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Humour across cultures: joking in the multicultural workplace 153

8. Humour across cultures:
joking in the multicultural workplace

Meredith Marra and Janet Holmes

1. Humour in multicultural workplaces

The Wellington Language in the Workplace project has been researching com-
munication in New Zealand workplaces since 1996. When the project began
we could not have anticipated that so much of our research would be devoted to
the analysis and interpretation of humour at work (e.g. Holmes 2000, 2006;
Holmes and Marra 2002a, 2002b, 2004). Humour is so prevalent in our data
that it was impossible to ignore. One reason for this ubiquity is that humour is
a remarkably flexible discourse strategy for achieving a range of communi-
cative objectives, both people-oriented and task-oriented. The effective use of
humour and its accurate interpretation by interlocutors is, however, very con-
text-sensitive, and typically relies for its effect on shared understandings and
experiences.
In this paper we focus on the use of humour in multicultural workplaces.
Our examples illustrate some of the varied functions served by humour, and
explore the shared cultural knowledge, values, and beliefs which underlie the
appropriate use and interpretation of humour in such workplaces. Until the early
th
19 century the New Zealand population comprised exclusively indigenous
Ma ¯ori people, but during the 20 century Pa ¯keha ¯ New Zealanders (people
th
of mainly British origin) rapidly established themselves as the largest group.
Ma ¯ori people now make up only about 15% of the total New Zealand popu-
lation (www.stats.govt.nz). However, immigration from Europe, Asia and the
Pacific has also enhanced cultural diversity, and New Zealand workplaces have
thus become increasingly multicultural.
Reflecting some of this diversity, we draw on recorded data from two differ-
ent workplace teams. The first group are employees of a small corporate organ-
ization where a large proportion of the team identify as Ma ¯ori. Moreover, the
organization is committed to supporting and promoting Ma ¯ori issues within
a mainstream (and predominantly Pa ¯keha ¯) industry. Their communication pat-
terns and their humour regularly reflect Ma ¯ori cultural values, and the ethnicity
of the speakers is often foregrounded. The second group are a team of shift
workers operating in a multicultural factory setting. Many of the team, includ-
ing the team leader, identify as Samoan, but the team also includes Pa ¯keha ¯, Ton-
gan and Ma ¯ori workers. In both these workplaces, humour occurs frequently.
However, the interactional norms of each workplace are very different, and