The European Journal of Humour Research

Have media texts become more humorous?

Haoran Zhu, Yueqing Deng — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

As a research topic, humour has drawn much attention from multiple disciplines including linguistics. Based on Engelthaler & Hills’ (2018) humour scale, this study developed a measure named Humour Index (HMI) to quantify the degree of humour of texts. This measure was applied to examine the diachronic changes in the degree of humour of American newspapers and magazines across a time span of 118 years (1900-2017) with the use of texts from Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). Besides, the study also discussed the contributions of different types of words to the degree of humour in the two genres. The results show significant uptrends in the degree of humour of both newspapers and magazines in the examined period. Moreover, derogatory and offensive words are found to be less frequently used than other categories of words in both genres. This study provides both theoretical and methodological implications for humour studies and claims or hypotheses of previous research, such as infotainment and linguistic positivity bias.

“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

Clara Cantos-Delgado, Carmen Maíz-Arévalo — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Sexual jokes in Nigerian stand-up comedy

Eyo Mensah, Idom Inyabri, Romanus Aboh — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Nigerian stand-up comic artists explore emerging social, religious, and political issues as materials for comic entertainment within their performance space and community of practice. One of the resources for comic performance is the recourse to sexual contents which are deployed to reduce apprehension around stereotyped norms about sex and sexuality in the Nigerian sociocultural context. Drawing on ethnographic qualitative data using social media skits, audio-visual disks and semi-structured interviews, this article examines sexual jokes as ideological texts and rhetorical devices that embody the struggle between conservatism and postmodern conceptions of sex and sexuality. It highlights the recurrent themes and creative discourses of sexual humour which stand-up comedy performers exploit as artistic tools for the engagement of gender roles, sexual myths, sexual politics and social contradictions within a vulnerable socio-political and economic context. We adopt social relief theory and incongruity theory of humour comprehension to provide a nuanced understanding of sexual jokes and the sociocultural inhibitions that surround them. The dominant themes in these jokes include male sterility, faking orgasm, commodification of sex, prostitution, rape, and the use of aphrodisiac. The results indicate that sexual jokes are circulating within the comedy performance space as forms of protest against stereotyped sexual culture. In this way, male and female comedians, working with the tools and ideology of postmodernism, help to satirise conventional sexual values and radicalise their audiences against normative construction of sex and sexuality.

Identity politics and ethnic humour in contemporary Jordan

Yousef Barahmeh — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Forms and functions of jokes disseminated during the Covid-19 pandemic in Jordan

Ahmad Tawalbeh, Rula Abu-Elrob, Emad Al-Saidat, Mamdouh Alenazy — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

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.

Legal analysis of freedom of expression and online humour in Indonesia

Andryka Syayed Achmad Assagaf — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

This paper examines the issue of freedom of expression in relation to online humour, particularly in Indonesian law. Despite being an inherent individual right within the broad scope of freedom of expression, there is currently no clear demarcation line in Indonesian law to position humour as an integral aspect of this right and of entertainment. Consequently, forms of humour such as memes, parodies, and satire may potentially be considered as insulting due to the subjective nature of humour and the lack of a consistent interpretation. This legal uncertainty raises concerns about the protection of freedom of expression as a fundamental human right in the present era. Despite the protection granted by the Constitution and various laws, Indonesia's legal framework does not explicitly define humour as a constituent of freedom of expression, thus leaving its interpretation to the discretion of the courts.

Factor invariance of the Humor Styles Questionnaire and its relationship with the HEXACO personality model in a Spanish community sample

Đorđe Čekrlija, Ferran Balada, Luis F. Garcia, Anton Aluja — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

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.

The relationship between humour types, assertiveness, self-efficacy, personality, and perfectionism in pre-service teachers

Elena Mirela Samfira, Ionel Samfira — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Teachers’ humour has a special place in the educational context with multiple benefits for themselves and their students. As a complex concept, humour is strongly related to individual personality, which is also complex and diverse. The current research aimed to investigate the correlations between four types of humour (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating) and assertiveness, perfectionism, and Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability) in pre-service teachers. The obtained results show that the adaptive type of humour (affiliative and self-enhancing) positively correlated with assertiveness, Big Five personality traits, and the adaptive form of perfectionism, and negatively with the maladaptive form of perfectionism. Also, the maladaptive type of humour (aggressive and self-defeating) negatively correlated with assertiveness, Big Five personality traits, and positively with the maladaptive form of perfectionism. An intriguing finding was the positive correlation between aggressive humour and assertiveness.

Book review

Janne Zareff — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Book review

Book review

Fadi Hirzalla — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Book review

Book review

Maria Semikolennykh — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Book review

Book review

Salvador Spadaro — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Book review