ABSTRACT
This chapter contains four studies of humour in different cultural settings. The first study deals with miners' humour and exemplifies the importance of humour in the workplace. The second study describes a form of verbal duelling employed in working-class negro peer-group culture. The next two studies deal with classroom humour. The first study attempts to portray the style of one teacher involved in an innovatory open-plan classroom and is an extract from an earlier study the authors completed. The other study discusses a pupil participant in the humour of an urban American classroom. The chapter concerns the indexicality of different forms of joking and alternative classroom social structures. The nature and mechanisms of humour are notoriously difficult to analyse. Part of its nature derives from inherent qualities of language itself. Humour thrives on ambiguity and paradox. Being serious about humour soon becomes a joke in itself and about itself.
