On joking relationships

Radcliffe‐Brown, A. R.

doi:10.2307/1156093

Cited by 413 publications

(170 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

151

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Humour can be understood as important in maintaining informal relations by downplaying status differences and indicating a sense of personal closeness (Cooper, 2008;Radcliffe-Brown, 1940). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the employment context, humour and forms of humorous play have been discussed as autotelic (Sørensen and Spoelstra, 2012), often engaged in for its own sake and without specific purpose. It can, however, not only help to alleviate boredom (Korczynski, 2011;Roy, 1960) but also remove overt hostility from relationships, providing a 'safety valve' (Coser, 1959;Radcliffe-Brown, 1940) that enables employees to express discontent whilst reducing pressure to address the underlying causes of their grievance. This is possible because communicating through humour allows room for ambiguity and multiplicity of meaning (Mulkay, 1988), offering a means of tentative interaction and negotiation in relation to sensitive topics (Grugulis, 2002;Hatch and Ehrlich, 1993;Kahn, 1989) or where parties may be of unequal power (Kets De Vries, 1990;Martin, 2004;Terrion and Ashforth, 2002;Ullian, 1976).…”

Section: Humour and Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight‐talking

Mallett

Wapshott

2012

British J of Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. This paper presents in-depth qualitative research on three small professional service firms whose owner-managers sought to introduce greater degrees of formality in their firms' working practices and employment relationships. We focus on humour as an ambiguous medium of informality, yet viewed by owner-managers as a tool at their disposal. However, while early studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises support such a functionalist view, our findings indicate its significant limitations. We argue that humour obscures but does not resolve disjunctive interests and it remains stubbornly ambiguous and resistant to attempts to functionalize it. Our findings contribute to studies of humour in small and medium-sized enterprises by challenging its utility as a means of managerial control or employee resistance. They also contribute to studies of employment relationships by exploring humour's potentially disruptive influence within the formalityinformality span, especially as small and medium-sized enterprises seek greater degrees of formalization with implications for how those relationships are conducted and (re)negotiated on an ongoing basis.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Humour and Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight‐talking

Mallett

Wapshott

2012

British J of Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Ethologists find that friendly physical aggression, such as rough-and-tumble play or tickling, produces laughter in nonhuman animals, and the so-called victim does more of the laughing (3). Anthropologists document how people across cultures participate in joking relationships by teasing and insulting one another using "a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism" (4). Even simple verbal statements are more humorous when they are illogical (e.g., "a pig with impeccable table manners") or aggressive (e.g., "a donkey that kicks below the belt") than when logical and nonaggressive (e.g., "a cow that eats grass") (5).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What makes things humorous

Warren

McGraw

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…The most important result of studying according to Radcliffe-Brown is; Mockery, mocking, etc. are a combination of friendship and enmity [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humor and Peace in Kars

Durukan¹

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This anthropological research performed with different groups living in Kars, Turkey which are known as Yerli, Azeri, Kurds, Terekeme, Molokan and Alevi. Turkey is a very sensitive region between the Middle East and Europe. The presence of ethnic groups not only provides cultural wealth but also causes tension from time to time. Kars is a city with a lot of ethnic diversity, but nevertheless it is a city where tensions are least experienced. In Kars, unlike other places, they seem to live in peace. Therefore this city was chosen for the study. The goal was to understand this silence. The research method used for the study was in-depth interview and in-depth interviews were done with 13 people between the ages of 50-80 from each group. However, sometimes during negotiations someone else like a friend or a relative became a better source. At the end of the study, it was observed that humor was a means to emphasize the differences of different groups. It was noticed that the mutual dislike and/or superior properties of the groups were highlighted through jokes and funny stories. Funny stories had been told during dinners at the houses, at the large dining tables, even at formal dining tables of local and administrative managers. Food is a part of the culture, and important in developing social bonds. It is thought that, the parser effects of humor are destroyed by taking the unifying power of food. It is thought that, the power of food soften the situation without creating conflict.

show abstract

On joking relationships

Cited by 413 publications

References 1 publication

Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight‐talking

Informality and Employment Relationships in Small Firms: Humour, Ambiguity and Straight‐talking

What makes things humorous

Humor and Peace in Kars

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About