A Communication Guide to Being Funny
One of my favorite things to tell students during my dedicated class on humor communication is that we all have access to being funny, some of us might just have more practice than others.
That practice starts, like many things, in our early education. In a 2018 study of kindergarten age students, playful boys were often given the label “class clown” over their female counterparts, whose playfulness was often not considered by their teachers. Typically seen as unruly or disruptive, the “class clowns” hold up to their ascribed self-fulfilling prophecy and make their classmates laugh. As the “class clown”, they get to practice timing, adjust their material to the preferences of their audiences, explore the boundaries of rules in their respected classrooms, and ultimately build the confidence it takes to speak in public. So, the structure emerges: Boys are funnier than girls.
Where is the next place that young men and women might turn to model and engage with humor? TV, of course. Popular characters in sitcoms and cartoons often fall across a gendered spectrum in comedy. Male characters are loud, unintelligent, and mopey/lovesick and female characters are controlling, slutty, or dumpy. Let’s look at these types in some of our favorite shows:
- Monica Geller: Controlling
- Ted Mosby: Mopey/Lovesick
- Penny Hofstadter: Slutty
- Al Bundy: Loud
- Liz Lemon: Dumpy
- Phil Dunphy : Unintelligent
In a qualitative content analysis of these programs, these humor stereotypes typically correspond with the character’s job too. Men are more likely to be portrayed in professions like doctors, lawyers, or businessmen. Women tend to be homemakers, assistants, or teachers. These stereotypes can have an impact on how men and woman may see themselves in their environments and the space the choose to take up in a room, especially when it comes to using humor. I should add this note here before continuing, most media communication research studies historically have researched gender through the lens of the male/female binary and tend to lack inclusion of non-binary or gender-fluid spectrums. However, emerging research may suggest that non-binary or gender-fluid characters may experience some degrees of humor stereotypes too.
Communication researchers suggest that humor is a tool for everyone to access. If you have laughed before and made someone else laugh, then you have the ability to use and experience humor no matter where you fall on the gender spectrum. It may just take a little practice in order to get better at using it.
If someone struggles to connect painful experiences with others, they may find that joking or using humor could be a way to talk about things that they otherwise would have difficulty explaining. This is relief theory in humor. Relief humor can be good to engage in during conflict communication, experiencing an embarrassing moment, or processing difficult, personal issues in way that encourages your audience to laugh rather than evoke a feeling of pity. When I first started to talk about my previous experience with suicide or my husband’s alcoholism, it was easy to be met with sad, sympathetic glances and hushed voices saying, “Gosh, that’s tough.” This communication pattern kept those experiences, even if my audience didn’t realize it, in shame. As I learned to joke about the absurdities surrounding mental health or alcoholism, the easier it became to talk casually the experience. The only way to remove the stigmas of these experiences is to talk about them. For some, laughing about it can be the way to open the door.
Relief humor can be useful, but often is misused as a way to seek attention or attempt to deal with unprocessed emotional trauma that would be better unpacked in a therapy secession, rather than with your coworkers during lunch. Someone who may struggle to connect with others during interpersonal communication (one-to-one communication), may find it difficult to connect using humor too. There are two likely scenarios for recognizing this person. First, they may dump too much onto their audience and expect an emotional response other than laughter. That individual might be looking for, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry you are going through that”, instead of a, “That’s a hilarious way to look at that”, and they made the common mistake of choosing the wrong communication vehicle to drive the conversation. The audience can tend to sense when someone is looking for an authentic moment of laughter or when someone is just trying to dump their trauma. Second, a person who struggles with interpersonal connection, may rely on jokes and humor that reflects superiority humor (put-down humor). They use jokes at the expense of others in order to make themselves feel better, or more superior. It is a way to take control of the conversation, but often at the expensive of others which causes division and disconnection. At the end of the day, no one wants to be the butt of the joke.
Knowing that we all have access to humor as a way to engage with the world is the first step in understanding how to use humor better. Acknowledging that there are good and bad ways to use humor is another step to take in during our practice. Some days we might get it wrong, but we just have to keep trying. Just like that little kid in the first-grade classroom, trying things out and making adjustments. There may be gender binaries or even racial biases that have made accessing humor easier for some than others, but the greatest strength of humor is its ability to speak truth to power and often break through those divides. Humor is biologically instinctive and humans have the unique ability to use it as a communication tool to challenge social norms, reflect on difficult experiences, and to create a cathartic space to build communities.
May we all be class clowns. (Sorry teachers!)