Joking Rule

This page is devoted to a hobby of mine : the appreciation and enjoyment of a good ( and sometimes not so good ) joke. I know that I am not alone in this but I think I can say that I have turned what was an attachment to a good joke into an academic study. In fact, I have just completed a PhD thesis on the subject. The title of my work is "MINDPLAY - The Genesis, Structure, Effects and Benefits of Jokes". I need to mention that having completed this work I have decided to let it rest in peace as I feel it is time for me to move onwards in my study of the intricacies of the English language in general. I have thus graduated from the specialist study of verbal humour to the study of English as a global tool. Many writers have undertaken an analysis of the structure of what I call "the standard narrative joke". There are many other forms of verbal humour such as ad hoc (or ad lib) jokes, one-liners, slips of the tongue (unintentional humour) etc. For the serious student there is a wealth of available material. What I intend with this page is to offer a rather good example of a somewhat typical narrative joke. It has been said that to explain a joke is to kill it. I do not intend to explain but to draw your attention to a rather sly trick that is being performed on you, dear reader, as you read this joke. Please read on!

THE HIRED HELP

There once was a successful rancher who died and left everything to his devoted wife. She was determined to keep the ranch and make a go of it, but she knew very little about ranching, so she decided to place an ad in the newspaper for ranch hands. Two men applied for the job. One was gay and the other a drunk. She thought long and hard about it, and when no one else applied, she decided to hire the gay guy, figuring it would be safer to have him around the house than the drunk. He turned out to be a fantastic worker, worked long hard hours every day and knew a lot about ranching. For weeks the two of them worked and the ranch was doing very really well. Then one day the rancher’s wife said to the hired hand,” You have done a really good job and we’ve both done nothing but work for weeks. The ranch looks great, and I’m taking Saturday night off and going into town to kick up my heels and paint the town red, and I think you should do the same.” The hired help agreed readily, and Saturday night each went to town. The rancher’s wife had dinner and a lot of drinks with friends, and talked and joked and danced, and had a great time, getting home about midnight. The hired hand wasn’t home yet, so she decided to wait up for him. One o’clock and no hired hand yet. Two o’clock and no hired hand and she began to worry. At two-thirty in came the hired hand. The rancher’s wife was sitting by the fireplace and called him over by her. “Now I’m the boss,” she said,” and you have to do what I tell you, right?” “Well, yes,” he answered. “Then unbutton my dress and take it off,” she said. He did as she asked. “Now take off my shoes.” He did. “Now take off my stockings.” He did. “Now take off my skirt.” He did. “Now take off my bra.” Again he did as she asked. “Now take off my panties.” And again he did what she told him. Then she looked at him and said; “Now don’t you EVER wear my clothes to town again!”

Rule
REMARKS :I consider this a very good joke and one which is easily analyzed if you know how and if you think it is worth the effort. You, the reader, have been "led up the garden path" as you read this text. First of all you were early in the narrative introduced to a "harmless" gay ranch hand. This suggested that there would be no hanky panky between the woman and her hired help. So you were urged to forget about a sexual angle and look for some other theme. (not consciously, of course). The situation however heats up towards the end where sex suddenly rears its (ugly?) head. The woman is asking the gay worker to strip all her clothes off. This comes as a surprise given what we have been encouraged to believe. We are titillated and feel that now we know what is what. But in the final words of the woman boss “Now don’t you EVER wear my clothes to town again!” we receive a kind of shock as we realize we have been "cheated". The gay was not being asked to take the woman's clothes off HER but to take HER clothes (that he had worn to town ) off HIM. This was not a striptease situation but a reprimand to a "naughty" employee. This (sudden) switch from our assumed reading of the story to the "real" reading delivers a psychological-linguistic jolt and causes us (hopefully) to "get it" and enjoy a sheepish laugh (at our own expense!). I rest my case. If you bother to examine other narrative jokes in this light you will be able to discover this linguistic mechanism operating in virtually any half-way decent joke.


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