HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

An ethnic joke is a remark aiming at humor relating to an ethnic, racial or cultural group, often referring to an
ethnic stereotype An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nationa ...
of the group in question for its punchline. Perceptions of ethnic jokes are ambivalent. Christie Davies gives examples that, while many find them
racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race over another. It may also mean prejudice, d ...
and offensive, for some people jokes poking fun at one's own ethnicity may be considered acceptable. He points out that ethnic joke are often funny for some exactly for the same reason they sound racist for others; it happens when they play on negative ethnic stereotypes. Davies maintains that ethnic jokes reinforce ethnic stereotypes and sometimes lead to calls for violence. The perceived damage to the ethnic group can be of great concern as when the ethnic Polish jokes became so common in the 1970s the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached the U.S. State Department to complain.


Academic theories of ethnic humor

The predominant and most widely known theory of ethnic humor attempts to discover social regularities in the anecdote traditions of different countries by contextually describing jokes. Christie Davies, author of this theory, has posed the main arguments in his article ''Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries'', published in 1982. His approach is based on Victor Raskin's (1985) ''Semantic Script Theory of Humor'', or to be more precise, on the arguments connected with ethnic humor on binary oppositions. While Raskin merely describes the main binary oppositions providing examples (mostly from the
Jewish humor The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient Middle East, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal and often anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States ove ...
), Davies explores the situations where the scripts apply; for example, he has discovered that the most common opposition, stupid/clever, is applied under particular circumstances in the social reality of two ethnic groups concerned. Davies in his monograph published in 1990 has surmised that "Jokes in every country (or reasonably homogeneous cultural and linguistic domain) have certain targets for stupidity jokespeople who dwell on the edge of that nation or domain and who are perceived as culturally ambiguous by the dominant people of the center. In addition, they will likely be rustic people or immigrants in search of unskilled and low-prestige manual work. They are to a great extent similar to the joke-tellers themselves, share the same cultural background or even speak a similar or identical language." According to Davies, ethnic jokes are centered on the three main themes of stupidity, canniness and sexual behavior. Davies is featured in the 2010 documentary film, ''Polack'', exploring the source of the Polish joke. L Perry Curtis, in examining ethnic humour aimed at the Irish in Victorian England, describes the descent that the ethnic joke and the accompanying stereotype can undergo as the target that they are aimed at descends into depictions of violent behaviour: "My curiosity of ' Paddy's' transformation in comic art from a rather primitive, rustic, or simple-minded peasant to a degenerate man... bent on murder or outrage." According to Samuel Schmidt, the ethnic jokes can also be a form of social resistance, and so they are addressed by the joke-tellers against those whom they see as the aggressors, like the multiple jokes published in Mexico about the Americans (also called gringos there).


See also

*
Allport's Scale Allport's Scale is a measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society. It is also referred to as Allport's Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination or Allport's Scale of Prejudice. It was devised by psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954. The sca ...
* An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman *
Dialect comedy The term "Dialect comedy" was coined by David Marc in his essay, ''Origins of the genre''. Dialect comedies are a genre of radio (and later television) sitcoms that were popular between the 1920s and the 1950s. They relied on the exaggerated and hi ...
*
Ethnic stereotype An ethnic stereotype, racial stereotype or cultural stereotype involves part of a system of beliefs about typical characteristics of members of a given ethnic group, their status, societal and cultural norms. A national stereotype, or nationa ...
*
Stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...


Footnotes


References

* * * * * *


External links


Intergroup Humor in Bosnia
*

' {{Racism topics Ethnic jokes Ethnic humour