Why do repetitions of words often have a humorous effect?

Since you invited me, I will try to answer -

Many people know the truth of "repetition is humor", but few people mention the principle behind it. I have quoted the conclusion from a book many times before, saying that the reasons why people laugh are nothing more than two things: surprise and superiority. But the strange thing is: "repetition" does not seem to be among the two.

Whether it is called a setting poem or a jingle, they all have two things in common, one is rhythm and the other is rhyme.

The same punchline, changing from spoken prose to rhyme, often adds humor - sometimes even the "rhyme" itself is the main source of humor. Just look at how many jokes in ancient joke books fall into this category. And, speaking broadly, most "wordplay" humor can be counted in this category.

I searched Zhihu and found that someone asked a question on Zhihu: Why do people feel pleasure when they hear rhymes in poems or lyrics? I went to look at the answers there, and many of them made it very clear—rhyming makes people feel happy. This pleasure comes from repetition. This kind of regular repetition is easy for readers and listeners to understand and grasp. Once they "grasp" this rhythm, they will continue to have psychological expectations for the next rhyme, and when such psychological expectations are met , that kind of harmonious joy arises spontaneously. "There is a bright moonlight in front of the bed, but it is suspected to be frost on the ground" is pleasant, but "there is a bright moonlight in front of the bed, but it is suspected to be snow on the ground" is awkward. Reading each rhyming line evokes the satisfying feeling of "sure enough." This kind of satisfaction is comfortable - I think it's not wrong to call it superiority.

Similar to rhymes, there are others.

This pleasure is the same as the pleasure we feel when we see an ingenious building or observe an infinitely subtle insect wing. It is caused by the discovery of some "regular" things in a world that is usually disordered and irregular. If a primitive man found an absolutely square stone in the wilderness, he would probably feel such wonder and joy.

In my opinion, this is clearly a surprise.

And sometimes, this sense of pleasure will turn into joy and make people laugh.

There are many examples. Every limerick is.

The vulgar vernacular, uttered from the mouths of ordinary people, but rhymed with it, is already a kind of "surprise" in itself.

I heard a joke when I was a kid. It is said that the three uncles went to the father-in-law's house for dinner. The elder uncle said at the table: "2816, I will eat a bowl of meat first" and brought the whole bowl of meat in front of him. When the second uncle saw this, he said: "Seventy-nine sixty-three, if there is wine, I will drink it first." He held the whole jar of wine in his arms. When the third uncle saw it, he was completely out of food and wine, and said angrily: "Thirty-seven-twenty-one, I eat NMLGB!"

——If you remove the multiplication formulas at the beginning of this joke, there is still one more thing Is it ridiculous? Rhyming makes these vulgar words even more "violent". The joy comes from this "violation".

Okay. After talking about rhyme, it’s much easier to talk about “repetition”. Because the principle is the same.

First of all, repetition, like rhyme, will give people a familiar and intimate "sense of control", which is pleasant. Every year when Feng Gong says the words "I miss you so much" on the Spring Festival Gala, some people always express their distaste for him repeating this gameplay, but at the same time, there are always hundreds of millions of people showing familiar smiles because of this sentence. In Guo Degang's jokes back then, every time he said the phrase "You deserve it!" on stage, there were always hundreds or even thousands of people in the audience who accurately responded to the second half of the sentence "Death!" Those who accurately responded to the second half The person who wrote the sentence must have some complacent pleasure. This kind of pleasure is very close to superiority. The "quite" mentioned in the question is this example. The best result of this kind of gameplay is that the audience can quickly grasp your rules and complete each subsequent repetition with you.

I participated in a stage play called "Lafayette", and there was a line in it that was "I just like chatting with you! Bai!". That "White!" I came up with during rehearsal, added it in, and told the actor to repeat it as much as possible.

During the performance, after repeating this line several times, the audience will understand this rule. So in the second half, the entire audience would laugh and shout out "Bai!" after the word "Chat".

Similarly, if what is repeated is not a person, but a sentence, an action, an expression... then it is repetition in our common sketches.

There are often examples of this in standup comedy. A punchline in a joke told at the beginning of a performance will often reappear at the end of the performance. This method usually has good results.

The "radish" in the question is also a good example. It is different from Song Dandan's "quite". The recurring appearance of "radish" is a surprise every time. Even when he shouldn't use "radish" to deal with the second line, he always uses "radish" to deal with it. This is already a surprise. After that, he interpreted "carrot" as something different every time, which was another surprise.

In summary: In my opinion, repetition is indeed a common humor device.

Regular repetition can give people a sense of pleasure. Unexpected repetition can make people laugh.