In Chapter 3 of “Good Humor, Bad Taste”, Mouton de Gruyter found in the results of his survey that joke-telling is closely connected with gender and education levels.
The author first found that less women could tell jokes than men. Surprisingly, the author knew that people often saw joke telling as “something primarily done by men”(Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 43), and women should be careful when they are trying to tell a joke. According to the author, besides the risk of women to damage their “reputations” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 44), many women simply can not tell jokes. The author concluded that in the world of joke-telling, men play the role of telling while women are there to listen.
After that, the author continued to talk about the connection between joke-telling and education levels. The author found that the more people are educated, the less they like telling jokes. Joke-telling is mainly practiced in middle class and below, and high-educated people usually describe jokes as “crude” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 46), “vulgar” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 46), “a forced way of getting laugh”(Rob de Laat, Page 42). What’s more, the author thought that it was because that high-educated people were trying to distinguish themselves with lower classes.
Finally the author concluded that “telling jokes is an activity principally reserved for men with a low level of education” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 47). Importantly, the author also found that women and college educated persons didn’t like it because they didn’t like the communication style of joke telling, instead of jokes themselves. They viewed joke telling as “a form of talk that is tiring, impersonal, predictable, forced or loud” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 56).
3 comments:
It is curious that joke-telling is connected with gender and educational levels, and “telling jokes is an activity principally reserved for men with a low level of education” (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006, Page 47) Only men with a low level of education have the privilege to make jokes, which can give them the power to live. On the other hand they show to women the superiority by letting women to listen to their jokes.
People are very difficult to understand. It's interesting.
I found it very interesting that joke-telling is connected with gender and educational levels and it also has a connection with educational levels. I thought a sense of humor was one of the needed characteristics for high-educated people. Maybe not.
Ohhh.....interesting!!!!
I just think that Joke can also divided into different level. Some jokes can be made more educated and some can be made less educated. It depends on who do you want to tell them a joke. We can tell different kinds of joke to different kinds of people, can't we?
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