Situational Humor

Across the variety of age groups that were interviewed in order to gather data, there were a few similarities that arose. The first similarity was the use of situational humor by almost all of the informants. This consisted of poking fun at everyday life, telling stories that were found humorous, or mentioning things that were may have been out of character and were found to be funny. The use of situational humor is believed to function like other types of humor in that it is conversation filler, it is more often than not spoken when there is a lull in a party or family gathering. This type of humor, although often off the cuff, does not have an intention to offend anyone but rather, as Subject M1 mentioned, it is used to “lighten things up …show more content…
An interesting function of humor presented by only one subject was to the use of humor to reflect on other things occurring in someone’s life, whether they knew they did it or not. As subject M1 said, “humor can mirror the larger issues that are taking place in a family, a school, a community and/or society.” This could imply that a person who uses humor as a way of making a point or putting someone down could have influential or upsetting things going on in their life and they use humor as an escape. Similarly, humor can function as a dictator for whether or not people are or will be getting along with each other. Meaning that if someone uses an off-color joke about a specific minority, some people might assume that the person would not get along with a person of that same minority. Similarly, Subject Y1 brought up the idea that the use of humor around another person can imply a certain level of comfort and mutual respect for that person. This shows that they believe they will not be criticized or judged for the humor that they enjoy. One of the most prominent functions of humor that many subjects agreed on was to put others down. The different topics that were used for this include religious, racial, and sexual humor as well as jokes about disabilities. The use of this humor functions in a way to devalue the life of the subject of the joke, putting their life …show more content…
Although many informants agreed that the United States has always been a society that has been prejudice or insulting to others. As subject M2 said, “human nature, to a degree, is to make fun of what they don’t understand.” This shows the presence of offensive humor could be seen to be omnipresent in this country since it was formed, whether it was the colonists making fun of the British, or visa verse. However, there are certain aspects of humor that have caused the respect for others to decrease over the recent years. As multiple informants suggested, the intensity of topics of humor, such racial, sexual, and religious, has been seen to increase because of the presence of the internet and social media. People seem to lack the amount of face to face contact that they did before the rise of smart technology, this leads to people not having to be in the physical presence of others to tell an offensive joke, therefore they will not face the repercussions that go along with insulting someone. Similarly, the large presence of these types of humor in society or in sources that younger individuals have access to has created the acceptance for children to repeat whatever they hear. A child might hear a joke about religion told by an older individual and deem it acceptable to restate