Volume 14, Issue 1

This essay attempts to synthesize disparate sources regarding African-American humor in the antebellum South into a comprehensive view of comic modes on the plantation. In part, the essay addresses the question of slave compliance with white demands that the slave be funny on demand. Such compliance provided slaveholders with evidence that their slaves were not only content in their social position but also happy. I try to navigate through the various arguments related to the Sambo stereotype by examining slave humor in various realms of the plantation: from the big house to the quarter to the field; and from everyday interaction to special occasions such as the annual corn shucking festival. By identifying various domains of plantation life, each with its own particular mode of humor, I am able to draw a picture of the role humor played in negotiation identities on the plantation. These negotiations allowed both white and black members of the plantation community to create and maintain images of the Self.

This study investigates the use, form and function of humor for children aged 12–16 years in two different schools including 47 participants through interviews and 112 participants in a questionnaire. The assumption is made, that developmental changes in form and function of humor for children aged 12–13 years may be influenced by their actual environmental settings and their actual tasks. Data from 12–16 year old children from two schools (school 1, in the countryside with grade 1 to 7 and school 2 in an town area with grade 1 to 10) is analyzed to see whether adult humor appears at an earlier stage in school 1. Finally, the study considers the importance of children's sense of humor in problem solving and social interaction during the period 12–16 years.

In this paper, we develop a theory to explain why some people possess a good sense of humor (i.e., are funny) while others do not. In essence, the theory follows the general selectionist (Donahoe and Palmer 1994) scheme of response generation and selection : People who both generate a lot of jokes and are sensitive to negative appraisal will be considered to be humorous by their peers. Data to test this theory are described and analyzed. Most results are in accord with our theory and alternative explanations are ruled out.

Many researchers claim joking and laughter to be an adjacency pair. There are, however, a range of strategies used for supporting humor in conversation, of which laughter is just one. This paper uses natural conversational data to illustrate a variety of humor support strategies. Common support strategies include contributing more humor, playing along with the gag, using echo or overlap, offering sympathy and contradicting self-deprecating humor. There are four implicatures associated with full support of humor: recognition of a humorous frame, understanding the humor, appreciating the humor, and agreeing with any message associated with it. Recognition, understanding and appreciation are in an entailment relationship, and this relationship can be exploited to display recognition and understanding while denying appreciation. The implicature of agreement is particularly salient when teasing or self-deprecating humor is being supported.

The repatriated Vietnam prisoners of war are suffering almost no mental illness, and the effective use of humor seems to be one of the reasons for their health. The literature by and about prisoners of war from several recent wars indicates prisoners often found humor to be an effective coping mechanism, a way of fighting back and taking control. By defining humor as an element of communication and by thinking of resilience as a communication phenomenon, the links between humor and resilience become more apparent. This was a qualitative study that consisted of interviewing approximately 50 Vietnam POWs in unstructured interviews and 12 Vietnam POWs in a structured, topical format. Chronicling the subjective accounts of these men and framing them as communication allowed an examination of the results. Knowing that human connection contributed to the survival and resilience of these men implies that resilience is contagious, as humor seems to be. Through the creation of humor in a well-defined system of social support, these fiercely independent men learned to rely on their own power and to draw a sense of mastery from each other.

John Morreall: Comedy, Tragedy, and Religion . Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1999. 177 pp. $16.95. (Bob Easton-Waller) Gerard Matte and Jessica Milner Davis (eds.): Readings from the International Conference on Humor: A Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Comedy . Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1997. Available from International Specialized Book Services, 5408 N. E. Hassalo Street, Portland, OR. 97213-3644, $24.95. (Peter Derks) Shannon Hengen (ed.): Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories, Texts and Contexts . Gordon and Breach Publishers, Canada, 1998. Vol. 4 in the series, Studies in Humor and Gender , Regina Barreca and Nancy Walker (Eds.) 279 pp. $23.00. (Mary Ann Rishel)

Humor in the news Even before the complications of counting hanging chads, dimples, and pregnants on the Florida ballots, the United States' 2000 Presidential election was chalked up as a situation in which people were laughing more at the candidates than with them. The one bright spot was Joseph I. Lieberman, who “became the first vice-presidential candidate in American history to begin his convention speech with a mother-in-law joke.” After he was introduced by his wife, Hadassah, he said. There's an old saying that behind every successful man, there is a surprised mother-in-law, and I am here to tell you, it's true.