Jokes, affect and internet communication

Text-based, electronic communication, originally classified as secondary orality ( Ong 1982 ), lacks immediate feedback, natural non-verbal cues, and shared physical context, impacting conversational flow and pragmatic interpretation. This contributes to the rarity of joke-telling in text-based conversations. This paper argues that cognitive factors, particularly the inferential overload effect, also play a role in the scarcity of sharing jokes, in the form of mini-narratives with a punchline, in text-based communication. Inferential overload, which occurs through weakly communicated assumptions that suddenly become manifest to the recipient, leads to emotional impact and amusement. This emotional response, underlain by non-propositional effects and essential for joke appreciation, is distinct from mere joke comprehension. The paper explores the distinction between joke comprehension and appreciation, supported by recent psychological and neuroscientific research. Additionally, it examines other reasons for the scarcity of jokes in text-based communication, related to social parameters and the dynamics of written online discourse.