Page 177 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Humour across cultures: joking in the multicultural workplace 155

Individual goals may also be met through humour. Humour offers the
speaker the option of recourse to the ‘I was only joking’ explanation for an of-
fensive action; humour provides a useful strategy for conveying a negative or
critical message in an ostensibly acceptable form. In this way, individuals make
use of humour to manage necessary face threatening speech acts such as criti-
cizing, complaining, refusing and disagreeing (Holmes and Stubbe 2003a; Daly
et al. 2004).
In addition, humour may also be used to challenge norms such as the taken-
for-granted ways of doing things in a particular workplace, and especially to
challenge power relationships. Holmes and Marra (2002c) examine a range of
ways in which humour may contest or subvert the status quo, at individual,
group, and societal levels. Quips, jocular abuse and parodic humour, for
example, function as distancing devices to emphasize boundaries between the
speaker and the target of the humour, and provide a socially acceptable means of
encoding critical intent. Humour provides a socially acceptable ‘cover’ for criti-
cisms of individuals, or for subverting and challenging established norms and
practices. Among friends, humour can provide a means of contesting a group
member’s status in the group. Between those of different status, humour can be
a double-edged weapon, providing a legitimate means of subverting authority, a
difficult-to-challenge way of criticizing superiors.
This summary of the various functions of humour is far from exhaustive, but
it can serve as a basis for the analysis in this paper. 1

3. Researching effective communication in New Zealand workplaces

The Wellington Language in the Workplace Project has been investigating com-
municative strategies in New Zealand workplaces since 1996. To date, the re-
search team has collected and analysed naturalistic data from 21 different work-
places involving approximately 450 participants. In every case, the basic
principles of our methodology have remained the same.
The research team adopts an appreciative inquiry approach, choosing organ-
izations, teams and individuals who are recommended to us (by other organiz-
ations, colleagues, or employees) as good models of effective communication.
Volunteers record a selection of their everyday workplace conversations using
personal Walkmans, and more recently MiniDisc recorders. The interactions
thus collected typically include small one-to-one meetings, social talk, phone
calls, etc., and each dataset is augmented with video recordings of larger meet-
ings, and ethnographic observations. In factories, the methodology was adapted
to accommodate different working patterns, including a good deal of movement
about the factory floor by team members, sporadic talk, and noisy equipment
(Stubbe 2001). Volunteers were wired with radio microphones in one factory,