HUMOR: AN INTERACTIONIST APPROACH

A considerable body of empirical and theoretical work has recently been devoted to the subject of humor, In part this increased emphasis may be because of the increased importance of humor and other emotions (see Hochschild, 1983) as products. Notwithstanding the apparent importance of humor as a product in the contemporary economy, the theoretical understanding of humor seems inchoate and underdeveloped. In order to understand humor, we need to move beyond aspects of performance and content and on to the examination of the interactionist process of making humor. We asked a group of judges to evaluate a sample of descriptions of humorous events, and then analyzed the differences between the two extereme groups. We found that the sources of humor are the same as the sources of embarrassment and boredom (loss of identity, poise and confidence), and that context is the most important discriminator between "funny" and "not funny." Because humor is created within the process of interaction, it necessarily is unstable and evanescent. However, just because hymor is a situated process which relies upon the definitions and interpretations of the participants does not consign the phenomenon into the realm of "ineffable, unknown."