ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter focuses on the use of humour among male pupils within two secondary schools in the UK where we conducted research. During the research period we were aware of humour as a common interaction of the young men we observed, interviewed and discussed school life with. However, with a few notable exceptions (Woods, 1976, 1990; Stebbins, 1980; Dubberley, 1993), relatively little attention has been paid to the social significance of these exchanges to the lives of pupils. Our study suggests that humour plays a significant part in consolidating male peer group cultures in secondary schools, offering a sphere for conveying masculine identities. By exploring a range of interactions involving young men, our work suggests that heterosexual masculinities are organised and regulated through humour. Using qualitative methods we look at the ways in which humour is used and expressed in the negotiation and contestation of heterosexual masculinities. Here, humour is frequently invoked to expose, police and create gender-sexual hierarchies within pupil cultures. We conclude by arguing that humour is a technique for the enactment of masculine identities and can be seen to produce differentiated heterosexualities. [. . .]
We are indebted to the insights of Woods (1976) and Willis (1976, 1977), where pupil humour can be understood, respectively, as both a coping strategy and a product of class cultural tensions. However, our study further suggests that humour is less an ‘outcome’ or ‘effect’ of working-class masculinity but, rather, is constitutive of these very identities. We argue that humour is a style utilised by young men to substantiate their heterosexual masculinities. It appeared that humour was used for consolidating heterosexual masculinities through game-play, storytelling and the practice of insults. Our study suggests that although pupil humour contains moments of subversion (to teachers, bourgeois values, compulsory education, etc.), it is also a compelling mode for sex/gender conformity. Although a resistance to the authorities of schooling, young men’s humorous performances could have oppressive effects on other pupils. Significantly, young women were targets for male humorous insults (Jones, 1985; Lees, 1986, 1993) while young men who did not conform to dominant heterosexual codes of masculinity were also subject to its adverse consequences (Askew and Ross, 1988; Haywood, 1996; Nayak and Kehily, 1996). Although some styles of joking may enhance feelings of equality, we focus on the regulatory effects of humour on pupils’ sex/gender identities. This may call for alternative ways of theorising working-class masculine resistance in the context of school.
