Ah, the enigmatic energy of dads with their terrible, terrible yet wholesome puns. Believe it or not, in 2019, the term 'dad joke' made its way into Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as "a wholesome joke of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny." But as in all art forms, can we pin down dad humor to a single, limited definition?
As Stanley Dubinsky, a Professor of Linguistics at the University of South Carolina and the father of two boys, explains, it's not so simple. "Dads are, in our culture, entrusted with teaching some of these things to their children, and one might think of dad jokes as a kind of 'introduction to humor,'" he told Bored Panda in an email. "They’re dad jokes because they’re unsophisticated, but they’re unsophisticated because children are just beginning to learn how humor works."
Dad jokes, we are told, often utilize the power of ambiguity or double entendre to add humor to their punchlines. "What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet?” “Supplies!” Sure, the setup of this joke is quite obvious, with a couple of letters substituted with near-sounding ones. However, there are some which require more effort on the wordplay, considering the age (and generation) of your audience. Prepare to roll your eyes: 'What concert costs just 45 cents? 50 Cent featuring Nickelback!'
"I don’t think that dads explicitly and consciously frame dad jokes for their audience," Dubinsky said. "Rather, in the same way that we avoid complicated nuanced words with children (pointing out a 'horse' rather than a 'mare' or a 'stallion'), we make humor legible for children to help onboard them into that world."
But helping kids understand the appeal and rules of humor is not the only good thing about dad jokes. According to recent research conducted by Marc Hye-Knudsen, a humor researcher from Aarhus University, dad jokes can actually play a role in helping children develop the ability to handle embarrassment and grow into self-assured adults.
Turns out, by regularly hearing these cringey jokes, children can build up a higher tolerance for embarrassment, which can ultimately have a positive impact on their personal growth. The repetitive nature of hearing the same joke over and over also helps children develop endurance. "They show their children that embarrassment isn’t fatal. For a child who is approaching or has entered adolescence, which appears to be a sensitive period for sociocultural processing, this is an immensely valuable lesson," Hye-Knudsen writes.
However, why does this type of humor make us cringe like no other combination of syllables? "Dad jokes and their relevance for children come apart when they’re used between adults. In those cases, we tend to use them to be silly, to relax the conversational mood, or sometimes to be annoying," Dubinsky admitted, noting that deep down most fathers understand they're embarrassing to their kids, which makes dad jokes even more effective.
"Clearly, dad jokes don’t have the same utility among adults who have acquired a sophisticated ability to parse jokes, and so the act of using them in such company usually carries more connotations than the meaning of the joke itself," Dubinsky said. "If people groan, they may do so out of annoyance. Or perhaps because they’re supposed to groan – and thereby acknowledge that they have understood the tacit agenda behind using one."
