Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor

Very Short Summary

Victor Raskins “Script-Based Semantic Theory Of Humor” can be considered a variation of the Incongruity Plus Theory, but instead of trying to explain all humor, he focuses his efforts exclusively on verbal humor.

And for such humor to occur the following two conditions must be met:

1) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different semantic scripts In very simple words, a semantic script is all the information we associate with a word or a phrase.
2) The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite

Laughter, in his opinion, is thus the result of the sudden shift of a persons understanding from the first script to the second, opposite, script.

Or simply put: There are two stories in a joke and at the beginning we think we are in Story 1 (The first semantic script) and at the end of the joke we realize we have been in Story 2 (the second, opposing script) the whole time. For example:

“There’s nothing so tragic as seeing a family pulled apart by something as simple as a pack of wolves.”

The first semantic script (or Story 1) is the word “a family pulled apart” which most people don’t interpret literally but in the sense of for example “being pulled apart by a divorce”. This interpretation is reinforced by the words “by something as simple”. The second, opposing semantic script (or Story 2) gets revealed right at the end with the words “a pack of wolves”.

For a moment the pack of wolves is incongruous with our first understanding of “being pulled apart” (as in a divorce) but it gets resolved immediately because every word in the joke is compatible with both semantic scripts or Story 1 and 2.

Or as Victor Raskin puts it:

“…one cannot simply juxtapose two incongruous things and call it a joke, but rather one must find a clever way of making them make pseudo-sense together”. Humor in Literature by Katrina E. Triezenberg (2008). , pg. 537. In Primer of Humor Research, ed. Victor Raskin. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin, New York.

Proponents

Victor Raskin (Semantic Mechanisms of Humor)

The Case for the Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor

It works. A lot of jokes function exactly like that. But what sometimes is difficult to understand, is when jokes seemingly don’t switch from Story 1 to Story 2. When Story 2 (aka Sudden Cognitive Shift) is expanding Story 1. Take a look a this joke:

“I like rice. Rice is great if you’re hungry and want 2000 of something.”

What is Story 1 and Story 2 in this case? It is hard to tell at first glance.

Story 1: What we normally expect when someone starts to list the positive traits of rice.
Story 2: You can eat 2000 rice kernels in one sitting.

In order to understand what happens here, we need to remember that Raskin doesn’t talk about stories but semantic scripts, which encompass all the information we associate with a word or a phrase. So the semantic script Hedberg exploits in his joke is, that when we hear “I like rice”, that we don’t include the huge amount of rice kernels we can eat.

The Case against the Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor

Nothing except that it takes a moment to wrap your head around jokes that seem to expand the first semantic script with the second one, instead of being in clear opposition.

Is it necessary to have two semantic scripts which oppose themselves but are compatible in order to get a laugh? Yes.

Is it sufficient to have two semantic scripts which oppose themselves but are compatible in order to get laugh? No. Two semantic scripts which oppose themselves but are compatible can also be used in horror stories:

“I love your face. I love everything about it. That’s why I’m wearing it right now.”

Rating: Five out of Five Stars

When you get it, it’s a great way to look at comedy. But it’s sometimes hard to find the semantic scripts, when you are used to writing jokes that use two meanings of a word or a phrase in order to create two stories that are opposed to eachother. For example in absurdist humor.

Two muffins in an oven. The first one goes: “Hot in here, isn’t it?”
The other one says: “AAAAAAH! A TALKING MUFFIN!”

Because here the joke uses not only what we associate with the information we are presented with in the joke itself but also the genre of the joke. It makes us assume that all muffins can talk in the world it creates, but then flips the script on us because it being absurdist humor it’s completely fine that that assumption isn’t true.

The Takeaway

It is always helpful to think about having two stories in a joke and how to make them as opposed to each possible while still making them compatible. But also thining about how can you expand on Story 1 while still making the sudden cognitive shift surprising and compatible.