Humorous Responses to Embarrassment

This study is based on interaction in institutional settings (job interviews, posttrial interviews with defendants, negotiations between high-school students, telephone conversations between social-welfare officers and parents) and examines the social significance of laughter in dialogue. As an example, two assumptions put forward by Jefferson (1979Jefferson ( , 1984 are questioned-namely, that laughter is regularly triggered by something funny and that laughter always has a strong inviting character. The analyses show that, in dialogue, we often laugh alone and not always at things considered particularly funny. Mutual laughter is a sign of rapport and consensus. This is exemplified by the fact that in the job interviews resulting in a job offer there was more mutual laughter than in those involving applicants who were unsuccessful. Unilateral laughter is used to modify verbal expressions or attitudes and can help us in handling ambiguities and tension.

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“…Other similar studies of laughter have a high intercoder correlation for laughter (e.g. 0.99 for Fink & Walker 1977).…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 94%

Laughter and Dialogue: The Social Significance of Laughter in Institutional Discourse

Adelswärd

1989

Nordic Journal of Linguistic

125

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“…Studies using observational methods (e.g., Campbell et al, 2008) have also concluded that aggressive humor has negative relational consequences, which suggests that this limitation did not result in inconsistent findings. Furthermore, the processes identified here may be part of a larger causal sequence involving humor and embarrassment (Fink & Walker, 1977). Future work should employ observational methods to explore how one partner responds to another's aggressive joking in public.…”

Section: Limitations and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is it something I said? Sense of humor and partner embarrassment

Hall

2010

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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This manuscript explores one romantic partner's humor use and the resulting embarrassment felt by the other partner using coorientation theory. Self-report and partner perception data were gathered from 106 couples (N ¼ 212) in romantic relationships, and two coorientation variables were calculated. Actor-Partner Independence Models estimated the relationships between four humor styles and partner embarrassment. Aggressive humor was related to partner embarrassment and self-defeating humor with feeling embarrassed by one's partner. For women, perceived similarity in aggressive and self-defeating humor mitigated embarrassment, and greater understanding of men's self-defeating humor was related to embarrassment. In Study 2, a 2 Â 2 experiment (N ¼ 222) tested whether self-defeating humor predicts embarrassment or whether embarrassment predicts self-defeating humor use, with results supporting the former.

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“…Humor allows an embarrassing actor to cope with embarrassment by implicitly acknowledging blameworthiness, releasing situational tension, and overcoming a lapse in social competence with a display of social competence (Edelmann, 1985;Fink & Walker, 1977). Both laughter and jokework are considered helpful forms of humor.…”

Section: Remedial Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 97%