Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.625
Marianthi Georgalidou, V. Kourtis-Kazoullis, Hasan Kaili
In this study, we analyse conversations recorded during ethnographic research in two bilingual communities on the island of Rhodes, Greece. We examine: (a) the bilingual in Greek and Turkish Muslim community of Rhodes (Georgalidou et al. 2010, 2013) and (b) the Greek-American/Canadian community of repatriated emigrant families of Rhodian origin (Kourtis-Kazoullis 2016). In particular, combining interactional and conversation analytic frameworks (Auer 1995; Gafaranga 2007), we examine contemporary approaches to bi-/multilingualism focusing on the pragmatics of humour in conversations among bilinguals. We scrutinise aspects of the overall and sequential organisation of talk as well as instances of humour produced by speakers of different ethnic origin, generation, and social groups. We focus on the construction of “otherness,” which reflects the dynamic interplay between the micro-level of conversational practices and the macro-level of discourse involving contrasting categorisations and identities pertaining to differently orientated ethnic and social groups. Based on the analysis, we will show a) how humorous targeting orients in-groups versus out-groups, and b) mediates the dynamic process of constructing the identity of speakers who, being members of minority linguistic communities, represent “otherness.”
{"title":"Humor in conversation among bilinguals","authors":"Marianthi Georgalidou, V. Kourtis-Kazoullis, Hasan Kaili","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.625","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.625","url":null,"abstract":"In this study, we analyse conversations recorded during ethnographic research in two bilingual communities on the island of Rhodes, Greece. We examine: (a) the bilingual in Greek and Turkish Muslim community of Rhodes (Georgalidou et al. 2010, 2013) and (b) the Greek-American/Canadian community of repatriated emigrant families of Rhodian origin (Kourtis-Kazoullis 2016). In particular, combining interactional and conversation analytic frameworks (Auer 1995; Gafaranga 2007), we examine contemporary approaches to bi-/multilingualism focusing on the pragmatics of humour in conversations among bilinguals. We scrutinise aspects of the overall and sequential organisation of talk as well as instances of humour produced by speakers of different ethnic origin, generation, and social groups. We focus on the construction of “otherness,” which reflects the dynamic interplay between the micro-level of conversational practices and the macro-level of discourse involving contrasting categorisations and identities pertaining to differently orientated ethnic and social groups. Based on the analysis, we will show a) how humorous targeting orients in-groups versus out-groups, and b) mediates the dynamic process of constructing the identity of speakers who, being members of minority linguistic communities, represent “otherness.”\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44087831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.681
Rashid Yahiaoui
The transfer of humorous elements in audio-visual texts is a challenging task as verbal expressions heavily rely on witty wordplay and are visually bound. To overcome such a challenge, the translator has to have two particular skills: creativity and a thorough understanding of the context and/or intended meanings. This paper aims at investigating the realisation of humour in dubbing animation vis-à-vis register variation and creativity by comparing the Egyptian dub with the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) re-dub of Disney’s Monster’s Inc. Drawing on House’s (2015) translation quality assessment model, the data analysis reveals that resorting to colloquialism as a covert translation strategy provided a functionally adequate, nuanced leeway for the translator to capture the essence situational humour of the source text by relying on the on-screen visuals. Therefore, the translator quasi-assumes the role of an author to communicate interpersonal meanings as effectively and humorously as possible. Meanwhile, resorting to the standard variation as an overt translation strategy significantly deflated and sacrificed verbal humour due to the translator’s literal style and Al-Jazeera’s ideological orientation that shuns functional equivalence for the sake of linguistic homogenisation.
幽默元素在视听文本中的转移是一项具有挑战性的任务，因为言语表达严重依赖于诙谐的文字游戏，并且受到视觉的束缚。为了克服这样的挑战，译者必须具备两项特殊技能:创造力和对上下文和/或预期意义的透彻理解。本文旨在通过对埃及配音与迪斯尼电影《怪物公司》现代标准阿拉伯语配音的比较，探讨幽默在动画配音中对-à-vis register variation and creativity的实现。根据House(2015)的翻译质量评估模型，数据分析表明，将口语作为一种隐蔽的翻译策略，为译者提供了一个功能充足、微妙的余地，使他们能够依靠屏幕上的视觉效果来捕捉源文本的情境幽默本质。因此，译者扮演了作者的角色，尽可能有效和幽默地传达人际意义。与此同时，由于译者的文字风格和半岛电视台为了语言同质化而回避功能对等的意识形态取向，将标准变异作为一种公开的翻译策略大大削弱和牺牲了言语幽默。
{"title":"Transcreating humour for (re)dubbing into Arabic","authors":"Rashid Yahiaoui","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.681","url":null,"abstract":"The transfer of humorous elements in audio-visual texts is a challenging task as verbal expressions heavily rely on witty wordplay and are visually bound. To overcome such a challenge, the translator has to have two particular skills: creativity and a thorough understanding of the context and/or intended meanings. This paper aims at investigating the realisation of humour in dubbing animation vis-à-vis register variation and creativity by comparing the Egyptian dub with the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) re-dub of Disney’s Monster’s Inc. Drawing on House’s (2015) translation quality assessment model, the data analysis reveals that resorting to colloquialism as a covert translation strategy provided a functionally adequate, nuanced leeway for the translator to capture the essence situational humour of the source text by relying on the on-screen visuals. Therefore, the translator quasi-assumes the role of an author to communicate interpersonal meanings as effectively and humorously as possible. Meanwhile, resorting to the standard variation as an overt translation strategy significantly deflated and sacrificed verbal humour due to the translator’s literal style and Al-Jazeera’s ideological orientation that shuns functional equivalence for the sake of linguistic homogenisation.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46713843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.631
Maria C. Voutsa, L. Hatzithomas, E. Tsichla, Christina Boutsouki
Prior research has indicated that gelotophobia, people’s fear of being laughed at, influences their emotions toward a disparaging humorous event. Based on two experiments with a sample of 50 Greek participants each, the present study employed face recognition software to explore the emotions of gelotophobes, when exposed to an advertisement. It further examined the moderating role of the type of advertisement (i.e. a disparaging humorous ad vs. a non-disparaging non-humorous ad) and identification with the victim of the joke, on gelotophobes' emotions. At higher levels of identification with the victim, gelotophobes indicated lower levels of joy, joyful (Duchenne) smile, and a positive emotional valence toward a disparaging-humorous advertisement as opposed to non-gelotophobes. Joy was also found to mediate the negative effects of gelotophobia on attitude toward the ad.
{"title":"Face reading the emotions of gelotophobes toward disparaging humorous advertising","authors":"Maria C. Voutsa, L. Hatzithomas, E. Tsichla, Christina Boutsouki","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.3.631","url":null,"abstract":"Prior research has indicated that gelotophobia, people’s fear of being laughed at, influences their emotions toward a disparaging humorous event. Based on two experiments with a sample of 50 Greek participants each, the present study employed face recognition software to explore the emotions of gelotophobes, when exposed to an advertisement. It further examined the moderating role of the type of advertisement (i.e. a disparaging humorous ad vs. a non-disparaging non-humorous ad) and identification with the victim of the joke, on gelotophobes' emotions. At higher levels of identification with the victim, gelotophobes indicated lower levels of joy, joyful (Duchenne) smile, and a positive emotional valence toward a disparaging-humorous advertisement as opposed to non-gelotophobes. Joy was also found to mediate the negative effects of gelotophobia on attitude toward the ad.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45241193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.643
Reza Arab, Jessica Milner Davis
Serving as introduction to this Special Issue, this article presents a thematic review of topics involved in studies on humour and belonging. It briefly elaborates on the intricacies of concepts such as humour, sense of humour and belonging and their relationships. It then provides a selective review of some major relevant studies. Finally, the themes and contents of the Special Issue are introduced.
{"title":"Humour and belonging","authors":"Reza Arab, Jessica Milner Davis","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.643","url":null,"abstract":"Serving as introduction to this Special Issue, this article presents a thematic review of topics involved in studies on humour and belonging. It briefly elaborates on the intricacies of concepts such as humour, sense of humour and belonging and their relationships. It then provides a selective review of some major relevant studies. Finally, the themes and contents of the Special Issue are introduced.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43463088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.651
W. Chang, Valeria Sinkeviciute
Although research on humorous practices of Anglo-Australians has received much attention, the understanding of those practices by members of various multilingual communities in Australia has not been much studied. In this paper, we look at metapragmatic comments on concept familiarity in relation to conversational humour, particularly focusing on Mandarin Chinese speakers’ perceptions of conversational humour in Australian English. In order to explore what role ‘familiarity’ plays in (inter-)cultural conceptualisation of humour, we analyse interview data where speakers of Mandarin Chinese provide their metapragmatic comments on humorous exchanges among Australians. Drawing on approximately 8.2 hours of interview data elicited by a segment from the reality television gameshow Big Brother 2012, i.e., a teasing sequence between two acquainted persons, it is suggested that the concept of familiarity is the one most frequently alluded to in the theme of how participants ‘draw the boundary’ between intimates and acquaintances. From the analysis it emerged that Mandarin Chinese speakers’ evaluations of humorous exchanges in Australian English are driven by their culturally-informed perceptions that are conceptualised through various emic notions, e.g. guanxi (‘interpersonal relationship’), various labels for classifying different relational distance, and qiji (‘opportune moment’). The findings of this exploratory paper suggest that the role of ‘familiarity’ in relation to humour is crucial in the perception of appropriateness of humorous practices in interaction, especially across cultures.
{"title":"role of ‘familiarity’ in Mandarin Chinese speakers’ metapragmatic evaluations of Australian conversational humour","authors":"W. Chang, Valeria Sinkeviciute","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.651","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.651","url":null,"abstract":"Although research on humorous practices of Anglo-Australians has received much attention, the understanding of those practices by members of various multilingual communities in Australia has not been much studied. In this paper, we look at metapragmatic comments on concept familiarity in relation to conversational humour, particularly focusing on Mandarin Chinese speakers’ perceptions of conversational humour in Australian English. In order to explore what role ‘familiarity’ plays in (inter-)cultural conceptualisation of humour, we analyse interview data where speakers of Mandarin Chinese provide their metapragmatic comments on humorous exchanges among Australians. Drawing on approximately 8.2 hours of interview data elicited by a segment from the reality television gameshow Big Brother 2012, i.e., a teasing sequence between two acquainted persons, it is suggested that the concept of familiarity is the one most frequently alluded to in the theme of how participants ‘draw the boundary’ between intimates and acquaintances. From the analysis it emerged that Mandarin Chinese speakers’ evaluations of humorous exchanges in Australian English are driven by their culturally-informed perceptions that are conceptualised through various emic notions, e.g. guanxi (‘interpersonal relationship’), various labels for classifying different relational distance, and qiji (‘opportune moment’). The findings of this exploratory paper suggest that the role of ‘familiarity’ in relation to humour is crucial in the perception of appropriateness of humorous practices in interaction, especially across cultures.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45186346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.645
B. Plester, T. Bentley, Emily M. Brewer
Our study examines the impacts on workers when organisational humour is repeated, sustained, dominating, and potentially harmful, and thus can be considered to be bullying. In an ethnographic study of an idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company, we observed humour that was sexualised, dominating, and perpetrated by the most powerful organizational members. We argue that the compelling need for belonging in this extreme organizational culture influenced workers to accept bullying humour as just a joke and therefore acceptable and harmless even when it contravened societal workplace norms. Our contribution is in identifying and extending the significant theoretical relationship between workplace humour and bullying that, to date, is not well-explored in organizational research.
{"title":"\"It only hurts when I laugh\"","authors":"B. Plester, T. Bentley, Emily M. Brewer","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.645","url":null,"abstract":"Our study examines the impacts on workers when organisational humour is repeated, sustained, dominating, and potentially harmful, and thus can be considered to be bullying. In an ethnographic study of an idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company, we observed humour that was sexualised, dominating, and perpetrated by the most powerful organizational members. We argue that the compelling need for belonging in this extreme organizational culture influenced workers to accept bullying humour as just a joke and therefore acceptable and harmless even when it contravened societal workplace norms. Our contribution is in identifying and extending the significant theoretical relationship between workplace humour and bullying that, to date, is not well-explored in organizational research.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43846259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.650
A. McLachlan
Drawing on a range of American, Australian, British and Scandinavian research into laughter, the current paper will use the form of pragmatic analysis typically found in qualitative research and apply it to data produced by the quantitative methodology common in the author’s own discipline of psychology. Laughter will be examined as an indexical that serves both a discourse deictic function, designating the utterance in which it occurs as non-serious, and a social deictic function, marking the laughing person’s preference for social proximity with fellow interlocutors. The paper will then analyse examples and data pertaining to three types of laughter bout derived from taking laughter as an indexical. First, solitary listener laughter will be argued to signify a deferential acknowledgement of continued solidarity with the speaker. Second, solitary speaker laughter will be suggested to mark a simple preference for solidarity. Third, joint laughter will be accepted as a signifier of actual solidarity that may also be used to mark status depending on which party typically initiates the joint laughter. Joint laughter thus acts in a manner closely analogous to the exchange of another set of indexicals, the T and V versions of second person pronouns in European languages. Finally, the paper will conclude by examining the problematic case of laughing at another interlocutor, before briefly considering the implications of this pragmatic perspective for traditional accounts of laughter as well as for future research.
{"title":"role of laughter in establishing solidarity and status","authors":"A. McLachlan","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.650","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a range of American, Australian, British and Scandinavian research into laughter, the current paper will use the form of pragmatic analysis typically found in qualitative research and apply it to data produced by the quantitative methodology common in the author’s own discipline of psychology. Laughter will be examined as an indexical that serves both a discourse deictic function, designating the utterance in which it occurs as non-serious, and a social deictic function, marking the laughing person’s preference for social proximity with fellow interlocutors. The paper will then analyse examples and data pertaining to three types of laughter bout derived from taking laughter as an indexical. First, solitary listener laughter will be argued to signify a deferential acknowledgement of continued solidarity with the speaker. Second, solitary speaker laughter will be suggested to mark a simple preference for solidarity. Third, joint laughter will be accepted as a signifier of actual solidarity that may also be used to mark status depending on which party typically initiates the joint laughter. Joint laughter thus acts in a manner closely analogous to the exchange of another set of indexicals, the T and V versions of second person pronouns in European languages. Finally, the paper will conclude by examining the problematic case of laughing at another interlocutor, before briefly considering the implications of this pragmatic perspective for traditional accounts of laughter as well as for future research.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43094249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.2.644
K. Mullan
This study examines the use of online humour in a subversive local community Facebook group set up in 2017 by disgruntled members banned from a similar group “in opposition to [the original group’s] arbitrarily-applied rules, [its] enforced happiness, and [its] suppression of any post that isn't about giving away lemons or asking to borrow small appliances”. The dissatisfaction with the guidelines and the administration of the original Facebook group provides rich material for humorous posts in the new group, many with varying degrees of aggression directed at the founder and certain members of the “Dark Side”, as the original group is frequently referred to. This article will demonstrate how the use of humour in this new rival Facebook group is used for the purposes of inclusion and exclusion, and how it contributes to a sense of belonging in this online community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) created by a small group of self-declared dissidents. It will be shown how the humour shapes the identity of the group through the members’ shared ideologies and beliefs (Tanskanen 2018), and how the humorous messages intended to denigrate and belittle the “Dark Side” reinforce unity among the group members, since the feeling of superiority over those being ridiculed coexists with a feeling of belonging (Billig 2005). Fifteen single comments or multi-post threads were chosen for analysis. These appeared during the first twenty months of this rival group’s existence, and included primarily affiliative and/or aggressive humour (Meyer 2015) directed at the original group. The analysis was carried out using elements of computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004), and an insider participant-observer online ethnographic approach. The examples chosen illustrate how the humour is used to unite the members of this subversive group by dividing them from the original one, to create the joking culture (Fine and de Soucey 2005) of the new group, and in so doing, creates and sustains the members’ shared identity as irreverent breakaway troublemakers.
这项研究调查了一个颠覆性的当地社区Facebook群组中网络幽默的使用情况，该群组由被禁止加入类似群组的心怀不满的成员于2017年成立，“反对[原始群组]任意应用的规则，[其]强制执行的快乐，以及[其]压制任何与赠送柠檬或要求借用小电器无关的帖子”。对原Facebook群组的指导方针和管理的不满为新群组中的幽默帖子提供了丰富的素材，其中许多帖子都对“黑暗面”的创始人和某些成员进行了不同程度的攻击，这篇文章将展示这个新的竞争对手Facebook群组中幽默的使用是如何被用于包容和排斥的目的的，以及它是如何在这个由一小群自称持不同政见者创建的在线实践社区（Lave&Wenger，1991）中产生归属感的。它将展示幽默如何通过成员共同的意识形态和信仰塑造群体的身份（Tanskanen 2018），以及旨在诋毁和贬低“黑暗面”的幽默信息如何加强群体成员之间的团结，因为与被嘲笑者相比的优越感与归属感共存（Billig 2005）。选择了15条单评论或多帖子进行分析。这些出现在这个竞争对手团体存在的前二十个月，主要包括针对原始团体的附属和/或攻击性幽默（Meyer 2015）。该分析使用了计算机介导的话语分析（Herring 2004）和内部参与者-观察者在线民族志方法。所选的例子说明了幽默是如何通过将这个颠覆性团体的成员与原来的团体分开来团结他们，创造新团体的玩笑文化（Fine and de Soucey 2005），并在这样做的过程中创造和维持成员们作为不敬的分裂麻烦制造者的共同身份。
{"title":"On the \"Dark Side\"","authors":"K. Mullan","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.2.644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.2.644","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the use of online humour in a subversive local community Facebook group set up in 2017 by disgruntled members banned from a similar group “in opposition to [the original group’s] arbitrarily-applied rules, [its] enforced happiness, and [its] suppression of any post that isn't about giving away lemons or asking to borrow small appliances”. The dissatisfaction with the guidelines and the administration of the original Facebook group provides rich material for humorous posts in the new group, many with varying degrees of aggression directed at the founder and certain members of the “Dark Side”, as the original group is frequently referred to. \u0000This article will demonstrate how the use of humour in this new rival Facebook group is used for the purposes of inclusion and exclusion, and how it contributes to a sense of belonging in this online community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) created by a small group of self-declared dissidents. It will be shown how the humour shapes the identity of the group through the members’ shared ideologies and beliefs (Tanskanen 2018), and how the humorous messages intended to denigrate and belittle the “Dark Side” reinforce unity among the group members, since the feeling of superiority over those being ridiculed coexists with a feeling of belonging (Billig 2005).\u0000Fifteen single comments or multi-post threads were chosen for analysis. These appeared during the first twenty months of this rival group’s existence, and included primarily affiliative and/or aggressive humour (Meyer 2015) directed at the original group. The analysis was carried out using elements of computer-mediated discourse analysis (Herring 2004), and an insider participant-observer online ethnographic approach. The examples chosen illustrate how the humour is used to unite the members of this subversive group by dividing them from the original one, to create the joking culture (Fine and de Soucey 2005) of the new group, and in so doing, creates and sustains the members’ shared identity as irreverent breakaway troublemakers.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43834050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.668
C. Goddard, David Lambert
This paper combines perspectives from evolutionary biology and linguistics to discuss the early evolution of laughter and the possible role of laughter-like vocalisation as a bonding mechanism in hominins and early human species. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, we here emphasise several things: the role of exaptation, the typically very slow pace of evolutionary change, and the danger of projecting backwards from the current utilities of laughter to infer its earlier function, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years ago. From the perspective of linguistics, we examine both the semantics of the word ‘laugh’ and the vocal mechanics of human laughter production, arguing that greater terminological care is needed in talking about the precursors of laughter in the ancient evolutionary past. Finally, we turn to hypotheses about how laughter-like vocalisations may have arisen, long before articulate language as we know it today. We focus in particular on Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that laughter-like vocalisation, which stimulated endorphin production, might have functioned as a bonding mechanism (a kind of “vocal grooming”) among hominins and early human species. The paper contributes to the special issue theme (Humour and Belonging) by casting a long look backwards in time to laughter-like vocalisation as a distant evolutionary precursor of humour, and to bonding as an evolutionary precursor to cognitively and socially modern forms of “belonging”. At the same time, it cautions against casual theorising about the evolutionary origins of laughter.
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Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.689
Mark Rolfe
The widespread notion of a unique national humour involves an impulse to apply the commonplace assumptions of national identity that demand uniqueness of identity, history, language and culture for a political society. What is deemed true and distinctive of the nation must be also be true and distinctive of its national humour, goes the thinking. However, such cultural exclusivity has not been reconciled with cultural exchanges between nations. Paradoxically, conceptions of national humour have been formulated in dynamic tension with such exchanges during the various phases of globalization that have taken place since the 19th century. The Americanisation of humour, in particular, has been an important component of such transmissions and resulted from the commercial popular culture dominated by America since the nineteenth century. Australia is a prime example examined here along with examples from Britain. To complicate matters of transmission, Americanisation sometimes arrived in Australia via Britain as well as directly from America itself. Australians and Britons periodically reacted against American culture, including humour, as a threat to national identity. But this was part of a dynamic tension played out between modern and traditional, imported and local in their selections and adaptations of humour imports from America. There is a huge and historic complexity of cultural anxiety and cultural transfer lying behind the apparent cultural comforts of belonging to a nation-state. Moreover, humour has played its part in the continual discursive recreation of the nation in the form of constant searches for the unique national humour of a people.
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