40
HUMOR IN A GROUP OF HAWAIIAN ADOLESCENTS
Louise Bernstein
Department of Anthropology
University of California
Berkeley, California
This paper explores the correlation between role relationships
and humor patterns in a group of twenty-two Hawaiian adolescents who
were designated by school administrators to be disciplinary problems
and assigned to a Special Motivations Class (S.M.C.). The students
were observed in two institutional settings: first in the S.M.C. at
an intermediate school; later in a summer continuation program at a
local Y.M.C.A. The shift in setting from the S.M.C. to the Y.M.C.A.
brought about concomitant changes in the role relationships of the
children, and these changes were reflected in their joking behavior.
My hypothesis is that ambiguous role situations are indicated by
joking relationships, and that different types of humor reflect
different types of role relationships.
Ethnographic Observation in the S.M.C.
From February to May, 1969, I was an assistant teacher for the
Special Motivations Class at Manapua Intermediate School.1 The goal
of the program was to modify the behavior of students identified as
disciplinary problems. The teachers particularly wanted to dis-
courage "paint sniffing", where the children obtained a "high" by
putting paint soaked rags into their mouths and inhaling the fumes.
Children assigned to the S.M.C. were considered by the teachers to
be disruptive in school, and eleven of the twenty-two had police
records. The S.M.C. was considered by the school administration to
be the children's last chance to remain in school. If they failed
to conform, they faced certain expulsion during the next school
year.
As a teacher assistant, I was not assigned to one particular
teacher, but instead attended several classes with the students.
Rather than standing at the front of the room, I sat with the
children during class, tutored them individually, and accompanied
them on weekly field trips. Outside of school I spent a great deal
of time talking with the students, and much of my data on their
opinions of the S.M.C., of the school, and of the teachers is drawn
from these conversations.
The children, twelve girls and ten boys, ranged in age from
twelve to eighteen, but most were fifteen and sixteen years old.
They were all part Hawaiian and lived in a homestead area called
Pali, where housing was substandard and often overcrowded. Many of
the children had only one parent, and alcoholism was common among
41
the parents. Before the S.M.C. was formed, these particular
children fought with one another, but once they were in the S.M.C.,
they ceased to fight among themselves and united against other
groups of children in the school.
Much of the children's behavior in the S.M.C. bears out
Simmel's (1955:91-93) contention that, when a group of individuals
band together and are faced with a common enemy, the larger conflict
augments intragroup unity while it aggravates intragroup conflicts.
After formation of the S.M.C., intragroup conflicts were expressed
largely through humor. This phenomenon was also noted by Radcliffe-
Brown (1952), who stated that joking relationships were often
maintained between individuals who banded together when threatened
by an outside power.
Each child in the S.M.C. occupied either a superordinate or a
subordinate status. I have designated them as leaders and non-
leaders respectively. By leaders I mean those who can influence the
group to action, who can ridicule and not be ridiculed in return.
Six of the girls in the group were leaders, while the remaining
class members were non-leaders. There was a small group of boys who
were treated as equals by the superordinate girls, but the boys did
not actively participate in the more flamboyant humor styles
described below.
The children exhibited a high degree of hostility toward the
school because they viewed it as unrewarding and irrelevant to their
lives. They expressed feelings of shame and anger about their mem-
bership in the Special Motivations Class, since at Manapua the word
"special" was a euphemism for mentally retarded (or, as the children
called it, "the dumb-dumb class"). Although these children were not
viewed as retarded by the school administration (there was another
"special" class for mentally retarded children), the stigma of being
in the Special Motivations Class had an effect on their behavior at
school.
In addition, many incidents indicated that the children felt
their Hawaiianness was a stigma. They made numerous derogatory
remarks about their homestead area and the Hawaiian people. Never-
theless, they reacted defensively if a non-Hawaiian made a remark
that could be construed as anti-Hawaiian.
The children's behavior in class bears out Goffman's theory
that stigmatized people take pains to prevent their stigma from
being obtrusive when they are interacting with "normal" people.
The awareness that one of his own attributes is a defilement often
causes the stigmatized person to feel a high degree of shame (Goff-
man 1963:7).  Therefore, in interactions with "normal" people the
stigmatized person may be self-conscious and calculating about the
impression he is making.
The joking relationships formed by the students were similar
to what Radcliffe-Brown calls symmetrical and asymmetrical joking
42
relationships (1952:90). In the former, which exists between
individuals who are of equal status, both parties are free to tease
one another. In the latter, found between two individuals of un-
equal status, the individual who is the target of ridicule may not
tease his tormentor in return.
The two joking modes discussed below, banter and irony,2 are
common in symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships respectively.
Tom Burns (1953) notes that the use of both irony and banter enables
people to cope with role disparity. When two roles overlap and an
individual wishes to keep the status concomitant with each, he can
do so by entering into a joking relationship. This is similar to
Radcliffe-Brown's theory about the co-presence of conjunctive and
disjunctive components in many relationships (ibid.). He sees the
joking relationship as a medium for uniting the conjunctive and
disjunctive elements in family relations. Radcliffe-Brown hypothe-
sizes that joking partnerships, which are characterized by behavior
which communicates both hostility and friendship, prevent serious
conflict through the constant repetition of playful hostility. He
sees banter as the expression of social disjunction which maintains
social conjunction.
One-to-One Interactions
This section deals with one-to-one interactions within the
group.  There was no need for a separate audience, since the humor
was whole and contained within the dyad.
1.   Intragroup humor
Intragroup humor tended to be a statement or metaphor about
the relative statuses of the students. Certain humor modes used by
a leader were rarely employed by a non-leader, but if a non-leader
did try to imitate leader-specific types of humor, he was either
ignored or told to be quiet.
Joking behavior between two or more leaders was a symbolic
statement of their relationship in the context of their friendship.
Certain signals were used to tell one another that what was being
verbalized was not to be taken literally. In general, the tone was
arch and the exchange was in the form of banter. For specific
situations other signals were needed, such as when leaders employed
the type of ridicule and sarcasm that could be highly insulting if
it was not known to be a joke. In these cases, the children
usually transformed their facial expressions into exaggerated masks
of indignation and repugnance. Their voices became sneering, brash
and loud. Through these exaggerations the pair made it obvious
that they were only playing. One such exchange went as follows:
A:   Give me some French fries.
B:   No, you stupid ass.
A:   Shut your ass, you fucker.
43
"A" was then allowed to grab some French fries,
after a short tussle.
Within this play context one child could call another a "black ass"
or a "nigger" (considered one of the grossest of insults) without
much danger of an adverse reaction.
When two leaders broke the sexual taboos set up by the group
members, one signaled that it was humor by changing her body posture
and voice. The instigator would bend her knees slightly and stick
out her rear end. Her hands would be limp and loose wristed. Walk-
ing in this stance she resembled a duck. Her voice ranged from that
of a drunk to that of a young child, depending on the actor, but
giving the impression that she was not in full control of herself
and therefore could not be held responsible for her actions. A
typical skit would run like this:
A (in the duck stance and drunk voice):   I love
you too much, I love you too much, I love you
too much.
A would then wrap both her arms around B's neck.
The latter was thus thrown off balance or weighed
to the ground as A kissed her cheeks with loud
smacking sounds. B invariably pretended to be
strangled and exaggeratedly helpless and confused.
One leader often provided entertainment for another by putting
on an impromptu skit or burlesque. This usually entailed a change
in costume.
Leader A had taken a scarf and tied it around her
eyes. She assumed the duck stance and (while
peeking) pretended to play blindman's bluff. In
reality she was chasing leader B. When A caught
B, she loudly kissed her. A then perched on a
high stool and tied a scarf in her own hair. She
sat in an extremely dainty, ladylike posture and
pretended to brush the scarf as if it were hair.
With a quick movement she feigned brushing her
pubic hair and just as quickly (pretending that
there had been no change) she went on to brush
the scarf. All of this was performed with icy
dignity. A then jumped off the stool and, hold-
ing the scarf like a harem veil, she sidled
sexily over to B, nudging the latter with her
shoulder and raising her eyebrows suggestively.
B took all of this with great humor but played
the straight man.
The idea conveyed by this sort of humor was that the players
were friends and equals. However, Gallimore and Howard (1968)
found in their study of Nanakuli adolescents that the relationship
44
between Hawaiian girl friends was often far from being warm and
close. The girls were constantly competing for boys and for group
popularity. In the S.M.C., where a group of superordinate girls
were placed in a class together, they formed a clique. When they
felt threatened by the teachers and by the other students, the girls
strengthened the unity of the clique (conjunction), which also
heightened their competition and hostility (disjunction). The
formation of symmetrical joking relationships enabled them to cope
with this ambiguous situation. The stereotypical ways in which the
children constantly related to one another (such as with voice and
posture changes) created social distance between them by limiting
the sharing of information and by stabilizing behavior. Repeated
playful hostility minimized real hostility, thereby enabling the
children to maintain a "friendly" relationship while keeping a
degree of separation and distance between them.
Such conflicts are seen by Murphy (1965) as a social concomi-
tant for social distance. He states that members of one's different
role sets often have conflicting expectations. To avoid conflict,
one must insulate one's roles by withholding knowledge of one's
planned course of action and opinions. This limitation of communi-
cation or social distance affords the actor some privacy and
flexibility, which in turn makes his multiple roles viable.
According to Murphy, social distance techniques often entail
"constancy of demeanor" (ibid., 369), that is, any continually
repeated type of behavior in specific situations will mask the
actor's feelings by limiting the amount of information he divulges,
while keeping the social relationship intact. Thus, social dis-
tance appears to make possible the combining of the conjunctive and
disjunctive elements in a relationship.
Social distance through stereotypical behavior plays an
important part in ambivalent and ambiguous situations in which an
individual must maintain a certain amount of flexibility. By
constantly repeating a certain type of behavior in similar circum-
stances, communication of information is controlled and social
distance maintained. This can be seen in the markedly stereotyped
behavior employed by the children in many of their interactions.
Leader to non-leader humor usually took the form of ridicule
and sarcasm. The signals were different from those used between
leaders in that the voice of the attacker (leader) ranged from
coldly factual to bitingly mocking (depending on the situation and
the personal relationship between the two interactors), and there
was no change of posture. The leader was communicating the idea
that there was something wrong with the subordinate, and occasion-
ally this something was spelled out (e.g., ugliness, stupidity,
asininity). The following exchange took place on a field trip:
About a mile from home the group lost its way.
They parked the car, and one of the girls went to
find directions. While waiting for her return, a
45
teacher sat on the curb and a non-leader began
to brush the teacher's hair. One of the leaders
yelled, "At a time like this you're brushing her
hair! We lost on the other side of island and
you're combing her hair!" The leader then raised
her eyes imploringly to the sky as if to ask God
for strength.
This sort of humor helped to keep subordinates in their places.
Leader to non-leader joking relationships were asymmetrical and
were characterized by irony. The superordinate children maintained
joking relationships with the subordinate for several reasons. For
one, all of the group members had to have some degree of solidarity
or else they could not work together as a group against their common
enemy (the school authorities). Also, many of the children were
related to each other or were neighbors. An openly hostile rela-
tionship between two children would have had repercussions outside
of the school setting. Their joking relationships enabled them to
cope with this rather ambivalent situation. Once again, stereotyped
behavior and playful hostility provided social distance.
Leaders may have used fewer voice and posture changes with
non-leaders because they felt less constrained to state symbolically
that the hostility was all in fun. In leader to non-leader
exchanges, the risk of causing insult was not as dangerous to a
leader's popularity as it would have been in leader to leader
exchanges.
Among the non-leaders there was a definite pecking order,
whereas the leaders formed a unified clique based on their equality.
Consequently two non-leader interactants often exhibited a great
deal of tension as they vied for position. When the joking behavior
was between two non-leader friends, it was similar in tone to
leader-leader banter, i.e., it showed their equality. The following
incident illustrates the difference between the interaction of two
non-leader equals and the interactions of one of them with someone
of lower status:
Non-leaders A and B (male friends) both wanted
to sit in the front seat of the car. In the
mock battle which ensued, each called the other
obscene names. Their laughter seemed genuine.
The winner (B) was later pressured into giving
up his seat to C (a female of very low status).
For about twenty minutes B ridiculed C by
calling her "black ass" and "nigger." he asked
her such questions as "How do you even get a
comb through your hair?" "Is it made out of
wires?" B also taunted C by disparaging her
home. All this was obviously very painful to
C. However, both children laughed at every
jibe. The laughter seemed strained.
46
An interesting contrast between leader to leader and non-leader
to non-leader exchanges was that, in the former, the message of
friendship was masked in ridicule, while in the latter the ridicule
was masked in laughter. Both messages came through despite their
screens.
Sexual joking was also indicative of the relative status of an
individual. A non-leader typically addressed his sexual jokes to an
authority figure rather than to another class member. The leaders,
however, usually addressed their sexual remarks to each other. The
following incident illustrates the difference in the two forms of
banter:
At lunch one day, two leaders were remarking to
each other that pineapple sticks were rather ideal
in shape to put inside of their pukas (holes).
The teacher overheard but pretended not to under-
stand what the leaders meant.   hiereupon, one of
the non-leaders said to her, "You ought to know,
you've done it enough--three kids, three tries."
(The other children expressed their embarrassment
concerning this innuendo.)
Certain modes of humor common to both leaders and non-leaders
did not usually indicate vertical relationships. Word play was of
this type, as was the sniffing ploy. A sniffing ploy was any trick
employed by the children to enable them to "secretly" sniff paint.
In one such play a child yelled, "Hey you, come back with my watch!"
He then ran out the door after the "thief." Of course there was no
stolen watch, but the child who had gotten out of the room without
the teacher's permission went to the lavatory for a refill of paint.
All the students humorously exaggerated their fears and pain
through jocular griping. It was part of their code of conduct that
one should maintain a cool, tough face. If something frightening or
painful transpired, the children suppressed their "weaker" emotions
and laughed instead, thus maintaining face. To participate in this
sort of jocular humor, one had to overcome one's fears and be
detached. The following incident took place on a field trip:
Two leaders were sniffing paint in the back of
the car and yelling obscenities out the window.
They made obscene remarks to some men who turned
out to be plainclothes policemen. When the
police threatened to arrest the girls (sniffing
is a misdemeanor), one of the two children wept
and yelled uncontrollably while the other kept
cool. The first girl's behavior embarrassed the
other children and the Hawaiian police officer,
who said, "Hawaiians aren't supposed to act that
way." The girl is now of very low status. The
children who used to laugh at her jokes now ignore
her or tell her to "shut up."
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If the girl had taken a jocular attitude instead of showing her
fear, she would have acted out her own and the group's invincibility,
thereby saving face. Instead, her conduct threatened the face of
the group. More importantly, because she was a leader, not only did
she shame herself, but, as the group's representative, she shamed
the others as well.
2.   Child-teacher
Although some qualitative differences did exist, the standard
way of relating to authority figures varied only slightly between
leaders and non-leaders. For the most part, the teacher was
baited, ridiculed, and made the brunt of many jokes. However,
non-leaders were more dependent on the teachers for affirmation,
and they knew that they could safely say things to a teacher that
would be unacceptable to another class member. A rather telling
example of non-leader to authority joking behavior went as follows:
The teacher and a group of the children (non-
leaders) got lost in downtown Honolulu. The
girls were giving the teacher incorrect direc-
tions and teasing her about her terrible driving.
The teacher pretended to cry and asked them to
stop teasing her. Whereupon one of the girls
said, "It's good to be able to pick on someone
sometimes."
The authority was often the only person that the very low-status
child could relate to as if the teacher's status was lower than her
own.
Joking relationships with authority figures were generally
highly asymmetrical. The students kept social distance between
themselves and the teacher by constantly barraging her with humorous
ridicule in the form of irony. The children assumed that a teacher
would never attack them by pointing to their stigma as "special"
children, whereas another Hawaiian would know exactly where they
were most vulnerable.
Sardonic humor was another form of interchange between a child
and an authority. The following are examples of typical themes:
(1) Alcoholism. One child, when asked if anyone in her family
drank, said (with a sad smile), "Does my family drink? All they do
is suck-em-up. Alcoholic family." On another occasion a girl told
me never to invite a Hawaiian to my wedding because all Hawaiians
do is drink and fight. These condemnations of alcoholism are very
telling in light of the fact that the most common humor voice is
that of feigned drunkenness. (2) Glue sniffing. When I mentioned
something about the future to one child, he told me that he did not
have to worry about the future: "Sniffers croak young, you know."
While trying to take a girl's paint rag from her, I was told to go
away and "let me live my last moments in peace." (3) Self-worth.
One child was told by a VISTA volunteer that one does not need to
48
graduate from high school to join VISTA. The girl queried, "Even if
you're dumb?" (i.e., like me). This form of humor allowed the child
to express her hurt without losing face.
The acceptance of humor from an authority figure was independ-
ent of the child's status. It depended on how well the two knew
each other (this entailed finding areas of shared perceptions and
experiences). When a child first met a teacher, most attempts at
humor on the authority's part were received with blank stares. The
children did not even recognize it as humor. A teacher jokingly
told one girl that he would punch her eye (this is a common jesting
threat used among the children). The inappropriateness of this
threat was so vast that the girl could not believe he had said it.
Instead, she attributed the remark to the boy sitting next to him
and acted accordingly, i.e., she laughed in his face and ridiculed
him, since he was of lower status than she. After the children came
to know an authority figure well, they accepted humor from him. But
at the beginning of the authority-child relationship the authority
was an object of humor and, like any alien, was not expected to
reply or understand.
It would seem that as the teacher and the child became more
"friendly" their joking relationship became more symmetrical.
Perhaps the proximity to friendship made the teacher less of a
threatening outside power.
The co-presence of conjunction and disjunction can be seen in
the children's relationship with the teacher. It was evident that
the students did feel hostility toward the teacher; however, an
ongoing relationship between the pupils and the teacher had to be
maintained despite the hostility, for the S.M.C. children and their
teachers were together five days a week. The teacher also had a
great deal of power over the children; she could suspend them from
school and give them failing grades. Despite this hostility there
was some degree of S.M.C. class spirit and, at certain times, the
teacher was called "our teacher."
Because of this ambiguity the students maintained social
distance between themselves and their teacher through joking rela-
tionships. The humor masked their feelings and gave the children
flexibility. They could be the teacher's friend and her tormentor
at the same time.
Relating to the other teachers in the school was quite a
different story.  The context became that of "school," which meant
added hostility on the children's part. These outside teachers were
almost always objects of ridicule. A typical example of this went
as follows:
An S.M.C. student was passing a teacher in the
hall. The girl took the duck stance, rear end
prominently forward (she was walking backward).
49
As she approached she made grunting noises and
shook her rear end at the indignant teacher.
For the most part, though, such hostility had to be kept at least
partially masked since the teachers had disciplinary powers over the
children.
Individual-to-Group Interactions
This section addresses the relationship of leaders, non-
leaders, and S.M.C. teachers to the group as a whole.
1.   Intragroup
In intragroup humor, when a leader directed her jokes to the
entire group, she often signaled it by using the duck posture and/or
the drunk voice. In a tense situation it was up to the leader to
provide comic relief. She usually performed a skit to burlesque the
angry (or hurt) parties or did a caricature of herself. For example:
One day after some of the children had been stung
by Portuguese men-of-war, we went to a Red Cross
station. Although the children were in great
pain, they made an effort to hold back their
tears. A leader (who had not been stung) jumped
out of the truck, assumed the duck posture, and
yelled, "Oh, my okoli (ass)" (repeated three
times) and presented her buttocks to the doctor.
Another leader (who had been stung on the arm)
exaggerated her fear of the medicine to the point
of ridiculousness. The group was able to laugh
at the two leaders and forget about their own
pain for a while.
Leaders also provided entertainment on long car trips or during
boring classes. They gave running commentaries on the scenery and
even allowed themselves to be ridiculed by the group. Humor for
entertainment usually called for audience participation. The other
children showed their appreciation by yelling, "That's a good one,"
or "Very funny." For example:
A leader described a nearby sewage plant as
follows:
Leader:    Do-do water goes in there.   They put
some sand in it and it comes out here.
That's all do-do water there, so if
you go swimming in it you swim in
do-do water.
Audience:  Go swim in it, Joe!
Leader:    No, you!  Some of you is out there in
the do-do water. Every time that you
50
make do-do part of you is there.
I go swim in it and I'll think
you you.
and
Leader:    It would be a shame if I drowned.
I'm so young and beautiful, aren't
I, guys?
Audience:  NO!
Leader:    You're jealous, cause I'm pretty.
I'm conceited, yeah, me!
Later we passed a ruined shack and another
leader said, "That's my house, guys. I live
there."
This type of humor was a reinterpretation of the group's
experiences, seeking to entertain and reassure the group members.
It also strengthened group cohesion by changing an individual
experience into a collective one. To understand the ironic humor
of some of the jokes, one had to understand the social structure of
the group. For instance, one day a leader threw her arms around a
non-leader's neck and loudly declared her love for him. All the
other children found this extremely funny. Her declaration of love
for the non-leader was ridiculous in light of his low status.
A non-leader's relationship with the group was usually defen-
sive, i.e., when attacked he saved face by laughing and joking.
Non-leaders occasionally acted out their own subordination,
exaggerated and in skit form. The tone of voice and posture were
supplicant and whiney.
Someone brought a can of beer from home. A non-
leader knelt on the back seat of the truck and
began to beg and whine loudly for a sip. She
pounded on the windows and kicked the dashboard
in exaggerated frustration, repeating, "Give me
some, please, give me some. I want some." Th'is
went on until she got what she wanted.
By dramatizing her own low status in relation to the group, the
non-leader endeavored to obligate the others to have pity on her
and to be nurturing.
A few non-leaders tried to imitate the leaders. One child (a
non-leader) acted the same sort of skit that a leader had given the
day before in a similar situation.   The leader's humor was appreci-
ated by the group, whereas the non-leader's performance was greeted
by icy silence and blank stares.   The child was assuming a role that
was not within her rights to assume.
51
Leaders entered into symmetrical joking relationship with the
entire group in which the leader and the group bantered back and
forth. A non-leader, however, could only enter into a joking
relationship with the whole group by acting out his role as the
receiving end of ridicule. Thus, the symmetrical and asymmetrical
joking relationships were kept intact whether it was a leader or a
non-leader who was relating to the group as a whole.
2.   Child-teacher
When the group interacted with a teacher in the class context,
the humor relationship was that of ridiculer (class) to ridiculed
(teacher). The children seemed to enjoy making the teacher the
brunt of their jokes, confusing her and pushing her to the breaking
point. The students separated the class into "us" (the group) and
"them" (the teachers). This division was emphasized by the fact
that while baiting a teacher the children frequently glanced at each
other and smiled. Joking behavior was also used by the children to
show the authority and each other that they were not "selling out"
by demonstrating their loyalty to the group while performing the
actions demanded by the teacher.
Receiving humor from an authority could be rather touchy unless
the type of humor was self-ridicule or a self-caricature on the part
of a teacher. Sometimes the authority's humor did not go over,
especially when a teacher's joke was interpreted as an antagonistic
remark. For example, on a field trip as the class passed an ancient
Hawaiian mask, the teacher said jokingly, "There's your picture,
Doug." The entire group expressed outrage.
3.   Child-others
A feeling of ambivalence pervaded the children's relationship
to the school. As mentioned before, the class bore the stigma of
the word "special." The S.M.C. students were constantly on the
defensive, and consequently they got into fights or "beefs" in
school. However, evidence of some school spirit could be seen when
children were talking about interschool events (including inter-
school "beefs"). The following incident illustrates the extent of
their ambivalence:
While the S.M.C. was touring the capitol
building, they saw another class from the same
school. The S.M.C. children were very excited
and proud that the other class was from their
school. They kept repeating, "That's Manapua,
they're from Manapua." But as we came closer
to the second class, the S.M.C. put on their
haughty tough masks and mockingly asked the
other children, "What school are you from?"
"Where did you say you were from?"
52
Other "regular" school children who passed by the S.M.C.
homeroom were open game. That is, they were often involuntarily
included in the leaders' skits. One such co-opting went as follows:
Two leaders had stuffed their pants with old
clothes. Pretending to be pregnant, they left
the room (grunting and moaning all the while)
and randomly began to grab and kiss boys in
the hall.
Intraschool humor was humor about barriers because the Hawai-
ians felt they were different from the other children. To make up
for this, they took pride in their physical strength and constantly
asserted that they were tough.  As several of the boys bragged, "We
Hawaiians hit first, think later."   The visual signs of their ethnic
identification which were stigmatized, such as clothing and language
differences, were often used as symbols of defiance. In this
ambivalent situation the S.M.C. students maintained an asymmetrical
relationship with the outside children. The joking relationship
which they maintained with the rest of the school children expressed
both their desire to establish contact with the other children and
their feelings of separation from them.5
Conclusion
When an exchange took place between leaders and/or non-leaders,
the context was that of the group. The content of this humor was
concerned with the social hierarchy and shared cultural (or sub-
cultural) assumptions, e.g., what was funny and what was not, what
defined stupidity, which emotions were publicly taboo, etc. The
type of humor employed (banter or irony) and the balance of the
joking relationship (symmetrical or asymmetrical) indicated the
social status of ego and alter.
By forming joking relationships, the S.M.C. students were able
to cope with socially ambiguous situations. The highly stylized and
stereotyped behavior (voice and posture changes) prevalent in these
joking interactions limited the flow of information between ego and
alter, thus placing social distance between the two interactants.
In this way, the ambiguous elements could exist simultaneously.
That there was a positive correlation between asymmetrical
exchange and the degree of hostility was borne out by the fact that
as hostility was reduced between a teacher and a child their joking
relationship changed from asymmetrical to symmetrical. However, for
the most part, the patterns of joking relationships in the S.M.C.
were stable and static. In the following section, dealing with the
Y.M.C.A. program, these patterns were dynamic.
53
Ethnographic Observation at the Y.M.C.A.
From June through July, 1969, I observed twenty of the twenty-
two S.M.C. students as they participated in a voluntary program
sponsored by the Y.M.C.A. The other eleven children (ages 12-19)
attending the Y program were from middle class families (nine
Caucasians and two Filipinos) .6 The staff privately called all
the non-Hawaiian children "Haoles" (a Hawaiian word usually used
to designate Caucasians) or "the others." Twelve of the fourteen
teachers were Caucasians, and two were part Hawaiian. The Hawaiian
children did not actively distinguish the different ethnicities of
the non-Hawaiian students or of the teachers.
The Y program was structured along the lines of a school.   In
the morning from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. there were two 45-minute
classes, and from 9:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. both children and staff
attended encounter groups. At noon lunch was provided by the Y.
I observed several major differences between the Y program and
the public school program. For one, instead of the grading system
employed by the public schools, money was used at the Y as an
incentive to encourage the children to attend class (the pay
schedule was fifty cents for attending each class and one dollar
for participating in the encounter groups). A second difference
was that at the Y the children were allowed to choose their own
classes.
The goals of the two programs also differed. The stated goal
of the S.M.C. was to modify the children's behavior along certain
lines; the Y staff, on the other hand, hoped that by forming rela-
tionships with the children they would provide an atmosphere
conducive to behavioral change. To this end, the Y staff tried to
minimize status differences between themselves and the children,
e.g., teachers and pupils were on a first-name basis and many
teachers and children went barefoot and otherwise dressed casually.
1.   Hawaiian-Hawaiian interactions.
The symmetrical joking relationships so common in the S.M.C.
between the Hawaiian students continued throughout the six weeks of
the Y.M.C.A. program. However, asymmetrical joking relationships
gradually decreased.
One aspect of the joking relationship especially prevalent at
the Y was the use of humor as comic relief to deflect attention
from a fellow student. When a student was in an embarrassing
position (usually when singled out by the teacher), his friends
joked loudly, thereby shifting the focus of attention away from the
first child. An example of such a maneuver took place in an en-
counter group:
A Hawaiian girl said that she wished she had
never been born. As a teacher began to question
54
her reasons for making such a statement, the
girl became embarrassed and tried to get out of
the situation by saying that she was hungry and
wanted to go out and buy some food. This ploy
did not succeed and the cross-examination con-
tinued. Suddenly the girl's friends began a
patter of humorous answers to the teacher's
questions, causing everyone in the group to
laugh. The tone of the discussion was no
longer serious, and the teacher had to give up
her questioning.
The new popularity of comic relief had at least two causes.
For one, because the student to teacher ratio was smaller at the Y,
the children were singled out quite often. Second, at Manapua the
children had had an extremely hostile asymmetrical joking relation-
ship with their teachers, and when singled out they protected
themselves by verbally ridiculing them. At the Y, however, the
children had a new non-hostile relationship with the teachers. It
would have been out of place to attack them for singling out a
student. Instead the children used comic relief as a diversionary
tactic.
Certain aspects of intragroup humor did change during the six
weeks of the Y program. In the first weeks of class, most of the
Hawaiian-Hawaiian humor was either incomprehensible to the non-
Hawaiians7 or derisive of the Y program. Derision communicated to
the other group members that the actor was loyal to the group. The
Hawaiians demonstrated their feelings of separation by being elab-
orately inattentive during class and strolling in and out of the
classroom. If any one of the Hawaiians took too active an interest
in class work, he was ridiculed and teased by his friends and in
this way was reminded of his group identity.
The use of derisive jokes and the exclusive Hawaiian-Hawaiian
form of humor declined by the third and fourth weeks. By the fourth
and fifth weeks, friendship with a non-Hawaiian was acceptable to
the group.
2.   Hawaiian-Haole Interactions
During the first week of class the Hawaiians avoided interac-
tion with the Haole children whenever possible by staying outside of
the Y building until class began and sitting far away from the other
students.  There were many reasons for this avoidance behavior.   As
mentioned earlier, the Hawaiians felt stigmatized and shamefully
different from the middle class children with whom they attended
public school. They (the Hawaiians) did not know how the students
at the Y would react to them.  This uncertainty was reflected in the
degree of social distance that they placed between themselves and
the others.
55
In the second week, the Haoles served as the butt of asymmet-
rical joking relationships and, as such, bore the brunt of many of
the Hawaiian's jokes. Near the end of the week, however, exchanges
of flirtatious remarks between the two groups reflected the change
from an asymmetrical to a symmetrical joking pattern. One of these
flirtations transpired at lunch when a Hawaiian girl who was sit-
ting near a Haole boy called over to the boy, "Hey, if I come hear
your band play, will you wave to me from the stage?"   The boy
replied, "I'll even dedicate a song to you. What's your name?"
Some rather shy friendships were forming by the third week,
usually across sexual lines. For instance, Hawaiian and Haole boys
and girls often chose to do their class assignments together. As
the two worked on the assignment, they would entertain each other
with visual jokes (e.g., making funny faces and humorous drawings).
To share this type of visual humor they did not have to have a
thorough understanding of each other's cultural codes and percep-
tions. This, then, was a convenient mode through which the
children could begin symmetrical joking relationships.
The fourth and fifth weeks saw an increase in friendly
interactions between individuals in the two groups. Several
Hawaiian-Haole symmetrical joking relationships (characterized
by teasing and banter) were formed.
Hawaiian-Haole cross-sexual relationships had more sexual
overtones during the fifth week. Lunch, which was the social hour,
became the time for flirtations, and a large clique of Hawaiian-
Haole couples usually sat together on one side of the lunchroom.
A Hawaiian girl would occasionally sit on a male Haole's lap and
hug him (the girls assumed the drunk-child voice on these occa-
sions). Hawaiian boys would sit next to Haole girls and hug them.
One reason for this intensification of Haole-Hawaiian relationships
was that each group had become more familiar with the other's
codes. The Hawaiians felt assured that the Haoles would not only
be able to understand their humor signals but would also understand
that these were not serious and would not reject them. By this
time all the children had had many experiences together at the Y,
so they had certain topics about which they could joke.
Also in the fifth week, Hawaiian students began to use comic
relief to help their Haole friends during class. For instance, in
a science class a teacher was questioning a Haole boy about an
assignment. The boy, having forgotten to do the lesson, was
obviously embarrassed. His Hawaiian friends began a barrage of
humorous answers to the teacher's questions, thus shifting the
focus of attention away from their friend. By six weeks all the
students seemed to be relatively at ease with each other and both
visual and verbal humor were present. The two groups made no
effort to avoid each other, but there seemed to be fewer interac-
tions between Haoles and Hawaiians.
56
In summary, conjunctive and disjunctive elements were present
in the Hawaiian-Haole relationship.8 Through the formation of
joking relationships, the students were able to maintain friendly
relations with the Haoles while keeping a degree of separation and
flexibility.
3.   Hawaiian-Staff Interactions
At the outset of the Y program, the Hawaiian students employed
avoidance behavior with the teachers. While they had to attend
classes in order to get paid, and thus were in constant contact
with the teachers, they minimized this contact by refusing to
answer questions or to do assignments. Also, during the first
week, the Hawaiian students ridiculed the class assignments aloud
among themselves and, when singled out, they became embarrassed and
tried to hide their embarrassment in laughter.
Although the Hawaiians still refused to respond in certain
situations, in the second week they did begin to address some
comments to the staff members. These comments, while derisive,
were not personal attacks against the teachers but were aimed
instead at the Y program in general (e.g., "This whole thing is
junk"). Humor was also employed when a student was unsure of the
teacher's opinion on a particular subject.   The student would
change the tenor of his remarks depending on what the staff member
said. An example of this change of posture took place during lunch:
Hawaiian (with exaggerated distate): This shit
looks like Pali [homestead area]
cooking.
Staff member: I like Pali cooking!
Hawaiian (making a face): Oh yeah? Rice and
eggs?
Staff member: Sure, I love rice and eggs.
Hawaiian:      Yeah!  And isn't it great with
sardines!
Thus, in an ambiguous situation the student used humor to achieve
a degree of flexibility. He did not lose face by changing his
opinion because he could claim that he was only joking in the first
place. In this way, he sounded out the other person's position
before he took a stance himself.
At this point the children were unsure of their relationship
to the teachers. Their uncertainty stemmed from the fact that the
Y teachers did not act like prototype authority figures; they did
not make overt value judgments about the children's behavior, nor
did they try to discipline the students. The children could either
treat the teachers as authority figures (i.e., ridicule them) or
they could respond to their gestures of friendship and form symmet-
trical joking relationships. Because of this ambiguity, the
students employed humor during the second week to discover what
57
the teachers thought of them, although they abstained from forming
actual joking relationships.
By the third week, many of the Hawaiian children had estab-
lished friendly ties with certain staff members. However, because
their old code had not yet changed to allow for these new friend-
ships, gestures of friendship made by Hawaiians to staff members
were greeted by a barrage of teasing from the other Hawaiian
children. One reason for the children's ambivalence toward these
staff-Hawaiian friendships was that they were unsure of how these
new relationships would affect the group's solidarity.
A staff member offered to share her hamburger
with a Hawaiian girl (sharing is an act of
friendship among Hawaiian children). The
Hawaiian took more than half the sandwich and
then proceeded to demand the lettuce and
pickles and finally some gum from the teacher.
In this way, the girl could accept the offer of friendship from the
staff member and still show the other students that she was not
selling out to the teacher but only using her. The humor created
social distance between the girl and the teacher, so that the
former could take an ambiguous stand about her feelings for the
latter.
During this same time, some of the boys began to throw small
things at the women teachers and pretended to make sexual advances.
But the boys were not yet ready for sexual jokes from the teachers.
In an encounter group, a teacher discovered the chance resemblance
of some lines she drew to female breasts. The woman found this
accident terribly funny, but the Hawaiian boys in the class were
so embarrassed by the innuendo that they left the room en masse.
In the third week, visual humor was the most common Hawaiian-
to-staff joking mode. Visual jokes included such things as funny
drawings, peace signs, and humorous facial and postural contortions.
By the beginning of the fourth week, most of the Hawaiian stu-
dents seemed interested in doing their class assignments, although
they still seemed ambivalent about how to relate to the staff.
Most gestures of friendship on the Hawaiians' part were accompanied
by symbolic statements of hostility. That is, after making a ges-
ture of friendship that was not masked in humor (and therefore
lacking in social distance), the children would revert to an
asymmetrical joking relationship which once again put social
distance between themselves and the teachers. One child even
overcame his embarrassment about his illiteracy and allowed a
teacher to write for him during a poetry class. He did make a
token symbolic statement of his group membership by loudly teasing
the teacher. Only then, having shown that he had not given up his
group identity, did he proceed to dictate his poen to the teacher.
58
Humorous sexual aggression became more prevalent during the
fourth week, and also more physical. The Hawaiian girls made
advances toward male teachers, but only after having assumed the
drunk-child voice. By changing their identity, the girls limited
the information passed on to the observer. One idea which was
communicated was that it was not the child who was acting, but
someone else (usually someone who could not be held accountable
for her actions). This gave the girls the freedom to sit on the
male teachers' laps, climb between their legs, and generally act
seductively.  The Hawaiian boys, on the other hand, rarely used
stylizations when making sexual advances toward a female teacher.9
One reason for this difference in degree of stereotyped behavior
was that, for the girls, there was much more role ambiguity in
these situations than there was for the boys, since it was part of
the boys' masculine role to make sexual advances toward a female.
The fact that the object of a boy's advances was a teacher and not
one of his peers was much less of a role change than for the girls
when they were sexually aggressive toward male teachers, since
ordinarily girls were expected to take a more passive role.
Although these sexual interactions were symbolic statements
about relationships, they were not indicative of vertical relation-
ships (i.e., relative status). They were, instead, an acting out
of male-female roles. It is not surprising, therefore, that sexual
humor became prevalent during a period when the Hawaiians were
unsure of their own status. They could use this mask of sexuality
to avoid showing their feelings for the staff members.
By the end of the fourth week, not only did it become socially
acceptable to be a staff member's friend, but demonstrations of
such friendship became common. Hawaiians shared food with teachers
and the girls entrusted their purses to staff members (girls previ-
ously let only their close friends hold their purses). With this
new feeling of friendship there appeared a new mode of humor. It
consisted of play and banter between a teacher and a Hawaiian
(often for an audience). One such incident took place in the
Y.M.C.A. restaurant where other customers were present:
Two females (a teacher and a Hawaiian) both
loudly claimed to be the wife of a male staff
member. In mock battle over him, the two
females spoke in exaggeratedly brash and
shrewish shouts. They chased each other and
their "husband" around the cafeteria.
It took a great deal of mutual trust to risk putting on an im-
promptu skit for such a large audience. Each of the three had to
act from the presupposition that the other two would not embarrass
him in some way.
In a second example of this new play mode, a Hawaiian girl
placed a thermometer in her mouth, upside down. Assuming the
drunk-child stance and voice, she approached a group of teachers.
59
With mock seriousness the staff members commented on her high
fever. The girl was entertaining the teachers by including them
in her play. Both child and teacher seemed to feel sure that the
other would recognize the humor signals (i.e., serious and drunk
voices, etc.) and play along. The Hawaiians were now ready to
affirm the teachers' equal status.  They did this by entering into
symmetrical joking relationships with the staff members.
On the first day of the fifth week, there was a slight setback
in student-staff relations. One of the teachers decided that he
would no longer allow paint sniffing during his class. His rela-
tionship with the Hawaiian children deteriorated rapidly. The
humor used in his class also changed. Several of the students
began to yell, run around the room, and tease the teacher. The
teacher's joking relationship with the Hawaiians went from a sym-
metrical relationship to an asymmetrical one because he had exerted
authority over them and stigmatized their behavior.
None of the other staff members made overt judgments about
glue sniffing, and in their classes student-staff relationships
continued to develop along the lines of friendship, characterized
by symmetrical joking relationships. By this week (the fifth) both
staff and children could banter with each other.
An interesting sidelight was the fact that paint sniffing
affected the children differently in the two settings. In the
S.M.C., the students were either quite nasty or semi-comatose when
intoxicated. At the Y, the children became lovably "drunk" and in
this condition they often approached the staff and asked to be
cuddled.
By the sixth week, the children would enter a room just to
talk casually with a staff member (previously children had pre-
tended that they had met the teacher accidentally). While a child
still used humor to cover up his embarrassment, fewer events were
considered embarrassing as the weeks passed.10
Joking during classes declined seemingly because of a new
interest in the subject matter. Undoubtedly, the Hawaiians' knowl-
edge that they could participate in class discussions without their
language and their lack of education being social stigmas enabled
them to let down their masks. They no longer needed the social
distance provided by the joking relationship. The expressions of
hostility and ambivalence toward the teachers were greatly reduced
in these last weeks.
The children demonstrated their affection for the teachers in
many ways. Some cried when they had to leave the program; others
invited several of the teachers to visit them at home. This type
of behavior was almost unheard of--previously the children were too
ashamed to invite non-Hawaiians to Pali. A rather conclusive sign
of the children's affection for the Y staff was the following:
when the children were given a choice between having the last day
60
of class off (they would have been paid anyway) or going to class,
the children voted to have class.
4.   Summary
At the beginning of the Y.M.C.A. program the Hawaiian children,
uncertain whether the other students would accept or reject them,
avoided interacting with the non-Hawaiians. Most of the humor
prevalent at this time served to strengthen the solidarity of the
group.
The Hawaiian students tried to discover, through humor, if
they could trust the good will of the other children. By using
sexual and visual humor (neither of which dramatized relative
status differences), the children communicated their own willing-
ness to accept the Haoles. At the same time, they retained enough
social distance and flexibility so that if they were rejected they
could pretend that their own overtures of friendship were only a
joke.
By the fourth week, the Hawaiian children, now reasonably sure
of their status, formed heterosexual symmetrical joking relation-
ships with the Haoles. Due to the relative stability of male and
female roles, heterosexual relationships were "safer" than homo-
sexual ones. The highly stereotyped behavior that these roles
entailed allowed maximum social distance and flexibility to the
interactors.
Because the Y staff did not act like public school teachers,
the Hawaiians did not have a stereotyped formula for dealing with
them. Consequently, in early Hawaiian-staff interactions, the
children tried to discover how the staff felt about certain issues.
The children seemed unsure about accepting the staff's gestures of
friendship. To deal with this ambivalent situation, they formed
asymmetrical joking relationships with the staff members.
In the fourth week the children began to communicate their
acceptance of the staff through the use of humor. Once again, as
in Hawaiian-Haole student relationships, sexual humor became
prevalent at a time when there was a shift from asymmetrical to
symmetrical joking relationships. By the end of the fourth week,
most Hawaiian-staff joking relationships were symmetrical.
In the last weeks of the program, the children were able to
relate to the staff members without the social distance provided by
the joking relationship. As the children began to trust the teach-
ers, they became more certain of their own status in relation to
the teachers, and feelings of stigma and of hostility were mini-
mized. When the social situations became less ambiguous, there was
less need for joking relationships.
61
Conclusions
With the change in context from the S.M.C. to the Y.M.C.A.
there were shifts in intragroup and intergroup relationships.
These shifts were evidenced by changes in the Hawaiian children's
humorous interactions and in the concomitant changes in affect
reflected in these joking patterns. When the children went from
the S.M.C. to the Y.M.C.A., they were confronted with several
differences in role and in authority structure. The following
section discusses four major differences between the two educa-
tional settings and the effects of these variants on the children's
joking patterns.
By being authoritarian and by repeatedly disciplining the
children, the S.M.C. staff constantly dramatized the status dif-
ferences between themselves and the students.11 At the Y, where
teachers tried to engender feelings of equality, symbols of
relative status differences were consciously minimized.
The children reacted to the high degree of status differentia-
tion in the S.M.C. by forming asymmetrical joking relationships
with the S.M.C. teachers, thereby enacting their own high status in
relation to the teachers. The Hawaiians' reaction to the Y staff
members was much less defensive. With the feeling of acceptance at
the Y came a reduction in the amount of hostility that the children
expressed toward the teachers.  This reduction was reflected in the
predominantly friendly tone of the Hawaiian-staff humor and joking
relationships.
A second difference between the Y and the S.M.C. was that the
S.M.C. authority structure was so overt that it provided a visible
enemy against which the children could organize.   The students
minimized their own intragroup hostilities and presented a solid
front against the outside power. A second factor contributing to
the tightening of the group was that the S.M.C. teachers set out,
quite openly, to change the children's behavior. In the face of
the pressure to conform to the teachers' values, the children
strongly asserted their own. A third factor causing the children
to unify was the fact that they were treated as a group and not as
individuals. (For example, all of the children had to follow the
same routine.)
At the Y, there was neither the strict authority structure nor
the pressure to conform to any one pattern. The Y staff treated
the children as individuals and formed relationships with them on
this basis.  This tendency toward personalization was reflected by
the fact that each child was allowed to choose his own classes.
The Hawaiian intragroup structure was distinctly different in
the two educational settings. In the S.M.C., the group was a
stratified, bounded unit, able to withstand and foil the outside
pressures to conform. Therefore, a great deal of humor was aimed
not only at strengthening group cohesion but also at dramatizing
62
the children's separation (disjunction) from the teachers. At the
Y, the children began as a tight group, but, as the weeks passed,
the group structure loosened and the children broke up into several
small cliques composed of both Haoles and Hawaiians. The humor
modes commonly used to strengthen group identity were dropped
(e.g., derision of outsiders, in-group jokes). Also dropped were
modes that were used to avoid conforming to the authorities'
standards of good conduct.
Another difference between the S.M.C. and the Y was that, in
the former, the Hawaiian children were separated from the other
Manapua students and given a stigmatizing label. These factors
which compounded their feeling of stigma caused the Hawaiians a
great deal of status ambiguity. Added to this uncertainty was the
feeling that they were unacceptable to the teachers and the other
students. The Hawaiian children continually tried to prove that
they were better, not worse, than the other pupils by defying the
school authorities and by treating many of the other Manapua stu-
dents with disdain.12
At the Y, the Hawaiians were not made to feel separate or
shamefully different from the other children, both because the
student body in the Y program was made up of children of various
ethnic groups and backgrounds, and also because the Y program was
set up as a job with hourly wages. This gave the children a non-
stigmatized reason for attending and greatly reduced the degree of
role ambiguity.13
The Hawaiian students did not need to dramatize the status
differences between themselves and the non-Hawaiians because the Y
staff and the Haole students tried to alleviate their feelings of
inequality by deemphasizing status differences. There was also
less of a need for social distance (for flexibility), and the
Hawaiians were able to let down their joking masks in the last
weeks of class, at which time the frequency of humorous interaction
was reduced. The fact that the Hawaiian children were not physi-
cally separated from the other students, therefore able to interact
with the Haoles to form friendships, had the effect of weakening
the Hawaiians' intragroup cohesion. As the Hawaiian group relaxed
to include non-Hawaiians, the humor modes employed by the group
members also became more inclusive.
A final difference between the two educational settings is
that of ambience. As mentioned previously, the Hawaiian children
expressed a great deal of hostility toward school in general.14
This hostility pervaded the children's humor when they were in the
school. The Y.M.C.A., on the other hand, was attended voluntarily
and was considered by the children to be a place to have fun. It
is not surprising, then, that disjunctive feelings were pervasive
in the Hawaiians' humorous exchanges in the S.M.C., while at the Y
conjunction was the prevailing tone.
63
NOTES
lThe names of the special class, of the school, and of the home-
stead area have been changed.
2For the uses of this paper, irony is considered to be an outward
expression of friendliness (conjunction) which masks a covert
intimation of hostility (disjunction) (Burns 1953:256-257).
3Paint cans were brought to school and hidden in easily accessible
places, usually in the lavatories.
4S.M.C. teachers were not specially trained to work with "special"
children.
5Many S.M.C.'s had friends in other classes. But for the most
part, the special class expressed hostility toward the other more
successful children. When the Hawaiian children got into fights,
they said it was "S.M.C. fighting the Japanese" or "S.M.C. fighting
the ninth grade," etc.
For the remainder of this paper, the S.M.C. children will be
referred to as "the group," "the children," and "the Hawaiians."
The eleven non-Hawaiian children will be called "the Haoles" or
"the other" children, except when otherwise designated. The Y
program was voluntary for all of the students.
7These jokes usually contained so much slang, Hawaiian, and obscure
in-group references that they were difficult for a non-Hawaiian to
decipher.
8Examples of conjunctive elments are sexual attraction, desire for
friendship, wish to reduce hostility, curiosity. Disjunctive feel-
ings stemmed from awareness of stigma and hostilities due to anti-
Haole prejudices.
9Occasionally, an exaggeratedly self-confident stance was taken by
the males.
lOThe fact that the children felt less embarrassment during this
time is evidence that they felt out of face (Goffman 1967) less
often. For the most part, the teachers did not invalidate the
images of self that they (the children) had claimed for themselves.
The fear of being shamed no longer motivated the children to main-
tain social distance.
11Other, more visible signs symbolic of this status difference were
the differences of dress and language between the two groups and
the fact that the teachers could call the students by their first
names, whereas the students had to address the teachers more
formally (e.g., Mr. or Miss X).
64
12AS several S.M.C. students said, "We're a special privileged
class."
13During the first weeks of class the children continually stressed
that they were in the program only for the money. Later, however,
the monetary aspect was no longer mentioned.
14The fact that the school was occasionally called "Manapua Prison"
suggests that the children felt that school attendance was a
punishment.
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