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Fowler on Humor

I was pleased to rediscover this table today.

	Motive or Aim	Province	Method or Means	Audience
humor	Discovery	Human nature	Observation	The sympathetic
wit	Throwing light	Words and ideas	Surprise	The intelligent
satire	Amendment	Morals and manners	Accentuation	The self-satisfied
sarcasm	Inflicting pain	Faults and foibles	Inversion	Victim and bystander
invective	Discredit	Misconduct	Direct statement	The public
irony	Exclusiveness	Statement of facts	Mystification	An inner circle
cynicism	Self-justification	Morals	Exposure of nakedness	The respectable
the sardonic	Self relief	Adversity	Pessimism	Self

That’s lifted from the entry on humor found in Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1927). Now I need one for the various forms of physical and visual humor.

Homework: Print copies for all. Take to dinner with the day’s comics. Categorize.

This was written by bhyde. Posted on Monday, October 11, 2004, at 4:34 pm. Filed under General. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm » Blog Archive » Traditional Values on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 11:27 am

[...] I love the way given a heterogeneous audience a single bit of humor can be at once all kinds of humor. Fun Fact about Common Lisp: standard Common Lisp has no networking [...]

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