Confusion joke

A mix-up joke is a class of jokes based on psychological criteria . In them, words or facts are used simultaneously in two possible meanings. Many confusion jokes are naive .

Confusion jokes with three possible meanings are rare and often very subtle. Most of the time they are no longer naive, as the meanings of the words often require inside knowledge.

The class of confusion jokes goes back to Sigmund Freud , who in his work The Joke and His Relationship to the Unconscious (Vienna 1905) established a first set of rules that was also used outside the psychoanalytic school .

Examples

Naive confusion joke

Jokes that only require prior knowledge of the meaning of the words used are considered to be naive jokes. Its meaning and thus its wit is generated by the listener at the moment of listening.

A woman comes to the doctor and says: "My child ate an orange with the peel, is that bad?"

The doctor replied: "If the shell wasn't injected, that's not so bad."

The woman: “Injected? The bowl was made of porcelain! "

The woman and the doctor use the word bowl in different meanings (the woman speaks of the porcelain bowl in which the orange lay, the doctor of the orange peel). The humor arises from the fact that the reader or listener automatically assigns the obvious meaning to the term peel ("orange with peel" = "orange with orange peel") and is surprised by the unexpected assignment by the woman. Example 2 works analogously:

The judge asks the defendant: "Your name, please?"

The accused: "Elisabeth Meier."

The judge: "And your age?"

The defendant: "He's waiting outside."

Confusion joke with other components

According to Freud, jokes of confusion can also belong to other categories. You are then no longer naive, as the wit results from further prior knowledge that the listener cannot generate, but simply has to have learned.

Two old sixties walk in the street and meet an old woman with a cane. “Hey, you're really old, aren't you?” The woman answered with a shaky voice: “Yes, I'm ninety-four.” The two laugh: “When was the last time you had sexual intercourse?” The woman: “Nineteen forty-five! " The two of them pat each other on the shoulder and say: " That was a while ago. " The woman looks at the clock and says: " Why? Now it's twenty fifteen. "

The time stamp is used in different ways in this joke. It therefore leads to a surprising turn. This joke falls Freud simultaneously into the category of sexual joke , not but in the category of obscenity because it lacks a kaschierendes moment. He's not naive either, as you have to know the old sixty-eight's views on sexuality to be able to laugh at this joke. Otherwise there is only a sense of humor that is associated with the confusion of the time ( 1945 or 7.45 p.m.) as well as with the spontaneous memory of "sexual intercourse".

A mix-up joke with a shoddy component: “What is red and is on the dung heap?” - “An old farmer's rule.” This joke is not naive, i. H. requires knowledge that cannot be generated by the listener at the moment of listening. At the same time, it is nonsense, as it comes with a degrading component that hides a sexual idea. As with any zote, which is very scarce, he has a very strong humiliating effect here, since he only has a brief idea at his disposal, which must be masked particularly effectively by this drastic representation.