Incongruity without novelty: Perfect joke and reinterpretation
Incongruity without novelty: Perfect joke and reinterpretation

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the phenomenon of the perfect joke - a specific joke-form articulated within the stand-up comedy community, most notably by Norm Macdonald. The central aim is to assess whether and how perfect jokes can be explained within the framework of incongruity theory of humor. After outlining the historical background of incongruity theory and its contemporary neo-Gricean developments, the paper analyzes the structural features of perfect jokes, focusing on their defining characteristic: the identity or near-identity of setup and punchline. It is argued that perfect jokes constitute a peculiar case of incongruity-based humor, one in which incongruity is generated not by the introduction of new semantic content but by a purely pragmatic trigger that invites reinterpretation. On this basis, the paper suggests that perfect jokes support a resolution-centered understanding of incongruity theory, while also considering certain methodological limits of incongruity-based explanation of this humorous phenomenon.

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