Reading Task #4 – Essay

In Chapter 5 of “Good Humor, Bad Taste”(2006), Mouton de Gruyter tries to find out various definitions of good humor, and then looks into the logic behind them.

Firstly, he states that “sense of humor” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 100) and “coarse” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 100) are two words that have been frequently used to judge humor. However, he finds that people have different opinions as to what is coarse humor. For “highbrow” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 103) people, coarse has three meanings: “simple” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 103), “corny” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 103), “easy” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 103). For people “with the popular style” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 108), coarse equals to “vulgar and rude” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 108). He then talks about good sense of humor. One type of description connects it to a personal connection, which means that people with whom they share humor have good sense of humor. Surprisingly, the author finds that this description is mostly given by women, which reflects the connection between humor and gender. Besides that, he finds the other two types of description related to humor styles. People with “highbrow humor styles” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 114) prefer “sharpness and originality” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 115), while people with “popular humor style” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 117) connect good sense of humor with “sociability” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 117) rather than “originality” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 117). What’s more, he notices that good sense of humor also means that people can take a joke.