Gender and Humour: Beyond a Joke
JenniferHay
Submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fullment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Linguistics.
This thesis investigates the interaction between gender and humour in sponta-neous New Zealand English. Tapes were collected of men and women in single sex and mixed groups and instances of humour were identied and transcribed. The taping situation proved more comfortable for the female groups and the mixed groups than for the male groups. Male groups tend to be more task-based, and so often treated the taping as a task to be completed. The tape-recorder was the primary reason for their conversation, whereas for other groups, the tape-recorder was incidental to the interaction.
A taxonomy of types of humour was constructed. Log-linear modelling showed that both gender and group composition a ect the type of humour used. The most statistically signicant results were that women are more likely to use ob-servational humour than men, insults and roleplay are more likely to occur in single sex conversations and humour involving quotes or vulgarity seldom occurs in mixed interaction and is more often used by men than by women. Other trends indicated that anecdotes and fantasy humour are more likely to occur in mixed interaction than single sex interaction, and men tend to use more roleplay and wordplay than women whereas women are more likely to use jocular insults. Most of the humour in the corpus was fresh humour, although men were shown more likely to use external source humour than women. This supports prior research which indicates men's humour is likely to be less context bound than women's and that they are more likely than women to discuss things they have seen or read.
immedi-and to create or maintain solidarity, although this strategy is largely restricted to single sex groups.
The humour used by the females was more likely to be about a topic involv-ing people than men's humour. The men joked more about work, computers, television shows, movies or books, and alcohol.
Speakers were much more likely to use humour focussed on a same-sex group member when in single sex groups than in mixed groups. In mixed interaction speakers maintained gender boundaries by focussing humour on group members of the opposite sex.
In mixed groups men contributed more humour than women. This supports claims that, as joking has been regarded a masculine activity, women are reserved with their humour when in mixed groups.
Analysis of how speakers present themselves through humour can give insight into the value systems of the group. The humour in this corpus indicates that the ability to laugh at oneself and to be open and honest are valued more by female groups than male groups, and wit and \coolness" are traits valued more by males.
The nal aspect of humour investigated is that of humour support. It is shown that the issue of humour support is much more complicated than many re-searchers claim. There are numerous support strategies available to any audi-ence, some of which provide stronger support than others. The most appropriate strategies will vary with context. Some types of humour do not require any sup-port at all, and there are many reasons why an audience may choose not to support an attempt at humour.
Acknowledgements
In Which Jen Admits that She had a Little Bit Of Help
This thesis could not have been completed without the time, help, advice and energy of numerous people.
I am extremely indebted to those friends who succumbed to my bullying and taped their conversations to contribute to my corpus. Thanks are also due to Anita Easton, for providing me with several pre-transcribed conversations, and to the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English for allowing me access to their data, and lending me a transcribing machine.
This thesis has benetted greatly from the advice and comments of several sem-inar and conference audiences. I would like to thank Miriam Meyerho and Maria Stubbe for providing references, comments, enthusiasm and support. Use-ful references were also provided by Chris Lane, Laurie Bauer, Gary Johnson, David Crabbe and Robert Sigley. Alan Tam converted my graphs to postscript, and Annie McGregor provided papers, references, enthusiasm and good humour when it was most needed. I'd also like to thank Alex Heatley for his thorough attempt at retrieving my literature review from the back-up tapes!
Sally McConnell-Ginet provided much needed enlightenment as to the structure of my function taxonomy, a willing ear, and useful advice and comments. Many thanks are due to the sta of the linguistics department at Victoria, who provided much support and encouragement. I would also like to thank Alastair Gray for his advice and guidance on the statistics in this thesis.
Financially I am indebted to the BNZ and Victoria University for their generous scholarships, the internal grants committee for covering thesis-related expenses and the Linguistic Society of New Zealand for funding my trip to the conference in Lincoln. I'd also like to thank Liz Pearce for the chance to accumulate some teaching experience, Allan Bell for providing tapes on which to practise my transcribing, and Janet Holmes and Allan Bell for giving me an excuse to spend a few days in the sun.
I'm grateful to the many people who regularly stopped by the oce to chat, providing a welcome distraction and relief. In particular such thanks are due to Gary Johnson and Allan Bell.
For co ee, support, meals, chats, and laughter, I would like to thank Bernadette Vine, Claire Oram, Andrew Chick, Linton Miller, Judi Lapsley Miller, David Tulloch, Jenny Freeman, Lindy Smith, and Phil Plasma.
In particular I am indebted to Aaron, resident computer consultant, translator, advisor, proofreader, friend, chau eur and chef-extraordinaire.
I am extremely grateful to my wonderful mother who patiently proofread the draft of my thesis. Bernadette Vine and Gary Johnson also proofread parts of this thesis, and Bernadette checked through my many tables and sacriced some sleep to help with the last minute rush! Chris Lane provided useful comments on the nal draft.
My greatest debt is to my supervisor Janet Holmes. Her support and enthusiasm for this project were constants I could always rely on. I would like to thank her for providing both valuable guidance and the freedom to wander where my data and whims lead me, for setting tight deadlines and understanding when I often missed them, for nding my work interesting even when I found it most boring, and for being a mentor and a friend.
1 Introduction
1
2 Review of humour research
3
2.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3
2.2 Dening Humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 4
2.3 Theories of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 7
2.4 Humour research using elicitation or surveys: : : : : : : : : : : : 8
2.5 Research on conversational joking: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8
2.6 Literature on types of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10
2.7 The functions of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 12
2.8 Conclusion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 14
3 Gender, Language and Humour
15
3.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 15
3.2 Men and Women in Conversation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 15
3.3 Explanations of di erence : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18
3.3.1 Female Decit : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 18
3.3.2 Di erence or Dominance? An ongoing debate : : : : : : : 18
3.4 Conceptualisations of Gender { Moving Forward : : : : : : : : : 20
3.5 Gender and Humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 24
4 Methodology
35
4.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 35
4.2 Control of Variables : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 35
4.2.1 Number of Speakers : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 35
4.2.2 Sex: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 36
4.2.3 Ethnicity : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 36
4.2.4 Age : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 36
4.2.5 Education : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 37
4.2.6 Intimacy of Speakers : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 37
4.2.7 Setting : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 38
4.2.8 Alcohol : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 38
4.3 Data Collection : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 38
4.3.1 Speakers' knowledge of the project : : : : : : : : : : : : : 39
4.4 Selection of examples : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 40
4.5 Methodological problems: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 41
5 Statistical methods
51
5.1 Log-linear modelling : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 51
5.2 Clustering e ects : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 59
5.2.1 Clustering due to individual behaviour : : : : : : : : : : : 59
5.2.2 Clustering due to conversational ow : : : : : : : : : : : : 59
5.2.3 Clustering due to complex examples : : : : : : : : : : : : 60
5.3 A statistical check on clustering : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 60
5.4 The suitability of statistics for analysing conversational data : : 60
6 Types of humour
63
6.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 63
6.2 The Taxonomy of Types : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 65
6.3 Dening the Types : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 65
CONTENTS iii
6.3.2 Fantasy : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 68
6.3.3 Insult : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 70
6.3.4 Irony: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 71
6.3.5 Jokes : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 73
6.3.6 Observational : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 74
6.3.7 Quote : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 75
6.3.8 Roleplay : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 76
6.3.9 Self Deprecation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 78
6.3.10 Vulgarity : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 78
6.3.11 Wordplay : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 79
6.3.12 Other : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 81
6.4 Results: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 82
6.5 Discussion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 84
6.6 Conclusion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 89
7 Fresh Humour and Seconds Humour
91
7.1 Background : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 91
7.2 Results: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 95
7.3 Discussion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 96
8 The Functions of Humour
97
8.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 97
8.2 The Framework : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 97
8.3 Solidarity : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 99
8.3.1 To share : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 100
8.3.2 To highlight similarities or capitalise on shared experiences 100 8.3.3 To clarify and maintain boundaries : : : : : : : : : : : : : 102
8.3.4 To tease (S) : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 102
8.4 Power : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 103
8.4.2 To control : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 106
8.4.3 To challenge and set boundaries : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 107
8.4.4 To tease (P): : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 108
8.5 Psychological Functions : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 108
8.5.1 To defend : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 109
8.5.2 To cope with a situational problem : : : : : : : : : : : : : 109
8.5.3 To cope with a general problem : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 110
8.6 Results: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 111
8.7 Overall results : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 111
8.8 Results of individual strategies : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 114
8.8.1 Results of solidarity based strategies : : : : : : : : : : : : 114
8.8.2 Results of power based strategies : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 115
8.8.3 Results of psychological functions: : : : : : : : : : : : : : 117
8.9 Discussion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 118
8.9.1 The General Function : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 118
8.9.2 Solidarity : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 119
8.9.3 Power : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 122
8.9.4 Psychological Functions : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 123
8.10 Conclusion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 123
9 Fo cus and Topic 125
9.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 125
9.2 Focus : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 125
9.2.1 Classication and Results : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 126
9.2.2 Discussion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 128
9.3 Topic: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 129
9.3.1 Discussion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 132
CONTENTS v
10 Amount of Humour
137
10.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 137
10.2 Quantifying \Amount" of humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 139
10.2.1 Counting instances of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 139
10.2.2 Calculating relative humour contribution : : : : : : : : : 139
10.3 Results: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 140
10.4 Discussion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 143
11 Social and Personal Identity
145
11.1 Background : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 145
11.2 Ability to laugh at oneself : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 147
11.3 Wit/Cleverness : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 148
11.4 Openness/Honesty : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 149
11.5 Coolness : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 151
11.6 Conclusion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 153
12 Laughter and humour support strategies
155
12.1 Introduction: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 155
12.2 Laughter as humour support : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 155
12.3 Counting laughter : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 157
12.4 Humour support strategies: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 162
12.4.1 Contributing more humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 162
12.4.2 Echo : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 166
12.4.3 O er sympathy or contradict self-deprecating humour : : 167
12.4.4 Overlap and heightened involvement in the conversation : 169
12.4.5 Non-verbal : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 169
12.5 When explicit support is not needed : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 170
12.5.1 The humour is a support strategy itself : : : : : : : : : : 170
12.5.2 Irony: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 170
12.6.1 Insucient contextualisation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 171
12.6.2 Being too late or reviving \dead" humour : : : : : : : : : 172
12.6.3 Assuming too much background knowledge : : : : : : : : 173
12.6.4 Misjudging relation between speaker and audience : : : : 175
12.6.5 Negatively teasing someone present: : : : : : : : : : : : : 176
12.6.6 Trying to gain membership of exclusive sub-group : : : : 177
12.6.7 Disrupting serious conversation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 178
12.6.8 Portraying oneself inappropriately for one's status or gender179 12.6.9 Other unsupported humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 181
12.7 Conclusion : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 181
13Conclusion 183
A Key to Transcription Conventions 189
8.1 The functions of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 98
10.1 Humour contribution by individuals in mixed groups : : : : : : : 142
4.1 Pre-collected data available : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 39
5.1 Example model: Observed frequencies : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 53
5.2 Example model: Predicted frequencies according to the indepen-dence model : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 53
5.3 Example model: SAS analysis for independence model : : : : : : 54
5.4 Example model: SAS analysis of model showing interaction be-tween all variables : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 55
5.5 Example model: SAS analysis of model of main e ects for hair : 56
5.6 Example model: Predicted frequencies for model of main e ects for hair : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 57
5.7 Example model: Predicted frequencies for model of main e ects for hair { collapsed : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 58
5.8 Example model: Conditional probabilities : : : : : : : : : : : : : 58
6.1 Probability gures for types of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 82
6.2 Odds ratios for types of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 83
7.1 Probabilities for \freshness" of humour: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 95
7.2 Odds ratios for \freshness" of humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 95
8.1 Results of possible models for overall function : : : : : : : : : : : 112
8.2 Probability gures for overall function : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 112
8.3 Odds ratios for overall function : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 113
8.5 Odds ratios for solidarity based strategies : : : : : : : : : : : : : 115
8.6 Probabilities for power based strategies : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 116
8.7 Odds ratios for power based strategies : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 116
8.8 Probabilities for psychological functions : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 117
8.9 Odds ratios for psychological functions : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 117
9.1 Probability gures for focus of humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 127
9.2 Odds ratios for focus of humour : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 127
9.3 Percentage of humour on di erent topics : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 131
10.1 Number of high and low contributors of humour : : : : : : : : : 141
Introduction
Interest in language and gender research has exploded in the last few decades. Researchers have examined the relationship between language and gender using numerous methodologies and with regard to a diverse set of variables. Humour research has also become increasingly prolic, to the extent that there is now a regular journal devoted to the subject. The intersection between these elds, however, is relatively unexplored. There are many myths and stereotypes pos-tulating gender di erences in use and appreciation of humour, but there is a conspicuous lack of studies investigating how men and women use humour in spontaneous, natural, spoken English. This thesis is an initial step towards ll-ing this gap.
In chapter 2 I briey review relevant literature in humour research, giving an in-dication of past ndings and areas which would benet from closer investigation. Chapter 3 outlines recent developments in the area of gender and language, and goes on to discuss research which has dealt specically with gender and humour. The specic methodology employed in this study is described in chapter 4. The design of the project, the data collection, the variables controlled, and resulting methodological problems are addressed.
adequately interpret the results presented in the following chapters.
Chapter 6 outlines a taxonomy for categorising types of conversational humour. The taxonomy was used to classify my data, and the results are presented and discussed. In chapter 7 I introduce and illustrate the notion of freshness, and discuss relevant gender di erences.
I also constructed a taxonomy of humour functions and strategies. This was applied to the data. Chapter 8 describes and exemplies the taxonomy and outlines and discusses the results.
In chapter 9 I discuss the focus of the humour, and indicate the range and distribution of topics. Chapter 10 outlines the proportion of humour contributed by men and women in the recorded conversations.
Chapter 11 is a discussion of personal identity, and illustrates how humour, like all interaction, provides an opportunity for the speaker to display certain char-acteristics. An analysis of how speakers portray themselves reveals information about value systems. Signicant gender di erences in the representation of cer-tain traits indicate that individuals are identifying as male or female, or more precisely, what it means to identify as male or female.
Chapter 12 is a discussion of humour support strategies. I show that the issue of humour support is much more complex than is generally assumed, and describe a range of humour support strategies, and possible reasons why humour may go unsupported.
Review of humour research
2.1 Introduction
The literature on humour is vast, and draws on a number of disciplines. Scholars in psychology, sociology, anthropology, women's studies, communications and management have investigated aspects of humour and joking, and linguists have approached humour from several diverse angles. This discussion is, by necessity, an extremely limited review of the huge amount of research available. It touches briey on aspects of humour research which provide background information relevant to this thesis. I will not touch on aspects of humour development, the use of humour for therapy, cross-cultural issues, or the semantics of why a joke is funny. I also omit discussion of literature on humorous written pieces and people's reactions to and appreciation of such pieces, and have no room to discuss the vast literature on comedy and stand-up routines.
chapters I introduce literature in more detail where appropriate. Reviews of the literature on gender di erences in amount of speech, topic, focus and other areas discussed in this thesis are provided in the relevant chapters.
2.2 Dening Humour
Very few researchers take care to dene what they mean by humour, or specify the basis on which they selected their examples. Aspects and repercussions of humour and the functions it can play are readily ascribed and discussed, and entire theories are sometimes constructed, without a denition in sight.
Those researchers that do dene their terms or make explicit the criteria by which they select examples adopt varying approaches and emphases. Comparison of denitions highlights contradictions and inconsistencies in this area. The issue is further complicated by terminological overlap and confusion.
Denitions tend to focus on either speaker intention or audience interpretation. Berger (1976) denes humour as \a specic type of communication that estab-lishes an incongruent relationship or meaning and is presented in a way that causes laughter." The fact that Berger includes laughter as part of his denition reects the fact that he holds the audience's interpretation to be important in the denition of an event.
Winick (1976) concentrates on speaker intention. His denition of a joke is \any type of communication that has a witty or funny intent that is known in advance by the teller."
Unsuccessful attempts at humour would be included in Winick's denition, but not in Berger's. Denitions focussing on audience response are much easier to apply than those which attempt to establish speaker intention. A researcher can never tell from recorded data alone the exact nature of a speaker's intention. It is easier to monitor the audience's reaction, and particularly easy if you maintain, as does Berger, that the incident must be met with laughter. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that laughter can indicate many things of which positive response to humour is only one (see Poyatos 1993).
2.2. DEFININGHUMOUR 5
I have analysed those interactions from which the actors intended to elicit a laugh or a smile. Thus I have disregarded what the researchers considered as humorous, but which may not have been intended as such. This has cast light on the situated nature of humour, as we see in the examples of humorous remarks: the jokes recorded here do not make the reader laugh, not only because they are sometimes tasteless and unamusing, but because the reader (and writer) is alien to the particular social group and situation in which the joke was expressed. (Pizzini 1991:479-480)
Pizzini states that she is alien to the social group involved, and so she can have no intuitive sense of the sorts of things they nd humorous. She disregards what the researchers think is funny, but which might not have been intended as humorous. There can be no sure way of establishing speaker intention, so on what basis is she selecting her data? She is most likely analysing those interactions thatdoelicit a
laugh or smile, and is perhaps guided by context and clues in the speaker's voice which indicate that they are not serious. When joking, a speaker often adopts a laughing or smiling voice, and they may speak more rapidly than normal, using exaggeration and a wider pitch range, or otherwise indicate through their intonation that their utterance is intended as humorous.
Martineau (1972:114) incorporates both elements in his denition. He states \humour is conceived generically to be any communicative instance which is perceived as humorous by any of the interacting parties". This denition, while more comprehensive than many others, seems rather circular.
It is important to be aware of overlap between the terms wit, humour and jokes. Duncan (1984) chooses to use the terms joke and humour interchangeably. Long and Graesser (1988) dene humour in the wider sense of Martineau (1972), in-corporating both interpretation and intention. They dene jokes as things said to deliberately provoke amusement.
Humor is anything done or said purposefully or inadvertently, that is found to be comical or amusing. In contrast, jokes are dened as anything done or said to deliberately provoke amusement. (Long and Graesser 1988:37)
So it would seem that they use the term \joke" in a way similar to Winick (1976). They then continue though,
Jokes are also context free and self contained in the sense that they can be told in many conversational contexts. Wit will be dened as anything deliberately said that provokes amusement in a specic con-versational context (ie context bound). (Long and Graesser 1988:37)
2.3. THEORIESOF HUMOUR 7
more restrictive still. Sherzer (1985) for example, denes jokes as discourse units consisting of two parts, the set up and the punchline.
It is obvious that there is some confusion and disagreement as to what the various terms should refer to. This makes it all the more important for researchers to dene their terms carefully to avoid misunderstanding. The terminology is a minor problem compared to others facing us in humour research and all that is really needed is some agreement. Until such time, however, it is important that terms and criteria for selection of examples are very clearly documented for each study.
2.3 Theories of humour
There are many diverse theories of humour. Most of these can be loosely cat-egorised into one of three categories: superiority theories, incongruity theories and relief theories.
Superiority theories have as their basic premise the assumption that laughter is the triumph of one person over other people (Keith-Spiegel 1972).
Incongruity theories emphasise the cognitive processes involved in perceiving hu-mour. Suls (1972) proposed a model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons. This involves a two stage process which relies on the generation and disconr-mation of a listener's expectations. Raskin (1985) proposes a similar theory of humour, claiming that jokes are compatible with two di erent scripts that are in some way opposite. A joke begins by being compatible with one script, and then a script-switch trigger occurs which is inconsistent with the original script. The trigger is usually the punch line. The listener then searches for an alternative, more compatible script. The humour lies in the overlap between the two scripts. Relief or arousal theories incorporate the belief that laughter is the release of repressed energy (Freud 1905).
2.4 Humour research using elicitation or surveys
Only recently have researchers begun to study spontaneous spoken humour. Past studies have been based on questionnaires or surveys (Crawford and Gressley 1991, Hampes 1992, Vitulli and Barbin 1991, Duncan 1984, Neuliep 1991 and others) and elicitation (Fink and Walker 1977).
The methodology of some early studies is highly questionable. Fink and Walker (1977) looked at humorous responses to embarrassment. The methodology em-ployed in this study is somewhat dubious for both linguistic and ethical rea-sons. Sixty male subjects were put through an embarrassing interaction with an experimenter by phone. They were asked to talk about issues such as sexual attractiveness and appearance, and to describe the most embarrassing situation they had experienced. The same interviewer was used throughout, but how she introduced herself was varied. She introduced herself either as a professor, an undergraduate or a high school student. This was so the variable of status could be examined. In fact there were no signicant di erences in humour used with regard to status, although signicantly more laughter occurred between people of relatively equal status than between people with unequal status. Of course, these are perceived status di erences rather than actual ones. The status is determined by the way in which the interviewer introduced herself, but her conversational style remains the same. This cannot be an exact simulation of conversation between equals/unequals, although the authors seem to treat it as such.
The many questionnaire studies vary in their approach. Some ask for reactions to certain instances of humour (Cox, Read and van Auken 1990), or ask for descriptions of people the respondents perceive as particularly funny and about their own use of humour (Crawford and Gressley 1991).
The questionnaire based studies of interest to this project are those which relate to humour and gender. These are discussed in chapter 3.
2.5 Research on conversational joking
2.5. RESEARCH ON CONVERSATIONAL JOKING 9
Davies (1984) investigated natural conversation, scripts, talk shows, interviews and several other sources. She describes three joking styles used by speakers of American English. The rst consists mainly of insults, but only recognised strengths must be attacked. This requires careful monitoring of reactions. In the second style, speakers build on what others have done. Speakers demonstrate an ability and willingness to participate in the joint e ort. It must be kept imper-sonal, and laughing and latching are common. Characteristic of this style are phonetic play, lexical repetition and semantic linking between utterances. The third style is an intimate positive politeness style in which the speaker displays an understanding of what the other person is feeling/thinking. It uses allusion to shared symbols and incongruity, gives the person a chance to express themselves further and is usually accompanied by small smiles and laugh particles.
Norrick (1993:2) claims that in order to fully understand how joking can simul-taneously express aggression and build rapport, we need to view joke-telling, punning and teasing in relation to power, solidarity and distance and in light of the principles of politeness and cooperation. He points out that the majority of conversational joking grows from preceding talk, with much playing on it directly. Norrick's book discusses di erent forms of humour, and gives some general ex-amples of various joking styles. It is useful both as a signicant contribution to research on situational joking, and an indication of how much we still have to do!
Chiaro discusses various joking styles and the implications of these. She also looks at the features that distinguish serious and humorous discourse. This leads her to the conclusion that the two labels are opposite ends of a continuum, and the area in the middle could be dened either by neither or by both labels. The distinction is not a clear-cut one. Some features which do tend to distinguish humorous from serious discourse are choice of words, use of euphemisms, intonation and informal discourse markers, gesture and comic expressions, exaggeration and interaction with the audience, and a casual and chatty style. When analysing my data I used many of these features to help identify and interpret instances of humour (see chapter 4).
2.6 Literature on types of humour
In this section I will briey review some of the taxonomies for classifying types of humour proposed by humour researchers. The crucial criterion here is the form the humour takes. There are many such taxonomies, and listing them all would not be particularly useful. Instead I pick out a few and through these identify some key categories. Many taxonomies are intended only for categorising canned or formulaic jokes.
Monro (1953) provides an outline of what he regards to be the traditional classes of humour: a) any breach of the usual order of events, b) any forbidden breach of the usual order of events, c) indecency, d) importing into one situation what belongs in another, e) anything masquerading as something it's not, f) wordplay, g) nonsense, h) small misfortunes, i) want of knowledge or skill, j) veiled insults. This seems to be more or less a list of things that people nd funny. These are mostly the topics of the humour, rather than its actual form. Categories like \wordplay", and \veiled insults" though, do describe the form of the humour. Zijderveld (1983) describes humour as the exploitation of institutionalised mean-ings, and breaks down types of humour into exploitation of either language (e.g. puns, spoonerisms), logic (wit, elephant jokes), emotions (black humour) or the activities of everyday life (parody, understatement).
2.6. LITERATURE ON TYPESOF HUMOUR 11
1. Puns
2. Goong o (slapstick) 3. Jokes/anecdotes
Humorous self-ridicule
Bawdy jokes (sexual or racial basis) Industry jokes
4. Teasing
Teasing to get things done Bantering { the great leveller
Categories such as industry jokes, are context specic. Puns are a relevant category. These would fall into a broader category of wordplay, as described in Norrick (1993: chap.3). Wordplay can include not only puns, but also types of humour such as spoonerisms, allusion, hyperbole and metaphor.
Feigelson has put jokes and anecdotes together as one category, although many researchers choose to keep these distinct. Telling a joke is di erent from telling an anecdote. An anecdote will be more personal, whereas telling a joke is more of a performance.
Mitchell (1985) makes a further distinction between narrative jokes and question and answer jokes.
Teasing is an important category. There is some confusion, though, as to whether it is a type of humour, or a strategy, or function. It is rather di erent than other \types" identied in that a tease can not be formally identied by any criterion. In my data, humour which served to tease someone present appeared in the form of fantasy humour, insults, wordplay, anecdotes and roleplay, and so is clearly on a level di erent from a purely formal taxonomy. I regard tease as a strategy which can take any number of forms, and which can be used to create either solidarity or power. This category is further discussed in chapter 8.
And nally, Morreall (1983) provides a comprehensive taxonomy of humour, based on the concept of incongruity. Most of his categories could be slotted into one of those discussed above, with the exception of mimicry.
In chapter 6 I outline a taxonomy developed for this thesis, which draws on the literature discussed above and is further modied to suit the data being analysed.
2.7 The functions of humour
In this section I briey outline the literature dealing with functions of humour and identify some recurring themes.
Martineau (1972) discusses three functions of humour: consensus, conict and control. The term consensus refers to the reduction of social distance. The function of such humour is to initiate and solidify the development of social relationships. It therefore encompasses functions such as integration into a group, and creating solidarity. Conict humour introduces or fosters conict in a group. Ridicule is a form of humour that can e ectively introduce conict. The term controlrefers to the control of others. Humour is used to express grievances and to draw people's attention to their mistakes.
The control function is also discussed by Collinson (1988). He discusses humour on the shop oor, identifying three main functions { to resist boredom, to conform and to control others. Collinson's conform reects the consensus category created by Martineau. To resist boredom is a function not mentioned by Martineau. This will be the function of a large number of instances, although probably not often the sole reason. A broader term is to amuse or to entertain.
Pogrebin and Poole (1988) also identify three functions of humour. The rst is exploration, or probing. Humour allows us to test the attitudes and beliefs of others in a non-threatening, o -record manner. In this way we can clarify boundaries and standards. Humour is also used as a coping strategy. It helps to normalise crises and deal with circumstances beyond our control. The third function Pogrebin and Poole comment on is that of solidarity.
2.7. THEFUNCTIONS OFHUMOUR 13
\humor apparently helps people succeed in intimate relationships because it al-lows them to handle the stress within those relationships" (Hampes 1992:127). Fink and Walker (1977) identify humour as a face-saving device in an embar-rassing situation. This is another example of the copingfunction of humour.
The exploration and coping functions of humour are also discussed by Linstead (1985), who points out that humour often performs a boundary function. He
refers to Davies (1982) work on ethnic jokes. By making fun of peripheral groups we clarify boundaries. These boundaries can be social, geographic or moral. We can establish acceptable standards, and ensure that there is consensus amongst the group as to what these standards are.
In discussing self-directed humour, Ziv (1984) identies the following four func-tions:
Redening the social hierarchy by higher status individuals in order to
create solidarity among group members of di ering social status
Protecting the self by identifying a weakness before anyone else does Sharing similarities between self and others
Coping with weaknesses by making light of them
Ervin-Tripp and Lampert (1992) refer to these functions asequalizing,defending, sharing and coping.
2.8 Conclusion
In this chapter I have briey discussed some relevant literature on humour and joking. It can be seen that the terminology in this area is still somewhat confused, and that there is a need for much more research. As Graham, Papa and Brookes (1992:177) point out:
We are lacking a substantial body of research that focuses on the use of humour in conversational settings. Such research is necessary for the development of a single, unied functional model of humour.
Research has become increasingly advanced in many areas of humour research, but research on spontaneous spoken humour is still a rarity. This is no doubt partly due to the diculties involved in collecting appropriate data and identi-fying and analysing spoken humour.
Gender, Language and
Humour
Nothing spoils a romance so much as sense of humour in the woman, or the want of it in the man. (Oscar Wilde)
3.1 Introduction
This chapter outlines developments in research on gender and its relation to language and humour. Section 3.2 describes some di erences that have been claimed to exist between the speech of men and women. In section 3.3 I discuss some of the explanations proposed for these di erences, and in section 3.4 I address in more detail recent thinking on the notion of gender. Section 3.5 describes research which has dealt specically with humour and gender.
3.2 Men and Women in Conversation
a urry of action in language and gender research and so, while much disputed, provided a valuable impetus and focus for further research.
The hypotheses have been tested in a number of ways. Many studies concen-trate on more formal speech or speech collected in articial environments (O'Barr and Atkins 1980, Preisler 1986 among others). This is problematic because Lako 's hypotheses related explicitly to speech in informal situations. The var-ious methodologies adopted by researchers have also meant that much research is non-comparable and results are sometimes conicting.
Many researchers tested the hypotheses with counts of the forms Lako identi-ed as being typical of women's language (see Philips 1980 for review). Rather than being particularly useful such research may actually conceal facts. Hedges, which Lako claimed reect uncertainty, can also be used for politeness purposes (Holmes 1984b, 1986). Pure hedge counts are therefore relatively uninformative. Researchers have now started to look at the functions that such forms play within the context of the conversation. Many have found that women use forms for fa-cilitative, expressive or a ective functions more often than men (e.g. Holmes 1984b Cameron et al 1988).
Spender (1980) noted that people have inaccurate perceptions of how much men and women contribute, particularly in formal settings. People tend to have the perception that women have contributed and talked much more than is actually the case. Studies of contributions in formal contexts have shown that men con-tribute more than women do (Swacker 1979, Edelsky 1981, Holmes 1988, Swann 1988, Bashiruddin, Edge and Hughes-Pelegrin 1990).
It has been claimed that women use minimal responses more than men (Maltz and Borker 1983), are more likely to acknowledge what the other speaker has said (Fishman 1977), and ask more questions (Maltz and Borker 1983). Men are more likely to use disruptive interruptions (Zimmerman and West 1975, Stubbe 1991).
3.2. MENAND WOMEN INCONVERSATION 17
(Haas and Sherman 1982, Aries and Johnson 1983, Aries 1976).
Lako (1975) was concerned that women do not seem to bond as much as men: We would like, that is, not only for men to accept women as integral parts of their groups, but for women to be able to group with other women as men do with men...I think that a start is being made, in women's groups, to overcome this tendency of women not to bond. (Lako 1975:78)
Despite Lako 's concerns, research has indicated that women seem to value community and co-operate in communication more than men. Makri-Tsilipakou points out:
...men can be seen as mostly opting for privacy, separateness, inde-pendence and non-involvement. In contrast, women (...) seem to be essentially opting for community, rapport and involvement. (Makri-Tsilipakou 1991:84)
There is still a relative paucity of research in informal settings, and men's talk in informal contexts has been less studied than women's. Studies of women's talk have generally found the subjects to be collaborative and supportive. Tannen (1990a) claims that where women seek agreement, men tend to challenge each other.
The women in Johnstone's (1993) study told stories about communities, whereas the stories told by men were of acting alone, or of competition. The women em-phasised the power of interdependence and community, whereas men emem-phasised the power of the individual in opposition to others.
Researchers investigating accommodation have found that females tend to ac-commodate to the interlocutor more than males (Mulac et al 1988, Bilous and Kraus 1988).
(see Aries 1976, Edelsky 1981, Fishman 1983, Maltz and Borker 1983, Coates 1986, Preisler 1986, among others).
3.3 Explanations of dierence
In the previous section I outlined a small number of the many di erences that have been claimed to exist in the speech of men and women. Several theories have arisen in an attempt to explain these di erences.
3.3.1 Female Decit
One of the earliest explanations for apparent gender di erences in language usage was that of female decit. A much cited example is Jespersen (1922), who, in a book about language, included a chapter entitled \The Woman". Women's speech was seen as inferior and di erent to men's, and so a deviation from the norm. One can infer from Jesperson's writings that he considers this di erence to be biological. Lako (1975) in her much criticised but very inuential paper, also took the view that women's language is inferior. She regards socialisation as the main explanation for this, and describes women's speech as reecting insecurity and hesitance. She also regards male as norm, and notes that \when we leave the lexicon and venture into syntax, we nd that syntactically too, women's speech is peculiar".
There is no evidence for the theory of female decit. On the contrary, there is some evidence that females possess superior linguistic skills (see Chambers 1992 for a summary of research). Evidence presented by Lako is anecdotal, and could be interpreted in a number of ways. Pure superiority judgements are necessarily extremely subjective, and o er no explanation for the observed di erences.
3.3.2 Dierence or Dominance? An ongoing debate
3.3. EXPLANATIONS OF DIFFERENCE 19
di erent cultures. From childhood, boys and girls play in di erent groups and in di erent ways. Girls' play emphasises solidarity, and teaches them to use language to create and maintain friendships, to criticise others in acceptable ways, and to interpret accurately the speech of other girls. The groups boys play in, however, are hierarchical and competitive. Through this play, boys learn to assert a position of dominance, attract and maintain an audience and assert oneself when other speakers have the oor. It is clear that the culture into which women are socialised is very much solidarity based, whereas there is an emphasis in men's culture on things which reinforce power and status. Maltz and Borker and Tannen, do not seem to regard this as signicant, although Maltz and Borker do admit that \power di erentials may make some contribution". The culture theory is ne as far as it goes. But it really seems to miss the issue at hand. Why is it that men and women are socialised di erently, and { more importantly { why the specic di erences that are observed? Eckert and McConnell-Ginet are critical of this approach, claiming it:
...seems to suppose that people ignore all but the interactional pos-sibilities predominant in their own gender-specic subcultures and make no real interactional choices, simply acting as passive sponges who soak up gendered identities. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992:466) Some theorists prefer a power-based explanation and are highly critical of the dif-ferent but equal cultures approach (Fishman 1983, Henley and Kramarae 1991). A purely power based approach claims men's conversational dominance, and dif-ferences reected in speech functions can be explained by men's superior social power.
Both are extreme views, and almost any piece of data or source of miscommu-nication could be analysed as solely power or solely cultural di erences. Both explanations have an element of truth, but, individually, they are simplistic. It must be true that men and women are socialised into di erent styles and rules of conversation. Parents interpret behaviour of male and female children dif-ferently (Condry and Condry 1976) and also interact with them very di erently (Lewis 1972, Thoman, Leiderman and Olson 1972, Lewis and Freedle 1973). The question that must be asked is why these particular patterns? The answer must somehow reect men's power. The di erent speech styles clearly lead to males claiming a dominant role in conversation. The di erent socialisation patterns, the di erent \cultures" are caused by, reect and reinforce men's dominant po-sition in society. Uchida (1992) points out that there must be other intervening and contributing factors. Race, age, occupation, education, context and numer-ous other factors will a ect the types and causes of miscommunication likely to arise between individuals and groups. It is important not to condense or ignore these factors in search of a tidy all-encompassing explanatory theory. Clearly socialisation and male dominance play a primary role in cross-sex miscommuni-cation, but they will often not be the only variables involved. And as Maltz and Borker (1982) point out, most theories of miscommunication are based on the behaviour of whites. We can not necessarily expect to nd observed patterns nor proposed explanations generalisable to other cultures.
3.4 Conceptualisationsof Gender{ Moving Forward
The discussion up until this point has presented the concept of gender as rela-tively straight-forward. Sex is a biological category, and gender is regarded as a social construct. Almost all linguistic research, however, has regarded gender as primarily a binary division. The term gender is used to acknowledge that the di erences observed are not absolute and biological, but rather are socialised, yet the categorisation of people's gender is based very rigidly on their biological sex.
3.4. CONCEPTUALISATIONS OF GENDER{ MOVING FORWARD 21
where you are placed by society. At birth, sex-category will be based on one's sex, but it is possible to claim membership of a sex-category without possessing the expected genitals. The concept of gender is much more tricky. Most theorists agree that gender is a social construct { something inuenced and shaped by one's environment. There has been a theoretical shift away from gender as a binary construct. Many see it more as a continuum, though I have not yet seen this applied in any practical sense to sociolinguistic research.
Smith (1985) claims one's gender identity can be marked on a scale ranging be-tween the stereotypically feminine and the stereotypically masculine. Among the variables claimed to contribute to gender are sexual orientation, masculin-ity/femininity, stereotypes and archetypes, social roles (e.g. family sphere or social sphere), and power/resource distribution. He describes two methods for measuring masculinity and femininity. As Smith points out, this approach is problematic as it assumes that stereotypes reect di erences.
Eckert (1990) regards gender as a set of traits, which she claims are the result of men's and women's place in society at a given time. Chambers (1992) sees gender as a social role, claiming gender-based variability in language is a reection of men's and women's mobility in the society.
There is, however, a shift away from the perception of gender as a set of traits. The question has become not whether these sets of traits can be sensibly divided into two categories, or whether they belong on a continuum, but something much more fundamental - what is gender.
West and Fenstermaker point out that treatment of gender as poles of masculinity and femininity is problematic.
...the bifurcation of gender into femininity and masculinity e ectively reduces gender to sex (cf Gerson 1985), while the treatment of gender as a role obscures the work involved in producing gender in everyday activities. (West and Fenstermaker 1993:151)
activities emerge from, and reinforce claims to membership in a sex-category. So there is not a male gender identity and a female gender identity, but rather a myriad of possible ways of identifying as male or female, and we reect and construct these identities in interaction constantly. Subtle shifts will occur in our gender identity as we shift from interaction to interaction, from interlocutor to interlocutor. At certain times our gender identity will be much more salient than at others.
Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet point out that there is much scope for gender variation within sex-categories. Di erences among men and among women are also important aspects of gender. Tomboys, goody-goodies etc are all categories of girls and women \whose mutual di erences are part of their construction of themselves and each other as gendered beings." (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992:470)
West and Fenstermaker touch on this important point as well:
doing gender does not require heterosexual situations....Hence we may nd some of the most extreme versions of essential womanly and manly natures in those settings that are reserved for members of a single sex category, for example, locker rooms or beauty salons. (West and Fenstermaker 1993:158)
West and Fenstermaker (1993:156) note that gender is a situated accomplish-ment: \the local management of conduct in relation to normative conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities for particular sex categories."
Doing gender, then, is not necessarily striving to t your identity to a particular normative ideal, but it is holding behaviouraccountablein relation to these ideals.
3.4. CONCEPTUALISATIONS OF GENDER{ MOVING FORWARD 23
This conception of gender as a situated accomplishment, of an ongoing, dynamic process, clearly has implications for approaches to the study of language and gender. Cameron (1992) is strongly critical of the approach often used in soci-olinguistic studies of male and female behaviour.
Merely to say that `men do x and women do y' is inherently prob-lematic: it ts comfortably into a tradition of prescriptive and sexist comment about what \normal" masculinity and femininity entail. (Cameron 1992:21)
Instead she suggests an alternative viewpoint, which reects more the concept that interaction constantly shapes and reects our gender identity.
..we ought to say \that's how people are under pressure to behave in order to realize certain ideas about what men and women should be like { to construct themselves as REAL or NORMAL men and women." NOT \how do men and women behave?" but \how do certain modes of behaviour make people into men and women?" (Cameron 1992:22)
The conceptualisation of gender as situated and dynamic is important for lan-guage and gender studies. It means a move away from large form-counting exercises, and towards studies of individuals' behaviour in certain contexts. We need to study how individuals construct an identity, and \do gender".
Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet adopt Lave and Wenger's (1991) concept of Communities of Practice.
A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in a particular endeavour. Ways of do-ing thdo-ings, ways of talkdo-ing, beliefs, values, peer relations { in short, practices { emerge in the course of this mutual endeavour. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992:464)
Eckert and McConnell-Ginet regard this as the direction in which we should move. They note that correlations between linguistic forms and sex are useful, but only in that they indicate areas where future investigation may potentially reveal the practices entering into gender dynamics within a community.
In many areas this ground work has now been laid, and researchers are equipped to move on to detailed investigation of various aspects of gender dynamics. Hu-mour research is an area where there are few ground studies. The literature in-dicates some trends, but much of it relies on introspection or articially elicited data. In this study I investigate di erences between men and women statistically with regard to a number of aspects of humour usage. I do not intend to produce any startling or categorical conclusions about how men and women use humour, but rather provide the ground work which has been lacking in this area up until now. I hope to point to some interesting trends, and identify areas of humour and gender research which could reward close examination. In chapter 11 I look more closely at several aspects of one's personal identity, and more specically, one's gender identity, and how they can be shaped and reected in humour. In chapter 12 I investigate more closely issues of humour support and reasons why humour might fail. The next section discusses research which has already been done in the area of humour and gender.
3.5 Gender and Humour
Women have traditionally been considered humourless beings. Much literature portrays females as unable to produce or even appreciate humour.
In her inuential but much disputed paper Lako (1975) lists the forms compris-ing \women's language". One of her observations is \Women don't tell jokes" (Lako 1975:56).
It is axiomatic in middle-class American society that, rst, women can't tell jokes - they are bound to ruin the punchline, they mix up the order of things and so on. Moreover, they don't \get" jokes. In short, women have no sense of humor." (Lako 1975:56)
3.5. GENDERANDHUMOUR 25
use humour. Freud (1905) claimed women do not need a sense of humour because they have fewer strong feelings to repress. Grotjahn (1957) suggested that women do not tell jokes because joke-telling is an aggressive act.
Lizbeth Goodman, in a paper primarily about stand-up comedy, points out: There is a lingering perception that women are not best suited to telling jokes but rather to being the punchlines. (Goodman 1992:286) This perception has applied, not only to joke-telling, but to humour in general. The attitude is slowly changing as researchers begin the process of collecting and documenting humour used by both men and women in a variety of contexts. Kramarae (1987) points out that men and women have di erent perceptions of the world and so consequently probably have di erent joking interests. Society is such that women have to work within the social symbols of the dominant group, so it is more likely that women will recognise the joking interests of males than vice-versa. Kramarae believes this is the basis of the common assertion that women have no sense of humour. In short, women have to understand male humour, men do not have to understand women's. This is reinforced by Jenkins (1985) who notes this asymmetry:
I wondered why it was that when a man tells a joke and women don't laugh, we are told we have no sense of humor, but when a woman tells a joke and men don't laugh, we are told we are not funny. (Jenkins 1985:135)
Many researchers have pointed out that humour is an inherently powerful act. In order to gain acceptance as a \true" woman, it is therefore unacceptable for women to display humour in mixed company. Marlowe (1989) observes:
When women produce and present humor they reverse conventional social situations by putting themselves in the foreground, threatening the most basic social gender arrangements. (Marlowe 1989:150)
For these reasons, some researchers have found that women use humour when by themselves, and tend to avoid it in mixed groups (Coser 1960, Goodman 1992).
Women just do not attempt to be humorous in a mixed group set-ting and the reason seems to be that women are neither expected, nor trained, to joke in this culture....it seems reasonable to propose that attempting a witty remark is often an intrusive, disturbing and aggressive act, and within this culture, probably unacceptable for a female. (Pollio and Edgerly 1976: 225)
Grotjahn (1957) issues a warning to female readers.
The woman of today....had better not show her wit too obviously if she is young and intelligent, for she will scare the contemporary male, who is easily frightened in his masculinity. (Grotjahn 1957:52)
Crawford (1989) points out that many studies of gender and humour have in-volved bias. Many concentrate on humour occurring in the public sphere. This is clearly easier to collect than private, spontaneous joking, but, as the public sphere is generally the domain of males, observed women's humour is unlikely to be typical. There has also been a lot of research concentrating on responses to set piece jokes. Canned jokes have been shown to be a more typically male form of humour (Jenkins 1985, Goodwin 1982), and so predictably, many results show men more appreciative of the jokes than the women. This often leads to the conclusion that women have less of a sense of humour.
Unfortunately poor methodology has even recently lead some researchers to mis-takenly conclude that impressions of humourless women are substantiated by fact. Cox, Read and van Auken (1990) looked at gender di erences in commu-nicating job-related humour. The study is triggered by the concern that:
3.5. GENDERANDHUMOUR 27
This is an interesting area, and one which clearly warrants some empirical investi-gation. However the work documented in this paper has some serious aws. The data is collected by administering a questionnaire to 156 male and 106 female undergraduate business students. Most students probably have no experience in the work place, so using them to establish gender di erences in job-related humour is highly dubious.
The questionnaire contained 15 hypothetical situations in which the respondent's colleague is placed in a potentially embarrassing situation in a job-related cir-cumstance. Each situation was followed by three reactions, one related to ignoral, one to humour and one to helpfulness. For each one, the informant had to rate how likely it was that they would react in that way. The one example given was a colleague who accidently dropped a lot of papers, and the humour response was: \I would tease him about being a master paper shuer". Students were asked to rate such statements from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree). All this actually tests is whether respondents have the same sense of humour as whoever wrote the questions. If a respondent rated the humour question low, then this was taken to mean they would not use humour in that particular situation. All it really means is that they would not use the statement provided. If it is the case that men and women have di erent joking styles, then this methodology will be heavily biased towards the gender of the author of the questions.
The results showed that men used the humour response signicantly more, and women were signicantly more likely to react helpfully. Cox, Read and van Auken therefore conclude:
This study seems to verify what most of the non-empirical literature has hypothesized about women's use of humor, namely, that humor is less a part of the female's communications pattern. (Cox, Read and van Auken 1990:293)
communication pattern." Most aspects of humour have not been discussed let alone examined in this paper. Secondly, the study set out to look at job-related humour, but this conclusion seems to be making claims about communication in general.
Crawford and Gressley (1991) also used a questionnaire to elicit their data. Their ndings are both less spectacular and more credible than those of Cox, Read and van Auken. They administered a two-part questionnaire to 72 males and 131 fe-males (aged 16-84). The rst section of the questionnaire asked participants to describe someone they knew who had an outstanding sense of humour, and the second part asked them to rate how much they themselves participate in various humour-related activities (e.g. do you enjoy ethnic humour). The descriptions were analysed to establish which of the following dimensions were mentioned: hostility (cutting, sarcastic, humour at others' expense), jokes, creativity (spon-taneous, can think on feet), real life (stories and anecdotes), caring (to alleviate anger or tension) or none of the above. In describing someone they knew, men used the creativity dimension signicantly more than women. Sixty-two of 92 females wrote about males, and 41 of 49 males wrote about males. When writ-ing about males, respondents were signicantly more likely to use the creativity dimension. Males reported they enjoyed both slapstick and hostile humour (e.g. racist or sexist humour) more often than females, and they reported more use of formulaic joking, whereas females reported more anecdotal humour.
Vitulli and Barbin (1991) administered questionnaires to establish whether sub-jects thought humour was a male oriented activity or a female oriented activity, and to see if there was a perceived di erence in reaction to humour depending on whether the initiator was male or female. They also investigated the possibility of age di erences in such perceptions.
3.5. GENDERANDHUMOUR 29
behaviour. Females in 8th grade more than females in college thought that humour was a female oriented behaviour. The nal signicant result was that females at college level thought that responses to humour di ered depending on the sex of the initiator, more than 8th grade females did.
Kottho (1986) deals with spontaneous conversational joking, and also proposes a gender di erence. She provides three very interesting hypotheses based on transcripts taken from various discourse analysis literature. The hypotheses are:
Men more often than women joke at the cost of others.
Women joke about themselves and their experiences. For them joking is a
means of establishing common ground and intimacy.
Women actively encourage the success of the speaker by providing support
through laughter. Men do this less frequently, especially when the speaker is a woman.
She states that for women and other oppressed groups, the safest joking method is to make oneself the butt of the joke. This allows the audience amusement at the speaker's expense and also, the laughter provides an acceptable outlet for aggression. She stresses that women's ability to laugh at themselves should be considered positive.
Kottho also refers to an unpublished masters thesis, Dreher (1982). Dreher studied four conversations and found that women laughed more than men, and that both men and women laughed more at men than at women.
of humour elicitation by women. Women were more collaborative in their hu-mour. They often used duets in wordplay, and their self directed humour in single sex interaction was more likely than men's to be built on someone else's remark. Ervin Tripp and Lampert call this stacked humour. When men used self directed humour it was more novel and less collaborative. It also tended to be more exaggerated or clearly false, giving a performance quality to men's humour. Women volunteered real stories about themselves to resolve and heal old embarrassments or to build togetherness by revealing shared experiences. Men often used wisecracks about themselves, usually following something they had done wrong, to defend themselves by making light of the situation. Women used humour to share and cope, men used it to defend and equalise. In mixed groups humour dealt with power tensions, built solidarity and displaced anger to di erent persons.
Di erences have also been observed in men's and women's joke-telling habits. Mitchell (1985) collected 1507 jokes, noting who told them, and in what context, and categorised them according to form, character, setting and theme. This resulted in a large taxonomy of characters and themes. The sex of the teller and the composition of the audience had signicant inuence on the choice of joke. Men told a higher percentage of openly aggressive jokes than women, and seemed to enjoy competitive joke-telling sessions. Women rarely participated in these sessions. Men were also more likely to use jokes to deride someone they did not like, and to tell jokes they thought might be o ensive to some members of their audience.
Women preferred to tell jokes in their homes to small groups of close friends, whereas men enjoyed telling jokes to larger audiences in public places. Men told a higher percentage of obscene, religious, ethnic, racial, death and drinking jokes, whereas women told a higher percentage of absurd, morbid, Polack and authority jokes, and used more word-play. Mitchell found that men told more narrative jokes, and women more question and answer jokes. Joke-telling by men was much more performance-based.
perfor-3.5. GENDERANDHUMOUR 31
mance. This establishes them as credible performers and gives them an audience. Women tend to rely on the context more in the creation of their humour, and use it in a way that is supportive and healing.
Goodman (1992) points out that joke telling is less typical for female comedians than males. Female comedians tend to prefer narrative comedy, in which humour is di used over the situation rather than contained in a single phrase. She quotes Helen Lederer describing gender di erences she perceives in the use of humour by professional comedians.
When a man tells a formalized joke I tend to switch o because it's quite authoritarian: you have to listen in order to get the payo , the punchline, and then you have to laugh. It's quite strict and inexible. It's far more interesting for me to ramble on, hopefully hitting the right targets, certainly with a through-line, and certainly with an end, but not in the same formalized way. I would rather just sit and hope that it's funny. (Helen Lederer as quoted in Goodman 1992:295)
Kaufman (1991) attempts to characterise feminist humour. She also notes a preference for spontaneity rather than for formulaic humour.
(Feminists') preferences are toward spontaneous wit, amusing real-life anecdotes and other forms of humour that are participatory. Jokes involve tellers and listeners, the teller is the active one at the cen-tre of attention, and the listeners are relatively passive...spontaneous human interaction is largely absent. (Kaufman 1991:248)
She points out that witty remarks contribute to the dialogue, whereas jokes tend to disrupt and distract from it.
it involves not only creative spontaneity but connectedness and com-passion it invites self-disclosure and reciprocal sharing of perspec-tives it is dependent on the immediate social context. (Crawford 1989:160)
3.6 Conclusion
In the last few decades we have witnessed an explosion of research in language and gender. This work has become increasingly sophisticated and intricate. The gen-erally consistent nding is that women tend to be the more supportive speakers. They emphasise interaction, solidarity and community, whereas men emphasise status and competition. Jenkins (1985) characterises the general trend as follows:
Men in their groups seem to be saying \I'm great. I'm great too. Gee we're a great bunch of guys." In contrast, women seem to be saying \Did this ever happen to you? Yeah. Oh good, I'm not crazy" (Jenkins 1985:137)
Recently theorists have become uncomfortable with such sweeping statements and many have doubts of the wisdom of polarizing the genders so distinctly. We should be careful to keep in mind that such claims are at best, large generali-sations. They are useful primarily in that they provide pointers to interesting phenomena and provide a base for further, qualitative research.
Given that there is a tendency for women to be more supportive in their inter-actions, we might expect this to have implications for women's use of humour. Early research into humour and gender was unbalanced, or based primarily on speculation, and claimed that women did not use humour at all, or that they used humour much less than men. This claim is largely a result of the fact that pressure is put on women not to joke in mixed sex interaction. Joking is re-garded as a particularly masculine behaviour. This means that much of women's humour occurs in single-sex groups.
