ABSTRACT
For centuries there has been a widespread belief that humour is closely related to feelings of superiority or aggression. This has been promoted as a theory of humour by Gruner, but there are serious flaws in his arguments. Nevertheless, we can use his discussion as a source of several distinct superiority-related constructs which could be applicable to jokes, and a small number of these are suitable for use in our framework. We primarily focus on the idea of an insult, which we represent as occurring when some conceptual item in the joke world has its rating on a worth scale reduced. We also allow for the relatively rare case of textual jokes operating like practical jokes, which may be used more for the benefit of the joke teller than the amusement of the audience.
