Pub Date : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.769
Ahmad Tawalbeh, Rula Abu-Elrob, Emad Al-Saidat, Mamdouh Alenazy
People in Jordan have suffered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Jordanian government took some pre-emptive measures to curb the spread of the virus, including the announcement of indefinite curfew and nationwide strict lockdown. Humorous texts appear to be the people’s key to escape from life stress, minimise the pressure of unpleasant situations and increase pleasure. Jordanian humour attracts our attention to find out what it does during the Covid-19 pandemic and investigate its structure. To pursue this aim, a sample of 50 jokes and memes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp in 2020 and analysed using the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). The researchers conducted a systematic and detailed analysis of the data relying on the six knowledge resources postulated by the GTVH, which are script opposition, logical mechanism, situation, target, narrative strategy and language. The analysis showed that humour can be viewed as a tool to release the tensions caused by Covid-19 restrictions on mobility and lockdown. It also revealed the people’s comments on different aspects of their life during the pandemic, including but not limited to social contact, economic status and education. In most of the analysed texts, humour is playful and serves the function of decommitment. This study offers insights into Arabic humour discourse, showing how jokes may serve the emerging context and encourage conducting studies on humorous texts in various settings to show what roles they would play.
{"title":"Forms and functions of jokes disseminated during the Covid-19 pandemic in Jordan","authors":"Ahmad Tawalbeh, Rula Abu-Elrob, Emad Al-Saidat, Mamdouh Alenazy","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.769","url":null,"abstract":"People in Jordan have suffered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Jordanian government took some pre-emptive measures to curb the spread of the virus, including the announcement of indefinite curfew and nationwide strict lockdown. Humorous texts appear to be the people’s key to escape from life stress, minimise the pressure of unpleasant situations and increase pleasure. Jordanian humour attracts our attention to find out what it does during the Covid-19 pandemic and investigate its structure. To pursue this aim, a sample of 50 jokes and memes were collected from Facebook and WhatsApp in 2020 and analysed using the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). The researchers conducted a systematic and detailed analysis of the data relying on the six knowledge resources postulated by the GTVH, which are script opposition, logical mechanism, situation, target, narrative strategy and language. The analysis showed that humour can be viewed as a tool to release the tensions caused by Covid-19 restrictions on mobility and lockdown. It also revealed the people’s comments on different aspects of their life during the pandemic, including but not limited to social contact, economic status and education. In most of the analysed texts, humour is playful and serves the function of decommitment. This study offers insights into Arabic humour discourse, showing how jokes may serve the emerging context and encourage conducting studies on humorous texts in various settings to show what roles they would play.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279535","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 : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.734
Clara Cantos-Delgado, Carmen Maíz-Arévalo
This article explores humour employed as a self-presentation device in the biography section of Tinder profiles belonging to heterosexual users (male and female) in their 20s based in Spain and the United Kingdom. The main purpose of this investigation is to find out if male or female users are more prone to resorting to humour in their Tinder profiles and if the culture within which this interaction takes place also affects the frequency of use of humorous remarks. More specifically, we intend to answer the following research questions: (i) To what extent does gender influence the use of humour as an online self-presentation strategy?, (ii) To what extent does the users’ cultural context play a role in the frequency and way humour is employed? To that purpose, a total of 455 Tinder profiles from both Spanish (224) and UK (231) users was gathered with the help of a bot, Tinderbotz, and it was then analysed quantitatively and qualitatively with the assistance of the software program Atlas.ti. The results show that UK users favour humour as a self-presentation strategy in a significantly higher percentage than their Spanish counterparts, independently of their gender. Thus, while Spanish-speakers may regard humour as a risky mechanism that can backfire, UK users embrace it as part of the Anglo-Saxon ethos of not taking oneself too seriously.
{"title":"“I hear you like bad girls? I’m bad at everything”: a British-Spanish cross-cultural analysis of humour as a self-presentation strategy in Tinder profiles","authors":"Clara Cantos-Delgado, Carmen Maíz-Arévalo","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.734","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores humour employed as a self-presentation device in the biography section of Tinder profiles belonging to heterosexual users (male and female) in their 20s based in Spain and the United Kingdom. The main purpose of this investigation is to find out if male or female users are more prone to resorting to humour in their Tinder profiles and if the culture within which this interaction takes place also affects the frequency of use of humorous remarks. More specifically, we intend to answer the following research questions: (i) To what extent does gender influence the use of humour as an online self-presentation strategy?, (ii) To what extent does the users’ cultural context play a role in the frequency and way humour is employed? To that purpose, a total of 455 Tinder profiles from both Spanish (224) and UK (231) users was gathered with the help of a bot, Tinderbotz, and it was then analysed quantitatively and qualitatively with the assistance of the software program Atlas.ti. The results show that UK users favour humour as a self-presentation strategy in a significantly higher percentage than their Spanish counterparts, independently of their gender. Thus, while Spanish-speakers may regard humour as a risky mechanism that can backfire, UK users embrace it as part of the Anglo-Saxon ethos of not taking oneself too seriously.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279536","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 : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.823
Đorđe Čekrlija, Ferran Balada, Luis F. Garcia, Anton Aluja
The cross-cultural factor invariance of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) structure, and its relationships with the HEXACO personality model were analyzed in a large Spanish community sample. The effect of age, gender, and social position on the observed relationships was also investigated. The four-factor structure of the HSQ was largely invariant compared to the original one. Males and younger participants score higher on all four domains of the HSQ, but no relevant effect of social position is observed. The HEXACO-60 dimensions and facets predicted between 17% and 32% of the HSQ domains. Results and discussion broadly support that the HEXACO personality model can be used as an adequate personality framework for the research and understanding of humor styles.
{"title":"Factor invariance of the Humor Styles Questionnaire and its relationship with the HEXACO personality model in a Spanish community sample","authors":"Đorđe Čekrlija, Ferran Balada, Luis F. Garcia, Anton Aluja","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.823","url":null,"abstract":"The cross-cultural factor invariance of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) structure, and its relationships with the HEXACO personality model were analyzed in a large Spanish community sample. The effect of age, gender, and social position on the observed relationships was also investigated. The four-factor structure of the HSQ was largely invariant compared to the original one. Males and younger participants score higher on all four domains of the HSQ, but no relevant effect of social position is observed. The HEXACO-60 dimensions and facets predicted between 17% and 32% of the HSQ domains. Results and discussion broadly support that the HEXACO personality model can be used as an adequate personality framework for the research and understanding of humor styles.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136341743","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 : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.786
Yousef Barahmeh
Following political turbulence and instability in the Middle East, Jordan has become a home for a large number of Palestinians, Iraqis, and Syrians, and now includes a significant number of Egyptians in its workforce. This growing diversity in the population has impacted the country not only socially and economically but quite noticeably in terms of identity politics and ethnic humour (how do indigenous people perceive the other(s) and how do others perceive the indigenous people?). This is explained through the rising tensions between Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin in relation to the formation of ethnic humour that is based on the idea of urban and rural division in Jordanian society. The discussion in this article argues that the people of Transjordanian towns, such as As-Salt, At-Tafilah, and As-Sarih, have ‘unexpectedly’ become the target of many ethnic jokes by the urbanites in Amman and elsewhere, who now make up the majority of Jordanians of Palestinian origin. The people of these Transjordanian small towns and villages have been the target of Jordanian ethnic humour because of their backwardness, lack of discretion, and stupidity, compared to the cleverness, modernity, and high culture of the Jordanian urbanites and their cultural superiority. However, since the 2011 Arab Spring, the people of these Transjordanian towns have developed a counter-superiority tendency to laugh at the powerful in urban centres and make fun of the government and its institutionalised discourse about reform and progress.
{"title":"Identity politics and ethnic humour in contemporary Jordan","authors":"Yousef Barahmeh","doi":"10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/ejhr.2023.11.3.786","url":null,"abstract":"Following political turbulence and instability in the Middle East, Jordan has become a home for a large number of Palestinians, Iraqis, and Syrians, and now includes a significant number of Egyptians in its workforce. This growing diversity in the population has impacted the country not only socially and economically but quite noticeably in terms of identity politics and ethnic humour (how do indigenous people perceive the other(s) and how do others perceive the indigenous people?). This is explained through the rising tensions between Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin in relation to the formation of ethnic humour that is based on the idea of urban and rural division in Jordanian society. The discussion in this article argues that the people of Transjordanian towns, such as As-Salt, At-Tafilah, and As-Sarih, have ‘unexpectedly’ become the target of many ethnic jokes by the urbanites in Amman and elsewhere, who now make up the majority of Jordanians of Palestinian origin. The people of these Transjordanian small towns and villages have been the target of Jordanian ethnic humour because of their backwardness, lack of discretion, and stupidity, compared to the cleverness, modernity, and high culture of the Jordanian urbanites and their cultural superiority. However, since the 2011 Arab Spring, the people of these Transjordanian towns have developed a counter-superiority tendency to laugh at the powerful in urban centres and make fun of the government and its institutionalised discourse about reform and progress.","PeriodicalId":376818,"journal":{"name":"The European Journal of Humour Research","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136279540","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}
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