars but also for conversation
analysts investigating the use and functions of laughter in social
interaction. Eventually, if humor/comedy and tragedy are two sides of
the same incongruous coin (Morreall 1998, 1999, Hamilton 2013,
Marszalek 2020) and, at the same time, “humor and art-horror are […]
two sides of the same coin” (p. 193), then another possible research
question pertains to what is the relationship between tragedy and
horror.

Until then, and perhaps even after that time, the book remains a
must-read and an inspiration for all those working on incongruity
theories not only from a psycholinguistic and cognitive perspective,
but also from a pragmatic and sociolinguistic one.

REFERENCES

Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic theories of humor (Humor Research
1). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Attardo, Salvatore. 2001. Humorous texts: A semantic and pragmatic
analysis (Humor Research 6). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Attardo, Salvatore. 2020. The linguistics of humor: An introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bain, Alexander. 1876. The emotions and the will, 3rd edn. New York:
D. Appleton & Company.

Beattie, James. 1779. An essay on laughter and ludicrous composition.
In James Beattie, Essays: On poetry and music, as they affect the
mind; on laughter, and ludicrous composition; on the usefulness of
classical learning, 3rd edn., 297-450. London.

Canestrari, Carla & Ivana Bianchi. 2013. From perception of contraries
to humorous incongruities. In Marta Dynel (ed.), Developments in
linguistic humor theory (Topics in Humor Research 1), 3-24. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.

Hamilton, Theresa. 2013. Humorous structures of English narratives,
1200-1600. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Marszalek, Agnes. 2020. Style and emotion in comic novels and short
stories. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Morreall. John. 1983. Taking laughter seriously. Albany: State
University of New York Press.

Morreall, John. 1998. The comic and the tragic visions of life. Humor:
International Journal of Humor Research 11(4). 333-355.

Morreall, John. 1999. Comedy, tragedy, and religion. Albany: State
University of New York Press.

Morreall, John. 2009. Comic relief: A comprehensive philosophy of
humor (New Directions in Aesthetics 9). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic mechanisms of humor (Studies in
Linguistics and Philosophy 24). Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Rothbart, Mary K. 2017/1996. Incongruity, problem-solving and
laughter. In Antony J. Chapman & Hugh C. Foot (eds.), Humor and
laughter: Theory, research, and applications, 2nd edn., 37-54. New
York: Routledge.

Tsakona, Villy. 2020. Recontextualizing humor: Rethinking the analysis
and teaching of humor (Language Play and Creativity 4). Boston: De
Gruyter Mouton.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Villy Tsakona is Associate Professor of Social and Educational
Approaches to Language at the Department of Early Childhood Education,
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She has
published articles on humor research, political and media discourse
analysis, as well as on critical literacy theory and applications. She
has recently co-edited ‘The dynamics of interactional humor: Creating
and negotiating humor in everyday encounters’ (with Jan Chovanec 2018)
and authored ‘Recontextualizing humor: Rethinking the analysis and
teaching of humor’ (De Gruyter Mouton 2020). Personal webpage:
http://www.concept-pl.us/villy.tsakona



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