First paragraph: Despite what some people might think, academics are not all humourless boffins out of touch with the real world. They can also be funny, and some are turning to humour to help get their messages across.https://theconversation.com/an-education-in-irony-why-academics-need-to-be-funny-5526

Batlle, Ioannis

Watson, Cate

English

First paragraph: Despite what some people might think, academics are not all humourless boffins out of touch with the real world. They can also be funny, and some are turning to humour to help get their messages across

Stirling Online Research Repository (RIOXX)

30/05/2019 An education in irony: why academics need to be funnyhttps://theconversation.com/an-education-in-irony-why-academics-need-to-be-funny-55261 1/4AuthorsCate WatsonProfessor in Professional Education andLeadership, School of Social Sciences,University of Stirling., University of StirlingIoannis Costas BatllePhD Researcher in Education, University ofBath  LanguagesFrançaisEnglishAcademic rigour, journalistic flairAn education in irony: why academics need to be funnyApril 4, 2016 10.37am BSTDespite what some people might think, academics are not all humourless boffins out of touch with thereal world. They can also be funny, and some are turning to humour to help get their messages across.Last November, the Times Higher Education reported that zooarchaeologists from the University ofNottingham had hired a stand-up comedian to disseminate the findings of their research on “human-We give a voice to experts. Donate now to help us spreadfacts, not fiction.Donate now Education should be a laughing matter. Ollyy/www.shutterstock.com30/05/2019 An education in irony: why academics need to be funnyhttps://theconversation.com/an-education-in-irony-why-academics-need-to-be-funny-55261 2/4chicken interactions” to the public. While the report took the opportunity to poke a bit of fun at this,the purpose was to make the entirely serious point that human-chicken interactions are no joke.Using comedy to create awareness of research is less ridiculous than it might at first appear. Publicengagement is the new black in academia, with pressure growing on academics around the world to show the “impact” of their research. A growing number of academics are now starting to realise thepotential of comedy to deliver hard-hitting social insights.00:0013:26CC BY-NDListen Extract from The Anthill 16 podcast: Humour Me, on humour and academia.    Download          MP3 / 12 MB   Academics take to the stageIn 2010, two science communicators in public engagement at University College London created the Bright Club, where “researchers become comedians for just one night”. The success of the format –each performance features a mix of both comedians and researchers – has resulted in chapterssprouting up across the UK.Bright Club in action in Dundee.Stephan Köppe - From Sausages to Sandwiches30/05/2019 An education in irony: why academics need to be funnyhttps://theconversation.com/an-education-in-irony-why-academics-need-to-be-funny-55261 3/4One of the Bright Club founders, Steve Cross, created and now comperes Science Showoff a “chaoticcabaret for science lovers”. He welcomes any sort of performance, including stand-up comedy, and iskeen to have academics present.It would be easy to dismiss the performers at the Bright Club as wannabe stand-ups intent onescaping the drudgery of academia if only for one night. But good stand-up comedians are capable ofachieving what social scientists often crave: getting an audience to critically engage with a subject.Humour as a toolAnd as anthropologist Kate Fox has argued: “at its best … social science can sometimes be almost asinsightful as good stand-up comedy”.Comedy can be used to challenge social norms, or speak out against social injustices. For instance,what better way to begin explaining what a class system is than to say it is “what you use todiscriminate against people who look like you” – as comedian Reginald D Hunter has done.But comedy in the social sciences is not just about public engagement and brightening up theotherwise dull existence of the average academic. Humour also has an important role to play in thesocial sciences as a tool for analysis and its neglect should be a cause for concern, given its essentialplace in the experience of being human.Humour hasn’t just been neglected by social scientists, it has been actively rejected. To be a humorousacademic appears to be an unacceptable oxymoron and those who use humour in their work run therisk of being seen as non-serious, and therefore trivial. Even Erving Goffman, one of the greatestsocial scientists of the 20th century, is regarded in some quarters with suspicion for his “sparkling”humorous prose. There are many who would agree with his own apparently self-denigrating epithet ofbeing an “elegant bullshitter”.It doesn’t get better than ironyGoffman’s technique depends on irony. By overturning received ideas and the logical contradictionsthat shape our most deeply held convictions, irony has the potential to provide new theoreticalinsights. It can function as an analytical tool.An appreciation of irony is arguably an essential attribute for the social scientist. It underlies the law of unanticipated consequences which says that “actions of people – and especially of government –always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended”. It has been claimed by some very eminentthinkers (among them Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Machiavelli) that this is the most importantphenomenon the social sciences have to deal with.Irony also underpins the concept of “planned incongruity” in which, through a deliberately inducedincongruity, the apparently rational is undermined, re-emerging as irony. For example, the Americaneconomist Thorstein Veblen’s idea of “trained incapacity” – that a person’s narrow specialisation in aparticular subject can actually widen their field of ignorance.30/05/2019 An education in irony: why academics need to be funnyhttps://theconversation.com/an-education-in-irony-why-academics-need-to-be-funny-55261 4/4Research impact Humour Social sciences Irony Anthill 16: Humour meIrony certainly produces comic pleasure and the extent of this pleasure can be directly related to twokey principles: the principle of “high contrast” and the “law of irony”. The principle of high contrastsays that the more incongruous the ideas put together, the more pleasurable the result will be for thereader or listener. The law of irony, meanwhile, asserts that when an ironic statement combines highcontrast and high certainty of outcome, the resulting statement is of greatest theoretical value. Forexample, the Utopian paradox which states that utopia, if achieved, would result in disaster.By combining these two ideas, we can see that the most pleasure is derived from the highestincongruity, which also gives rise to the greatest theoretical insight. This produces the somewhatunexpected – hence ironic – finding that the most important sociological insights are also likely to bethe ones which produce the greatest comic effect. In other words, the funniest.Before you go...Most health research is conducted by academic researchers. For health newsstraight from those that are breaking new ground – from the latest work oncancer and dementia to advice on nutrition – The Conversation is the place toread it. But we urgently need your support to continue. Help us to help you stayhealthy and informed.Clint WitchallsHealth EditorDonate now

An education in irony: why academics need to be funny

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An education in irony: why academics need to be funny

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