Abstract This paper summarizes the scope and content of the present Special Issue that has been conceived to explore humor as a resource for coping with trauma and adversity. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, it explores how verbal and performative humor facilitates emotional regulation, resilience, and social bonding across contexts such as illness, oppression, and marginalization. Emphasis is placed on the double-edged nature of humor as both a subversive and healing practice.

Abstract Unexpected movements, represented verbally or nonverbally, can give rise to cognitive shifts that function as incongruities leading to kinesic humor. The visual narrative form of silent comic strips relies on depiction of movements in humorous storytelling, and echoes the sensorimotor nature of kinesic humor. The current study adopts a cognitive-pragmatic perspective to study visualized kinesic humor in silent comic strips. Based on a holistic understanding of visual explicatures/implicatures, this study proposes general associations between narrative tokens such as various images or effect lines and their kinesic fortes reflected with inferential activities. Incorporating the concepts of jab line and hyperdetermination in humor studies into the incongruity-resolution approach, detailed analyses are conducted to demonstrate how kinesic humor is visually realized with narrative tokens, cognitively processed through inferencing, and structurally subsumed into a multilayered humor complex in silent comic strips.

Abstract Humor plays a crucial role in our lives, sometimes offering a valuable means for individuals to navigate and cope with traumatic experiences. While not intended to diminish the gravity of trauma, humor provides survivors with tools to process and manage such experiences constructively. This aligns with the concept of humor as a benign force, capable of eliciting positive emotions and fostering social connections. However, dark humor and irony can also serve as mechanisms to confront life’s traumatic events, such as illness and loss. Within this framework, this study explores how humor operates in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (2019a [2013]). Fleabag: The special edition . London: Nick Hern Books). Fleabag epitomizes the modern woman, no longer confined to being an object of desire but an active agent with perspectives and truths deserving to be heard. The protagonist exemplifies postfeminist humor, which serves as a means to critique societal norms, particularly those tied to expectations of femininity. She also uses it as a coping strategy to address the pain and guilt stemming from the loss of her mother and best friend. A linguistic analysis highlights Waller-Bridge’s brilliance in crafting a complex and, at times, unlikable character who consistently defies audience expectations while maintaining their empathy for her journey.

Abstract Teacher humour is found an effective tool associated with different dimensions of instructional quality. However, its significance as a teaching characteristic has not been systematically investigated, particularly through a qualitative approach. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative study to investigate how teacher humour ranks relative to other teaching characteristics from teacher and student perspectives. The participants were 40 high school English teachers ( M age : 39.47, M experience : 10.68, female 63 %) in Germany and 989 ninth-grade students ( M age : 14.23, SD = 0.50, female 53 %). Teachers completed a paper-and-pencil qualitative questionnaire, while students completed an online questionnaire. Both groups answered two identical open-ended questions and one group-specific open question. Our results show that teacher humour is considered a salient characteristic of instructional quality from both teacher and student perspectives and relates to multiple dimensions of instruction. However, the role of humour in instruction is seen differently by teachers and students, especially compared to other highly prioritized instructional quality features. In addition, the most and least important characteristics of instructional quality were identified in comparison to teacher humour. We conclude that teacher humour functions as both a distinct feature of instructional quality and a potential contributor to various dimensions within this multidimensional construct. We discuss the results against the backdrop of the trainability of humour in the classroom.

Abstract This paper explores feminist aesthetics in women’s stand-up comedy, arguing that performances incorporating first-person accounts of injury, trauma, and pain can reimagine the laughscape as a space for resistance, camaraderie, and healing. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, feminist comedians increasingly use, what I call, testimonial humor to disrupt conventional comedic structures, centering personal narratives of injury not merely as comedic devices but as interventions into dominant affective economies in the laughscape. Viewing the aesthetics of injury as counter-aesthetics, I ask: Can stand-up mobilize injury to convey unsettling lived experiences? What are the political implications of embedding testimonial humor within the laughscape ? Through an analysis of Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette and performances by Cameron Esposito, Beth Stelling, and others, I propose that feminist comedians engage in “ out-law stand-up ” – a form that challenges traditional comedic norms by refusing resolution and amplifying discomfort. This shift transforms the comedic stage into a site of testimonio , where storytelling becomes an act of witnessing rather than mere entertainment. By unsettling audience expectations, feminist stand-up fosters solidarity, redefines humor’s political stakes, and creates space for collective healing while resisting the entrenched misogyny, racism, and homophobia within both comedy and society at large.

Abstract From an evolutionary psychology perspective, laughter can be attributed a significant function in the formation and maintenance of social relationships. However, in educational research, this hypothesis has not yet been tested. In a randomized controlled trial, N = 660 students ( M age = 9.24, SD age = 0.81, female: 49.55 %) from a total of 34 third- and fourth-grade elementary school classes were randomly assigned to groups of four to six within their classes. In these groups, students were shown either a laughter-inducing funny cat video or a documentary video about cats for 3 min each. Before and after the manipulation, social acceptance was assessed by sociometric ratings with regard to all classmates. Data were analyzed with cross-classified multilevel models of the dyadic relationships among students within their classes. Watching a video together – regardless of type – significantly increased social acceptance, whereas the type of video had no effect. Furthermore, sociometric ratings increased corresponding to students’ perceptions of other students’ laughter intensity. In addition to the main results, it became evident that the higher the students rated their own laughter intensity, the higher their sociometric ratings of other students were before the manipulation. The results support the assumption that even short, mere-exposure contact promotes social acceptance of other students. Additionally, there are indications that students’ own laughter or the laughter of other students correlates with social acceptance.

Abstract Dalits’ cultural production has received significant attention for its role in shaping the Indian cultural landscape (Browarczyk, Monika. 2013. The double curse–a Dalit woman autobiography in Hindi by Kausalya Baisantri. Cracow Indological Studies 15(2). 169–187, Browarczyk, Monika. 2021. WE are Dalit history: Hindi Dalit autobiographies and their engagements with India’s past and present. Cracow Indological Studies 23(2). 1–39; Brueck, Laura. 2014. Writing resistance. The rhetorical imagination of Hindi Dalit literature . New York, NY: Columbia University Press (ebook edition); Wessler, Heinz W. 2019. From marginalisation to rediscovery of identity: Dalit and Adivasi voices in Hindi literature. Studia Neophilologica 92(2). 159–174). However, the function of humor and satire in articulating social assertions by Dalit authors when emphasizing the idea of individual and collective trauma remains underexplored. While some contributions investigated the role of comedy in the shows of a new generation of Dalit stand-up comedians (Shivaprasad, Madhavi. 2020. Humour and the margins: Stand-up comedy and caste in India. IAFOR. Journal of Media, Communication & Film 7(1). 23–42, 2022), little attention has been paid to the connections between stand-up comedy and other cultural areas that previously articulated claims of Dalit consciousness ( Dalit chetna ) in the Indian public sphere. This study investigates life narratives produced in Hindi autobiography and stand-up comedy, examining the extent to which humor and satire have been used by Dalit authors as empowering instruments to process trauma (Garrick, Jacqueline. 2006. The humor of trauma survivors: Its application in a therapeutic milie. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 12 (1, 2): 171–172). It also traces key sociocultural shifts occurring in the narratives produced by Dalit authors in Hindi or Hinglish. The first section offers a critical analysis of Murdahiya (2010), a Hindi autobiography by Tulsi Ram, a prominent author and activist of Hindi Dalit literature. The second reflects on narratives by contemporary stand-up comedians with a focus on Manjeet Sarkar, a rising figure in alternative stand-up comedy.

Abstract The TV series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , in its clever depiction of the daily life and dalliances of a woman suffering from borderline personality disorder, employs humor within parodied musical numbers to heal both the characters and the viewers from the stigma and discrimination around mental illness. In this study, the value of humor strategies centered around serious or heavy topics is analyzed by inquiring on the use of humor in the series, on the structure of parodic musical intermissions, and addressing how these parodic songs are part of the narrative. Particular attention is given to disengagement from seriousness as a potentially healing stage in humor, as it allows to playfully reinterpret an affirmation. The analysis focuses on selected songs from the four seasons of the show, following the gradual betterment of the protagonist and her journey in therapy. The results show the therapeutic and positive value of ridicule as both in-character coping mechanisms and as an active social response against a detrimental stereotype, with humor achieving perlocutionary effect intradiegetically and extradiegetically.

Abstract Previous research has shown that exposure to traumatic history, such as visits to Holocaust memorials or death camps, can have detrimental effects on people’s psychological well-being. There is relatively little research showing how these negative consequences could be mitigated. Based on previous studies in which humor is an effective way to cope with stress and difficult situations, we tested how humor in memes can help cope with exposure to traumatizing historical content. An online experiment ( N = 197) was conducted in which we showed participants a video of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and then tested their reactions depending on which memes they viewed (Holocaust-related vs. everyday life-related vs. no memes). The study found that individuals who effectively use humor as a coping mechanism and who view memes related to traumatic historical contents (such as Holocaust-related memes) experience a more positive mood after exposure to traumatic stimulus than those who watch everyday memes or no memes. Results suggest that humor may be an effective form of reducing the negative consequences of confrontations with traumatic historical contents.