Harmony or attack: The function of student humor at lower secondary schools

Abstract

This paper addresses the phenomenon of school humor, focusing on the question of how it contributes to shaping teacher-student relationships. Based on an analysis of texts written by lower secondary school students, the paper shows that humor at school serves contradictory functions, such as harmonizing teacherstudent relationships on the one hand, and enabling power negotiation aimed at gaining superiority on the other. Analysis of narrative data has identified a specific phenomenon of festive humor. Within its frame, teacher-student relationships nearly always tend to be harmonized.