Many humor culture divisions follow from ordinary non-humor culture divisions. The term ‘cultured’ itself means smarts and book-learning, and it implies a set of preferences that carry over to humor expression preferences. Opening a lock with a mon-key is a kind of wordplay humor accessible to anyone regardless of intellect and education. In contrast, the following wordplay example is more intellectual in vocabulary and logical structure.

Tour Guide:
"A ‘wildlife preserve’ is made with tiny bits of wildlife skin."
"Wait, my mistake, I’m thinking of wildlife marmalade."

Unlike the mon-key joke, the humor here might be described with terms like clever or witty. Wit is a well-known humor culture category, but what is wit’s distinguishing feature? According to Clash Theory, four adjectives separate wit from non-wit. Wit is humor that is intelligent, educated, non-obvious and novel.

Wit is quips and epigrams and bon mots. Wit is erudite. The lowbrow humor in a sitcom like Two and a Half Men is less complicated – and therefore accessible to a wider population – than the highbrow humor in a sitcom like Arrested Development. Adjectives like educated and accessible apply to humor but they represent culture divisions as well.

‘Unintelligent’ and ‘uneducated’ are opposites of clever, and they describe what wit is not. A third opposite of clever is ‘obvious’. Other things being equal (which they rarely are), an obvious joke occurs to a higher percentage of the general population than a clever one.

A fourth opposite of clever and witty is ‘repeated’. Wit and clever humor feature novelty. A joke repeated or a gag reposted might count as funny, but the expression of wit belongs to the originator. A comedic middleman is funny but not witty. Wit is frequently pithy but ‘witty’ and ‘pithy’ are distinct and overlapping humor measurements.

Return to the third broad category Culture

Return to the third Humor Culture category Cultural Comparison Humor

Continue to the fifth Humor Culture category Catchphrases