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The playful is political: The metapragmatics of internet rape-joke arguments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2011

Elise Kramer
Elise Kramer
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, The University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637elise@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

Rape jokes are a contentious topic on the internet; arguments over whether “rape is funny” unfold in a diverse range of forums, but they generally take the same predictable form. In this article, I analyze the text of a variety of disputes on American websites over the funniness of rape jokes. I show not only that both sides of these arguments are premised on the same underlying assumptions about the ways that humor and language function, but more importantly that these shared assumptions make it possible for rape humor (and humor more generally) to carry social and political valence—and that in order to understand the significance of the debate over rape jokes, we need to understand the identity work that people are doing when they tell rape jokes, laugh at them, or frown and shake their heads. (Humor, language ideologies, rape, joking)*

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Type
Articles
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Language in Society , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 137 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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