Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor, self-aware humor, or meta humor, is a type of comedic expression that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is

self-referential Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philos ...

in some way, intentionally alluding to the very person who is expressing the humor in a comedic fashion, or to some specific aspect of that same comedic expression. Self-referential humor expressed discreetly and surrealistically is a form of bathos. In general, self-referential humor often uses

hypocrisy Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform. In moral psychology, it is the ...

oxymoron An oxymoron (usual plural oxymorons, more rarely oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase that creates an ostensible self-contradiction. An oxymoron can be used as a rhetorical dev ...

, or

paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

to create a contradictory or otherwise absurd situation that is humorous to the audience.

History

Old Comedy Old Comedy (''archaia'') is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with thei ...

of Classical Athens is held to be the first—in the extant sources—form of self-referential comedy.

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his fo ...

, whose plays form the only remaining fragments of Old Comedy, used fantastical plots, grotesque and inhuman masks and status reversals of characters to slander prominent politicians and court his audience's approval. Self-referential humor was popularized by

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...

who wrote several books on the subject of self-reference, the term ''

meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or ende ...

'' has come to be used, particularly in art, to refer to something that is self-referential.

Classification

Meta-jokes Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor, self-aware humor, or meta humor, is a type of comedic expression that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is self-referential in some way, int ...

are a popular form of humor. They contain several somewhat different, but related categories: ''joke templates'', ''self-referential jokes'', and ''jokes about jokes'' (meta-humour).

Joke template

This form of meta-joke is a

sarcastic Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...

jab at the endless refitting of joke forms (often by professional comedians) to different circumstances or characters without a significant innovation in the humor.

Self-referential jokes

Self-referential Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philos ...

jokes must refer to themselves rather than to larger classes of previous jokes.

Jokes about jokes ("meta-humor")

''Meta-humour'' is humour about humour. Here ''meta'' is used to describe that the joke explicitly talks about other jokes, a usage similar to the words metadata (data about data),

metatheatrics A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes ...

(a play within a play, as in ''

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depi ...

''), and

metafiction Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own narrative structure in a way that continually reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and stor ...

Other examples

Alternate punchlines

Another kind of meta-humour makes fun of poor jokes by replacing a familiar punchline with a serious or nonsensical alternative. Such jokes expose the fundamental criterion for joke definition, "funniness", via its deletion. Comedians such as

George Carlin George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of countercul ...

and

Mitch Hedberg Mitchell Lee Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 30, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian known for his surreal humor and deadpan delivery. His comedy typically featured short, sometimes one-line jokes mixed with absurd elements and non seq ...

used metahumour of this sort extensively in their routines.

Anti-humor

Anti-humor Anti-humor is a type of indirect and alternative humor that involves the joke-teller's delivering something that is intentionally not funny, or lacking in intrinsic meaning. The practice relies on the expectation on the part of the audience of ...

is a type of indirect and

alternative comedy Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe ...

that involves the joke-teller delivering something that is intentionally not funny, or lacking in intrinsic meaning. The humor of such jokes is based on the surprise factor of absence of an expected

joke A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...

or of a

punch line A punch line (a. k. a. punch-line or punchline) concludes a joke; it is intended to make people laugh. It is the third and final part of the typical joke structure. It follows the introductory framing of the joke and the narrative which sets up ...

in a narration that is set up as a joke. Warren A. Shibles
Humor Reference Guide: A Comprehensive Classification and Analysis
(Hardcover) 1998 It depends upon reference to the audience's expectations on what a joke is.

Breaking the fourth wall

Self-referential humor is at times combined with breaking the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cent ...

to make explicit reference directly to the audience or to make self-reference to an element of the medium the characters should not be aware of.

Class-referential jokes

This form of meta-joke contains a familiar class of

s as part of the joke.

''Bar'' jokes

Comedian jokes

The process of being a humorist is also the subject of meta-jokes; for example, on an episode of '' QI'',

Jimmy Carr James Anthony Patrick Carr (born 15 September 1972) is a British-Irish comedian, presenter, writer, and actor. He is known for his deadpan delivery of controversial one-liners and distinctive laugh, for which he has been both praised and criti ...

made the comment, "When I told them I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed. Well, they're not laughing now!"— a joke previously associated with

Bob Monkhouse Robert Alan Monkhouse (1 June 1928 – 29 December 2003) was an English comedian, writer and actor. He was the host of television game shows including '' The Golden Shot'', '' Celebrity Squares'', '' Family Fortunes'' and '' ''Wipeout'. Ea ...

Limericks

limerick Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2016 ...

referring to the anti-humor of limericks: W. S. Gilbert wrote one of the definitive "anti-limericks":

Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and politi ...

's anti-limerick from ''

Travesties ''Travesties'' is a 1974 play by Tom Stoppard. The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing '' Ulysses'', ...

'':

Metaparody

Metaparody is a form of humor or literary technique consisting "parodying the

parody A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its su ...

of the original", sometimes to the degree that the viewer is unclear as to which

subtext Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced explicitly (by characters or author), but is implicit, or becomes something understood by the audience. Subtext has been used historically to imply controversial subjects without ...

is genuine and which subtext parodic.

RAS Syndrome

RAS syndrome RAS syndrome (where "RAS" stands for "redundant acronym syndrome", making the phrase "RAS syndrome" homological) is the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym (or other initialism) in conjunction with the abbreviated ...

refers to the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...

or initialism with the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating one or more words. However, "RAS" stands for Redundant Acronym Syndrome; therefore, the full phrase yields "Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome" and is self-referencing in a comical manner. It also reflects an excessive use of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms).

Examples

Hedberg

Stand-up comedian

would often follow up a joke with an admission that it was poorly told, or insist to the audience that "that joke was funnier than you acted."

Rehnquist

Marc Galanter in the introduction to his book ''Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture'' cites a meta-joke in a speech of Chief Justice

William Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from ...

I've often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who's been nasty, greedy, and unethical. But I've stopped that practice. I gradually realized that the lawyers in the audience didn't think the jokes were funny and the non-lawyers didn't know they were jokes.

References

{{Reflist Humour Self-reference Jokes