Humour is an act of aggression. A German academic sees humour as an act of aggression, and says that people who make others laugh think that they are higher up the social ladder than their audiences.
Helga Kotthoff, of the Frieburg University of Education, claims that dominant people exploit the ability to make others laugh as a degree of control to show that they are in charge. The research, which was published in the Journal of Pragmatics, suggest that the role of humour is not to make other people laugh as much as it is to make others know who is in charge. The theory explains why until recently it has been extremely rare for women to tell jokes in front of men, according to Helga Kotthoff of the Frieburg University of Education. She said: "Those 'on top' are freer to make others laugh. They are also freer to be more aggressive and a lot of what is funny is making jokes at someone else's expense. "Displaying humour means taking control of the situation from those higher up the hierarchy and this is risky for people of lower status, which before the 1960s meant women rarely made other people laugh - they couldn't afford to. "Comedy and satire are based on aggressiveness and not being nice," she said. "Until the 1960s it was seen as unladylike to be funny. But even now women tend to prefer telling jokes at their own expense and men tend to prefer telling jokes at other people's expense." Following this line of reasoning, it is logical to assume that MY is more likely than not a male. I would guesstimate that the odds on this speculation are 70/30 that MY is a man. Projecting further and consistent with the use of aggressive humor, MY’s objection with Rossi borders on the pathological and may be an attempt to assert dominance over Rossi as a perceived object of our adoration as well as the other members of this forum by cutting Rossi down to size as it were, discounting and belittling his accomplishments and oftentimes inferring and sometimes openly asserting he is no more than a common criminal; i.e. a man of no consequence juxtaposed to MY himself. On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:18 PM, Mary Yugo <maryyu...@gmail.com> wrote: > It was joke-- pls. lighten up! >
