The sense in humour : a personal exploration of humour in the teaching of adults : some questions and tentative answers : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education in Adult Education at Massey University

This thesis is a personal exploration of the potential applications of humour in the teaching of adults. I have provided some questions and tentative answers about the use of humour in the facilitation of adult learning. Having recognised the value of humour in my own teaching practice, I have examined the ways in which humour, when applied appropriately, can promote creative thinking by enhancing the processes of knowing, perceiving and discovering. Adult learning has been said to be a means of gaining knowledge and skills, a way to satisfy learner needs and a process of critical self-reflection that may lead to transformation. Adult education can involve challenging periods of transformation and students may require assistance to overcome inhibitions, behaviours and beliefs about themselves their culture and learning. In this thesis I have sought to explore how humour, manifesting itself in verbal, written and visual formats, may be a valuable pedagogical tool to address such issues. One of the purposes of this thesis is to contribute to knowledge in teaching practice by demonstrating that the systematic and informed introduction of humour into individual teaching strategics may provide a more people-centred climate which addresses individual and group learning needs from the perspective of teacher and student

Editorial for special issue on education and humour: Education and humour as tools for social awareness and critical consciousness in contemporary classrooms

It is not new to consider the instructive power of humour. Both Plato and Aristotle, through their superiority theories, saw the benefit of wit as a social corrective, although they remained suspicious of the uneducated laughter of the masses (Plato in Morreall 1987; Aristotle in Morreall 1987). This approach has informed traditions of satire and resistance humour in a myriad of contexts. Stott summarises the raison d'être of satire through its aim “to denounce folly and vice and urge ethical and political reform through the subjection of ideas to humorous analysis” (Stott 2005: 109). The political potential of humour is easily recognised as a rhetorical and communicative device, yet it seems odd that little stock has been placed academically or culturally in the idea of humour as an educative tool in other social and cultural contexts and, more specifically, in the classroom

Humour and incongruity

Article postprint deposited with the permission of the Philosophy Documentation CenterThe first in a series of articles on the philosophy of humour and laughter looks at attempts made to explain humour in terms of incongruity.Peer reviewe

Humour and superiority

Postprint deposited with permission of the Philosophy Documentation Center.This is the second in a series of articles on the philosophy of humour and laughter. This article looks at the attempts which are made to explain humour in terms of superiority.Peer reviewe

Perception, cognitive development and humour in the child

Like beauty, humour is in the eye of the beholder, having no objective existence, being purely a product of the act of perception) In other words, humour results not from the concrete object which impinges physically upon the organism, but from the complex process which organizes and places the sensory-data within a frame of reference, thus bestowing meaning on it. A "humour stimulus" (e.g. a "joke") - like any other stimulus - is intrinsically meaningless, and only acquires meaning after the perceptual process has successfully managed to decipher a pattern in the stimulus which can be matched with pre-existing schemata in the mind.peer-reviewe

Humour and release

Article postprint deposited with the permission of the Philosophy Documentation Center.The third article in this series looks at Freud's attempt to explain humour and laughter in terms of the release of 'psychic energy'.Peer reviewe

Laughing at Cancer Online: a corpus-based investigation of irreverent humour as coping

In the context of illnesses like cancer, humour and joking, especially gallows humour “that treats serious, frightening, or painful subject matter in a light or satirical way” (Watson 2011: 38), can still be socially unacceptable. Yet people with cancer and their carers amongst themselves, can sometimes find much needed comfort and relief in breaking social taboos and making light of their often life-threatening situations. Such naturally occurring interactions, however, can be difficult to capture in the physical world. This paper therefore explores the role of irreverent humour used by patients and carers in the digital world, on a UK-based online forum dedicated to cancer. Specifically, the focus is on a thread called “For those with a warped sense of humour WARNING- no punches pulled here”, consisting of half a million words, over 2500 posts, contributed by 68 individuals. A statistical comparison of this thread with other threads on the same forum using Wmatrix (Rayson 2009) reveals that the key humorous utterances make fun of cancer and its consequences, such as embarrassing bodily functions and paraphernalia required as part of treatment: If baggy had farted lots then HB would have shot across the pool... jet propulsion! Focusing on such examples identified through combined corpus and qualitative methods, I discuss potential functions of this kind of humour in the cancer context, such as community building, support and empowerment in a situation where people otherwise feel powerless. I also reflect on the affordances of digital environments, both as facilitating such risqué interactions and in enabling researchers to capture them

Prescribing humour in healthcare : part 2

Title on article is Prescribing humour in healthcare - part IPart 1 of this article can be found in this link : https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/12758Part 2 of the article. With regards to the effects of humour and laughter on immunity, research is not so conclusive. while some studies have reported that IgA, T-cells and Natural Killer Cells increase with laughter, methodical problems question these conclusionpeer-reviewe

Men's Words in Women's Mouths: Why Misogynous Stereotypes are Humorous in the Old French Fabliaux

While many scholars have examined the subject of misogyny in Old French fabliaux in a number of contexts, no consensus has yet been reached on how the fabliaux can be considered humorous in the light of the stereotypes found therein. By conducting a close contextualised study of three fabliaux, this paper asserts that the humour of the fabliaux is created out of misogynous stereotypes by investing female characters with the ability to appropriate and subvert masculinist rhetoric and discourse styles. This subversive portrayal of women enjoys a circular relationship with humour; the creation of a clearly defined 'joke-world' within the fabliaux licenses socially outrageous portrayals of female protagonists, which in turn create humour through their incongruity with the realities faced by medieval women of all social classes