The seriousness of ethnic jokes: Ethnic humor and social change in the Netherlands, 1995–2012

Abstract

How serious are ethnic jokes? This article investigates this question by looking at the relation between ethnic jokes and ethnic relations in the Netherlands. It analyzes two corpora covering the range of ethnic jokes collected using an (almost) identical survey among high school students in 1995 (

Globalisation and ethnic jokes: A new look on an old tradition in Belarus and Estonia

“…Online humour tends to be visual and relies on language play. Other points that Kuipers and van der Ent (2016), as well as Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman (2015) have suggested, are reinforced, for example that a meta-level approach to producing humour is often used. Memes and jokes play with the stereotypes, targeting implicitly both the targets mentioned in the text or image as well as the people who believe such stereotypes are true.…”

“…Kuipers and van der Ent (2016) have found that among present-day ethnic jokes, there are numerous universal jokes that can be applied to various target groups over time. While the universal jokes are not relying on specific or real features of the group members, the picture they conjure of these groups is lopsided and doesn't always coincide with the social reality; instead it points at certain relationship between the joke-teller and the target group.…”

Virgins, Terrorists, and Ten Children: Immigrants' Humorous Play with Ethnic Stereotypes in Bonding with Danes in the Workplace

“…Ethnic humor—a type of humor based on stereotypes in which the perceived behavior, customs, personality, or other traits of a group or its members are made fun of—is a very old phenomenon, widespread around the world (Apte ; Davies ; Lowe ). It has always been a touchy subject (Rappoport :xi) and is by far the most contested form of humor in contemporary Western societies (Kuipers and van der Ent :605) and the subject of both societal and scholarly debate.…”

“…Ethnic humor can also manifest itself in different ways depending on whether it is standardized humor prepared in advance and performed by a “joke‐teller,” or spontaneous humor performed by a wit as it arises situationally on the spot out of real‐life experiences and the imagination of the narrator, originating in ongoing interpersonal processes (Morreall :83–84; Mulkay :57). The vast majority of studies and discussions on ethnic humor focus on standardized humor as it appears in the form of (for example) ethnic jokes (Apte ; Billig ; Davies ), on television (Husband ), on the Internet (Billig ; Boxman‐Shabtai and Shifman ; Weaver ), or in satirical drawings (Boe and Hervik ; Kuipers ; Kuipers and van der Ent ; Lewis et al ). However, scholars have long called for studies able more specifically to elucidate manifestations of spontaneous ethnic humor in social interaction (Davies :3–4).…”

Narrativizing (and laughing) spatial identities together in Meänkieli-speaking minorities

“…Likewise, humor is a practical "tool" which helps people to cope with and challenge subordinating power-relations and social inequality. A great deal of the research focusing on the social and political nature of humor has concerned the humor directed at ethnic and national minorities, with minority groups typically being approached as targets of laughter (Gillota, 2013;Anderson, 2015;Weaver, 2015;Kuipers and van der Ent, 2016). However, less attention has been paid to how minorities use and experience humor in their everyday lives and environments.…”