Humor Styles and Symbolic Boundaries

Cultural omnivores or culturally homeless? Exploring the shifting cultural identities of the upwardly mobile

“…Moreover, comedy's capacity to mark social boundaries may be relatively unique, particularly considering its inextricable relationship with the use of humour in everyday life. As Kuipers (2009) It is also worth considering the role of national specificity here, something rarely adequately addressed in the omnivore literature. For example, while comedy taste clearly marks powerful symbolic boundaries in Britain and the Netherlands (Friedman and Kuipers, forthcoming), it may perform a much less significant function in the 'cultural repertoires' of other nations (Lamont, 2000).…”

“I get it, but it’s just not funny”: Why humour fails, after all is said and done

“…This alignment between personal face needs and the face of a group comprises, and demarcates, "the public self-image that every [person] wants to claim for [themselves]" (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 61). A clear demarcation of face occurs with humour, since, as we have seen, speech communities offer quite precise symbolic boundaries for what is considered to be acceptable humour (Attardo, 1994;Clark, 1994;Kuipers, 2009;Rose, 2014). A humorous text which transgresses these boundaries generates a Face Threatening Act (FTA) for the members of a speech community, and this FTA exerts pressure to conform to these expectations of behaviour, since "face is extremely sensitive, volatile and vulnerable" (Partington, 2006: 87).…”

“…So, for instance, Kuipers (2009Kuipers ( : 2015 refers to practices of humour which are distinctive from one European nation to another, and from one class system in the Netherlands, to another. Within each of these speech communities, the humorous transaction's outcome is more predictable, because the participants are literate in the communicative practice: they expect it, and they are also very quick to identify, and respond to it.…”

“…Some theorists see the practice of accepting or resisting humour as being entirely, or at least predominantly, the product of social constraint and construction (Hall, 1980, Davies et al, 2008, Kuipers, 2009). This is especially true for when humour offends.…”

Narrativizing (and laughing) spatial identities together in Meänkieli-speaking minorities

“…Although it plays a significant role in communication and daily interaction, in the social studies in which group discussions have been utilized humor has relatively rarely been taken into particular consideration. In those rare studies where participant observation of focus groups has been used, it has been noticed that humor functions as a mechanism through which group identities become established, "materialized" if you like (see Terrion and Ashforth, 2002;Kuipers, 2010). For instance, in group discussion studies conducted earlier in Sweden it was noticed how, compared to other discourses, narrations of Finnishness were invariably played down with laughter (Weckström, 2011).…”