Knowra American humor American humor American humor is a tradition of comic writing and performance shaped by the country’s cultures and history. It ranges from frontier tall tales and satire to stand-up, parody, and observational comedy.
Yankee humor : A New England comic tradition marked by dry wit, shrewdness, and distinctive regional speech. Its dialect stories helped establish a recognizable regional voice in American comic writing.
Deadpan : A comic style delivered with little visible emotion or change in vocal expression. Its restrained delivery makes absurd claims and bleak observations sound matter-of-fact.
Artemus Ward : The pen name of Charles Farrar Browne, a nineteenth-century American humorist known for comic lectures and intentionally misspelled prose. His mock-naive voice helped popularize the fictional backwoods speaker in American humor.
British humor : A diverse tradition of British comic writing and performance, often associated with irony, understatement, and absurdity. Its conventions offer a useful comparison with American directness and regional storytelling.
American vaudeville : A variety-show tradition in the United States featuring separate acts such as comedy, music, and novelty performances. Vaudeville trained performers in concise, audience-tested comic routines.
Tall tale : A comic story that presents impossible exaggerations as though they were factual accounts. Frontier tall tales turned exaggeration into a durable national comic form.
Self-deprecation : Humor that makes the speaker, rather than another person, the target of ridicule. Stand-up performers often use self-mockery to establish intimacy and disarm audiences.
Will Rogers : An American humorist and performer known for homespun political commentary and rope tricks. Rogers made plainspoken political jokes a national performance style.
Canadian humor : Comic writing and performance shaped by Canada’s languages, regions, institutions, and cultural history. Shared media and neighboring histories make its differences from American humor especially visible.
American radio comedy : Comedy created for radio in the United States, including sitcoms, sketches, and comic variety programs. Radio carried comic voices and characters into homes across the country.
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