Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Having a laugh at work:

how humour contributes to workplace culture
Janet Holmes*, Meredith Marra
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600,
Wellington, New Zealand

Received 5 October 2001; received in revised form 12 February 2002

Abstract
Work is one important source of an individual’s social identity, and workplace interaction
is a crucial means of instantiating that identity. As one component of workplace discourse,
humour can provide insights into the distinctive culture which develops in different work-
places. Using a community of practice framework, this paper explores the potential of
humour analysis for identifying characteristics of workplace sub-cultures which develop
within different organisations. In particular, patterns of variation in the frequency, type and
style of humour used in meetings in four different organisations is examined. The dataset is
taken from the larger corpus of the Victoria University of Wellington Language in the
Workplace Project. # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Workplace culture; Humour; Conversational collaboration; Social identity; Sociolinguistics;
Pragmatic effects

1. Introduction1

Workplace culture is currently a popular topic. Large sections of libraries are

devoted to corporate culture, organisational culture, and management culture.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +64-4-463-5614/5600; fax: +64-4-463-5604.

E-mail address: janet.holmes@vuw.ac.nz (J. Holmes).
1
This paper is based on a Plenary presentation at the 7th International Conference for Language and
Social Psychology, June–July 2000, University of Wales, Cardiff. We thank those who allowed their
workplace interactions to be recorded, and other members of the Language in the Workplace Project team
who assisted with collecting and transcribing the data (especially Maria Stubbe and Bernadette Vine). We
would also like to express appreciation to Sasha Calhoun who assisted with the analysis. The research was
supported by a grant from the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology.

0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0378-2166(02)00032-2
1684 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

There is little consensus, however, on what exactly constitutes workplace culture, or

about how it should be studied. Introducing their influential book on organisational
culture, Frost, et al. (1991: 7) say:

Organisational culture researchers do not agree about what culture is or why it

should be studied. They do not study the same phenomena. They do not
approach the phenomena they do study from the same theoretical, epistemolo-
gical, or methodological points of view.

However, amidst the argument and dissension around the topic, one generally
accepted and widely cited definition of workplace culture is provided by Smircich
(1983: 339):

Workplace cultures revolve around the shared values and attitudes and the
shared experiences that validate them. A culture includes everything that is
learned and shared by its members: its social heritage and rules of behavior, its
own customs and traditions, jargon and stories.

In other words, as intergroup theory emphasises, attitudes and values are crucial
in distinguishing cognitively salient social groups (Tajfel, 1974, 1978, 1982; Tajfel
and Turner, 1979), and represent the psychological boundaries between groups.
Within such boundaries, workplace culture comprises the knowledge and experience
that enables people to function effectively at work, or, to quote one managing
director, familiarity with ‘‘the way we do things around here’’ (Bower, 1966, cited in
Clouse and Spurgeon, 1995:3).
Some analysts emphasise the shared values, meanings and understandings that
underlie a workplace culture (e.g. Louis, 1985; Schein, 1985, 1991; Fitzgerald, 1988;
Meglino et al., 1989; Weick, 1985), while others give more attention to the experi-
ential and behavioural aspects of shared workplace culture (e.g. Albert, 1985; Connell,
1999; Hagner and DiLeo, 1993; Linder, 1985; Sathe, 1983). Similarly, research on
workplace culture ranges from analyses which focus on the values, beliefs and attitudes
which underlie an organisation’s corporate vision, mission statement and objectives,
to those which look more closely at the experiences and behaviours of those who
belong to the organisation, analysing management style, for instance, or workplace
gathering places, social customs and the interactions of those who work together.
The research reported in this paper begins from the latter end of this continuum,
focussing on the way people interact at work, but, inevitably, the analysis provides
an important means of gaining insight into participants’ values and beliefs, and of
relating participants’ behaviours to the values and attitudes which characterise the
workplace teams and the wider workplace context in which they are working. As
Sally McConnell-Ginet (2000: 263–264) has said in relation to gender:

Whether a particular person’s talk and other actions affect many or few, it is the
unfolding over time of a structured totality of situated acts that creates meaning
in and for society. . . . . . . . . For example, work colleagues constitute an ongoing
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1685

group that develops a shared history of linguistic practices, including interpreta-

tions and evaluations of what different individuals bring to the group’s exchanges.

The culture of a workplace is constantly being instantiated in on-going talk and

action; it develops and is gradually modified by large and small acts in regular social
interaction within ongoing exchanges. Using the community of practice framework
advocated by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992, 1999) in the analysis of the dis-
cursive construction of gender, this paper focusses on just one aspect of on-going
interaction at work, namely the contribution of workplace humour to the char-
acterisation of a distinctive workplace culture.
The ‘‘community of practice’’ is a dynamic concept which can usefully be adopted
to compare the way humour functions in different workplaces. A community of
practice has been defined as

an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an

endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power rela-
tions—in short, practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. . .. . .it
is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that
membership engages (Eckert and McConnell–Ginet, 1992: 464).

Etienne Wenger (1998) regards the concept community of practice as a means of

examining one natural method of learning which in many respects resembles an
apprenticeship. The process of becoming a member of a community of practice, as
typically happens when we join a new workplace, involves learning the appropriate
behaviours, including verbal behaviours, that characterise this group and distinguish
it from others. In other words, joining a community of practice inevitably involves
acquiring the cultural norms of the community. The focus is on the dynamic process
involved in constructing a new group identity.2 From a sociolinguistic and prag-
matic perspective, becoming a member of a community of practice actively interacts
with the process of gaining control of the discourse of that community of practice.
Since verbal humour is one potential manifestation of the discourse of a community
of practice, one aspect of such an apprenticeship inevitably involves learning whe-
ther and how humour is used in the verbal practices of the community of practice.
Wenger (1998: 73) identifies three crucial dimensions of a community of practice:
mutual engagement, a joint negotiated enterprise, and a shared repertoire (of nego-
tiable resources accumulated over time).3 The meetings which are the focus of the
analysis in this paper are all instances of regular meetings between established
workplace teams, fulfilling the criterion of ‘‘mutual engagement’’.4 Negotiation of
work responsibilities is characteristic of such meetings, reflecting members’ under-
standings of their particular roles within the work unit or project team, and their
2
Holmes and Meyerhoff (1999) discuss the similarities and differences between a community of prac-
tice approach and social identity theory.
3
See Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992, 1999) and Holmes (forthcoming) for evidence of how these
criteria can illuminate sociolinguistic research.
4
See Holmes (2000c) for a description of the composition of the LWP corpus.
1686 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

unit’s collective role within the larger institution or organisation. The meetings
involve teams who have developed, though to different degrees, a shared repertoire
of joint resources for negotiating meaning (Wenger, 1998: 82), including linguistic
resources such as specialized terminology and linguistic routines, and most rele-
vantly for our purposes, differences in practices in relation to verbal humour.
Wenger (1998: 125–126) suggests a number of dimensions, or specific features,
through which these various aspects of a community of practice are instantiated.
These dimensions include both verbal and non-verbal behaviours, but the following
four are most obviously relevant in examining spoken interaction, and, in particular,
for analysing humour in the workplace:

 ‘‘sustained mutual relationships—harmonious or conflictual

 shared ways of engaging in doing things together
 local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter
 certain styles recognized as displaying membership’’ (1998: 125–126).

These dimensions provide a means of characterising the distinctiveness of parti-

cular communities of practice, and of comparing their communicative practices.
They provide the basis for a framework which can be used to distinguish between
different workplaces, and to characterise important aspects of workplace culture.
More specifically, they provide a means of exploring the linguistic texture of aspects
of the social practices which form the basis of workplace culture.
In the New Zealand workplaces which were the focus of our study, we identified a
number of characteristics of the shared discourse repertoire of the different commu-
nities of practice. We observed, for example, regular greeting rituals and the exchange
of small talk between members, and we identified norms governing how much social
talk was tolerable in different contexts (Holmes, 2000a); we noted preferred ways of
giving directives (Vine, 2001), and of reaching decisions in different units (Marra, fc). We
also observed differences in practices in relation to verbal humour- differences along
dimensions whic be used as a basis for distinguishing between different communities of
practice. These included different attitudes to and tolerance of humour, recurring sour-
ces or topics of amusement, and regular verbal humour routines, as well as the devel-
opment of different styles of humour and ways of ‘‘doing collegiality through humour’’
in different workplace units (e.g. Holmes, 2000b; Holmes and Marra, 2002; Holmes et
al., 2001; forthcoming; Stubbe, 1999). Verbal humour clearly instantiated some of the
features identified by Wenger as important in characterising a community of practice. In
what follows we focus on three particular aspects of the verbal humour practices of four
different work units selected from our workplace database, in order to investigate the
usefulness of Wenger’s dimensions in distinguishing different workplace cultures.

2. Analysing dimensions of humour in a community of practice

Using Wenger’s criteria as a starting point, we identified three aspects of the

way humour functions in workplace meetings as a basis for comparing different
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1687

workplaces: the type of humour which predominated, the style of humour adopted
by participants, and the amount of humour which characterised different meetings.
The concepts ‘‘type of humour’’ and ‘‘style of humour’’ require some explication.

2.1. Type of humour

Different types of humour construct different types of work relationships. Hence

humour is one means of instantiating two of Wenger’s features of a community of
practice, namely, ‘‘sustained mutual relationships—harmonious or conflictual’’
(1998: 125) and ‘‘certain styles recognized as displaying membership’’ (1998: 126).
Humour can function to construct and sustain relationships which contribute to
workplace harmony by expressing solidarity. But humour may also serve as an
acceptable vehicle for expressing subversive attitudes or aggressive feelings (Holmes,
2000b; Rodrigues and Collinson, 1995; Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999). The pre-
dominance of one or other of these various functions, is one potential source of
contrast between different workplaces.
More specifically, we distinguish between broadly supportive humour and broadly
contestive humour, on the basis of the pragmatic orientation of the content. (See
Holmes, forthcoming, for full discussion and exemplification.) Put simply, suppor-
tive humour agrees with, adds to, elaborates or strengthens the propositions or
arguments of previous contribution(s), as illustrated in example 1, in which two
women use humour to ‘‘do collegiality’’ in their workplace talk.

Example 15. Context: meeting of team in a commercial organisation. They are dis-
cussing how people find out about a job they might be interested in.

1. Peg: people quite often like to ask the hypothetical question just to
2. /test the water as well\
3. Clara: /a friend of mine\ wanted to know
4. XF: [laughs] yeah
5. [general laughter]
6. Peg: just like me in the mirror

In this example, Clara supports Peg’s point, expressed in lines 1 and 2, with a
humorous illustrative comment a friend of mine wanted to know (line 3), which Peg
then further elaborates in line 6. Each contribution pragmatically supports the pre-
vious proposition.
Contestive humour, by contrast, challenges, disagrees with or undermines the pro-
positions or arguments put forward in earlier contributions, as illustrated in example 2.

Example 2. Context: regular meeting of a project team in a large commercial orga-

nisation. Callum has failed to update a header leading Barry to think he has got the
wrong document.
5
Transcription conventions are provided in the Appendix. Examples are sometimes slightly edited for
ease of reading.
1688 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

1. Callum: I definitely sent you the right one

2. Barry: [laughs]
3. Eric: yep Callum did fail his office management [laugh] word
processing lesson
4. Callum: I find it really hard being perfect at everything

In this example, from a meeting of a group whose interactive style is typically

contestive and challenging, Eric makes Callum the target of a jocular insult. Callum
asserts that the document Barry has received is the correct document (line 1), despite
the fact that, as it emerges, he has failed to up-date the header. Barry, realising the
reason for his confusion, laughs. Eric then humorously contests Callum’s claim that
it is the ‘‘right ‘‘document with his comment Callum did fail his office management
[laugh] word processing lesson (line 3). Callum responds by challenging Eric’s claim
with his own ironic, mock-modest claim (line 4). The interactive style is pragmati-
cally contestive, with each contribution undermining or challenging the proposition
or implied claim of the previous speaker (see also Holmes and Marra, 2002).

2.2. Style of humour

Another feature of a community of practice is ‘‘shared ways of engaging in doing

things together’’ (Wenger, 1998: 125). One aspect of the way people ‘‘engage’’ with
each other at work is the style in which they construct humorous interchanges.
Humour provides an ideal vehicle for collaborative verbal behaviour, and, as Wen-
ger suggests, different communities of practice develop particular ways of ‘‘doing
humour’’. Distinctive styles of workplace humour develop, permitting comparison
between different workplaces on this dimension.
In analysing different styles of humour, we have focussed on the variety of ways in
which participants may link their humorous contributions to the meeting talk to the
contributions of others, with very different effects in terms of the overall style of
interaction (e.g. Holmes et al., 2001; Holmes and Marra, in press). At one end of the
continuum we find very collaboratively constructed humour sequences, an obvious
means by which people ‘‘do collegiality’’ at work. Adopting this style, participants
tend to integrate contributions tightly, using devices such as echoing, mirroring or
completing another’s utterance.6 Example 3 illustrates this more collaborative end of
the continuum.

Example 3. Context: 3 colleagues at a tea break in manager’s office discussing the

sartorial problems which arise when someone is unexpectedly summoned to see the
Minister

1. Eve: I think we need a ministry suit just hanging up in the cupboard

2. /[laughs]\
3. Leila: /you can just\ imagine the problems with the length /[laughs]\

6
See Holmes (forthcoming) for further discussion and exemplification.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1689

4. Eve: /it would have\ it would have to have an elastic waist so

5. /that we [laughs]\ could just be yeah=
6. Leila: /[laughs] yes that’s right [laughs]\
7. Eve: =bunched in for some and [laughs] let it out=
8. Leila: /laughs\
9. Eve: =/out for others\
10. Lesley: and the jacket would have to be /long to cover all the bulges\=
11. Leila: /no I’m quite taken with this\
12. Lesley: =/so\
13. Eve: /[laughs]\
14. Leila: /now that\ that is very nice
15. [laughter]

Eve and Lesley together describe features of the hypothetical all-purpose ministry
suit. Throughout the episode there is laughter from all three participants. Lesley
seamlessly links her contribution to Eve’s description with a coordinating conjunction
and the jacket would have to be long (line 10), while Leila’s supportive comments yes
that’s right (line 6), I’m quite taken with this (line 11), that is very nice (line 14), and her
laughter throughout (lines 3,6,8,15) function as a kind of musical ‘‘burden’’ or lower
stave contrapuntal supportive accompaniment. The effect is one of high energy, good
humoured, enjoyable interaction, with all the features of all-together now’’ (ATN)
talk as defined by Coates (1988, 1996) in her description of the talk of women friends.
At the other end of the continuum, are extended sequences of humour involving a
series of loosely semantically linked one-off quips or witty one-liners. These often
have a ‘‘competitive’’ edge, and also often involve ‘‘one-at-a-time’’ (OAAT) style of
talk (Coates 1988: 120), with few overlaps between speaker turns. Example 4 is a
very brief illustration of this type of humour.7

Example 4. Context: Ten women from government department in a regular report-

ing and forward planning meeting.

1. Ellen: Grace you’re gonna chair next week

2. Ruth: it must be my turn soon
3. Ellen: and Kaye can scribe
4. XF: so it’s at three /(isn’t it)\
5. Sally: /I must\ be due for a turn at chairing too+
6. and I’ll put in my apologies now
7. [general laughter]
8. Kaye: no you’re not you’re not at all sorry [laughs]

Sally makes a humorous comment (line 6) saying she will put in an apology in
advance for any meeting when it is her turn to chair. Kaye responds, extending the
humour by challenging the sincerity of Sally’s ‘‘apology’’. While the contributions

7
See Holmes (forthcoming) for further discussion and exemplification.
1690 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

are clearly semantically and pragmatically linked, they are minimally collaborative
compared to many examples in the database. The contributions are independently
constructed, with no cooperative overlapping or syntactically integrated structures.
Similarly, participants sometimes produce succinct quips or brief, witty one-liners
which may be inserted neatly into the discourse or, alternatively, may disruptively
interrupt the on-going talk. In factory meetings we recorded, for instance, brief
humorous contributions from the floor were common in the course of the manager’s
morning pep-talk (see also Holmes and Marra, 2002).

Example 5. Context: meeting of factory team. Manager is establishing objectives for

day’s work.

1. Ginette: if you don’t finish it by six o clock you’re staying here

until you do finish it ++
2. that a good deal
3. Sam: that’s the good news give me the bad news now
4. [laughter]
5. Lesia: the er two k g is the er priority

Sam’s quip that’s the good news give me the bad news now (line 3) is neatly inserted
between the more task-oriented contributions of the team manager, Ginette, and
Lesia, a co-worker. While functionally positive because it is amusing, Sam’s con-
tribution is stylistically competitive or non-collaborative in the sense intended here,
in that it is not topically or syntactically integrated into the discourse, but rather an
independent (and subversive) insertion into the on-going talk.
The next step was to see whether these dimensions of analysis, derived from the
community of practice model, could provide a means of analysing workplace
humour in such a way as to distinguish in an interesting way between the ‘‘cultures’’
of different workplaces.

3. Method and database description

Since 1996, the Victoria University of Wellington Language in the Workplace

Project (LWP) team has been collecting workplace interactions in a wide range of
New Zealand workplaces, including government agencies, private organisations,
small businesses, and factories (see Holmes, 2000c). More than 350 people have
contributed to the database, including women and men from a range of ages and
levels of responsibility within each organisation. The participants include Pakeha
and Maori New Zealanders, as well as a number of other ethnic groups, including
Samoan and Chinese.8 Predominant characteristics of the contributing workplaces
include the features summarised in Table 1. As the table indicates, the full dataset

8
The term ‘‘Pakeha’’ is a Maori word widely used to refer to non-Maori New Zealanders of European
(and usually British) origin.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1691

Table 1
Features of participating workplaces

Organisation Social features Ethnicity Gender of management

(gender of CE in bold)

Government 1 White collar Pakeha/Maori Female

Government 2 White collar Mainly Pakeha Male/female
Government 3 White collar Maori/Pakeha Male/female
Government 4 White collar Maori/Pakeha Male/female
Semi-public White collar Mainly Pakeha Female/male
Commercial 1 White collar Mainly Pakeha Male
Commercial 2 White collar Mainly Pakeha Male/female
Factory 1 Blue collar Multicultural Male
Factory 2 Blue collar Pakeha/Polynesian/ Male/female
Maori

includes four different government departments, a semi-public, voluntary sector,

non-government organisation,9 two private commercial organisations, and two fac-
tories. The final column indicates the relative proportion of managers of each gender
at the senior management level: e.g. male/female indicates that both genders are
represented but that males predominate. The gender of the Chief Executive is indi-
cated by bold typeface.
The methodology developed for the project was designed to give participants
maximum control over the data collection process (see Stubbe, 1998, 2001). In the
white collar workplaces, a number of volunteers tape-recorded a range of their
everyday work interactions over a period of two or three weeks, including one-to-
one interactions, telephone conversations, social talk, and a range of both smaller
and larger meetings. A number of larger and longer meetings were both video-taped
and audio-recorded. Data collection in factories and noisier small businesses gen-
erally began with an overall survey of the site in order to identify potential recording
opportunities. In the Wellington factory, a field worker recorded material from
several workers for 3–4 hours each day over successive shifts from 6 am in the
morning meetings to 6 pm at night in order to provide samples of talk from each
section of a typical day in the factory. Handing over control of the recording process
in this way resulted in an excellent research relationship with workplace partici-
pants, based on mutual trust. The LWP now has a corpus of over 1000 workplace
interactions to use as the basis for analysis.
From this large corpus, a sub-set of meetings from a focus team within each
organisation was selected for more detailed analysis of the contribution of humour
to workplace culture, including at least two larger meetings from four contrasting
workplaces to provide a minimum of an hour of data per workplace. The natural
time-span of meetings is quite different from one workplace to another. In the factory,
for example, team meetings were typically very short, sometimes as short as 5 or 6 min.

9
‘‘Semi-public’’ is the term we have used for an organisation from the voluntary and community sec-
tor; other terms include ‘‘not-for-profit welfare organisation’’, ‘‘non-government organisation’’ (NGO),
and ‘‘community services organisation’’.
1692 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

In the public sector, meetings were more often a minimum of an hour. In each
workplace, we selected meetings that were typical in this respect. We also selected
examples of regular meetings for the teams which were the focus of our recordings in
‘‘normal’’ contexts for these teams within their organisations (e.g. factory floor for
one team, board room for another). We analysed complete meetings rather than
sampling shorter sections, because previous research has identified an interaction
between the structure of a meeting and the positioning and amount of humour
(Marra, forthcoming; Consalvo, 1989). Each meeting involved between eight and
twelve participants, and included both women and men; meetings from both blue
collar and white-collar workplaces were included in the data set. See Table 2.
Naturally, despite efforts to ensure that the data from different organisations was
as comparable as possible, there were many variables such as the ethnicity of the
participants, the topics of the discussion, and the precise settings in which the
meetings took place, which could not be controlled. In every case, the criterion
adopted was that the meeting should be as ‘‘typical’’ as possible for the group
recorded in each organisation. Hence we used this rich, naturalistic, authentic data
set, for which we had detailed ethnographic information, as the basis for both
quantitative and qualitative analysis, illuminating the contribution of humour to the
construction of distinctive workplace cultures.

4. Analysis of humour in meetings

4.1. Amount of humour

Implicit in Wenger’s (1998) framework is an assumption that the relative amounts

of different relevant behaviours contribute to the distinctiveness of a workplace as a
Table 2
Description of data set

Meeting No. of Participants Length (min)

Female Male

FAC-01 3 9 29
FAC-02 3 8 14
FAC-03 3 8 10
FAC-04 3 8 12
FAC-05 3 8 6
PRI-01 6 7 54
PRI-02 6 5 33
GOV-01 4 9 88
GOV-02 3 5 41
SPU-01 4 4 55
SPU-02 4 4 87
Total 42 75 429

FAC: factory. PRI: commercial organisation. GOV: government department. SPU: semi-public organisation.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1693

community of practice. Before embarking on the analysis of the more qualitative

dimensions of humour, we therefore identified the amount of humour in the meetings
which were the focus of the study. The definition of humour which we have con-
sistently applied in our analyses to date focuses (like most definitions) on successful
humour. Humorous utterances are defined as those which are identified by the analyst,
on the basis of paralinguistic, prosodic, and discoursal clues, as intended by the
speaker(s) to be amusing and perceived to be amusing by at least some participants
(Holmes, 2000b; Holmes and Marra, 2002). A wide range of contextual and linguistic
clues are relevant to identifying instances of humour, including the speaker’s tone of
voice and the audience’s auditory and discoursal responses. Laughter, and, where
video recording is available, facial expression, including smiles, are also very important
clues. A collaborative sequence of humour, unified by theme or content, was treated as
one instance of humour for the purposes of the quantitative, comparative analysis.10
In order to compare the different meetings on this measure, we used an index based
on the proportion of humour per 100 min. Fig. 1 represents the results of this analysis.
It is clear that the amount of humour varies quite dramatically in the meetings in
different workplaces. There is a great deal of humour in the factory meetings (FAC)
and in the meetings at the private commercial sector organisation (PRI), while the
meetings at the public sector government department (GOV) and the semi-public
organisation (SPU) involved considerably less humour. Indeed, participants in one of
the factory meetings averaged more than one instance of humour per minute, while, at
the other extreme, in one government department meeting, people produced humor-
ous remarks only every seven minutes or so, on average.11

4.2. Type of humour

Turning to the overall pragmatic effect of humorous contributions, the type of

humour contributed in the meetings in different workplaces was analysed according
to the criteria described above. We classified as many instances of humour as possible
according to whether the humorous contribution supported previous contributions to
the discourse, or whether it challenged and contested preceding contributions.
Fig. 2 indicates very clearly that the distribution of humour by type in the focus
team within the PRI organisation was quite distinct from that in other meetings.
Only in the PRI meetings were there more contestive than supportive instances of
humour.12 In fact, the proportion of contestive to supportive humour in the PRI

10
All coding, both quantitative and qualitative, was undertaken by at least two and usually three
independent coders. Criteria were determined in advance and problematic cases were discussed and
resolved. A high measure of inter-rater reliability was attained.
11
There was also considerable variation in the amount of humour from one meeting to another within
organisations. See Holmes et al. (forthcoming) for more detailed discussion. This suggests caution in
drawing strong conclusion from such a small database.
12
In an earlier study (Holmes and Marra, 2002) we coded 40% of the total humour in our data set of
corporate meetings as subversive (corresponding roughly to contestive humour from subordinates) which
lines up well with the current findings. In that study we compared business meetings with conversations in
friendship groups, where there was almost no subversive humour.
1694 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

Fig. 1. Amount of humour by workplace.

meetings was 2:1, whereas this pattern was reversed in the meetings of teams within
other organisations. In the meetings of the focus team within the SPU organisaton,
for instance, there was more than three times as much supportive as contestive
humour. The team meetings within the GOV organisation were characterised by
almost twice as much supportive as contestive humour, and there was also a greater
proportion of supportive than contestive humour in the classifiable instances from
the focus team in the factory meetings.13 In fact, dimension of analysis thus dis-
tinguished clearly between the different workplaces in our data set.

4.3. Style of humour

In order to compare the style of humour which characterised the meetings in dif-
ferent workplaces, two aspects of the ways in which people contributed humour in
meetings were examined. Firstly, single humorous contributions were distinguished
from more extended humour sequences, and secondly, the style in which more
extended sequences were constructed was examined in more detail.

4.3.1. Single vs extended contributions

In all the workplaces in our dataset, humour was frequently expressed both by
short individual contributions, such as quips or brief humorous comments, and also
by more extended sequences of humour, involving contributions from several parti-
cipants. The results of analysing the distribution of these different strategies for
making a humorous contribution to a meeting are illustrated in Fig. 3. Note that
Fig. 3 presents percentages not ratios, so it does not provide a valid comparison
between workplaces i.e. this figure does not indicate which workplace used most
instances of single or extended humour. Rather it compares the proportion of single
vs extended instances of humour in meetings within each workplace. (Fig. 4 allows
comparison between workplaces.)
It is clear that the white collar workplaces differ from the factory in that extended
sequences are more frequent than individual one-liners in the white collar meetings,
while the reverse is true in the factory. The most important contributing factor to
this pattern is almost certainly the very specific objectives of the factory meetings,
namely, to review the previous day’s performance and convey information for the

13
Some examples were inaudible due to factory noise.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1695

Fig. 2. Type of humour by workplace.

Fig. 3. Style of humour by workplace. Single vs extended instances.

current shift.14 Brief humorous contributions from the floor were more common
than extended humour sequences in the factory meetings largely because the factory
manager had the primary right to the floor; contributions from others were only
rarely invited.
Comparing the proportion of single vs extended humour contributions in each
workplace, Fig. 4 indicates that the factory meetings are characterised by more sin-
gle contributions of humour than meetings in other organisations. So while Fig. 1
indicated that there was more humour in the FAC and PRI meetings than in the
meetings of the focus teams in the other two organisations, the results captured in
Figs. 3 and 4 identify a difference in the style of humour characterising PRI and
FAC meetings. In PRI meetings, proportionately more of the total humour takes
the form of extended sequences, as opposed to the single one-liners favoured in FAC
meetings. And, overall, the meetings of the factory team are distinguishable from
meetings of the teams in all the white collar organisations by a higher proportion of
single one-liners used to express humour in the factory meetings.

4.3.2. Style of construction

Exploring the style of the extended humour sequences in more detail, we dis-
tinguished between humorous sequences which were constructed using a more col-
laborative style, as defined above, and those which were more competitively
developed. Since the number of such sequences was relatively small, namely 15–20

14
It is noted by one reviewer that other possible explanations include such factors as the structure and
length of the meeting.
1696 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

instances from each group, it is possible only to make suggestive comments. The
most useful comparison is intra-organisational, namely the relative proportion of
collaboratively constructed sequences of humour compared to competitively con-
structed sequences within each meeting set. (Comparisons between organisations
may be misleading since, as mentioned, the time span of particular meetings varied
considerably).
Fig. 5 illustrates the different proportion of collaboratively vs competitively con-
structed humour sequences within the selected team meetings of each organisation.
Some interesting patterns are suggested concerning the preferred style of extended
humour in different workplaces. The first point to note is that collaborative humour
sequences are more frequent than competitive sequences in all workplaces. However,
Fig. 5 also suggests that competitive sequences are proportionately more frequent in
the PRI and FAC meetings than in the GOV and SPU meetings. The proportion of
extended competitive vs collaborative humour sequences is quite different in the
team meetings in different organisations; the proportion of competitive humour
sequences in the teams in the less commercial organisations is considerably lower
than in the more commercial organisations.15

Fig. 4. Style of humour by workplace. Single vs extended instances.

Fig. 5. Style of construction of humour by workplace.

15
It is possible that gender is a contributing factor (see Holmes and Stubbe, forthcoming; Holmes et al.,
2001), although it is worth noting in this regard that the particular PRI and SPU meetings analysed were
gender-balanced, and the GOV workplace could be described as towards the ‘‘masculine’’ rather than
‘‘feminine’’ end of a gendered workplace continuum (see Holmes and Stubbe, forthcoming).
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1697

5. Discussion

It is first worth drawing attention to the fact that by focussing on humour, and in
particular on extended humour sequences, we have selected discursive encounters
within meetings which are as similar as possible across workplaces. Many aspects of
meetings in different workplaces reflect the very different ‘‘core business’’ of each
community of practice, and the different ways in which the organisation is structured
to manage that business. Humour, however, like social talk (Holmes, 2000) escapes
the straitjacket of business talk in similar ways in different workplaces. Moreover,
significantly, and in contrast to humour in informal friendship groups, the content of
the humour in the workplaces we researched was consistently derived from and
embedded in the core business of each workplace. Despite these similarities, the
dimensions focussed on suggest that teams in different workplaces develop distinctive
discursive practices in the way they ‘‘do humour’’ in meetings.
The aspects of humour selected as the focus of analysis in the four different work-
places derive from Wenger’s suggestions concerning distinguishing features of a
community of practice. The results represented in Figs. 1–5, are summarised in Fig. 6,
which gathers together the different patterns of amount of humour, and of type and
style of humour which characterised the meetings analysed in each of the workplaces.
The patterns evident in Fig. 6 indicate that this approach provides an interesting
means of distinguishing between workplaces on the basis of this one particular
aspect of workplace culture, namely the use of humour—one component in the
shared discursive repertoire of different communities of practice. In the sections
which follow we discuss the characteristics of the selected teams in each workplace
in turn, highlighting the extent to which the patterns of humour express, construct,
and contribute to the continued development of the distinctive culture of each.

5.1. Factory

On the basis of our ethnographic data, observations, and recordings, the factory
team which was the focus of our study is a highly motivated team, with a very capable
and intelligent team leader. The team operates as a very cohesive group and relishes
the team leader’s sparky and engaging interactional style. The team leader provides
direct and ungarnished criticism when the team fails to meet its targets or makes
errors, but she also provides an abundance of very positive and encouraging feed-
back when the team performs well, including explicit comment on how much she
values the way team members support each other in reaching a high performance
standard (see Stubbe, 1998, 2001).
This positive picture of a highly integrated and effective team is well supported by
the analysis of different aspects of humour in the team’s meetings, which suggest
that the factory is a lively and verbally engaging place to work, and that a high
premium is placed on solidarity and the internal cohesion of the team (see also
Stubbe, 1999). This is reflected both in the amount of humour and the kind of
humour evident in team meetings. Two particular points emerge from the results
described above.
1698 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

Fig. 6. All factors by workplace.

Firstly, although the factory meetings were the shortest, they were characterised
by a relatively high proportion of humour. In one meeting participants averaged
more than one instance of humour per minute. Even the meeting with least humour
had the third highest proportion of humour in the data set, with amusing contribu-
tions every 2 or 3 min on average.
Secondly, while, there was no clear pattern in terms of a preference for individual
humorous contributions to the interactions compared to more extended humour
sequences, the majority of the analysable extended sequences that did occur were
supportive rather than contestive in pragmatic effect, and collaboratively rather than
competitively constructed. Sometimes this took the form of the team and the team
leader working collaboratively and good-naturedly to have a go at a particular
member who has been identified as not pulling his weight. In the following example
Markus is being ‘‘got at’’ for causing the team to have to re-do some work. The repri-
mand is achieved not through a formal rebuke from the team manager, but by some
good natured humorous ribbing from her, with support from other team members.

Example 6. Context: early morning meeting of factory team to prepare for day’s
work. Lesia the manager is male.

1. Ginette: so today we’re looking for a bigger day a better day or +

2. a bloody good day
3. Marcus: [laugh] I can’t wait now ++
4. Lesia: thanks again as well for the er rework
5. [cries of oh]
6. XM1: + all day yesterday as well (. . .. . ..)
7. Marcus: do you feel left out there
8. [laughter]
9. Ginette: we tried to cut away at lunchtime
10. Marcus: is that right yesterday
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1699

11. [laughter]
12. XM2: I didn’t expect too much /from this guy\
13. Ginette: /you get back\ on the line and you took off eh eh eh eh +
14. and hang up
15. [laughter]
16. Marcus: oh well today ( ) will you
17. XM3: I didn’t expect too much /from this guy\
18. Marcus: /watch me\ today boy
19. /[laughter]\

Lesia first spotlights Marcus as the source of yesterday’s less than brilliant per-
formance; he was responsible for a ‘‘re-work’’ (line 4). Marcus responds with a
contestive challenge do you feel left out there (line 7) which elicits laughter. The
manager then contributes a comment we tried to cut away at lunchtime (line 9) to
indicate she supports Lesia- but while the message is serious, her tone is humorous.
Marcus becomes a little defensive is that right yesterday (line 10), but he has
now become the target for the team’s jocular abuse (lines 12,13,14,17): I didn’t
expect too much from this guy, you took off eh eh eh. Marcus takes it all in good
part overlapping XM3 with his challenging comment watch me today boy (line
18).
Thus the style of the factory team’s humour closely reflects the team’s close
working relationships, as well as constructing it in dynamic interaction. The team is
assessed as a unit; their achievements are monitored on the basis of their perfor-
mance as a team. This interdependence is nicely indicated by the way they instanti-
ate the particular aspect of their interaction selected here for analysis, namely the
humour expressed in their meetings.

5.2. Private commercial organisation

The meetings of the focus team within the commercial organisation, PRI, had
some points in common with those in the factory. As with the factory meetings, the
impression from the videotapes and the interchanges on the audiotapes is of high
energy meetings of members of the project team, with a great deal of spirited
engagement on issues. The amount of humour, and the patterns of type and style of
humour provide support for this impression.
In general, the PRI team meetings were characterised by considerably more
humour than those of the other white collar organisations. In the meetings analysed,
for instance, participants in one meeting averaged almost one humorous comment
every two minutes, a level of humour surpassed only by the liveliest of the much
shorter factory meetings. It was evident that these white collar meetings encouraged
entertaining contributions from participants.
Secondly, the results indicate that extended sequences of humour were as frequent
as single one-line comments or quips. This again suggests that humour is an accep-
ted component of these meetings, and is certainly not repressed by the meeting chair.
In meetings where humour is not encouraged, participants tend to make quick witty
1700 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

comments in a tone clearly signalling the remark is an ‘‘aside’’.16 In the PRI meet-
ings, by contrast, humour sequences are frequent, and all participants contribute to
them at different times.
Thirdly, the extended humour sequences that occurred in the PRI meetings were
quite different from those in other workplaces in two respects. In the first place,
unlike all other workplaces, they were considerably more often contestive than sup-
portive in pragmatic effect. Secondly, there was a considerably higher proportion of
contestive humour in the PRI meetings than in any other meetings, and especially
than in other white collar workplaces.These features make a considerable contribu-
tion to accounting for the distinctive style of the PRI meetings.
The impression of good-natured but high energy and enthusiastic engagement is
constructed through interactional sequences which are often adversarial and com-
bative in content, and highly competitive in making claims on the ‘‘floor’’, but at the
same time entertaining and good-humoured. Example 7 provides an illustration.

Example 7. Context: a project team at their weekly reporting meeting.

1. Clara: well there’s a there’s a um a photo um you know a pict- an

icon or a pic-
2. picture that’s going to come up at (the) business review
meeting tomorrow
3. when I talk about the fact that we’ve staffed all the jobs
4. Peg: yep
5. Clara: and there are too many men in the picture
6. like there are about equal numbers of men and women
7. I was going to say I think that the testosterone level has
been overstated
8. in this photo in this picture but I don’t know if I can actually
say that ( ). . ...
9. [laughter]
10 Rob: what’s the point you were trying to get to there’s
too many men in a
11. Benny: /in the photo\
12. Clara: /(there’s four)\ in the picture
13. /+ and there are not many men in\ the call centre
14. Sandy: /’cause there’s only\ one man in the call centre
15. Clara: the picture overstates the number of men in the call centre
16. Rob: oh okay
17. Sandy: there’s one gigolo and one pimp and the rest of them are
18. Clara: [laughs] call girls
19. Sandy: call girls
20. Peg: [laughs]

16
cf Marra and Holmes (2002) where we found quips were particularly favoured as expressions of
subversive humour where participants were challenging authority.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1701

21. Marlene: and you’ll need some more /chunky gold jewellery\
22. Peg: /there’s always a complete [name of organisation]
service\ though isn’t it
23. when you think about it [laughs] /[laughs]\
24. Clara: /and maybe a moustache\
25. Marlene: yeah and a shirt that unbuttons (to the waist)
26. Clara: a shiny shiny shirt
27. Rob: what’s Ange then /the top moll or something\
28. Marlene: /and he’ll (. . .. . ..)\
29. Clara: /stuck on\
30. Sandy: the madam
31. Peg: [laughs] yeah she’s the madam [laughs]
32. Sandy: madam Ange
33. [general laughter]
34. Clara: moving right along

This excerpt illustrates several features of the way humour is used as one means
of constructing relationships in this workplace. Most obviously, perhaps, the topic
of call girls, pimps and gigolos, is somewhat risqué in a serious work setting. No
other group introduces such topics in large group business meetings. The topic is
introduced or seeded by the manager with a single witty comment: I was going to
say I think that the testosterone level has been overstated in this photo in this pic-
ture but I don’t know if I can actually say that (lines 7 and 8). Her point is picked
up and developed in a way which provides a basis for jocular abuse of two
members of the team, one of whom is characterised as a gigolo or pimp and the
other the top moll or the madam. While overall, this is predominantly a pragma-
tically supportive humour sequence—the team work together to elaborate the
fantasy of the call centre as a brothel—nevertheless the tone is challenging, and at
one point a contestive sub-theme develops, with the women focussing on elaborating
the characteristics of the gigolo, while the men respond by focussing on the role of the
senior woman as the top moll or the madam. Peg and Sandy finally bring the team back
together pragmatically with their agreement that Ange is the madam.
The style of this short burst of humour illustrates nicely the typical style in these
meetings. Contributors often compete with each other for the floor, each trying to
provide a wittier and more humorous contribution, while they also work collabora-
tively to build up the overall humorous scenario. As Sandy hesitates, Clara supplies
the term call girls (line 18) to complete his utterance; he then repeats it approvingly
(line 19). Marlene introduces the idea of appropriate dress for the gigolo—chunky
gold jewellery (line 21), and a shirt that unbuttons to the waist (line 25). Clara joins in
with further supportive contributions and maybe a moustache, and, more precisely, a
shiny shiny shirt (lines 24 and 26), elaborating Marlene’s mention of a shirt.
Clara’s contributions are collaboratively constructed to mesh with Marlene’s, but
they compete with those of Peg, who interrupts Marlene to develop an alternative
theme, namely that this is part of the complete service provided by PRI to its cus-
tomers (lines 22–23). The mixture of competitive and collaborative style here is very
1702 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

typical of the humour in PRI meetings. Rob competes with Marlene and Clara for
the floor as he develops the theme of Ange as the top moll (line 27), in opposition to
their focus on the gigolo (lines 21, 24–26, 28–29), but Sandy and Peg finally
collaborate echoing and repeating the characterisation of Ange as the madam (lines
30–32). Also typical is the way the manager brings them back to serious business
with a humorous comment moving right along (line 34), echoing the use of this
phrase in other contexts in which people have diverged from the track of business.
Thus, the way in which this team ‘‘does humour’’ in their meetings indicates
accurately the way they construct their collegial relationships, as evident from our
ethnographic observations. Compared to the extremely cohesive factory team, who
are highly inter-dependent in their work and in achieving their work goals, the PRI
team depend on each other much less. They operate essentially as individuals each
making a distinctive contribution to the project they are working on. Interestingly,
this is nicely reflected in the style of humour that the team develops, as evident in
this analysis.

5.3. Semi-public organisation

The data from the semi-public organisation (SPU) was characterised by a rather
different humour profile from either the factory team or the private commercial
organisation project team. The SPU team consisted of the regional managers of a
‘‘helping’’ organisation, most of whom had worked together for some time, and who
had shared objectives. They therefore had a good deal in common. However, they
did not meet face-to-face as a group very often, and they communicated mostly by
phone and e-mail. The meetings analysed involved the team’s discussion of their
strategic objectives, and they were clearly working together seriously to achieve a
common and agreed outcome. There was evidence of a great deal of goodwill and
cooperation, and a friendly and pleasant tone. Once again, this impression was
supported specifically by the analysis of humour in their meetings.
The amount of humour in the meetings of the SPU team was relatively low. This
almost certainly reflected the fact that the team members did not know each other
as well as did the participants in the meetings from other workplaces. Another
contributing factor was the highly focussed nature of the meetings: the team had
been brought together from their regions at some expense for these meetings, and so
there was considerable pressure to get through the agenda efficiently.
However, although there was not as much humour as in other workplaces, the
humour that occurred reflected the very positive culture of the SPU organisation.
Indeed, the general atmosphere of goodwill which was evident from the recordings
of these meetings was well instantiated by the type and style of humour which
characterised them.
Firstly, there was as much extended, jointly constructed humour as there were
individual contributions to the humour in the meetings, a good indication of attempts
by team members to cooperate at the discourse level. Secondly, the great majority of
the humour sequences in these meetings were both supportive in pragmatic effect
and clearly collaboratively rather than competitively constructed. Indeed, the
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1703

meetings of this team were the most clearly distinguished in this respect: they pro-
duced three times as many supportive and collaboratively constructed sequences as
competitive and contestive sequences. Example 8 provides an illustration of these
points.

Example 8. Context: a group of regional managers at planning meeting of a large

organisation (There are some substituted words and pseudonyms to protect anon-
ymity of the organisation and towns.)

1. Penelope: the fact that we don’t go to Malt

2. Howard: mm
3. Penelope: doesn’t mean that people from Malt can’t
4. Scott: yeah
5. Penelope: go somewhere to get help mm ‘cause they were
interested enough t-
6. Ralph: if you live in Malt you need to go somewhere /(to get help)\
7. /[General laughter]\
8. Scott: there is actually quite a big consultancy in Malt
9. Howard: is there?
10. Scott: yeah
11. Henrietta: I was told many years ago that Malt/was the\=
12. Malcolm: /Malt\
13. Kirsty: =/heart of the\ wife swapping area for PROVINCE
14. Malcolm: /(Malt)\ [pronounced with local pronunciation]
15. Scott: /isn’t\ it Malt that had the highest rate of um /s t oh no
that’s Stout\
16. Penelope: /ex ex nuptial\ birth- births /ex\
17. Scott: /highest\ the highest s t d rate per capita
18. Penelope: /Malt had th-\ the highest
19. Scott: /Malt or Stout [laughs]\
20. Kirsty: /did they?\
21. Penelope: /rates of ex ex nuptial\ births at one point.......
22. Malcolm: it’s the alcohol that does it
23. Howard: [laughs] it’s the alcohol
24. [General laughter and overlapping talk throughout
next section]
25. Penelope: poor old Malt
26. Kirsty: we should be there
27. Scott: we should be there
28. Penelope: we should be /there\
29. Scott: /what\+do you want more children?
30. [General laughter].....
31. Scott: /(....) an outpost\
32. Penelope: /an outpost we want\ an outpost in Malt
33. Scott: right OK
1704 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

34. Penelope: /open an outpost\ in Malt h- how far is Malt from Halty
35. Scott: /send your donation\
36. Ingrid: Malt [with local pronunciation]
37. Scott: I don’t know ‘cause I always bypass it and do the/ back road\
38. /it’s such an awful place\
39. /[General laughter]\

This is a section from a much longer humorous sequence (almost 800 words). The
humour revolves around the disadvantages of living in a particular small isolated
rural town. Participants work together to supportively develop the topic at length,
making more and more outrageous claims about the horrors of life in the town,
pseudonymed Malt. Each utterance supports and further develops the proposition
of the previous contributor.
There is a great deal of fast and frequently overlapping speech throughout. Of the
many points which could be made concerning the collaborative strategies which
characterise the excerpt, we draw attention to just two: firstly the number of requests
for confirmation which closely tie contributions to each other: e.g. is there? (line 9)
isn’t it Malt that had the highest rate of std? (line 15) did they? (line 20); secondly the
amount of repetition which extends from single words and phrases e.g. highest (lines
15,17,18), Malt, (lines, 1,3,6,8,11,12,14,15,18,19,25,32,34,36) outpost (lines 31,32,34)
to whole clauses e.g. the refrain we should be there is repeated by several different
voices at different pitches and volumes in a way which is strongly reminiscent of the
different parts in a motet or madrigal (lines 26,27,28). The excerpt ends with a
humorous response to the question how far is Malt from Halty ? (line 34). The whole
excerpt is full of laughter and overlapping contributions, further well-established
characteristics of a collaboratively shared floor. It is a complete contrast to the
OAAT type of floor which is typical of this and most meetings as they discuss the
serious content of the business meeting. As in the previous example, the chair even-
tually moves the meeting back to business.
In these meetings, the predominance of supportive humour and collaboratively
constructed sequences identified by the analysis clearly makes an important con-
tribution to the construction of good relations and cooperation between partici-
pants. The impression of focussed yet harmonious discussion which characterised
the meetings of this SPU group was therefore well-mirrored by the patterns of
humour in the meetings. Indeed the humour itself contributed to the construction,
development and cementing of collegial relationships between the group members.

5.4. Government department

The data from the government department meetings provided yet another sce-
nario. The recorded meetings took place between people who had worked together
regularly for some time. The participants knew each other well and these were reg-
ular routine team meetings. The interaction at the meetings gives the impression of a
group who are familiar with each other, and with each other’s style of interaction, as
well as with each other’s professional strengths and weaknesses.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1705

The amount of humour in one of the meetings of this group is particularly low.
This may be partly accounted for by the seriousness of some of the topics on their
agenda, but may also be due to the fact that this was the first video-taped meeting of
this particular group (previous meetings had been audio-taped). In both meetings
there is a substantial amount of more extended humour which is jointly constructed,
however, indicating and enacting the collegial relationships among the group mem-
bers. Moreover, the general pattern of the jointly constructed sequences of humour
in both meetings is consistently more supportive than contestive, and it is more often
constructed in a collaborative than a competitive style, in terms of contributions to
the floor. These patterns clearly distinguish this public sector GOV group from the
very contestive and competitive private sector PRI meetings. On the other hand, the
GOV team is not as highly supportive and collaborative as the SPU team, a pattern
which accurately reflects our ethnographic observations which identified the SPU team
as notably explicit in their friendly, supportive and collaborative behaviour in general.
Example 9 illustrates some of these points. This excerpt begins with a supportive
humour sequence constructed in a collaborative style but gradually develops into a
more contestive and competitive interaction.

Example 917. Context: Regular meeting of mixed gender group of 13 people in gov-
ernment department

1. Jake: he’s also very popular locally as well ’cause he actually looks after his
2. workforce he’s /kept them\ he’s kept them on payroll while there’s=
3. Stu: /oh right\
4. Jake: =been no stuff going through the factory he’s
5. he employs far more people than than COMPANY NAME
6. across the ro- er
7. Stu: no
8. Jake: across the way he’s he’s got a quite high profile and he’s considered
9. to be + /you know\
10. Connie: /a good chap\
11. Stu: /a good guy\
12. Jake: /a bloody\ good bloke
13. Stu: a good guy /oh okay\
14. Jake: /and the\ Minister thinks so as well so you know
15. /an- and\ he’s quite an honourable guy
16. Wendy: /( )\
17. Connie: [quietly]: mm:
18. Jake: he’s a sort of a handshake and I trust you type guy so you know+
19. when you’ve got another good bloke talking to another good
20. bloke then you’ve got a
21. [General laughter]
22. Stu: they didn’t go to the same school /did they\

17
This example is taken from Holmes (forthcoming) where it is discussed more fully.
1706 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

23. Jake: /us good\ blokes have gotta stick together

24. [General laughter, buzz of sceptical noises and comments including
25. ‘‘oh right;’’ from more than one woman]
26. Wendy: /bloody good bloke\
27. /[General laughter]\
28. Jeff: bet he doesn’t employ many women workers
29. [General laughter]
30. XM: no
31. Connie: (oh) I probably wouldn’t want the job /either\
32. Jake: /it\ depends on your definition of /good bloke\
33. /[General laughter]\
34. (...............)
35. Jake: /yeah no a good good\ bloke
36. /[General laughter]\

This example begins with the development of a collaboratively shared floor

between two of the men, Jake and Stu (lines 1–9); Connie makes a pragmatically
supportive contribution with the phrase a good chap (line 10) indicating she ‘‘gets’’
the picture being constructed. Her contribution is practically simultaneous with
Stu’s synonymous a good guy (line 11), and Jake’s a bloody good bloke (line 12) .
This is maximally cohesive, collaborative and supportive discourse, with all three
clearly on the same wavelength developing a single shared floor.
Gradually, however, as Jake develops the concept of a good bloke (lines 15, 18–
20), the contributions become much less cohesive and collaboratively integrated.
Individuals increasingly provide their own syntactically complete and pragmatically
contestive contributions (see Holmes, fc for more detailed analysis). The floor
becomes a competitive site, a OAAT floor, with both women and men making
independent contributions (lines 25–31).
The women and men at the meeting clearly recognise in the course of the exchange
that they have rather different views about at least some of the characteristics of a
good bloke.
In terms of content, this example is also interestingly representative since the issue
of gender relations surfaces to a greater or lesser extent in a number of the meetings
of this male-dominated government department. In this example, the pervasiveness
of the old boys’ network gradually becomes the focus of the humour. Gender emerges
as the focus of attention as the women’s contributions to the humour indicate their
unwillingness to accept the values implicit in the picture of how the business world
works, as constructed largely by the men at the meeting. Gender-based dissonances
are evident elsewhere in the discussions we recorded in this workplace. They contrast
most markedly with the SPU meetings, where dissonances of this type simply never
emerged, and where there was repeated evidence that contributors shared goals,
attitudes and values, and were on same wave-length. Their discourse generally, as
well as their humour, provided evidence of a group working together for common
goal.
 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710 1707

6. Conclusion

As a component of discursive practice, humour can provide insights into the dis-
tinctive culture which develops in different workplaces or communities of practice.
The patterns evident in the humour analysed in this sample of workplace meetings
was generally consistent with our ethnographic observations of the kinds of
relationships evident between members of the different workplaces. Humour in the
factory (FAC) meetings we analysed was a means of making routine tasks more
interesting, as well as cementing highly solidary relationships. The profile of this work-
place, as represented by the focus workplace team, reveals a high level of relatively
collaborative and supportive humour. The serious meetings of the public organisation
(GOV) had the least amount of humour of all those analysed. The bursts of humour
which occurred at specific points tended to be more supportive than contestive in
type, and more collaborative than competitive in style, reflecting the general colle-
giality of the group. Meetings of the commercial team (PRI) produced a high level of
sparky humour, which was frequently contestive and expressed in a competitive
style, possibly one enactment of the more individual values and orientations, as well
as the pressure on team members to perform in these meetings. Finally, the pre-
dominantly supportive and collaborative humour in the meetings of the team
from the semi-public organisation (SPU) served very obviously to actively con-
struct collegial relationships between a group of team members who did not meet
regularly.
An individual’s work is one important aspect of their social identity. One means of
signalling intergroup distinctiveness is through the development of distinctive
workplace cultures. This paper has used a community of practice framework to
explore the notion that humour is one aspect of the distinctive culture of particular
workplaces. Hence, we have examined one specific aspect of the shared discourse
repertoire of four different communities of practice as a means of characterising the
distinctive culture of each. Analysing the amount of humour which occurred in a
small sample of meetings from each workplace, we established that different work-
places differ quite markedly in the proportion of humour which characterises their
team meetings. Different workplace meetings also contrast in the type of humour
they favour, with some characterised by predominantly supportive humorous con-
tributions and others by more contestive humour. There were variations in the style
of humour, with different distributions of brief quips as opposed to more extended
humour sequences. Moreover, within extended sequences, while collaborative,
jointly constructed humour was relatively common, there was variation in the extent
to which a more competitive style of humour was identified in different workplaces
meetings.
The analysis suggests that each workplace has its own distinctive mix of features.
Each workplace team creates its own particular combination from the discursive
resources available, within the parameters acceptable at that workplace. This
approach thus provides a basis for further research establishing workplace
norms and identifying distinctive aspects of the culture of different communities
of practice.
1708 J. Holmes, M. Marra / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1683–1710

Appendix. Transcription conventions

[laughs]: : Paralinguistic features in square brackets, colons indicate start/finish

+ Pause of up to one second
... /......\ ... Simultaneous speech
... /.......\ ...
(hello) Transcriber’s best guess at an unclear utterance
?
- Rising or question intonation
... ... Incomplete or cut-off utterance section of transcript omitted
XM/XF Unidentified male/female voice
= Continued speech

All names used in examples are pseudonyms.

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Janet Holmes holds a personal Chair in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, where she tea-
ches a variety of sociolinguistics courses. She is Director of the Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zeal-
and English and of a Government funded research project on Language in the Workplace. She has
published on a wide range of topics including New Zealand English, language and gender, sexist language,
pragmatic particles, compliments and apologies, and most recently on language in the workplace. Her
publications include a textbook, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, now in its second edition, and a book
on language and gender, Women, Men and Politeness.

Meredith Marra is engaged in research towards a PhD in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language
Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Her main focus is the decision-making processes in meetings,
but she has also published on the topic of humour in the workplace. As Research Officer for Victoria’s
Language in the Workplace project, Meredith’s research interests include a range of aspects of the dis-
course of meetings as well as the uses and functions of humour in workplace interactions.