Tosh: Context-Based Vs. Absolute Language

In July 2012, a blog post describing a rape joke told by stand-up comic, Daniel Tosh, went viral, spurring a debate about what should or shouldn’t be off limits in comedy. (Holpuch 2012) It is not an uncommon conversation between two competing camps, that it was just a joke or that rape is never funny. While stand-up comedy is typically approached as an art, this disagreement seems closer to a variant of two differing perspectives on language, context-based v. absolute language. I approach language contextually and under this framework Tosh could be defended for the lack of context to his punch line offered in the blog post condemning him. Yet, the issue presented by constructing a joke around an intentionally offensive topic presents a more

How would the choice of an alternative phrase have impacted this statement? What gives this statement and the slur itself the strength with which it performs? Is the use of the slur necessary to the meaning of the statement?

Further, when put into a different context can the statement take on a new meaning? Consider the same statement turned into a banner and hung outside the UNH office of multicultural student affairs. The incident lead to the removal of the banner. For the purpose of political protest, one could say that the demonstrators are trying to grab attention to convey their message, but how could that message than fail to get across in this context? It would have to take on a new meaning. I am interested in this pragmatic meaning just as much as the semantic meaning of a statement

I believe this same process occurs in comedy. Through analyzing the mechanisms of language and communication in comedy we can better determine the ethics of jokes and effectively, is there any off-limits

Sexist Humor and What’s Wrong With It’ Merrie Bergmann expresses the systems of privilege that work in humor. “On the other hand, a sexist joke is not an isolated event in which a woman is harmlessly teased or ridiculed; it is rather one instance among many in which women are belittled or disparaged” (Bergmann 1986). Sexist jokes reinforce an oppressive system which gives the feminist their grounds for offense. This draws upon Benatar’s view that the expression of racism (which can equally be applied to sexism) is a harm and can be acted out regardless of having racist beliefs. In Bergmann’s view however, laughing at a sexist joke also implicates one in reinforcing sexist stereotypes . For laughter to be an immoral act brings one into addressing an ethics of emotions. This is a topic cover in Berys Gaut’s ‘Just Joking: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Humor’, in which he proposes the idea of ethicism in which bad attitudes detract from the humor of a joke or, a joke is less funny when it is offensive (Gaut 1998). This is similar to the idea of moral emotion (de Sousa). I am not satisfied with either of these views and would like to assert a slightly stricter ethical system than Gaut has presented that is further from absolutism as Bergmann is. I hope to find this balance while incorporating the points made by Laurence Goldstein in ‘Humor and Harm’ on linguistic subtlety as a major component of what makes a joke funny (Goldstein