In the 1920s, scientists at the University of Cambridge’s Sir William Dunn Institute of Biochemistry made major contributions to the emerging discipline of biochemistry while also devoting considerable time and energy to the production of a humor journal entitled Brighter Biochemistry. Although humor is frequently regarded as peripheral to the work of science, the journal provides an opportunity to understand how it contributes to the social infrastructure of scientific communities as modern workplaces. Taking methodological cues from cultural history, ethnography, and (...) humor studies, this essay conducts a close and contextual reading of Brighter Biochemistry. This reading demonstrates how humor served as a central means through which members of the Dunn confronted workplace issues, including creating cooperative work teams, responding to gender discrimination, addressing funding anxiety, and defining professional identity. These conclusions provide a new perspective on the well-documented history of the Dunn and also offer a model for how historians of science can approach humor when its traces are encountered in other settings. (shrink)

This article explores how we use social media to construe identities and align with others into communities of shared values. The focus is on how ‘users of language perform their identities within uses of language’: How do personae using the microblogging service Twitter perform relational identities as they enact discourse fellowships? Addressing this question means understanding how personae enter into ambient affiliation. Such affiliation is ambient in the sense that social media users may not be interacting directly, but instead participating (...) in mass performances of hashtagging or contributing to iterations of Internet memes. This article will consider three key bonds using both a 100 million-word corpus of posts and a smaller specialized corpus collected by capturing the entire Twitter stream of a particular user. (shrink)

As Van Dijk proposed in the first issue of Discourse and Communication, the main purpose of this journal is to bridge the two cross-disciplines of communication and discourse studies. Given this goal, this article sought to help clear the ground for such interdisciplinary development by investigating how organizational researchers use the terms `discourse' and `communication' and cast discourse—communication relationships. By reviewing 112 organizational discourse studies from major journals in communication, organizational studies, and interdisciplinary journals published between 1981 and 2006, this (...) study identified diverse conceptualizations of these basic concepts. The findings help dispel some of the misunderstandings that scholars from one research field may possess toward the other and sort through some, if not all, the confusions regarding the terms `discourse', `communication', and their relationships. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 169-190.

This study explores how disciplinary humor is deployed to shape and reshape social order in inter-generational encounters. Data are drawn from an ethnographic study of staff–resident encounters at a treatment home for boys, focusing on sequential patterns in the local design of jokes and teasing, analyzing language and multimodal interaction in detail. It was found that staff and boys recurrently laughed together and teased each other by invoking local hierarchical positions such as child–adult. The intrinsic ambiguity of humor and teasing (...) allowed staff members to engage in temporary breaches of social order, while simultaneously enforcing local rules of conduct. Similarly, the boys would joke with the staff, exaggerating or transgressing institutional and generational divides. But ultimately, the joking could also be seen to remind the participants of the very hierarchies that separate staff from residents and men from boys, or adults from children. (shrink)

This paper explores how power relations are enacted and negotiated in the largely under-researched non-hierarchal leadership constellation of distributed leadership. Drawing on more than 300 hours of audio-recorded interactions of a corpus of interdisciplinary research group meetings, we analyse how members of a team that does not have an officially assigned leader or chair regularly draw on teasing thereby enacting and reflecting, as well as sometimes challenging existing power relations. Findings show that the highly ambiguous discursive strategy of teasing enables (...) all members, regardless of their official role or position, to contribute to the team’s leadership performance. However, findings also show that although teasing has the potential to facilitate more collaborative approaches to leadership, the ways in which power is actually enacted in our data resembles more traditional hierarchical leadership constellations. (shrink)

The concept of `the granny' is not uncommon in British media texts, in a range of stereotyped representations of older women and in (sometimes playful, sometimes serious) invocations of the grandmother role. `Granny parties' are one genre of recreational social event where young people dress up as grannies. In this paper I bring together data from the media and from an ethnographic study of granny parties in order to assess the age-political and ideological significance of `granny' in these very different (...) contexts. In both cases, representations and performances prove to be fashioned dialectically, in relation to normative assumptions about grannies as conservative, passive and out-dated characters. Despite the ludic frames of many representations, it isargued that the granny concept recycles restrictive ideological values for gendered ageing. (shrink)

Professionals transitioning into a workplace face the challenge of socializing into their new working communities. One important factor in this process is humor. We present a case study of how a newcomer transitioning towards integral status interacts with the use of humor in her new workplace. Using the Communities of Practice framework, we examine workplace discourse collected from a new recruit, Emma, and her colleagues in a Hong Kong firm. The analysis portrays a picture of how humor is a critical (...) element as Emma negotiates relationships with other colleagues and works towards her assigned tasks. Findings suggest that humor can be an indicator to newcomers of appropriate or inappropriate behavior. Humor can be used for newcomers’ integration into the workplace; humor can be used by integral members to mold newcomers into the normative ways of doing things. We argue that humor may be used as a regulating and coping mechanism in workplace socialization. (shrink)

Organizations comprise many social communities which arguably contribute to organizational knowledge creation. Two of these are the widely discussed community of practice and the lesser known micro-community of knowledge. Within such organizational communities collegial relationships are formed and maintained, norms and expectations learned, experiences shared, and ideas articulated and developed. The quality of collegial relations fostered by such communities, together with the importance of productive dialogue, have been identified as key components in organizations with the capability for ongoing innovation. Although (...) communities of practice have long been recognized as contexts for both learning and the development of collegial relations, little attention has been paid to micro-communities of knowledge. Using examples from a micro-community of knowledge found in a small New Zealand-based IT company, I demonstrate the ways in which participants ‘do collegiality’ towards establishing relational engagement. An example of collegial interaction in a community of practice is provided by way of contrast. The article concludes by arguing that despite being two distinct interactional contexts, the repertoire of relational skills required and the potential for social learning through participation in these two kinds of communities renders them not only complementary, but tightly interdependent. (shrink)

American televised political shows are under tremendous pressure to succeed within an economic model that requires maximizing viewership. In response to this growing financial pressure, political shows invite contentious guests to discuss current events and issues. Such discussions are often confrontational, making a mockery of the responsibility the news industry has in disseminating information in an impartial and insightful way. Although outrage is a common discourse feature of televised political shows, little is known about what this language looks like and (...) how it is used to argue ideological positions. To this end, drawing from critical discourse analysis, this study investigates the multidimensional and multifunctional aspects of mocking, which is a type of outrage discourse. The findings show that mocking is an important argumentative tool for panel members, which occurs in the turn following an opposing viewpoint and is used to carry out a range of actions, including expressing disagreement, establishing a competing ideological position, and refuting an idea based on an opponent’s political identity, to name a few. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how mocking and mock news feed into partisan ideologies, creating both tribalism and skepticism within society. (shrink)

This article explores the characteristics of narratives told by women and men about the birth of children. The comparison focuses on the way speakers use evaluation devices to structure their experiences and to negotiate a relationship with their audience. Findings indicate that, while there are subtle contrasts between the narratives that suggest that male speakers emphasize informative meaning and women provoke an affectual response related to the disclosure of internalized expectations, there are significant macro-level similarities with both women and men (...) making use of anecodotal structures. It is argued that understanding these similarities and dissimilarities in terms of gender difference alone is overly simplistic and that gender should be understood as interacting in complex ways with a range of further potential variables connected with context. (shrink)

Public authorities have traditionally used an official language style in public, but currently social media have become an outlet for humour. This article uses positioning analysis to discuss challenges that use of humour poses for the identity of public organizations. Drawing on interviews with communications professionals working in the emergency services sector, the article suggests six evaluative themes that factor into organizational identity construction, such as the frequency and type of humour in social media posts. Indeed, while humour helps fashion (...) more flexible and risk-taking organizational identities, it can also stand contrary to a bureaucratic ethos of public servantship and equal treatment. Dilemmas thus arise for public authorities that seek to adjust to the times and still remain ‘in character’. The article contributes to organizational identity research by considering the hitherto overlooked immersion of social media use, humour and organizational identity formation. (shrink)

The "Dark Side" of Humour. An Analysis of Subversive Humour in Workplace Emails Although a substantial amount of research has investigated the various functions of humour in a workplace context, electronic means of communication have largely been ignored. This is particularly surprising since electronic communication in the workplace is increasingly gaining significance. This seems to be especially true for email, which in many workplaces is the preferred medium for communicating transactional as well as relational topics. Drawing on a corpus of (...) about 100 emails collected in an academic setting, we explore how humour is used in workplace emails. Our specific focus is on subversive humour, which often functions as a tool to express frustration and dissent, and ultimately to challenge existing power relations. Our analysis illustrates that subversive humour is an excellent means to make fun of established and normative workplace practices by exaggerating and ridiculing them, and to re-define organisational reality by offering alternative interpretations. These functions of subversive humour appear to be particularly useful for those in relatively powerful positions: by employing humour to convey critical and potentially threatening messages in acceptable ways, the senders manage to express their dissent and frustration with the wider organisational system while, at the same time, escaping the scrutiny of the very organisation that they are symbolically challenging. (shrink)

Ridicule can be used in order to create concurrence as well as to en-hance antagonism. This paper deals with ridicule that is used by a critic when he is responding to a standpoint or to a reason advanced in support of a standpoint. Ridicule profits from humor’s good repu-tation, and correctly so, even when it is used in argumentative contexts. However, ridicule can be harmful to a discussion. This paper will deal with ridicule from the perspective of strategic maneuvering between (...) the individual rhetorical objec-tive of effecting persuasion and the shared dialectical objective of resolving the dispute on its merits. In what ways can ridicule be used in strategic maneuvering and under what conditions are these uses dialectically sound? (shrink)

Resumen Los enfoques tradicionales en el estudio de la comunión fática han examinado el concepto en términos de la función social, la función del lenguaje así como su ocurrencia en las etapas iniciales y de cierre de una interacción. Intentos por clasificar la comunión fática en términos universalistas predeterminados corrieron el riesgo de alejarse del concepto de entendimientos cotidianos donde interactuantes emplean el uso del lenguaje dinámico para lograr los objetivos de comunicación específicos en contextos particulares. Los enfoques contemporáneos tratan (...) de redefinir la comunión fática en términos interpersonales. La investigación sobre el uso del lenguaje fático en América Latina ha sido muy limitada, con contadas excepciones. Con la finalidad de investigar el tema en el contexto mexicano, donde todavía se considera en términos convencionales, examinamos un corpus formado por 92 instancias de comunión fática, recabadas en Guadalajara, México. Sostenemos que en el corpus antes aludido se emplea la comunión fática a fin de expresar y destacar la cortesía positiva en maneras poco convencionales, dado que el término tiene un alcance muy amplio en el que abarca: la anticortesía, el uso del lenguaje creativo, los juegos lingüísticos, la ironía, y los anglicismos. (shrink)

The process of apprenticeship is one means of entering a new profession. Along with the technical skills entailed in learning a new job, apprentices need to acquire proficiency in appropriate ways of communicating in order to construct a convincing professional identity. Data collected on a New Zealand building site provides evidence of the extent of the situated learning in which building apprentices engage. Becoming an accepted member of the community of practice centrally involves learning to recognize and respond appropriately to (...) a wide range of differently encoded directives, for instance. But membership also entails developing an understanding of more subtle interactional norms, such as acceptable topics of small talk and appropriate forms and quantities of humour on the job. This article examines evidence that suggests these understandings develop gradually as apprentices move from peripheral to core status in their chosen professional community of practice. We also explore the implications of the analysis for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the community of practice framework. (shrink)