ABSTRACT

Humor is an integral part of interaction in the workplace. As Duncan, Smeltzer, and Leap (1990, p. 263) stated, “When a group of people are assembled to accomplish a task, there is always some form of joking behavior and work group humor.” In fact, it has been suggested that humor is embedded in a group’s culture (Fine, 1983; Fine & De Soucey, 2005; Sev’er & Ungar, 1997). Fine and De Soucey (2005) contended that through interaction and the development of ongoing relationships, groups naturally develop a joking culture-a set of shared humorous experiences or references-that provide a basis for further interaction. Similarly, Sev’er and Ungar (1997) proposed that humor in the workplace provides a basis for dynamic social interaction in which the humorist and the recipient negotiate changes in the social context according to their perceptions of the underlying meaning of the humor. As such, Sev’er and Ungar suggested that jokes themselves are not funny or offensive events. Rather, joking represents a process whereby the joke teller and audience interact with one another according to their respective understandings of the embedded meaning of the material.