Humor, Context, and Divided Cognition

Lengbeyer, Lawrence

doi:10.5840/soctheorpract200531316

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…These pollution codes generally focus on one of two patterns: excess or inappropriate juxtaposition. These two patterns conform to what one would expect concerning the nature of humor (Gross, 2007;Lengbeyer, 2005;Shifman, 2007). Through the two patterns of excess and incongruent juxtaposition, these pollution codes contaminate common systems of classification in modern, mainstream, White American social life.…”

Section: If You [Pause] Have a Half-built Truck Engine In The Front Yard Of Your Trailer Home [Pause] You Might Be A Rednecksupporting

confidence: 83%

Jeff Foxworthy’s Redneck Humor and the Boundaries of Middle-Class American Whiteness

Thomas

2016

Sage Open

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Popular culture has aided the reworking of a redneck discourse that historically signified poor rural White southerners (Jarosz & Lawson, 2002). Solidified by comedian Jeff Foxworthy in the 1990s, the term redneck has been reinterpreted as an identity salient to a mass audience (Hartigan, 1997). When redneck is used as a self-description or as a way of indicating otherness, it becomes a means of establishing identity boundaries. To expand research exploring the nuances of whiteness, this article seeks to illuminate how, and why, redneck identity is being constructed in this humor. Specifically, I seek to address three interrelated questions. Research Question 1: How is redneck defined according to Foxworthy humor? Research Question 2: How does this humor construct the boundaries between the redneck and non-redneck? Research Question 3: Do the boundaries utilized in this humor help us understand the production and maintenance of a more normative, mainstream whiteness? To address these questions, I conducted a semioticsinspired narrative analysis of more than 300 Foxworthy redneck jokes derived from his comedy routine and posted on the Internet site Country Humor (Foxworthy, 1991, 2004). My analysis is organized around four broad themes that permeate these jokes: lifestyle and fashion, rural living, sex and 647772S GOXXX10.

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Section: If You [Pause] Have a Half-built Truck Engine In The Front Yard Of Your Trailer Home [Pause] You Might Be A Rednecksupporting

confidence: 83%

Jeff Foxworthy’s Redneck Humor and the Boundaries of Middle-Class American Whiteness

Thomas

2016

Sage Open

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“…However, let us play along for the time being. David Benatar (1999), among a host of others (Gaut 1998;Goldstein 1995;Lengbeyer 2005) argues that we can as best as possible, determine whether we ascribe to a negative stereotype by considering a joke which contains a negative stereotype, particularly one that includes something about yourself:…”

Section: Humour Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The corrective social function of performative comedy demonstrated on two instances

Tapley

2021

SN Soc Sci

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I argue that performative comedy can be used to apply the corrective social function of humour to achieve a new awareness in people regarding social issues, in this case racism. Comedians are usually marginalized in some way. Some sort of Otherness characterizes their view of the world. Standing in the margins gives comics a unique view of the world, and in particular, a special view of what made them other. Performative comedy is comedians performing their marginalization. They, by being marginalized, are socially licenced to subvert and critique social norms. When they perform these subversions for us, and make us laugh, usually at ourselves, our laughter is revelatory. What is revealed is that subverted or critiqued norm. To see this social ill through the comic's eyes is revelatory. We see with new eyes. Our laughter signals the change to new thinking, the corrected thinking. Laughter is special in that we only laugh at comedy we think is true in some sense.

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“…In addition, any number of contextual variables need to be taken into account in order to predict how individuals will respond to a humorous political message. When joke tellers justify flops with, “I guess you had to be there,” they indicate the weight of context (Lengbeyer, , p. 320). And as Meyer () has noted, “attempts at humor that meet with success depend directly on the specific audience and the situation in question” (p. 316).…”

Section: Social Scientific and Rhetorical Accounts Of Political Humormentioning

confidence: 99%

The Persuasive Force of Political Humor

Innocenti

Miller

2016

J Commun

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Humor, Context, and Divided Cognition

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Jeff Foxworthy’s Redneck Humor and the Boundaries of Middle-Class American Whiteness

Jeff Foxworthy’s Redneck Humor and the Boundaries of Middle-Class American Whiteness

The corrective social function of performative comedy demonstrated on two instances

The Persuasive Force of Political Humor

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