As I see it, there are a lot of ways to find humor in English. For one thing, people have, over the centuries, applied various words to deal with what they, apparently, considered to be problems. For some reason, this seems to have been frequent when finding specific words for the names of groups of specific types of animals. A group of owls, for example, is a Parliament; Lapwings form a Deceit; woodpeckers a Descent; larks an Exaltation; Ravens a Constable; Lions, a Pride; hyenas, a Cackle; otters, a Raft; and so on. The one I find the most amusing is that a group of crows is called a “Murder,” which, I think, leads one to the obvious question posed by Skylar in this Shoe cartoon I ran across.
It’s probably because I am male, that I am somewhat sensitive to this, next, sort of humor. In spite of all of my exposure to literature of many sorts and some (not very well developed) skills as an actor, I confess to being something of a stereotypical American male in not being all that comfortable in expressing the “softer” emotions. This, as the Zits cartoon below suggests, does not seem to be anything approaching much of a challenge for the stereotypical American female, or, at least it isn’t perceived as being much of a problem for that branch of the species. The MALE, however, rightly, or wrongly, is usually portrayed as indicated, and my own experience would tend more towards supporting that belief than disputing it.
I suspect that even those males whom we think of as being quite skilled in this area MIGHT not be all that successful 100% of the time, as is suggested in this cartoon I ran across a while back.
There is, of course, the form of linguistic humor which one occasionally encounters where a group of letters form words which make some sort of sense when read normally, but can also be read in reverse to form an identical one. This is know as a “palindrome.” I am especially ford of THIS one: “My friend just got a PhD on the history of palindromes. We now call him Dr. Awkward.” Check it out, it works! Other examples include: Never a foot too far, even.; Red roses run no risk, sir, on Nurse’s order.; He lived as a devil, eh?; Ned, I am a maiden.; Now, sir, a war is won!; Dennis and Edna sinned.; Step on no pets!. There are certainly a lot more possibilities, but I’ll quit with these. (Thank the Lord, the reader thought.)
There are other possibilities for “playing” with language, of course. Here are a couple of B.C. cartoons which I enjoyed that do just that:
Of course, being a theatre person, especially one who has been involved with several productions of Sheridan’s play, The Rivals, I can’t even touch on any discussion of language humor without mentioning the “malapropism.” This, of course, “… is the wrong use of a word that sounds similar to the correct one, resulting in a funny or nonsensical sentence.” It derives its name from one of the characters in Sheridan’s The Rivals, Mrs. Malaprop, who uses this form of humor (which she does NOT realize she is doing) constantly throughout the play, which is a major aspect of the comedy in the work.
In any event. the term has caught on for this sort of thing, as I was reminded a while back by this Frank and Ernest comic:
While not, specifically referring just to English, I admit that I was quite taken by the image shown below which I ran across at some point after “emojis” started to become common. I confess that it did make me wonder if the modern emphasis on “advanced technology” was really a demonstration of PROGRESS as opposed to what some might think of as regression to a more primitive state. I won’t pretend to be smart enough to have an adequate response to that notion, but I do think it might be worth some consideration.
No matter how one deals with these questions, though, I confess that I’m glad that I have achieved at least SOME mastery of the mysteries of English. I won’t go so far as to claim anything approaching real MASTERY, but I manage to get along reasonably well, which suggests to me that I should thank my parents and teachers for their assistance in assisting me to acquire whatever knowledge I have of the only language in which I claim to have any sort of fluency . I think this cartoon from The Family Circus expresses that idea pretty well.
It also might be worth considering that if “pro” is the opposite of “con,” does that mean that Congress is the opposite of progress? Think about it!
🖖🏼 LLAP,
Dr. B