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De-Anglicising humour studies

100%

Goddard C.

The European Journal of Humour Research

2020

vol. 8

issue 4

This Commentary has two main aims. The first is to argue that systematic approaches to “humour” have been hampered and skewed by terminological Anglocentrism, i.e. by reliance on terms and categories which are English-specific, such as ‘amusing’, ‘joking’, ‘serious’, and ‘mock’, and even by the banner term ‘humour’ itself. Though some humour scholars have recognised this problem, I contend that they have under-estimated its severity. Anglocentric terminology not only interferes with effective communication within the field: it affects our research agendas, methodologies and theoretical framings. Needless to say, humour studies is not alone in facing this predicament, which at its largest can be described as the global Anglicisation of humanities and social science discourse.While calls to make humour studies more conceptually pluralistic are laudable, they cannot fully succeed while ‘full’ Anglo English remains the dominant scholarly lingua franca. The second aim of this paper is to argue that considerable progress can be made by “de-Anglicising English” from within, using a newly developed approach known as Minimal English. This allows re-thinking and re-framing humour terminology and agendas using a small vocabulary of simple cross-translatable English words, i.e. words which carry with them a minimum of Anglo conceptual baggage. For illustrative purposes, I will discuss how complex terms such as ‘wit, wittiness’ and ‘fantasy/absurd humour’ can be clarified and de-Anglicised using Minimal English.

Laughter, bonding and biological evolution

63%

Goddard C., Lambert D.

The European Journal of Humour Research

2022

vol. 10

issue 2

14-28

This paper combines perspectives from evolutionary biology and linguistics to discuss the early evolution of laughter and the possible role of laughter-like vocalisation as a bonding mechanism in hominins and early human species. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, we here emphasise several things: the role of exaptation, the typically very slow pace of evolutionary change, and the danger of projecting backwards from the current utilities of laughter to infer its earlier function, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years ago. From the perspective of linguistics, we examine both the semantics of the word ‘laugh’ and the vocal mechanics of human laughter production, arguing that greater terminological care is needed in talking about the precursors of laughter in the ancient evolutionary past. Finally, we turn to hypotheses about how laughter-like vocalisations may have arisen, long before articulate language as we know it today. We focus in particular on Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that laughter-like vocalisation, which stimulated endorphin production, might have functioned as a bonding mechanism (a kind of “vocal grooming”) among hominins and early human species. The paper contributes to the special issue theme (Humour and Belonging) by casting a long look backwards in time to laughter-like vocalisation as a distant evolutionary precursor of humour, and to bonding as an evolutionary precursor to cognitively and socially modern forms of “belonging”. At the same time, it cautions against casual theorising about the evolutionary origins of laughter.

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2 The European Journal of Humour Research

2 Goddard C.

1 Lambert D.

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1 2020

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De-Anglicising humour studies

Laughter, bonding and biological evolution