Take It with a Grain of Salt: the Kernel of Truth in Topical Jokes

Jokes are a vitally important part of everyday discourse. Joking occurs mostly in social situations, but there is an emergent source of jokes circulating on the Internet. The vast number and popularity of jokes proves that jokes possess roles other than those connected with immediate communicational gains. My interest is not to discuss the psychological or social, but rather the cognitive function of humour. This article suggests that jokes possess a cognitive function for both the joke-tellers and readers: jokes are a way of dealing with events in social reality. They help to organize the massive amount of information and experience of contemporary times. Jokes reveal the complexities and paradoxes inherent in living in a rapidly developing society that forces us to work through vast amounts of information from innumerable (mostly one-way-communication) sources: television, newspapers, and the Internet.