American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Let us begin with a simple observation: people like to laugh. The comic instinct can be found in every culture, including every form of humor from slapstick to the sublime. If we are interested in laughing with others rather than laughing at them, there seems to be a consensus in the literature as to what makes something funny, usually focusing on the nature of incongruities. At its simplest, incongruity consists of creating a juxtaposition between two items that normally would not be associated with each other, the proximity of which causes surprise. If the surprise causes an emotional response of delight, especially at seeing the world in a new and different way, that delight will support the interpretation that the juxtaposition is humorous. The emphasis on incongruities helps explain the nature of humor. However, it might be argued that this explanation for humor is insufficient to account for the entire process. In discussing incongruities, the emphasis, to a large degree, is on phenomena that exist outside the mental frame and on the nature of the mental frame. The aspect of the humorous event that lies outside the mental frame need not be explored here. As regards the mental frame, humor theorists will generally consider notions of language and cultural expectations. For example, a native speaker will get the joke, while a non-native speaker will be left in the dark. When it comes to cultural expectations, finding humor in something that is sacred in another’s culture most likely will not result in laughter on the part of one’s conversation partner but instead could instigate a quick end to the cross-cultural encounter.