Mechanisms of Laughter (Humor) and Techniques of its Generation in Classical Arabic Anecdotes

4 RESEARCH x ARTICLE Mechanisms of Laughter (Humor) and Techniques of its Generation in Classical Arabic Anecdotes ; Boulal Abdallah Doctoral Student Ancient Arabic Literature, University of Kasdi Merbah-Ouargla, Laboratory of Criticism and its Terminology Algeria Email: Dahou Houssine Dr. University of Kasdi Merbah-Ouargla Algeria Email: Doi Serial                    / Keywords Arab anecdotes, Comic elements, Emotional relief, Expectation violation, Laughter.

doi:10.56352/sei/8.7.44. ;

X Licensed x © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Science, Education and Innovations in the context of modern problems (SEI) X by IMCRA - International Meetings and Journals Research Association (Azerbaijan). This is an open access article under the CC BY license .

Laughter is language and terminology:

Laughing

The tongue said: Laughter: Known, laughed, laughed, laughed, laughed, and laughed in four languages.

There is a lot to say:

The robe was flooded if he smiled laughing, and the necks of money closed to his laugh

In the hadith: God raises the clouds and laughs the best laughter. He made his revelation about lightning a metaphor and a metaphor, as the laughing man laughed about the gap, and as they said, the earth laughed if it brought out its plant and flower.

And laughter: the appearance of folds of joy.(1 )

Laughing idiomatically:

Laughter has explanations that serve as definitions for it. Some philosophers have interpreted laughter physiologically,2

and some have interpreted it purely psychologically, and some have combined and linked them, and all of them are attempts that resulted in more than one definition of laughter, including:

• 1-    Laughter: is an innate predisposition (not acquired) in man, or it is a special human emotion that distinguishes it from the rest of the animals, so we find from the definitions of man that: [a laughing animal].

• 2-    Laughter: is an internal and external movement that has its known characteristics (special sound output, body vibration)¹

What is meant by that deep laughter that ends in the human being to the known state of euphoria, not just the special traits that appear on the mouth and facial strings.

Pillars of Laughter:

Laughter is an instinct and its pillars are the following:

• 1-    An impulse that arouses him

• 2-    An accompanying emotional state

3-A job or a goal that he seeks to achieve

Laughing

The author of the book of satire in Arabic literature, Nu 'man Muhammad Amin Taha, believes that everything that laughs is ridiculous, and has two faces:

• 1.    Humor: If humor has no purpose or purpose and is only meant to be funny, it is "humor".

• 2-    Ridicule: It is when ridicule means criticism, stinging and pain, and it has a clear purpose, whether specific or indeterminate when telling a joke.

Irony and humor meet at the source from which they emanate, and they may mix with each other and mix.

The definition and processing of irony.

Language: It came in the tongue: I mocked him, that is, his oppression and humiliation. He mocked him: it cost him unpaid work

The origin of the harness: humor, and the satirist in fact tries to subjugate his opponent to him.(2)

Terminologically ironic:

The process of ridicule is animated and vivid, so it cannot be defined collectively; because the living thing cannot be surrounded and portrayed with some minor words as it is a moving neighborhood, and the words are static, so how can the neighborhood be placed in static molds? The reader and the owner of the irony agree in the sense of it without being concerned with a definition.

Among the definitions of irony are:

[ A way of expression, in which a person uses words that flip meaning to the contrary of what the speaker really means.]

Causes:

• -    Hatred and hatred: The cynic transcends himself from society or from individuals, criticizing them because of hatred, hatred and a sense of inferiority, using the gift of cynicism to hide that deficiency.

• -    Enmity: Criticism is for the purpose of revenge.

• -    Arrogance: that is, the arrogance of the cynic, so he criticizes society and individuals out of a desire for cynicism.

Application:

Mechanisms of laughing and techniques of generating it in Arab anecdotes

The mechanisms of laughter and its generation techniques in Arab anecdotes are multiple, and we will limit ourselves to some of them:

1-Laughing at parody technique

Parody is based on irony, and among the Arabic anecdotes that include this technique are the following:

• *    - [It is narrated that an Arab found another and said: Who are you from? He said: From Bahla, the Arabs lamented to him, and he said: I will increase you, I am not from their core, but from their slaves.

So Al-Arabi kissed his hands and said: God has not been plagued with this symbolism in this world except that you are one of the people of Paradise.](1)

This is a rare social summary, so that it does not exceed three lines, and its social topic relates to a tribe of Arabs described as a degenerate tribe, to which everyone who joined it is slandered, called the "Bahla" tribe,as it was said:

And what is the benefit of the origin of Hashem if the soul is of the worthy?

Another said:

If the dog was told, Bahli, howl the dog from the meanness of this lineage

Some of them were told: Are you pleased that you are my idol and that you have entered Paradise? He said: By God, provided that the people of Paradise do not know that I am my idol.(2)

All this indicates that the "Bahla" tribe was ostracized by the Arabs, and was condemned as a lowly and degenerate tribe, and even set an example for it.

This rarity is distinguished by the simplicity of its language, away from the strangeness of words, the concavity of speech, and from all manifestations of disguise, arrogance, and ambiguity.

Its narrative elements: The events of this rare occurrence take place between two pivotal and essential characters. It tells us a revealing dialogue about the psychology of the two characters, their morals, and their cultural and linguistic levels. The hero character is a character: "Arabi», and the personality of "Bahli man", which is the focus of the event, with no focus on space-time

This rarity suggests that there are birth defects that characterize an entire society called "Bahla tribe". These defects are often negative, bad and ugly, because rare people focus on the negative qualities of people or societies in search of irony, humor and curiosity.

The mechanism and technique of generating laughter in this rare is the parody found in two phrases:

1-The phrase: [The Arabist lamented to him, and said: I will increase you, I am not from their core, but from their slaves.] , and the irony of this phrase is the paradoxes that violate the horizon of the recipient's expectation and extract his laughter.

• -    The irony of the situation: (Farthi has the Arabi), the Maqam is not a place of sadness so that the lamentation is from the Arabi of the man from Bahla.

• -    The paradox of the situation: (And I increase you that I am not from their core, but from their slaves), the Arab in the place of slander and ridicule, and the Bahili man in the place of pride.

• -    A verbal irony of the eloquent analogy in the sentence: (Farthi has the Arab), so that the Arab compared the man from the "Bahla" tribe to the dead man, so he omitted the suspect, and the similarity, which he expressed with the word: " Farthi"

• 2- The phrase: [ So Al-Arabi kissed his hands and said: God has not been plagued with this symbolism in this world except that you are one of the people of Paradise]

• -    The paradox of the endowment: (So the Arabi kisses his hands and says), so how can one who is arrogant and ridicules the "Bahla" tribe kiss the hand of a slave from the slaves of this tribe, it is a clear paradox that generates laughter

• -    A verbal paradox that came in the form of a metaphor in saying: (God has not been afflicted with this symbolism in this

world), so that he likened the "Bahla" tribe to calamity and everyone who belongs to it is afflicted in this world, and that he is one of the people of Paradise in the Hereafter in exchange for this affiliation, so what does the tribe sing about man in the Hereafter? This verbal paradox generates laughter.

In this rare case, the Arab criticizes both the individual and the tribe because of his arrogance, and out of a desire for ridicule, with intent after bitter laughter and pain.

Among the Arab anecdotes that included the following rare parody mechanism:

* - [Some fools wrote to a man who comforts him with his daughter: Tell me your calamity and what it is a calamity, and he came to the news about - the Prophet, peace be upon him - that he said: Whoever died with a daughter had a reward gone away from me, and whoever died with two had a reward like the one who went away from me twice, and after the death of Aisha, the daughter of the Prophet – peace be upon him - from your innocent daughter (1) so that you do not die] (2)

These are a rare of brief anecdotes and their subject is social, their words are clear and their language is simple, revolving around two characters: the hero character (the foolish man who wrote the condolence letter), and the other character (the man whose daughter died).

Parody in this rare is to turn "condolence" from its serious purpose into a comic purpose, which is the irony of the situation. The place is a place of sadness and not a place of comedy, and condolence requires well-known manners, and the comforter is in a position of consolation; because the situation is a position of sadness, but the idiot in this rare situation was otherwise so that he took the condolence out of its original purpose, and included it in a context that tells about the foolishness of the character and its departure from habit and custom.

2-Laughing at the mechanism of paradox:

One of the rarity of this mechanism is: Rarely entitled: (Divorce five in an hour)(3)

* - [One of them said to Al-Rashid: Tell me, O Commander of the Faithful, that an Arab man was divorced on the day of five women, but it is permissible for a man to own four women, so how could he divorce five?

He said: A man had four women, so he entered them one day and found them competent, conflicting, and he was badly created and said:

• -    How long has this conflict been going on? I only think of this by you, pointing to one of them, go, you are divorced!

The owner said to him: I hastened her divorce, and if I had taught her otherwise, I would have been real.

He said to her: You are also divorced.

The third said to him: God has wronged you, so by God, they were good to you, and you are preferred.

He said: And you, O many, their hands are also divorced.

The fourth said to him: - It was a crescent moon, and it had a great gentleness -: Your chest is tired of disciplining your women except by divorce!

He said to her: You are divorced too!

This was done by the hearing of a neighbor of his, so I supervised him, and I heard his words, and she said: By God, the Arabs did not witness you, and your people, weakened by what they had waned from you, and they found him in you, so you only decided to divorce your women in one hour!

He said: You too, you repentant, divorced woman, if your husband permits. He replied from inside his house:

I have sanctioned, I have sanctioned, I have sanctioned. "

It is rare, long and in the form of dialogue, with a social and religious theme. Its events revolve around divorce, and it contains a jurisprudential ruling that some people do not know about the occurrence of a woman's divorce without her husband, provided that her husband permits that divorce, and that he is heard by him and in his presence. As for the words and language, they are rare and far from the manifestations of fabrication and grandiose. There is no surprise in their words, and their language is simple. As for their heterodox elements, they consist of the main character, which is the heroic character represented by the man who divorced his women, and other pivotal figures represented by the four women, the fifth woman and her husband.

The victim in this rarity is: the recipient or the reader; because the funny thing (humor) in this rarity came in the form of a mysterious, puzzling, and supernatural question (how can a man divorce five in an hour when he cannot and cannot afford to combine five women in his neck? This is the irony of the situation.

The technique and mechanism that elicited the laughter of the recipient or victim is this paradox and the answer to it is rare.

It is also rare:

* - [It was told] that Abu Othman al-Huairi was invited by a man to hospitality, so when he met (1) the door of the house, the man said to him:O Professor, I have no face in your entry, so he left – may God have mercy on you - and Abu Othman left. When he met his house, the man returned to him and said: O Professor, I regretted, and he apologized to him, and he said: Bring the watch, so he got up with him. When he met his house, he said to him like what he said in the first: Then he did that to him four times, and Abu Othman went away and attended, then he said to him: O Professor, I wanted to test you and stand on your morals, then he made an apology to him and praised him. Abu 'Uthman said, "Do not praise me for a creation you find in dogs, for if the dog is called, he comes, and if2 he is snubbed, he gets snubbed.3"

This is a long social rarity, in which there is no complexity of language, no strangeness in its words, and no ambiguity, and it is also far from fabrication. Its narrative elements are represented by two pivotal characters. This rareness included the meaning of paradox as a metaphor in the sentence: (Do not praise me for a creature you find in dogs, the dog, if he is invited, is present and if he is enjured, is enjured). The character of the hero likened himself to the dog that if he is invited to attend and if he is enjured, he mentioned the suspect, the suspect, and the similarity, which is a "declarative metaphor" that includes the meaning of paradox, which is what provokes laughter and extracts it from the recipient, the reader, and the victim as well.

3-Laughing with the technique of flipping concepts

One of the Arab anecdotes with this technique is: Anecdote titled: Joking in the Amir's Council (4)

* - [Saad bin Shaddad Al-Kufi, the grammarist, was one of the disciples of my father Al-Aswad Al-Dawali, and he had jokes and humor, and this was acceptable from him, including: The tribes of Bani Rasab and Al-Tafawa differed in birth, so they appealed to Ziyad bin Abi, the governor of Muawiya, Saad said: Prince, this newborn is thrown into the water, and if he fails, he is from a failure, and if he is a floater, he is from Al-Tafawa! So Ziad took his soles and got up laughing, and said: Did I not forbid this comedy in my council?]

This rarity is one of the brief anecdotes,its topic is social,its language is simple and its words are clear, there is no cost, strangeness or ambiguity, its events take place between two central characters: (the character of the hero "Saad bin Shaddad Al-Kufi,and the character of Ziad bin Abih), and dual personalities: (the personality of the newborn, and the personalities of the two tribes),but the place of its occurrence is the" Emir's Council ",and the time of its occurrence is not focused on it.

In this rare case, we find that the mechanism and technology that extracted the laughter of the victim (the prince) and the laughter of the recipient is the "heart of concepts" technique, which is a kind of paradox, so that the hero character surprised the council and the recipient by extracting the solution from the name of the two tribes, and this is a heart of meaning. The word «failure" means the name of the tribe and not its original meaning, which is the failure, as well as the word «float", which means the name of the tribe and not the original meaning that he did "float, float». He turned the apparent meaning into a hidden meaning, and this is a verbal paradox that Al-Jurjani calls "fallacy", and it is called in rhetoric: "The wise style", which is the distraction of speech from what is meant to another, or the answer to the question with an answer that the questioner does not mean by his question, which is an old Arabic style that includes the meaning of paradox.

It is also rare:

It is a socially brief rarity, its language is not complicated, it has one or two words that need to be explained and interpreted, and there is no pretending in it. Its personal events revolve around the hero and a group of people who are expressed as "people".

In rare cases, we stand on the technique of "flipping the meaning" in the man's answer to the question of his people by saying: (It is okay for me, but the other lion is in my trousers). He flipped the meaning to hide his fear and justify his defecation in his trousers as if the lion was the one who was afraid and that fear drove him to it. It is a paradox between the maqam and the article that raises laughter and takes it away.

4-Dual Meaning Laughter

The following are rare in this regard:

* - [ The Arabs attended a people's council and they remembered the night, so it was said to him: O Abu Imamah, do you make the night? «That I would," he said. And they said what? He said: I pee and go back to sleep.] (1)

It is a socially brief rarity, characterized by the simplicity of its language and the clarity of its words, and it does not have a rhythm, does not cost, and does not fabricate speech. Its events revolve around the character of the hero (the Arab Abu Umama) and the figures of the People's Assembly, and there is no focus on space-time.

The funny thing (humor) in this rare is the hero character's answer to the question of the people, so that their expectation was breached because of the double meaning in the word "rise of the night", which has two meanings:

- A close meaning: It means the well-known worship, which is prayer at night while people are sleeping, and this is what the questioners meant in their question to the Arabs.

- Distant meaning: It is meant to do from sitting or sitting, and this is what Al-Arabi meant in his answer.

The basis of this rare farce resulted from this verbal paradox, which in Arabic rhetoric is called "pun".

It is also rare:

* - [ It was said: A man asked Al-Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him), "Are you the eldest or the Messenger of Allah (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him)?" He said: The Messenger of Allah (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) is older and I was born before him.] (2)

It is a short social rarity, far from pretending and decoding speech, its language is simple and its words are clear. Its narrative elements consist of two personalities between whom the conversation took place.

The funny or comical thing about it came from the double meaning technique in the word "greater", it has two meanings:

- A close meaning: It means age or age, that is: (the oldest), which is what the questioner means from his question to Al-Abbas – may Allah be pleased with him -

- A distant meaning: It means credit, fate, prestige and prestige, which is what Al-Abbas intended in his answer to the question. This verbal paradox is the one that extracted the laughter of the recipient by violating the horizon of his expectation and surprise, so he did not wait for this answer, so he fell victim to the "pun"

Conclusion:

If humor (the funny thing) is a basic ingredient in the Arab rarity, then the irony of its diversity is the basis of humor, and it is the one that provokes laughter, whether humor or ridicule. Ironically, the surprise is a breach of the horizon of expectation, and a breach of habit and custom.

All laughing techniques and mechanisms are paradoxes or include the meaning of paradox: (laughing at the heart of concepts - manipulating the arbitrariness of the mark - employing logical or transferable arguments on a trivial subject -repetition – misunderstanding – sudden question - anagram-based joke - double meaning - semantic intensification -parody).