Having a laugh at work: how humour contributes to workplace culture

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 workplaces. 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. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.