Tourism and Humour (Aspects of Tourism, 68) - Softcover

Pearce, Prof. Philip L.; Pabel, Anja

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845415086 ISBN 13: 9781845415082

Publisher: Channel View Publications, 2015

Synopsis

This book is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about humour in all kinds of tourism settings. It discusses the many ways in which humour can occur during tourism exchanges including guided tours, tourism marketing and promotion and travel narratives. Other themes include the role of humour in enhancing the tourist experience, the benefits of tourism humour, considerations of when humour may appear inappropriate in tourism settings and the development of tourism humour theory. The work includes much original material collected by the authors. The book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers of tourism as well as humour scholars from other disciplines.

About this title

About the Authors

Philip L. Pearce is the Foundation Professor of Tourism and a Distinguished Professor at James Cook University, Australia. He has written and edited 18 tourism books and has around 300 publications. His long-standing interests are studies in tourist behaviour and experience. He is well known for his work on travel motivation, and approaches to tourists’ experience as well as special topics including humour stemming from positive psychology. He works with his PhD students and international colleagues using a variety of methods and approaches. Most studies are done in settings in Asia, Australia and Europe.

Anja Pabel is a Lecturer at CQUniversity Australia. Her research interests include tourist behaviour, humour research, marine tourism and tourism marketing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Tourism and Humour

By Philip L. Pearce, Anja Pabel

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2015 Philip L. Pearce and Anja Pabel
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84541-508-2

Contents

Figures, 
Tables, 
Acknowledgements, 
Foreword, 
1 Better to Laugh Than Cry, 
2 It Will Be a Laugh, 
3 Joking Our Way Through the Day, 
4 That's a Funny Story, 
5 Not Funny, 
6 In it for a Laugh, 
References, 
Author Index, 
Subject Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Better to Laugh Than Cry

What Happens When We Laugh?

It often starts with a quick smile. As the individual mentally processes the punchline, or concludes that a scene or story is inherently funny, a number of physical changes follow the 'getting of the joke'. These responses are publically visible. The eyes close a little, the mouth opens, the jaw is lowered, teeth are exposed and there is a universal 'h'-type sound from deep in the human larynx. It is not speech, it is not any language, but we quickly recognise the pulsing rhythmic noises made by those captured in the mirth of the moment. Ruch and Ekman (2001), both prominent researchers in the analysis of human expressions and humour, suggest that across the globe we all perceive and respond to the onset of laughter from other humans.

At the end of the 19th century, Hall and Allin (1897) examined how 3000 people from the United States laughed. They recorded a string of behavaiours which comprise a laughter episode. The person captured by the humour may appear a little out of control. They pay less attention to what others are doing. Individual differences are apparent but some recurring behaviours are readily recognisable. Almost no-one stands perfectly still and laughs. Much more often there is head shaking, jerking of limbs, contortions of the trunk and rocking back and forth. In full and expressive laughter, there are repetitive waves of loud pre-speech 'h' sounds, punctuated by periodic sharp intakes of breath, all of which may be accompanied by tears streaming from the eyes. Indeed, the picture may not be a pretty one but the person participating is beyond caring for that period of time.

Interestingly, in some cultures one or both hands sometimes seek to cover the mouth. Sometimes a forehead or thigh may be slapped, and almost inevitably the chest heaves and expands to take in more air. Large-breasted women or rotund men may even seem to have body parts moving in several discordant directions at once. Children sometimes jump up and down, stamp their feet, and spin around as if contorted by an alien force and, if the episode continues, they may utter quick pleas such as 'stop, stop, no more!' Given all these physically engaging consequences, it is perhaps not surprising that in some cultures when people know they are likely to laugh a lot, they prepare for the physical consequences by lying down. O'Hanlon (1984) reports exactly this behaviour among the Ibo in Indonesia. No Western comedy festival yet prepares its audience in quite this way.

The physical analysis of laughter has many more components, but our interest in this volume reaches beyond the external acts and actions of laughter. Our concern is with all the facets of tourism-linked humour and its reception. The concern embraces both laughter and other more subtle responses to humour. More importantly, the interest in the following chapters lies centrally in the psychological benefits and social consequences of humour in the large and complex set of encounters made possible through tourism.

Looking at Laughter

Examining laughter (and smiling) in more detail helps shape our interests in humour and tourism. The description we have offered so far is a general one and some key distinctions introduce subtlety into the analysis. The ethology and communication researchers approach laughter from a descriptive and technical point of view but they point out that intentionality matters. The physical behaviours they observe are organised according to a key variable which is whether the laughter is spontaneous or fake, that is, either involuntary and without restraint, or composed and contrived for a variety of interpersonal motives. For spontaneous laughter, the trigger for the laughter is thought about and quickly processed, and there is no restraint on the expression of the mirth. Interestingly, in this spontaneous laughter with all its bodily movements and physical response quirks, the individual's self-awareness is seen as reduced. In the sense of the presentation of one's self in everyday life as described by Goffman (1969), the individual laughing uproariously and spontaneously is no longer on front stage. Instead, when laughing almost uncontrollably about the joke, story or incident, the individual is offering a window through which the outsider can glimpse their mind and personality. It may also be that the very best psychological rewards of laughter come from this uninhibited involvement. The topic of the benefits of positive responses to humour for individuals and groups will be an area of interest throughout this book.

Not laughing, when many others are doing so, is also potentially revealing. One of the authors has spent time at many conferences and public events with a senior colleague who is a very well respected tourism academic. When other professors are joking their way through mock debates or giggling at one another's staged and manufactured comic performances, the figure in question looks about as happy as a penguin in the tropics (we will assume here that penguins in the tropics are very unhappy, and clearly show signs they would rather be somewhere else). So both laughing and not laughing offer insights about what others think, possibly suggesting topics with which individuals are variously comfortable and uncomfortable as well as sometimes showing predilections among some people for strong cognitive mastery of their public face.

The alternative for many people to not laughing is to fake it, that is, to signal to others that they too get the joke or appreciate the situation. Some may be totally involved in performing a socially ingratiating act and have no idea why the situation is funny, whereas others do understand but see less humour in the circumstances than their associates. The voluntary or fake laughter has some distinguishing features. In addition to the slightly delayed onset of the laughter (cues from others are being attended to by those who wish to join in), there are suggested difference in voice quality, pitch and even the vowels which accompany the basic 'h' sound (Ruch & Ekman, 2001). The careful observer can often identify those who are faking their appreciation of the humour. The laughter may be produced just a little too late (monitoring others takes time) and there may be hesitancy about when to stop laughing. Additionally, not all of the physical signs of abandonment to the humour are evident. The vowels used appear to matter as well. The 'h' sound accompanied by the vowels 'a' or 'e' as in 'ha ha ha' or 'he he he' seem convincing to us as authors, but someone using the stylised trademark 'ho ho ho' of Santa Claus is, in our view, less compelling as indicating spontaneous laughter.

The faking of responses to humour has been particularly closely studied for smiling. Collett (2004) reports that the work of the French anatomist Guillame Duchenne de Boulogne in 1862 resulted in an appreciation of the roles of two sets of facial muscles. The first set of muscles, which are under conscious control, affect the position of the mouth and control its corners as well as the rounding of the cheeks. The effects of this first set of muscles create a pretty good smile, especially if some teeth are on display to add to the enthusiasm. There is, however, a further set of muscles which are not under conscious control and these are responsible for the crinkling of the skin at the outer edges of the eyes: the term in the beauty magazines is that of 'crow's feet'. All importantly, the genuine smile, the quick spontaneous equivalent to the involuntary laugh-out-loud humour, is the naturally occurring operation of this second set of muscles. They produce, in the truly genuine smile, not only the upturned mouth, rounded cheeks and teeth display but a shining example of crow's feet. To illustrate this point the reader can inspect photos taken of one's family and friends. Look in particular for the crow's feet. When the smiles were held too long at the photographer's request, the eye area is relatively smooth (assuming one's family and friends are not all severely wrinkled and withered specimens) and their overall expressions have a slightly forced and less enthusiastic look. The full and genuine smiles are now referred to as Duchenne smiles.

Controlling Laughter

The Duchenne smiles have also been found to be involved in laughter and again serve to distinguish between the spontaneous full-bodied kind of reaction and the socially planned but always slightly inadequate fake versions (Ruch & Ekman, 2001). The notion of faking one's laughter is one kind of control, but there are and have been strong societal and cultural rules about managing and controlling the expression of spontaneous laughter. Wiseman (2007) has commented that many psychologists, and one of the authors has a psychology background, repeatedly find sexual undertones when discussing human behaviour. He also asserts that like much Freudian theory including Freudian slips many such propositions are 'completely untesticle'. Undaunted by this commentary, the authors believe there is a case to be made that the suppression of full-bodied laughter is linked to gender-based issues and sexual roles.

It was noted in passing that the covering of the mouth with the hand while laughing is not uncommon in some groups and the point may be specified more clearly as applicable to women in cultural groups with strong taboos about overt signs of public sexuality (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989). Historically and in Western society the beautifully attired, cultivated ladies of 19th-century Victorian England or Puritan America did not engage in the full-bodied laughter we have documented. The heroines of Jane Austen and Henry James would have considered such open-mouthed displays to be frightfully vulgar, hinting at an altogether too robust enjoyment of the sensual components of life. Such decorum and the expression of these mannerisms pervade the popular television programmes depicting the eras in question, and whether it be Brideshead Revisited or Downton Abbey, it is the rebels and outsiders who laugh, not their conformist sisters.

Much the same line of reasoning about the suppression of overt sexuality can be made in relation to laughter and the use of the hands to cover the open-mouthed laugh in a number of Asian cultures. Almost any observation of young Japanese girls and women will reveal that when they laugh they cover their mouths. It can be suggested that there are both physical and symbolic links between open laughter, kissing, touch and sexual arousal. These issues are not a simple arcane detour in our preliminary discussion of humour and tourism but represent a background to understanding the position which humour holds in many societies and even in academic culture.

Huizinga (1938) in his major book Homo Ludens and Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1989) in his manual Human Ethology established some of these links. Open-mouthed laughing exposes a person's inner lips. From all the detailed mapping of our sensory motor cortex, as well undoubtedly as from some personal experiences, we know that the lips are key erogenous zones and that, through intimate kissing, both male and female sexual arousal is highly likely. These links have been known for a long time in the texts describing sexual behaviour (Ellis, 1937; Morris, 1969) as well as captured in the literature of the Western world. For example, Shakespeare illustrated the connection quite well when he instructs his characters to kiss with inner lip to show their passion. The noted English actress Judi Dench was once asked a question at the Australian University where one of the authors was an undergraduate as to why she appeared to engage in such a passionate, sexually charged scene when performing the role of Viola in Twelfth Night. Kissing with inner lips, she explained to a group of callow undergraduates, could not be done in any other way.

The control of laughter and open-mouthed exhilaration with their connections to sexuality can be linked to discussions of power and control (cf. Foucault, 1972). Once select behaviours are labelled as inappropriate by major organisations, spiritual leaders and politicians, citizens themselves take up the vigil of maintaining the right way to live and monitor each other in the manners of the day. The same forces of reactionary conservatism, apparent in the banning of some ribald seaside postcards in England (Wheeller, 2007) and titillating novels of the 1950s in Australia (Robertson, 2013), have at certain times and specific countries created a tight manacle of control over the reactions to humour.

Often the social institutions dampening the flames of laughter, enjoyment and passion have been the churches with the sober and funless creeds of the Protestants, the Lutherans, the Methodists and the Presbyterians foremost among many (Blainey, 2004). The Methodist creed of the paternal grandmother of one of the authors required her to avoid dancing, never to drink alcohol and to participate in sex only for procreation purposes. Immodest laughter was certainly off limits in this duty-bound sense of the world. More generally, it is appropriate to suggest that a general pall has been cast over the enjoyment of humour in some cultures and for some time. The great Protestant work ethic is not matched by a great Protestant play, joke and laugh ethic during non-work time. It is a modest step to see that the study of humour may not always be assessed as worthwhile.

The restraints on enjoying humour and contemplating its execution and effects are not confined to Western cultures. Yue (2011) reports that Confucian teaching, too, tends to frown on rather than smile at humour. Yue's studies of humour appreciation among Hong Kong students uncover a sharp contrast between enjoying humour and valuing it as a personal style or characteristic; it is apparently not a leading or wholly desirable trait with which students would like to be too closely identified. These background considerations from earlier times and across cultures undoubtedly influence how we think about humour and, further, how and why we should study the topic in tourism.

Valuing Humour Research: Our Positions

It is perhaps useful to document the backgrounds and perspectives of the authors in relation to their view of humour and its analysis. One author is an Australian scholar with long-standing research interests in tourist behaviour and experience, while the companion author grew up in Germany and is commencing her academic career as a researcher and educator in Australia. Both authors like to laugh, they sometimes attempt to be funny, and they recognise that the humour they like is wide ranging, occasionally subversive and sometimes risqué. The staff from Channel View, who readily accepted the proposed manuscript, are based in Bristol in the UK. The key contact personnel were quick to see that humour was an appealing topic, and possibly a profitable one. Do these affiliations and nationality issues matter It can be suggested that they do because they form a part of an Anglo-Antipodean valuing of humour. For example, Robertson (2013) is of the opinion that people from the UK and Australia are united by a common sense of humour. As a prominent Australian living in London he observes:

When you come to think of it, [humour] is what we really have in common. You can't share a joke with a New Zealander. They are the joke. You can't share a joke with a Canadian, they wouldn't get it. Americans have an irony deficiency, Germans have no sense of humour, Malaysians always take offence and South Africans are still very sensitive. We are probably the only two countries in the world that can actually enjoy each other if we really try. (Robertson, 2013: 53)

Robertson's remarks support some stereotypes that exist concerning who likes humour, and what styles of humour they like. The issue of who we are and where we are based is not irrelevant to how we position this book. Humour matters in our culture and in the tourism enterprises with which we are most familiar. Humour of this local Anglo-Australian style may not matter everywhere, and humour itself may be less of a laughing matter in other settings.

Wiseman (2007) provides some evidence supporting the everyday stereotypes. He directed an extensive study where he collected literally several thousand jokes in an online research exercise called Laughlab. A total of 40,000 jokes were rated by 350,000 people from 70 countries. Working at this macro-scale of analysis, Wiseman reported few differences in the appreciation of the jokes across the multiple countries in his sample. It is important to remember that this finding is centred on responding to provided jokes and so does not consider other ways of expressing humour, nor does it deal with the spontaneous production of humour or seeing humour in a situation. His work omitted crude and vulgar jokes and concentrated on verbal twists and the bizarre, quirky and illogical joke formats. The Canadians were the least likely to find the jokes funny, while the Germans seemed to be among the most likely to enjoy a range of humour styles. Australian and UK respondents shared a relatively high liking of most jokes. Other nationalities were more selective in their joke appreciation. This initial foray into the nationality and cultural issues surrounding humour, and in this case specifically joke appreciation, offers a clear reminder that humour may be difficult to manage in tourism contexts, especially when the audience is heterogeneous and members vary not just in their nationality but in their age, gender, religious and cultural sensitivities and basic personality styles. In later chapters of this book we will consider our own data and the analysis of the nationality and cultural determinants of humour appreciation.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1845415086
• ISBN 13: 9781845415082
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 184