Profanity and humor : is that @!&#% funny?

Abstract

Profanity and Humor are two complex human behaviors; both have been understudied by mainstream academics. There has even less research examining the interaction between these two topics. Three previous studies examined profanity (or some connotative synonym) and how it interacts with humor. This study revisits Sewell's (1984) research examining the appreciation of profanity in captioned cartoons. The present study is examining what, if any, changes have transpired from 1984 to 2011. Another expectation was that despite the possible changes, the research would find results similar to Sewell's (1984) experiment. Three questionnaires were used to see if there were any similar characteristics between the participants. The findings of the present study were different than those in Sewell's (1984) experiment, with there no longer being a significant difference between mild or strong profanity. The study also found there no significant difference in the appreciation of profanity in cartoons with captions. The results also yielded no similar characteristics between participant scores on their questionnaires and how they rated the cartoon.