
Filipino Jokes Vol. 5
By ALI IAN MARCELINO V. BIONG
In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, he says one way a speaker can make an audience laugh is by violating their expectations in telling a story.
Philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard and Immanuel Kant later took on this approach, which is now called the Incongruity Theory: a theory saying laughter is caused by the violation of our mental patterns, by seeing the incongruous.
We Filipinos may see this theory on humor transcend into our own jokes: “Anong tawag sa asong tumalon sa ilog? Aso pa rin.” “Anong tawag sa maliit na unan? Unano.”
This manner of joking may earn a good laugh or two, but when a president says during a speech that he uses marijuana to cope with his “killing” meetings and duties while leading a drug war that has taken thousands of lives—r...