Pub Date : 2022-08-11DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.670
Meredith Marra
Successfully joining a new workplace community is demanding, especially when this involves crossing national boundaries in addition to team boundaries. For outsiders, humour is an area that arguably presents a challenge to full participation, particularly when local understandings are not shared, nor even recognized as distinctive. Newcomers face the challenge of navigating the trajectory from legitimate peripheral member towards core status (adopting the terms of the Community of Practice model). This involves cooperating with others in interaction, including engaging with humour and laughter as a way of indicating belonging. Here belonging is operationalized using the two dimensions proposed by Antonsich (2010), namely (1) a sense of belonging and (2) the politics of belonging as evidenced through negotiation with others. Applying an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach, I offer analysis of naturally occurring workplace interactions and reflections from skilled migrant interns in New Zealand workplaces. I discuss the place of laughter in attempts to demonstrate team membership, arguing that these attempts at belonging require the cooperation and endorsement of insiders. The findings indicate that, however benevolently intentioned, the local colleagues’ use of humour, and their reactions to the humour and laughter produced by the skilled migrant interns, often results in a sense of othering and exclusion. This is keenly felt by the interns who note the difficulties that taken for granted practices create in their acceptance and progress. In many cases the result is laughing along, as an outward signal of fit, rather than laughing with which suggests a deeper sense of belonging.
{"title":"Laughing along?","authors":"Meredith Marra","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.2.670","url":null,"abstract":"Successfully joining a new workplace community is demanding, especially when this involves crossing national boundaries in addition to team boundaries. For outsiders, humour is an area that arguably presents a challenge to full participation, particularly when local understandings are not shared, nor even recognized as distinctive. Newcomers face the challenge of navigating the trajectory from legitimate peripheral member towards core status (adopting the terms of the Community of Practice model). This involves cooperating with others in interaction, including engaging with humour and laughter as a way of indicating belonging. Here belonging is operationalized using the two dimensions proposed by Antonsich (2010), namely (1) a sense of belonging and (2) the politics of belonging as evidenced through negotiation with others. Applying an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach, I offer analysis of naturally occurring workplace interactions and reflections from skilled migrant interns in New Zealand workplaces. I discuss the place of laughter in attempts to demonstrate team membership, arguing that these attempts at belonging require the cooperation and endorsement of insiders. The findings indicate that, however benevolently intentioned, the local colleagues’ use of humour, and their reactions to the humour and laughter produced by the skilled migrant interns, often results in a sense of othering and exclusion. This is keenly felt by the interns who note the difficulties that taken for granted practices create in their acceptance and progress. In many cases the result is laughing along, as an outward signal of fit, rather than laughing with which suggests a deeper sense of belonging. ","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":"44644912","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.611
I. J. Adekunle
Stand-up comedy, as a humorous performance, is a quintessential narrative that chronicles sociological realities of human endeavours. Its humour, as a new subgenre of comedy, fused the roles of performers and their audiences in a scintillating way that provokes laughter and, at the same time, gives great excitement. The performers and their audiences are major stakeholders in the performativity of stand-up comedy. Existing scholars have largely examined its realities as a product of entertainment and laughter to the neglect of its deeper sociological realities of religious satire and linguistic dexterity. Therefore, this paper investigates how stand-up humour serves as a tool for critiquing societal foibles of religious gullibility and bewitchment within the Nigerian socio-political space. Besides, the paper examines the linguistic techniques employed by the selected stand-up comedians. This is in a bid to show how stand-up comedians serve as gatekeepers, watchdogs, and social critics of their societies through their humour. Schechner’s Performance, Freudian, and Jungian psychoanalytic theories were used to analyse the embodied behaviours of the stand-up comedians. Three digital discs of live performance recordings were purposively selected. They were: Halleluyan Volume 1 and Ward 2 Comedy Klinic by Godwin Komone Gordons and A Nite of a Thousand Laughs Vol. 13 by Francis Agoda (I Go Dye). The selected live recordings were based on informing religious realities, choice of satiric humour, and performative styles of the performers. Data were subjected to performance and literary analyses.
{"title":"Humour of religious satire and linguistic dexterity of Nigerian stand-up comedy","authors":"I. J. Adekunle","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.611","url":null,"abstract":"Stand-up comedy, as a humorous performance, is a quintessential narrative that chronicles sociological realities of human endeavours. Its humour, as a new subgenre of comedy, fused the roles of performers and their audiences in a scintillating way that provokes laughter and, at the same time, gives great excitement. The performers and their audiences are major stakeholders in the performativity of stand-up comedy. Existing scholars have largely examined its realities as a product of entertainment and laughter to the neglect of its deeper sociological realities of religious satire and linguistic dexterity. Therefore, this paper investigates how stand-up humour serves as a tool for critiquing societal foibles of religious gullibility and bewitchment within the Nigerian socio-political space. Besides, the paper examines the linguistic techniques employed by the selected stand-up comedians. This is in a bid to show how stand-up comedians serve as gatekeepers, watchdogs, and social critics of their societies through their humour. Schechner’s Performance, Freudian, and Jungian psychoanalytic theories were used to analyse the embodied behaviours of the stand-up comedians. Three digital discs of live performance recordings were purposively selected. They were: Halleluyan Volume 1 and Ward 2 Comedy Klinic by Godwin Komone Gordons and A Nite of a Thousand Laughs Vol. 13 by Francis Agoda (I Go Dye). The selected live recordings were based on informing religious realities, choice of satiric humour, and performative styles of the performers. Data were subjected to performance and literary analyses.\u0000 \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49284317","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.612
G. Uwen, Godwin Oko Ushie
The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic (a global health emergency) following its ravaging spread and increasing death toll that led to the unprecedented multi-sectoral crisis and collateral damage. These, and the non-discovery of reliable therapeutic medicines combined to generate rising fears and tension across the globe. To cope with these realities, discourse participants devised humorous expressions to create laughter, ease tension and melt fears. The paper seeks to examine the contextual usage of such humorous expressions used in Nigeria, particularly in Calabar, that denote the sociolinguistic milieu, and shared knowledge and experience of the interactants. The study adopts Relief and Encryption Theories of Humour because the theories account for the situational appropriateness of the humorous expressions as “coping devices” in coherence with the cognitive, linguistic, situational and social contexts. Data were generated by means of participant observation in on-site and virtual interactions in social media platforms. Findings show that COVID-19 pandemic has exerted irresistible pressure on language resources that stimulated the creation of humorous expressions as coping needs for the consequential circumstance. Specifically, the humorous expressions such as “happy wives”, “sad husbands”, “side chicks are hungry” among others were regularly and contextually deployed for comic reliefs and cognitive recreations to stimulate laughter in crisis. Linguistically, the expressions are devised English structures and other constructs with codemixed elements derived from the registers of several discourse domains that reflect the Nigerian sociolinguistic environment. The constructs are therefore modelled to demystify the pandemic and unify interactants in order to ease tension and cope with the realities of the preventive and survival protocols.
{"title":"“Happy wives” and “sad husbands”","authors":"G. Uwen, Godwin Oko Ushie","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.612","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic (a global health emergency) following its ravaging spread and increasing death toll that led to the unprecedented multi-sectoral crisis and collateral damage. These, and the non-discovery of reliable therapeutic medicines combined to generate rising fears and tension across the globe. To cope with these realities, discourse participants devised humorous expressions to create laughter, ease tension and melt fears. The paper seeks to examine the contextual usage of such humorous expressions used in Nigeria, particularly in Calabar, that denote the sociolinguistic milieu, and shared knowledge and experience of the interactants. The study adopts Relief and Encryption Theories of Humour because the theories account for the situational appropriateness of the humorous expressions as “coping devices” in coherence with the cognitive, linguistic, situational and social contexts. Data were generated by means of participant observation in on-site and virtual interactions in social media platforms. Findings show that COVID-19 pandemic has exerted irresistible pressure on language resources that stimulated the creation of humorous expressions as coping needs for the consequential circumstance. Specifically, the humorous expressions such as “happy wives”, “sad husbands”, “side chicks are hungry” among others were regularly and contextually deployed for comic reliefs and cognitive recreations to stimulate laughter in crisis. Linguistically, the expressions are devised English structures and other constructs with codemixed elements derived from the registers of several discourse domains that reflect the Nigerian sociolinguistic environment. The constructs are therefore modelled to demystify the pandemic and unify interactants in order to ease tension and cope with the realities of the preventive and survival protocols.\u0000 \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48191981","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.569
Ahmad S. Haider, Linda S. Al-Abbas
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in late 2019, fear and panic dominated the content of online news. Simultaneously, there was a prevalence of jokes and satire on the different social media sites. During the crisis, most Arab countries went through a nationwide lockdown for weeks that people found themselves trapped in their homes and resorted to social media to express their frustrations about the prevailing happenings. They began exchanging jokes and parodies on social media that indirectly reflected stereotypes about them. 1424 jokes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp messages during a period of three months and were categorized based on the themes they covered. Gender-related jokes ranked the highest, and were predominantly targeting women. Hence, this study is an attempt to explore how Arab Women were stereotyped in Jokes circulated on social media during the Coronavirus crisis. The 508 gender-related jokes were analysed in light of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The analysis generated 4 main themes, namely 'marital relations' (33%), 'habits and attributes' (26%), 'beauty and makeup' (23%) and 'violence' (18%). Women were stereotyped as being ugly and less feminine without makeup, talkative, shopaholic, despising and annoying wives, and violent and harmful partners in their private sphere. The study concludes that such negative stereotypes might be unintentionally produced and reinforced through laughter-eliciting humor that circulates fast in the virtual world.
{"title":"Stereotyping Arab women in jokes circulated on social media during the coronavirus crisis","authors":"Ahmad S. Haider, Linda S. Al-Abbas","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.569","url":null,"abstract":"Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in late 2019, fear and panic dominated the content of online news. Simultaneously, there was a prevalence of jokes and satire on the different social media sites. During the crisis, most Arab countries went through a nationwide lockdown for weeks that people found themselves trapped in their homes and resorted to social media to express their frustrations about the prevailing happenings. They began exchanging jokes and parodies on social media that indirectly reflected stereotypes about them. 1424 jokes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp messages during a period of three months and were categorized based on the themes they covered. Gender-related jokes ranked the highest, and were predominantly targeting women. Hence, this study is an attempt to explore how Arab Women were stereotyped in Jokes circulated on social media during the Coronavirus crisis. The 508 gender-related jokes were analysed in light of the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The analysis generated 4 main themes, namely 'marital relations' (33%), 'habits and attributes' (26%), 'beauty and makeup' (23%) and 'violence' (18%). Women were stereotyped as being ugly and less feminine without makeup, talkative, shopaholic, despising and annoying wives, and violent and harmful partners in their private sphere. The study concludes that such negative stereotypes might be unintentionally produced and reinforced through laughter-eliciting humor that circulates fast in the virtual world.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41853074","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.649
Natalie Alkiviadou
This paper provides a legislative and jurisprudential comparative of European and U.S. case Law on humour. Whilst the Europe-U.S. comparison, in the ambit of expression, has been looked at extensively, there has yet to be a focus on the varying ways in which humour is treated in the two spheres. What will become evident is the intricacy of cultivating just legal tests to be used by the judiciary in deciphering an inherently abstract theme. At the core of these tests at the European level, is a balancing exercise between the right to offend and the right to be free from offence. However, the multitude of available interpretative routes, in addition to the array of differing human responses to humour, renders such tests and their application legally fragile. This reality raises concerns vis-à-vis the fundamental right of freedom of expression and becomes particularly topical within the current digital age and the ‘polarizing dynamics of social media.’ Godioli (2020:1) The analysis will demonstrate that humour receives much greater protection in the U.S. Framework due to the First Amendment whereas the highest regional human rights court in Europe, namely the European Court of Human Rights is quick to limit humorous speech on grounds of offending others, thereby demonstrating a backsliding of the fundamental freedom of expression, including humorous expression in the region.
{"title":"Ain’t that funny? A jurisprudential analysis of humour in Europe and the U.S.","authors":"Natalie Alkiviadou","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.649","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.649","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides a legislative and jurisprudential comparative of European and U.S. case Law on humour. Whilst the Europe-U.S. comparison, in the ambit of expression, has been looked at extensively, there has yet to be a focus on the varying ways in which humour is treated in the two spheres. What will become evident is the intricacy of cultivating just legal tests to be used by the judiciary in deciphering an inherently abstract theme. At the core of these tests at the European level, is a balancing exercise between the right to offend and the right to be free from offence. However, the multitude of available interpretative routes, in addition to the array of differing human responses to humour, renders such tests and their application legally fragile. This reality raises concerns vis-à-vis the fundamental right of freedom of expression and becomes particularly topical within the current digital age and the ‘polarizing dynamics of social media.’ Godioli (2020:1) The analysis will demonstrate that humour receives much greater protection in the U.S. Framework due to the First Amendment whereas the highest regional human rights court in Europe, namely the European Court of Human Rights is quick to limit humorous speech on grounds of offending others, thereby demonstrating a backsliding of the fundamental freedom of expression, including humorous expression in the region.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46827412","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.633
Santiago Arróniz Parra, Manuel Padilla Cruz
This paper reports on an exploratory study examining joke identification, appreciation and comprehension by Spanish intermediate ESL learners. The study is based on a relevance-theoretic classification of jokes, which assumes that humorousness results from manipulation of three parametres: make-sense frames, cultural information and utterance interpretation. It firstly ascertains whether Spanish ESL learners recognise orally-delivered samples of seven types of purportedly jocular texts. Secondly, it examines whether these learners actually regard such texts as comical and why. Finally, it looks into the learners’ interpretative problems in order to single out which joke type(s) is/are more challenging. The study relies on quantitative and qualitative data elicited through an online questionnaire comprising four tasks. The results indicate no correlation between joke identification and appreciation, and independence of successful joke recognition from sophisticated interpretative skills. Jokes involving invalidation of an activated make-sense frame were most easily identified and found most funny, but jokes exploiting cancellation of an initial, seemingly plausible, interpretation posed more difficulties.
{"title":"Joke identification, comprehension and appreciation by Spanish intermediate ESL learners: an exploratory study","authors":"Santiago Arróniz Parra, Manuel Padilla Cruz","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.633","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports on an exploratory study examining joke identification, appreciation and comprehension by Spanish intermediate ESL learners. The study is based on a relevance-theoretic classification of jokes, which assumes that humorousness results from manipulation of three parametres: make-sense frames, cultural information and utterance interpretation. It firstly ascertains whether Spanish ESL learners recognise orally-delivered samples of seven types of purportedly jocular texts. Secondly, it examines whether these learners actually regard such texts as comical and why. Finally, it looks into the learners’ interpretative problems in order to single out which joke type(s) is/are more challenging. The study relies on quantitative and qualitative data elicited through an online questionnaire comprising four tasks. The results indicate no correlation between joke identification and appreciation, and independence of successful joke recognition from sophisticated interpretative skills. Jokes involving invalidation of an activated make-sense frame were most easily identified and found most funny, but jokes exploiting cancellation of an initial, seemingly plausible, interpretation posed more difficulties.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43941489","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.596
S. Hamrick
Despite Shakespeare’s rejection of comic, racist stereotypes in Othello, minstrel shows offered racist blackface caricatures of slaves and others of African descent that filtered through British Music Hall and Variety to television sketch comedy. Analyses of twenty-five screened appropriations of Othello provide a cultural history of racism for 1967-1999. The article recovers an antiracist tradition overlooked in comedy studies.
{"title":"Antiracism in Othello sketch comedy, 1967-1999","authors":"S. Hamrick","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.596","url":null,"abstract":"Despite Shakespeare’s rejection of comic, racist stereotypes in Othello, minstrel shows offered racist blackface caricatures of slaves and others of African descent that filtered through British Music Hall and Variety to television sketch comedy. Analyses of twenty-five screened appropriations of Othello provide a cultural history of racism for 1967-1999. The article recovers an antiracist tradition overlooked in comedy studies.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48889364","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.634
Michael Nugent
Arguments over the future of school playtime continue back and forth. Opinions range from the interval period envisaged as a waste of teaching and learning time to sentiments supporting a child’s right to free play. Neither view, however, addresses the principal issue. If all laughter is ambivalent, which is the issue proposed here, then the central means by which pupils communicate on the primary school playground cannot be an indication of their contentment alone. The double, contradictory nature of ambivalency means that pupils’ laughter can also be an indication of their unhappiness. Playtime’s substantially serious dimension, therefore, invalidates any claims that playtime is simply a frivolous occasion and therefore expendable. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on the language of relationships and on ambivalent laughter provides this qualitative study with the fresh insights that can make a positive contribution to the ongoing playtime debate.
{"title":"Ambivalent laughter: the key to preserving playtime","authors":"Michael Nugent","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.634","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.634","url":null,"abstract":"Arguments over the future of school playtime continue back and forth. Opinions range from the interval period envisaged as a waste of teaching and learning time to sentiments supporting a child’s right to free play. Neither view, however, addresses the principal issue.\u0000If all laughter is ambivalent, which is the issue proposed here, then the central means by which pupils communicate on the primary school playground cannot be an indication of their contentment alone. The double, contradictory nature of ambivalency means that pupils’ laughter can also be an indication of their unhappiness. Playtime’s substantially serious dimension, therefore, invalidates any claims that playtime is simply a frivolous occasion and therefore expendable.\u0000Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on the language of relationships and on ambivalent laughter provides this qualitative study with the fresh insights that can make a positive contribution to the ongoing playtime debate.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47526388","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.600
Lillian Phillips-Kumaga, Rachael Hansen-Garshong, C. Ackom, C. A. Teku, Annabella Osei‐Tutu
The first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has been described as stressful. People make light of stressful situations in different ways. Ghanaians are known to be able to make humour out of any situation. During the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghanaians shared memes and posters on social media, making light of the seriousness of the problem. "Kwatakwata by June diεε…" shortened from the phrase: "kwatakwata by June diεε na obiara awu" to wit "Latest by June, we will all be dead" has become a catchphrase on social media and the streets of Ghana to make fun of the serious impact of the virus. This current study examines internet humour that became popular with Ghanaians during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. We examined videos, memes, and posters from various social media sites to learn about the Ghanaian use of humour during a public health crisis. Content analysis of the data showed that Ghanaians created humorous content to express how they felt about what was going on and also educate citizens about the pandemic. Recurring themes within the content analysis include humour concerning death, isolation, and keeping children occupied. We note that Ghanaians largely used self-enhancing humour. We discuss these themes to show the types of internet humour Ghanaians shared during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19大流行的第一阶段被描述为压力很大。人们以不同的方式减轻压力。众所周知，加纳人在任何情况下都能幽默。在2019冠状病毒病大流行的第一阶段，加纳人在社交媒体上分享表情包和海报，对问题的严重性轻描淡写。“Kwatakwata by June diε na obiara awu”是由短语“Kwatakwata by June diε na obiara awu”缩短而成的，意思是“最迟6月，我们都会死”，这已经成为加纳社交媒体和街头的流行语，用来取笑病毒的严重影响。目前的这项研究调查了在加纳COVID-19大流行的第一阶段在加纳人中流行的网络幽默。我们研究了各种社交媒体网站上的视频、表情包和海报，以了解加纳人在公共卫生危机期间如何使用幽默。对数据的内容分析表明，加纳人创造了幽默的内容来表达他们对正在发生的事情的感受，并向公民宣传这一流行病。在内容分析中反复出现的主题包括关于死亡、孤立和让孩子有事可做的幽默。我们注意到，加纳人主要使用自我提升的幽默。我们讨论这些主题是为了展示加纳人在COVID-19大流行第一阶段分享的网络幽默类型。
{"title":"“Kwatakwata by June diεε…”","authors":"Lillian Phillips-Kumaga, Rachael Hansen-Garshong, C. Ackom, C. A. Teku, Annabella Osei‐Tutu","doi":"10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr2022.10.1.600","url":null,"abstract":"The first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has been described as stressful. People make light of stressful situations in different ways. Ghanaians are known to be able to make humour out of any situation. During the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghanaians shared memes and posters on social media, making light of the seriousness of the problem. \"Kwatakwata by June diεε…\" shortened from the phrase: \"kwatakwata by June diεε na obiara awu\" to wit \"Latest by June, we will all be dead\" has become a catchphrase on social media and the streets of Ghana to make fun of the serious impact of the virus. This current study examines internet humour that became popular with Ghanaians during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. We examined videos, memes, and posters from various social media sites to learn about the Ghanaian use of humour during a public health crisis. Content analysis of the data showed that Ghanaians created humorous content to express how they felt about what was going on and also educate citizens about the pandemic. Recurring themes within the content analysis include humour concerning death, isolation, and keeping children occupied. We note that Ghanaians largely used self-enhancing humour. We discuss these themes to show the types of internet humour Ghanaians shared during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":37540,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Humour Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41552967","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 : 2022-04-14DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2022.10.1.618
Justyna Jajszczok
The article compares disgust as defined by the Parasite Avoidance Theory and humour explained through the Benign Violation Theory in order to analyse whether their affinity could be explained by analogous evolutionary conditioning. Both disgust and humour can be seen as specific, involuntary reactions toward particular triggers, and both may be connected with certain types of violations, particularly violations of body and violations of social norms. Moreover, disgust-sensitivity and humour-sensitivity are assumed to be largely dependent on personal circumstances and thus very difficult to predict before exposure to triggers. According to these theories, the fundamental difference between disgust and humour is that while the success of the latter is predicated on its benignness, the former must necessarily appear malignant enough to elicit the desired effect. The final part of the article is a case study of a “disgusting” joke by British comedian Jimmy Carr, in which various violations recognised by PAT and BVT are analysed.
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