ABSTRACT This article will focus upon the role of humour in the cultures of young men in school. We adopt an ethnographic approach to illustrate the variety of these interactions which can include forms of game-play, mythic storytelling and ritual insults. Our analysis suggests that humorous exchanges are constitutive of heterosexual masculine identities. We argue that humour is a technique utilised for the regulation of masculinities and the negotiation of gender-sexual hierarchies within pupil cultures. Bodily practices were prevalent in the interchanges, playing a part in the contestation and production of differentiated heterosexualities. Humour was an organising principle, deployed to position pupils within differing dominant and subordinate peer group sexual cultures. The paper focuses on conformist aspects of humour and recognises the oppressive dynamics articulated in these exchanges. Finally, we consider the implications of these practices for contemporary working-class masculinity.

Standard theories of politeness (Lakoff 1975, Leech 1983, Brown and Levinson 1987) face a number of problems. To mention but a few, it can be doubted that these theories have managed to establish truly universal concepts and classifications of (im)polite behavior; they exaggerate the relative importance of indirectness; they do not treat situational and societal constraints sufficiently; finally, they do not deal with rudeness in enough detail. Therefore, it does not seem to be possible to describe rudeness simply as a deviation from or violation of rules and maxims of cooperative/polite communication. Starting from suggestions made by Kasper (1990) and Culpeper (1996), I will try to refine standard definitions of politeness and rudeness. Moreover, examples of rude utterances (mostly taken from spoken and written English and German dialogues) will be used to establish a typology of communicative rudeness. Several subtypes of cooperative (e.g. ritual insults, reactive rudeness, sociable rudeness) and non-cooperative (e.g. strategic rudeness in public institutions) rudeness are distinguished.

ABSTRACTWilliam Labov formulated rules for sounding (black verbal dueling) that saw ritual insults, but not personal insults, as properly falling within the framework of black verbal play. Other researchers interested in contrasting play and fact-oriented dispute genres within more general discussions of keying have used Labov's analysis as a basis for drawing conclusions as to where play ends and the serious begins within this activity. However, Labov's decision to place personal insults outside the framework of the game of sounding is incorrect. Consequently, so too is the boundary line established by these other researchers to distinguish play from nonplay within the context of black verbal dueling. The present paper proposes to establish the correct black cultural perspective on the role and function of personal insults in sounding and the boundary between play and nonplay within the context of that activity. It also considers the different cultural consequences that would stem from regarding personal insults to be part of verbal play or not. Finally, it shows similarities in the structure and function of two speech actions – accusations and denials – that are used in both play and nonplay disputes to demonstrate more closely the nature of reciprocal influence of play and nonplay interactions. (Black verbal dueling, keying, discourse analysis, play and nonplay dispute genres, interethnic communication)

While greetings, terms of address, jocular abuse, and other ritualised verbal exchanges, reflect and help interpret social changes, they also contain within themselves an independent dynamic. This consists of a constant alternation of fixed and variant forms and thereby throws up the opportunities for social comment and criticism. Exchanges of ritual and jocular abuse involve most linguistic awareness and, while retaining a formulaic shape, provide the most creative examples of semantic experimentation and social comment. The folk contrast between 'serious' politeness formulae and 'game-like' ritual insults reflects, at a meta-level, that within each kind of exchange between the use of 'proper' and 'improper' forms. The contrast more generally reflects the predictable and innovative aspects of language use. Terms of address, greetings, farewells, and the verbal exchanges contained in joking and insult relationships have a dual character. On the one hand, they can reinforce assumptions about the relative status and hierarchy of the speakers and listeners and so perpetuate the wider status quo (Evans-Pritchard I964: 22I; Firth I972: 7; Mitchell-Kernan & Kernan I975; Sharman I969: II5). This is to emphasise their fixed, enduring character. But they are also among those critical areas of language use which, simply because they are 'ritualised' (or at least conventional enough to trigger predictable responses), contain the potential for the starkest possible contrasts of meaning. The assumption of predictability makes the genuine element of surprise more dramatic. The recipient may well interpret such 'deviance' as abusive but is, for that reason, forced to re-consider the basis of the relationship. This potential for contrastive meaning and subsequent re-definition of relationships is clearly evident in the use of pronominal and other address terms, on which much work has been done.

Figures Tables Introduction PART I- THE STRUCTURE OF THE BLACK ENGLISH VERNACULAR 1- Some Sources of Reading Problems for Speakers of the Black English Vernacular 2- Is the Black English Vernacular a Separate System? 3- Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula 4- Negative Attraction and Negative Concord PART II- THE VERNACULAR IN ITS SOCIAL SETTING 5- The Logic of Nonstandard English 6- The Relation of Reading Failure to Peer-group Status 7- The Linguistic Consequences of Being a Lame PART III THE USES OF THE BLACK ENGLISH VERNACULAR 8- Rules for Ritual Insults 9- The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax Bibliography Index