Topic Proposal

Elizabeth Kolbert's writing, "Why Candidates Need to Make Fun of Themselves," takes a closer look at what presidential candidates hope to accomplish through humor. In my essay I hope to find out why certain presidential candidates think humor will help them get more votes. Are the presidential candidates hoping to target a certain age by using humor in their campaign? If so, why will humor draw a certain age to them? Do they think the young voting population will be attracted to a candidate who can relate to them on a humorous level?


* What is the purpose of the argument? What does it hope to achieve? The purpose of my argument it to find out why presidential candidates find it necessary to use humor during their campaign.

* Who is the audience for this argument? The voting population.

* What are the contexts – social, political, historical, cultural – for this argument? Whose interests does it serve? Who gains or loses by it?
The contexts are political and it serves the interests of the voting population. The presidential candidate will gain or lose votes based on his success or failure with comedy. The contexts could also be social because the presidential candidate is trying to relate to the voting population and make us believe he is an ordinary guy.

* How does the language or style of the argument work to persuade an audience? Some people believe humor makes people feel comfortable while other people are naturally drawn to humor so presidential candidates tend to use humor to gain supporters.

Short Writing Assignment #2

Of all the readings we have done so far for this class, I am most interested in the reasons for laughter. I never paid attention to the reasons for laughter and just assumed people laughed because something was funny. I was very surprised to find out there are eight different reasons for laughter, with surprise and superiority as the two primary reasons. Under surprise and superiority there are six additional reasons for laughter which include instinct, release, incongruity, ambivalence, regress, and solving a puzzle.

Part of the reason I am interested in the reason we laugh is because it gives me something to think about when I hear a joke. After learning the reasons for laughter I can listen to a joke and decide if I laughed out of surprise, instinct, release, incongruity, superiority, ambivalence, regress, or because I solved a puzzle. Because of this I will probably not laugh as much and I will think about why I was laughing.

Knowing the reason for laughter is especially important for a comedian. If he wants to surprise the audience with the punch line, he will not be pleased if they laugh out of instinct. He wants to surprise them with his jokes and let that be the reason for their laughter. I think Mel Helitzer should have included the psychology behind the reasons for laughter. He mentioned the psychologist who identified the reasons for laughter, but he did not include how she discovered her findings. That is very important to me because I wonder if the findings were based on studying someone and looking at their personality to see why they laughed or if the findings were based on someone saying why they laughed.

I chose the article “Why We Laugh” by Morgan Griffin because Robert R. Provine, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland Baltimore Country, provides the psychological reasons to determine why people laugh. He conducted a survey of 1,200 “laugh episodes” by listening to conversations in public. He found that only 10-20% of laughs were in response to jokes and the other 80-90% of laughs came from comments that did not involve humor.

When Provine surveyed conversations in public, did he survey at random or did he visit one shopping mall and survey all males? We do not know who he surveyed and if his subjects were respresentative of the population. Depending on who he surveyed, his results may not be accurate.

http://men.webmd.com/features/why-we-laugh

Chapter 1 Reading Response CWS

Chapter one starts off by explaining the value of humor writing and explaining how people acquire their humor-writing skills. A quote backs up one theory of humor-writing skills by saying a secret is passed down from one generation to the next telling how to write humorously. The believers of this theory think the humor trait is inherited and only those who have humor in their genetics can become successful humor writers. Not all humor writers inherit their talent. The writing comes naturally for some, but others grow into their success through the environment they grow up in. Anyone can develop the skills needed for humor writing and I particularly enjoyed the exercise where I was supposed to list possible uses for a beer bottle and an ash tray. I was unsure of how difficult humor writing could be, but the exercise helped me and showed me how simple the writing really is.

The benefits of humor writing are brought up and said to involve reward, remembrance, and respect. Humor earns the speaker respectful attention, funny jokes make them remembered, and successful comedy writing helps them receive rewards. The benefits come with success and success comes from the performer using the material and audience to their advantage. The humorist must first weigh up the audience and determine if the majority is teenage girls, young lawyers, or old doctors. The people in the audience help the comedian decide what jokes to tell. Teenage girls will not enjoy the same jokes as old doctors so the comedian must decide what type of people are in audience so he can make sure he has a good show.

In dance I also used the material and audience to my advantage. In order to place well at competitions I needed to get a feel for what the audience and judges liked. Isn’t the key to success finding out what the audience enjoys before performing? I would sit in the audience and see what kind of dancers the judges enjoyed watching. Were they interested in jazz dancing and did they get into the music when an upbeat song started playing? I wanted to see how they reacted to good dancers so I could tell if they liked my performance while I was on stage. If the judges seemed to like sharp dancing right on the movement, then that is what I would do that day, but if I sensed they liked choreography held out to lengthen the music, then I would sustain my choreography instead. I never changed my choreography; I merely moved through the choreography based on the preference of the judges.


Similar to comedy writers, they also base their performance on the audience. For the audience members to enjoy the performance, jokes must be told in their interest of the viewers. Comedy writers must target a certain age range and solely write to keep the reader interested. When performing, you want to keep the audience entertained and that only happens by performing to their liking. Every type of performer has to study the audience and decide what type of performance will be the most successful and enjoyable to the viewers. As long as the performer gets the right feel for the audience's interests, the show will be a hit!

Questions : Do you think the majority of comedy writers inherited or worked for their talent?