Joking Apart: Some Recommendations Concerning the Analysis of Scientific Culture

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to show that scientific humour is an important topic analytically, because it reveals with particular clarity some of the interpretative resources by means of which scientists create social meaning. A discourse analysis is presented of a recurrent participants' `proto-joke' dealing with communication among scientists, of a satirical article appearing in a `joke journal', and of a cartoon. This analysis adds further support to prior work on the nature of scientists' interpretative repertoires; as well as describing some of the organizational forms which are used to construct scientists' humour. It is suggested that there is no difference, in general principle, between the social production of humour and the social production of, say, consensus or controversy; in other words, that the phenomena traditionally investigated by sociologists of science are best conceived, like humour, as highly variable outcomes of the interpretative procedures used by scientists to organize their versions of social action in specific contexts. © 1982, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.