ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the communicative aspects of humor—more specifically, how it persuades. It explores specific persuasive tactics meant to persuade the audience through humor. Scholars discuss humor's various communicative, physiological, psychological, and sociological aspects. Message creators use humor in a variety of different situations and in very specific ways. Humor is communicated, interpreted, and understood through the lenses of three primary theories: superiority theory, relief theory and incongruity theory. Relief theory argues that people experience humor based on some form of relief in stressful situations or stressful events. Incongruity theory attributes humor to laughing at an occurrence resulting from an unexpected, perhaps out of the ordinary, nonthreatening surprise. The widespread use of humor suggests that it does have some desirable persuasive effects. Research has shown humor's capacity to promote objectivity, audience interest, and speaker credibility, which are its three major benefits in the realm of persuasion.
