In Chapter 1 of “Good Humor, Bad Taste”, Mouton de Gruyter explains why he chooses jokes as his research topic and how tastes of humor are related to social backgrounds.
The author’s research of humor and taste is focused on jokes and people’s reactions to them. As he mentioned, it is based on the following reasons. The primarily reason is, as he said, that “jokes are meant to make people laugh and no more” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 3), and they “evoke emphatic reactions” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 4). Second, the author contends that jokes have standard patterns because they are “orally transmitted” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 5). The author then compares jokes with other forms of humor, and finds that only jokes are told every day by ordinary people and joke-telling is “a preeminently social phenomenon” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 6). Finally, the author makes his decision of jokes because they are “controversial genres that evoke explicit reactions and thus make visible social distinctions” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 6).
From the author’s point of view, humor is a social phenomenon, in other words, “a form of communication that is embedded in social relationships” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 7). According to the author, there are three aspects that are of special importance. First, it is “by definition an ambivalent form of communication” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 10). Second, different tastes of humor are largely related to societies and cultures. Third, it is often “touches upon social and moral boundaries” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 10).
Then the author goes on to talk about cultures and tastes of humor. As he quoted, “the social formation and determination of taste is one of the classical themes in sociology” (e.g. Bourdieu [1979]1984; Gans[1974]1999; Veblen[1899]2001), and “they can be used to demarcate social boundaries” (Lamont and Fournier 1992). What’s more, he said that “taste is an integral part of what Bourdieu calls the habitus: embodied culture” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 14). In this book, he tried to classify the humor styles, that is the differences in “humorous habitus” (Good Humor, Bad Taste, 2006, Page 15).
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4 comments:
Oh, I have an experience about this!It was the last session, my Italian friend was here,and she was level 6 and I was 5a. One day, She said to me your English is sucks!and other bad things to me.I was totally dipressed, and I argued with her.After that,I told this story to my Korean friend and she said that if she were me, she feels the same as me. Next, I told my host father and he said it might be joke.My host father is Italian.so.... this is the cultural difference isn't it?
Sometimes a joke is understood differently. Is humor in Western culture the same as humor in Eastern culture? Does culture make any difference in jokes? I hope I can learn the relationship between humor and culture/society.
There are big words like humor, society, culture in your summary. I feel like you have just entered the big castle. You have to choose which floor to go, which room to enter, and from which window you see outside. I'm curious about it.
I think it is all about culture. Like my brother when he first came here, he told me his teacher in high school made a lot of jokes and almost all students were laughing, except him and I totally understand that it is because of their different cultures. Sometimes people will make jokes in their own language which, if we just translate back to our own language, the jokes don't seem to be funny at all!
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