Taking laughter seriously

The Platonic Meta-Imports in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Scholarship in the study of humor, and in particular the study of religion and humor, has gained increased attention in recent years. Dave Feltmate, who has specialized in developing this area of study from a sociological perspective, has kindly compiled a working bibliography to help guide students and researchers who wish to enter this area of study. The bibliography offered below is certainly not exhaustive and readers are encouraged to use this as a beginning point. Our hope in offering this bibliography is to encourage the further development of the study of religion and humor. —The Editors

Religion and Humor: A Bibliography

This study is concerned with school-children’s communication, behavioural, and emotional development, in which the first concern has been to focus on their laughter. Although commonly thought of as an integral component of childhood, children’s laughter seldom receives the attention it deserves. The significance of laughter’s correlation with children’s social connectivity remains largely undiscovered. Little account has been taken of laughter’s exclusive orientation, and the strain this may create in schools with an avowedly inclusive ethos. 

Teachers and pupils who agreed to take part in this study were recruited from two primary schools. Together, they formed the substantive part of a pair of ethnographic case-studies. Data obtained from a series of playground/classroom observations and informal interviews were framed around Robert Putnam’s theory of social capital, and its own inclusive-exclusive (bridging and bonding) dynamic. 

Findings indicate that our diminishing stocks of social capital may be directly correlated with our decline in laughter production. They also confirm the view that it is unhelpful to consider inclusive and exclusive entities in isolation. Exclusive laughter appears to be a fundamental condition of inclusive schooling, with pupils and their teachers apparently natural exponents of a form of behaviour that may be described as inclusive-exclusive.

The laughter of inclusion

The literature on humour in teaching frequently defaults to a series of maxims about how it can be used most appropriately: ‘Never tease students', ‘Don't joke about sensitive issues', ‘Never use laughter for disciplinary purposes'. This paper outlines recent research into the boundaries of humour-use within teacher education, which itself forms one part of a large scale, broadly-based study into the use of humour within tertiary teaching. This particular part of the research involves semi-structured, in-depth interviews with university academics. Following the ‘benign violations' theory of humour - wherein, to be funny, a situation/statement must be some kind of a social violation, that violation must be regarded as relatively benign, and the two ideas must be held simultaneously - this paper suggests that the willingness of academics to use particular types of humour in their teaching revolves around the complexities of determining the margins of ‘the benign'. These margins are shaped in part by pedagogic limitations, but also by professional delimitations. In terms of limitations, the boundaries of humour are set by the academic environment of the university, by the characteristics of different cohorts of students, and by what those students are prepare to laugh at. In terms of delimitations, most academics are prepared to tease their student, and many are prepared to use laughter as a form of discipline, however their own humour orientation, academic seniority, and employment security play a large role in determining what kinds of humour will be used, and where boundaries will be set. The central conclusion here is that formal maxims of humour provide little more than vague strategic guidelines, largely failing to account for the complexity of teaching relationships, for the differences between student cohorts, and for the talents and standing of particular teachers.

Lecturing and the limits of laughter

Resume Introduction L’humour est une forme d’esprit railleuse « qui s’attache a souligner le caractere comique, ridicule, absurde ou insolite de certains aspects de la realite ». Plusieurs etudes ont rapporte un deficit dans l’aptitude a comprendre l’humour chez les patients atteints de schizophrenie qui serait en rapport avec un deficit dans la theorie d’esprit (Delay et al., 1954 ; Sarfati et Hardy-Bayle, 1999). Objectifs L’objectif principal de notre etude etait d’evaluer la capacite de comprehension et d’appreciation de l’humour de patients schizophrenes, comparee a celle des sujets volontaires sains. Les objectifs secondaires etaient etudier les liens entre la symptomatologie psychotique et la capacite a apprecier et a comprendre l’humour. Methodologie Une etude pilote compare les sujets schizophrenes a une population temoin appariee en sexe et en âge. Vingt et un patients (16 H et 5 F) âges de 35,95 (± 11) ans presentant une schizophrenie paranoide (selon le DSM-IV), stabilises depuis plus de trois mois, ont ete compares a 21 sujets sains, apparies par le sexe (15 H/6 F), l’âge (35,24 ± 9,17) et le niveau socioculturel (p > 0,05). Les patients ont ete evalues par les echelles Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS, Kays et al., 1987), Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS, Boyer et al., 1984) ; fNART (deficience intellectuelle, Nelson, 1982), TOM (capacite de prediction des intentions d’autrui, Sarfati et al., 1997). Les sujets sains ont ete evalues cliniquement par une MINI 500 (2005), deux echelles de depression hetero- et autoevaluation Hamilton Development of a Rating Scale for Primary Depressive Illness (HDRS) et Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), TOM. L’humour a ete evalue pour les deux populations a l’aide d’un support de 54 images inspire du test de Marjoram (2005) et un support de 6 videos, pour l’evaluation de la comprehension et de l’appreciation de l’humour. Resultats 1/L’analyse des donnees de la comprehension de l’humour par le support image montre que seule la comprehension des images Droles sans TOM est significativement inferieure pour les sujets schizophrenes, par rapport aux temoins sains (p = 0,015). Au sein d’un meme groupe, seul le groupe des patients comprenait moins bien les images Droles avec TOM (p = 0,021) et sans TOM (p = 0,05) que les images Neutres. Aucune difference n’est retrouvee pour la comprehension de l’humour chez les sujets sains entre les trois types d’images. 2/Les donnees sur l’appreciation de l’humour ne montraient aucune difference significative entre les deux groupes. 3/L’analyse par le support video ne montre aucune difference significative entre les deux groupes pour les trois categories de videos (p > 0,05). Conclusion Nos resultats mettent en evidence une deficience de la comprehension de l’humour chez les patients schizophrenes compares aux sujets sains uniquement avec le support image sans TOM. On ne retrouve aucune difference entre les deux populations avec le support video. Ces resultats soulignent l’importance du support et la necessite de plusieurs approches d’evaluation dans ce type d’etude.

Taking laughter seriously

Citations

The Platonic Meta-Imports in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Religion and Humor: A Bibliography

The laughter of inclusion

Lecturing and the limits of laughter

Évaluation de la compréhension et appréciation de l’humour chez les sujets schizophrènes comparés à une population témoin : étude pilote

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