LAUGHTER – SERIOUSNESS

Laughter and seriousness are the manifestations of opposing mental states. Laughter is a manifestation of positive emotions, such as joy. It is the opposite of tears and grief, which are manifestations of negative emotions. It is also the opposite of seriousness, i.e., calm, see pathos.
Laughter is a major instrument of discourse disorientation and destruction, see irony. Laughter and entertainment are associated with rhetoric, while seriousness and severity are associated with argumentation.
In a debate, laughter and seriousness correspond to two positioning strategies. if your opponent is joking and laughing, your response should be stern and to the point. If your opponent is delivering an austere technical discourse, your response should be a smile and a pun that everyone can understand about what he has just said.

Hamblin (1970, p 41) identifies three standard ad fallacies of entertainment, that occur in two different discursive and interactional organizations.

1. The Arguer as an Entertainer

Ad ludicrum: Latin ludicrum, « game; show », which Hamblin translates as « dramatics ».
Ad captandum vulgus: Latin. vulgus, « the populace »; captare, « to seek to seize. »

Rational criticism rejects discursive theatricality, which spares no form of public speech, including conference communication. A speech becomes a performance. Such shows were first staged by the ancient sophists, as in Plato’s Euthydemus, see sophism. The arguer becomes an actor, who « plays to the gallery » or « to the crowd », referring to an actor whose demagogic performance appeals to easy popular tastes, see ad populum.

2. The arguer makes fun of the opponent

Ad ridiculum: Latin. ridiculum « ridiculous ».

This second type of talk is quite different from the former. Hamblin uses the terms « appeal to ridicule » and « appeal to mockery » (ibid.). Strictly speaking, it is a type of refutation by the absurd, where the advanced proposition is rejected by pointing out its unacceptable, counterintuitive, immoral and ridiculous consequences, see absurd. Ridicule is not necessarily comic, and laughter may be sarcastic rather than joyful.

Hedge’s seventh rule explicitly prohibits laughing at one’s opponent: « Any attempt to lessen the force of his reasoning, by wit, caviling, or ridicule, is a violation of the rules of honorable controversy » (1838, p. 162), see rules. This is a special case of the prohibition against substituting the destruction of discourse for the refutation of arguments, see destruction.

Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s book, The Comic of Discourse (1974), is devoted to the comical use of argumentative mechanisms in jokes.