Volume 29, Issue 3 -

Focusing on the disciplinary function of humor as an understudied subject in humor studies, this article addresses Qazvini jokes – the contemporary Persian joke cycle targeting men from the Iranian city of Qazvin – as mainstream gender humor that uses ridicule as a means of supporting heteronormativity and fueling homophobia. Adopting an historical-analytical approach and considering examples of and references to Qazvini jokes, I argue that the joke series likely originated as a disciplinary tool to buttress the emerging heteronormative gender order of early modern Iranian society. Contextualized instances of these jokes not only illustrate that this punitive function has endured to the present but also indicate their ongoing homophobic role. This argument problematizes the claim made in humor studies that jokes have no social consequences. Qazvini jokes may be inconsequential in the limited sense that they might not affect attitudes toward their direct targets – that is, individual men of Qazvin – yet their heteronormalizing and homophobic functions clearly speak to larger social structures within Iranian society and culture. This form of ethnic humor both adheres to and informs Iran’s prevailing gender and sexuality norms; as such, in this broader sense, the jokes may indeed have far-reaching consequences.

This paper discusses the interaction between metaphor and humor by focusing on humorous metaphor-based nominal compounds in German. The paper highlights the lexical level of verbal humor, which has been largely overlooked in the linguistic humor studies. Viewing the nominal compound as one of the smallest units of verbal humor, the present study seeks to distinguish this from discussions of metaphorical humor that are concerned with specific sentence-level constructions. Nominal compounds are simple in terms of structural formation but the two constituents play a complex role in meaning construction, and the complexity increases when metaphor is involved. It is this aspect that has the potential to generate the incongruity required to induce humor. The humor in metaphor-based nominal compounds is produced by the mechanism that creates and resolves the incongruity between the literal and the figurative meaning of the whole compound, supported by a range of meaning construction types of the metaphor-based compound. This study focuses on German nominal compounds that are marked as “humorous” in the dictionary.

In 2010, the Macedonian government commissioned a controversial urban project titled Skopje 2014, designed to aesthetically revamp the look of the capital’s center. The announcement gave rise to conflicting views, both supportive and critical of the idea. Part of the criticism leveled at the project was expressed through on-line humor which produced no major sociopolitical effect, public debate or counter-humor production. Yet its production and reception may be taken as emblematic of the societal tensions underlying the contradiction between its effects and its evaluations. By outlining the political context of the humor’s emergence, analyzing the examples produced, and voicing humor creators’ and citizens’ understanding of its political role, the study reflects upon humor’s specifics and limitations in order to argue that the humor produced and its understanding reflect the political impulses, tensions, and ambiguities of a hybrid society such as Macedonia. Using input from the discussions on the role of humor across political systems, and especially relying on studies of political on-line humor in democracies and audience research, the study intends to determine the political effect of the humor produced so as to argue that faced with many challenges, the humor failed to become a democratic means of political engagement, remaining largely a tool for the expression of personal dissatisfaction. Nonetheless, there is an existing paradox in the face of citizens’ beliefs in the potential of this humor. This study tries to explain this paradox.

This study analyzes the reactions of practicing Christians and atheists to various kinds of humorous materials. The goal was to determine whether the presence or absence of Christian belief serves as a predictor for humor appreciation, specifically whether practicing Christians appreciate certain types of humor more (or less) than atheists do. Reactions by all study participants to 18 passages presenting various humor styles were dispersed from “not funny at all” to “very funny,” indicating the subjective nature of measuring humor appreciation. The results show almost no correlation between the presence or absence of Christian faith and the degree of humor appreciation. The only notable exceptions are that practicing Christians tend to react less favorably than atheists to the most blasphemous, disparaging kinds of humor, while atheists are somewhat less amused by good-natured religious jokes compared to practicing Christians. All other joke categories were judged similarly in terms of their perceived funniness by members of the two contrasting religious populations. The overriding determiner of funniness was found to be the inherent comical quality of individual jokes as well as, to some degree, the joke category from which humorous passages were drawn, rather than the presence or absence of Christian faith among the joke recipients. This finding contradicts a-priori claims about the supposed negative correlation between sense of humor and religiosity. The study further exemplifies adaptive statistical methods to extract significant trends and tendencies from empirical data obtained through an online survey.

As part of daily interactions humor is an integral element of work relationships with consequences for well-being or turnover intentions. However, its adequate assessment in the work context has yet to be improved. While the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ; Martin et al. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37. 48–75) covers adaptive and maladaptive functions of humor styles, it assesses humor in general life. With the adaption of the HSQ, that is, the short (12-item) and work-related version of the HSQ (swHSQ), we provide an efficient tool for the assessment of individual humor styles in the work context. We validated and tested the swHSQ in two Austrian-German and one U.S. sample and analyzed its structure and impact by means of confirmatory factor analyses as well as regression analyses. The swHSQ seems valid and reliable (α between 0.62 and 0.86) in a German and an English version, thus representing an efficient self-report tool for field research. Evidence for construct validity is provided with regard to humor styles’ associations with optimism, occupational self-efficacy, irritation, and job satisfaction. While the positive (affiliative, self-enhancing) humor styles showed expected relationships with the outcomes, patterns of relationships of the negative styles suggest intercultural differences in workplace humor. Thus, self-defeating but not aggressive humor seems impactful in the Austrian-German sample, while the contrary was found in the U.S. sample.