ABSTRACT
Towards the end of his classic paper on joking relationships Radcliffe-Brown (1952) drew a clear distinction between formalized and unformalized teasing. He emphasized that his sole concern was with standardized social relationships involving joking behaviour; but he suggested that there was a need for study of unformalized teasing or making fun of other persons, ‘a common mode of behaviour in any human society’ which ‘tends to occur in certain kinds of social situations’. This essay is intended to be a contribution to such a study.
