Robin Lakoff Revisited – Male and Female Humor in Academic Settings

Robin Lakoff Revisited – Male and Female Humor in Academic Settings

Sivric, Marijana

Females have traditionally been characterized as unable to produce, or even appreciate, humor. Although there were numerous studies on female humor within different scientific disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc., Robin Lakoff’s paper was among most significant ones:“…women can't tell jokes - they are bound to ruin the punchline, they mix up the order of things and so on. Moreover, they don't 'get' jokes. In short, women have no sense of humor.” (Lakoff, 1975:56) In the early gender and humor studies, the problem was that researchers did not rely on spontaneous joking, but on controlled public sphere, which was in the domain of males. With general advancement in language and gender research, the attitudes on gender humor have changed. Humor has been related to women’s conversational styles (supportive and collaborative) as opposed to male conversational styles (referring to status and competition). Some newer studies have tried to look at this topic from a more feminist perspective – the main task in male life is to impress the opposite sex, they accept women as the audience, but not as rivals. Within our Language and Gender course, we have tried to investigate the issue of gender humor in the academic setting. Some of the questions to be answered are gender differences in initiating and responding to humorous situations as well as cross-cultural dimension of humor.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05

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