ABSTRACT
The majority of studies of humour at work conducted to date have concentrated on setting specific joking frames and have focused on intragroup relationships between workers, especially on shop floors in industrial settings. Whilst the investigation of humour, even in modern times, has a long intellectual pedigree the social contextual analysis and theorising of situational aspects of this distinctive form of individual and social behaviour has been of much more recent origin, especially systematic observation of its operation in work situations. Such studies again broadly differentiate forms of verbal joking and non-verbal humorous expression of either an aggressive or unaggressive nature directed at persons, behaviour or objects in the work environment. There is very much less systematic study of and reference to the employment of humour by employees to resist and control the inevitable intergroup tensions in asymmetrical relations between management and workers in both shop floor, departmental and office contexts.
