Joking Culture

This was a really unexpected study for me to read. I've never really thought of joking as a form of culture, or really considered how it changes from one group to another. The authors brought up that this is not really a type of research that has been done very often, but it seems like it would shed a lot of light on tension diffusion in a group dynamic. I found it interesting that they focused a lot on the significance of repetition and the status of relationships within the group. Jokes have always felt sort of universal to me, though thinking about it there are some jokes that I would use with my friends that I certainly wouldn't with say, colleagues or family.

They also focused on the use of joking within a group to subtly establish and reinforce status boundaries, and ensure that newcomers become aware of the group's moral boundaries. The authors stated that this was facilitated by a "joker", that one person that everyone has encountered at some time in their life that just seems to always have a humorous comment on the situation and never forgets a funny story. I suppose you could consider that person somewhat of a social gatekeeper when it comes to joking, since they are usually also the first to propose nicknames and push the jocular boundary.

I really agreed with the comments on newcomers and how their first attempts at joining in on the group jokes are usually hesitant and shaky at best. I've been that newcomer quite often in my life, having moved frequently, and I've still not developed a strong sense of where those boundaries lie. Perhaps having read this article I'll be a little more aware of how to determine them.

What I found the most interesting though was their assertion that that joking is one of the most effective and accepted methods of social control within a group. This is something that can cause a lot of problems, and I believe is most evident in the context of younger groups. Younger people tend to take more offense to the type of "at your expense" jokes that make social control joking unique. As people learn the meaning of these jokes and begin to follow the social guidelines though it seems like it would be a much less tense way to ensure that there is a valid status structure within the group. This was represented well by their study on the interactions between the meteorologists and the secretaries. Overall, this seems like a topic that should be researched further, since even this small amount gives a lot of insight into group dynamics that hasn't really been considered before.