The Social Account of Humour

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Daniel Abrahams

AbstractPhilosophical accounts of humour standardly account for humour in terms of what happens within a person. On these internalist accounts, humour is to be understood in terms of cognition, perception, and sensation. These accounts, while valuable, are poorly situated to engage the social functions of humour. They have difficulty engaging why we value humour, why we use it define ourselves and our friendships, and why it may be essential to our self-esteem. In opposition to these internal accounts, I offer a social account of humour. This account approaches humour as a social practice. It foregrounds laughter and participation, and thereby gives an account of humour that helps to understand why we value humour, why we use it as we do, and why we use it to define our relationship to the world.

Author(s):  
Peggy J. Miller ◽  
Grace E. Cho

Chapter 12, “Commentary: Personalization,” discusses the process of personalization, based on the portraits presented in Chapters 8–11. Personalization is not just a matter of individual variation; it is a form of active engagement through which individuals endow imaginaries with personal meanings and refract the imaginary through their own experiences. The portraits illustrate how the social imaginary of childrearing and self-esteem entered into dialogue with the complex realities of people’s lives. Parents’ ability to implement their childrearing goals was constrained and enabled by their past experiences and by socioeconomic conditions. The individual children were developing different strategies of self-evaluation, different expectations about how affirming the world would be, and different self-defining interests, and their self-making varied, depending on the situation. Some children received diagnoses of low self-esteem as early as preschool.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-71
Author(s):  
Zh.K. Madalieva ◽  

The article discusses in detail the essence and meaning of ritual as a social action. The study of the nature of this phenomenon involves, first of all, the study of various approaches to the definition of the concept of "ritual" and related phenomena. Analyzing the existing definitions, the author comes to the conclusion that "ritual" is a certain set of actions that have symbolic meaning. The symbolism of the ritual is manifested in its connecting role with the world of the sacred, sacred. The article emphasizes that in the consciousness of a person in a traditional society, the sacred world is present in the real world through ritual. As an archaic form of culture, ritual was also a way of regulating and maintaining collective life. The ritual served as a means of integrating and maintaining the integrity of the human community, giving it stability. Therefore, the article focuses on the social functions of the ritual in both public and individual life.


Author(s):  
Carla Fabiana Streck ◽  
Thirzá Baptista Frison

Resumo: Para Ecléa Bosi, uma das funções sociais do velho é recordar, ou seja, reconstruir o passado a partir de um olhar do presente. Considerando que o ato de lembrar é fundamental na resignificação da própria vida e também do reconhecimento de si, buscamos investigar as lembranças de velhos sobre o mundo do trabalho na infância e quais as características atribuídas a esse universo. O trabalho em nossa sociedade, tem papel fundamental por ser tanto um fator de socialização, quanto de aceitação social. Lembrar o passado e, principalmente, um passado de trabalho, contribui para o aumento da integridade e da auto-estima, em especial, quando se tratam de idosos aposentados. Foram examinados os relatos de onze pessoas, maiores de 60 anos, aposentadas há cinco anos ou mais, entrevistadas para a pesquisa "Identidade e Aposentadoria". Entre os principais resultados, revelou-se diferenças entre os relatos daqueles que trabalharam na infância e daqueles que não tiveram essa experiência. Foram também constatadas as influências de fatores sócio-econômicos e culturais, envolvendo nível econômico, moradia em ambiente urbano ou rural e questões de gênero. As lembranças de trabalho trazem consigo não apenas uma possibilidade de dedução do conceito de trabalho para cada entrevistado, mas também fazem referência à forma corno a mundo do trabalho era constituído. Palavras-chave: Terceira idade. Lembranças. Trabalho. Abstract: For Ecléa Bosi, one of the social functions of the elder is to remember, or, rebuild the past from the present outlook. Taking into account that the act of remembering is basic in the re-significance of his/her own life, and also in the acknowledgement of him/herself, the memories the elder have of his/her childhood work world, and which characteristics are attributed to such universe, were investigated. Work, in our society, has a fundamental role not only as a socialization factor but for social acceptance as well. Remembering the past, and mainly the work, helps increase the integrity and self-esteem, especially in retired seniors. The reports of 11 individuals over 60 years of age, retired for five or more years, interviewed for the research "Identity and Retirement" were examined. Among the most important results, differences were pointed out between those who worked in his/her childhood and those who did not have such experience. Influences of social-cultural factors were also noted, involving economic standard, living in rural or urban environment, and gender. The memories of work bring along not only the possibility of inferring the concept of work for each individual interviewed, but also the reference to the form of how the work world used to be made up. Keywords: Third age. Memories. Work.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuobi Luo

The dissimilation of the social functions of commercial banks is a phenomenon that the function of commercial banks deviates from the economic development and the people's livelihood. Such phenomenon, which can be seen all over the world, impedes the socio-economic development and affects the well-being of the people to some degree. After investigating and analyzing the dissimilation of the social functions of Chinese commercial banks, it was found that their social functions play a significant role, and the booming development of these banks has made great contribution to the economic growth and improved people's livelihood in China. China should also have special experience in preventing and handling this dissimilation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronke Eunice Adesoye

Various studies exist on the social functions of humour and such studies have been carried out in diverse fields that range from the humanities to the sciences. In linguistics specifically, research shows that humour has been studied from the perspectives of syntax, pragmatics and semantics; moreover, there is a dearth of studies on the creation of humour through phonological processes. Therefore, this study aims to investigate humour and how it is achieved using phonological processes. The study engages mainly qualitative methods of analysis. Five comedy skits were purposively selected from Folarin Falana’s (Falz the Bahd Guy) eleven collections. These were chosen on the basis of their internet popularity among Nigerians; this popularity was determined on the basis of the rates of downloading the skits. McGraw & Warren’s (2010) Benign Violation Theory was used to account for the phonological violations in the comedies. The various phonological processes that were violated include liaison, deletion, insertion, monophthongisation, coalescence and vowel strengthening. It is argued that the phonological distortions are deliberately made to achieve humour in these Nigerian comedies, especially when the high educational level of the artist is considered. Also, there anti-Anglicism and pro-Nigerianism in the data as the artist identifies himself with Nigeria(ns) and creates a niche for himself in the entertainment industry using the phonological peculiarities among Nigerians’ language use, especially the Yoruba tribe. He also creates different personalities to project different messages which are not only peculiar to Nigeria but to the world, using these personalities to portray people’s feelings and views of the world and how these influence their attitudes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariza Abdullah ◽  
Mohd Azidan Abdul Jabar ◽  
Nik Farhan Mustapha ◽  
Pabiyah Toklubok@Hajimaming

Women are the main driving force of society along side men. High personality of women will  bring into the world strong generation and community in facing challenges of life. If they are weak, the community also will become strengthless. Muslims, regardless being  majorities in Moslem countries or minorities in non Moslem countries should revive excellency as early generations of Islam that bring forth advanced world civilization for several centuries. The stories of the early generations had been written by many authors such as Mohammad Rashid Rida’s writing about the wives of the Prophet, as well as contained in history books known as “sirah”, autobiographies as well as other forms of writings, translations of thousands of titles in the subject but not studied analytically. Thus analyzing the social processes that apply at that time through the content of Prophetic hadith and discourse analysis texts as proposed by social language analysts, prevail to expose the excellency and sustainability of  women implied in the events as had been narrated by themselves and others. Methodology of this study is based on analysis of the content of hadith and Fairclough (2003, 1992, 1989)’s concept of discourse analysis through the dimension of intertextuality. Several prophetic Hadith are selected, analyzed and being related to social practice to formulate the principles that should serve as a model to modern  women especially by Moslim women. This is because the development of human capital especially female identity is the backbone of the nation’s development.


Author(s):  
David Russell

The social practice of tact was an invention of the nineteenth century, a period when Britain was witnessing unprecedented urbanization, industrialization, and population growth. In an era when more and more people lived more closely than ever before with people they knew less and less about, tact was a new mode of feeling one's way with others in complex modern conditions. This book traces how the essay genre came to exemplify this sensuous new ethic and aesthetic. It argues that the essay form provided the resources for the performance of tact in this period and analyzes its techniques in the writings of Charles Lamb, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Walter Pater. The book shows how their essays offer grounds for a claim about the relationship among art, education, and human freedom—an “aesthetic liberalism”—not encompassed by traditional political philosophy or in literary criticism. For these writers, tact is not about codes of politeness but about making an art of ordinary encounters with people and objects and evoking the fullest potential in each new encounter. The book demonstrates how their essays serve as a model for a critical handling of the world that is open to surprises, and from which egalitarian demands for new relationships are made. Offering fresh approaches to thinking about criticism, sociability, politics, and art, the book concludes by following a legacy of essayistic tact to the practice of British psychoanalysts like D. W. Winnicott and Marion Milner.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Rosália Dutra

Abstract This paper explores the ways in which speakers exchange information about themselves, and the world around them, in order to create an optimal social space in which interaction and engagement may be successfully accomplished. Success, in turn, the paper argues, depends on speakers making communicative gestures that involve the expression of certain aspects of their inner world: their preferences, attitudes, interests, beliefs, characterizations, points of view, values, assessments, likes, dislikes, and related notions that are rooted in how they feel about the world. Drawing from multi-party conversational data, the paper argues that resonance is one of the most productive outlets for the construction of ordinary evaluative/emotive stances. In fact, it is through the social practice of resonance itself that the amorphous and subtle nature of affect and emotions takes shape. The utterances that are selected for resonance, the subsequent resonant patterns, and the frequency in which the pattern is reproduced in order to secure the intended meaning are also briefly addressed in the paper.


Author(s):  
Barry C. Smith

Language is mostly used in a social setting. We use it to communicate with others. We depend on others when learning language, and we constantly borrow one another’s uses of expression. Language helps us perform various social functions, and many of its uses have become institutionalized. But none of these reflections settle the question of whether language is an essentially social phenomenon. To address this we must consider the nature of language itself, and then ask which social elements, if any, make an essential contribution to its nature. While many would accept that language is an activity that must take place in a social setting, others have gone further by arguing that language is a social practice. This view commits one to the claim that the meanings of an individual’s words are the meanings they have in the common language. The former view need not accept so strong a claim: meaning depends on social interaction because it is a matter of what one can communicate to others but this does not require the existence of communal languages. A competing conception which rejects the social character of language in either of these versions is the thesis that language is mentally represented in the mind of an individual.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-354
Author(s):  
Edythe Weeks

This essay uses a poststructural/critical race analysis, and provides a specific example of how the social practice of labeling serves to create major ideological effects, which produce and reproduce unequal race-based power relations. Certain U.S. citizens are ascribed/branded with the seemingly politically correct label, “African-American”. Many believe that the shift from “Black” to “African-American” in 1988 was the result of Blacks exercising political power and achieving a hard-won right to change their identity. Also many view the new label as the common sense preferred alternative to “Black”. This article deconstructs the term “African-American” and views it within the context of the macro and micro interactive forces of politics, economics, sociology, history and socio-cultural phenomena. Instead of the intended purpose of fostering a sense of self-esteem, the label has also served to reinforce the socially constructed binary dualisms characterizing “Blacks” as being fundamentally different from “Whites”. Moreover, the notion of Black pride, self-esteem and heritage are concepts with the power to shift culpability and blame onto the victims of a race-based system. Power appeared to have been exercised by Black/African-Americans. However, the shift to African-American was not the result of autonomous thinking. It was a “reflex without reflection” (Billig 1991:8). It “echoed” dominating ideological structures of power. The “new” label unwittingly serves to further perpetuate racist ideology inherited from a foundational institution of slavery. America can enjoy the image of having a culture of freedom, equality and egalitarianism, while maintaining justifiable race-based political, social and economic inequality gaps.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document