Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Humour in the Swedish Court: Managing Emotions, Status and Power

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Judges, Judging and Humour

Abstract

This chapter analyses humour from an emotion sociological perspective, linking humour to power, status, and group solidarity. It draws from about 300 observed trials and interviews with 43 judges and 41 prosecutors from four Swedish district courts. Humour is sometimes skilfully used as a strategy to ease tension, relieve boredom or to reprimand. It is initiated/allowed by the judge, but high-status lawyers or prosecutors may take the initiative. Judges may use humour to uphold an effective and smooth procedure, attenuating their own power. It is generally unacceptable to laugh at the expense of lay- (low-power) people present in court. Inter-professional humour takes place in intermissions during the hearings, while trials running over several days may include the defendants in the semi-backstage inter-professional joking. Most in-court humorous incidents are unintended, where laughter is suppressed or released depending on the judge. Humour has different functions and expressions frontstage (in court) and backstage (office, lunch room). Observation of both arenas reveal its shame-management function in inter-professional relations. While the judges’ backstage area teems with jokes about embarrassing procedural mistakes, prosecutors’ backstage humour more often deals with the foulness and tragedy of criminals and crimes.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Throughout this chapter, we use actor as a sociological concept denoting the (professional) participants in court.

  2. 2.

    The translation mirrors the original in metre and rhyme. Agneta is the defendant in the case.

  3. 3.

    Available at: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/model_code_of_judicial_conduct.html.

  4. 4.

    In this chapter, we operate with an heuristic notion of humour as explicated in the methods section. Our distinction between benevolent and malicious humour is based on the emotions that the humorous intervention evokes in the subject of the humour. Malicious humour may evoke shame, humiliation and resentment in the subject—and schadenfreude in the joker; while benevolent humour implicates sharing the pleasure of fun with the subject. It can be compared to the everyday distinction between “laughing with” and “laughing at” someone, a distinction frequently alluded to in our data. All the humorous interventions analysed in this chapter pertain to the category benevolent. Thus when we use the term “humour” in the analysis we mean “benevolent humour”.

  5. 5.

    In Sweden, court clerk is a two-year career position and a first step for both prospective prosecutors and judges. More experienced clerks preside in petty crime trials.

  6. 6.

    In contrast, Malphur’s (2010) study of oral arguments before the US Supreme Court demonstrates that laughter (at least in this context) is very common, occurring in 72 per cent of the cases analysed.

  7. 7.

    In a quantitative semantic analysis of all separately observed hearings, at least one of the words funny, fun, humour, joke, or laughter appeared in 80 of 261 hearings in our data.

  8. 8.

    The Tintin comic strips and books were created by Belgian artist Georges Prosper Remi (1907–1983, using the pseudonym, Hergé).

References

  • Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bandes, Susan A., ed. 1999. The Passions of Law. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbalet, Jack. 1998. Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure – A Macrosociological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bergman Blix, Stina. 2010. Rehearsing Emotions: The Process of Creating a Role for the Stage. In Stockholm Studies in Sociology, NS 45. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmensis.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Emotional Insights in the Field. In Methods of Exploring Emotions, ed. Helena Flam and Jochen Kleres, 125–133. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergman Blix, Stina, and Åsa Wettergren. 2015. The Emotional Labour of Gaining and Maintaning Access to the Field. Qualitative Research 15: 688–704.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. A Sociological Perspective on Emotions in the Judiciary. Emotion Review 8: 32–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chafe, Wallace. 2007. The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling Behind Laughter and Humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Candace. 1990. Emotions and Micropolitics in Everyday Life: Some Patterns and Paradoxes of ‘Place’. In Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions, ed. Theodore D. Kemper, 305–353. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dingwall, Robert. 1977. ‘Atrocity Stories’ and Professional Relationships. Work and Occupations 4: 371–396.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fine, Gary Alan, and Michaela de Soucey. 2005. Joking Cultures: Humor Themes as Social Regulation in Group Life. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 18 (1): 1–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Francis, Linda E. 1994. Laughter, the Best Mediation: Humor as Emotion Management in Interaction. Symbolic Interaction 17: 147–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabriel, Yannis. 1998. An Introduction to the Social Psychology of Insults in Organizations. Human Relations 51: 1329–1354.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1961. Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co..

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs, Pamela. 2007a. Judges’ Use of Humor as a Social Corrective. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 50–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2007b. Lawyers’ Use of Humor as Persuasion. Humor: Interntional Journal of Humor Research 20 (2): 123–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1983. The Managed Heart – Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1990. Ideology and Emotion Management: A Perspective and Path for Future Research. In Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotions, ed. Theodore D. Kemper, 117–142. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmes, Janet. 2000. Politeness, Power and Provocation: How Humour Functions in the Workplace. Discourse Studies 2: 159–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ibrahim, Noraini, and Radha M.K. Nambiar. 2011. There Are Many Ways of Skinning a Cat, My Lord: Humor in the Malaysian Adversarial Courtroom. The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies 17: 73–89.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobsson, Katarina. 2008. ‘We Can’t Just Do It Any Which Way’: Objectivity Work Among Swedish Prosecutors. Qualitative Sociology Review IV: 46–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kemper, Theodore D. 2011. Status, Power and Ritual Interaction – A Relational Reading of Durkheim, Goffman and Collins. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lange, Bettina. 2002. The Emotional Dimension in Legal Regulation. Journal of Law and Society 29: 197–225.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lively, Kathryn J., and Emi A. Weed. 2014. Emotion Management: Sociological Insight Into What, How, Why and to What End? Emotion Review 6: 202–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lund, Anna. 2015. At A Close Distance: Dropouts, Teachers, and Joking Relationships. American Journal of Cultural Sociology 3: 280–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malphurs, Ryan A. 2010. “People Did Sometimes Stick Things in My Underwear”: The Function of Laughter at the U.S. Supreme Court. Communication Law Review 10: 48–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maroney, Terry A. 2011. The Persistent Cultural Script of Judicial Dispassion. California Law Review 99: 629–681.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. Angry Judges. Vanderbilt Law Review 65: 1207–1286.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDonald, Seonaidh. 2005. Studying Actions in Context: A Qualitative Shadowing Method for Organizational Research. Qualitative Research 5: 455–473.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, William. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling – A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Roach Anleu, Sharyn, Kathy Mack, and Jordan Tutton. 2014. Judicial Humour in the Australian Courtroom. Melbourne University Law Review 38: 621–665.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rock, Paul. 1991. Witnesses and Space in a Crown Court. British Journal of Criminology 31: 266–279.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudolph, Marshal. 1989. Judicial Humor: A Laughing Matter. Hastings Law Journal 41: 175–200.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rushing, Susan K. 1990. Is Judicial Humour Judicious? Scribes Journal of Legal Writing 1: 125–142.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tracy, Sarah J., Karen K. Myers, and Clifton W. Scott. 2006. Cracking Jokes and Crafting Selves: Sensemaking and Identity Management Among Human Service Workers. Communication Monographs 73: 283–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wettergren, Åsa. 2005. Mobilization and the Moral Shock – The Case of the Media Foundation Adbusters. In Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Helena Flam and Debra King, 99–118. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. How Do We Know What They Feel? In Methods of Exploring Emotions, ed. Helena Flam and Jochen Kleres, 115–124. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wettergren, Åsa, and Stina Bergman Blix. 2016. Empathy and Objectivity in the Legal Process: The Case of Swedish Prosecutors. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 17: 19–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zijderveld, Anton C. 1983. Trend Report on the Sociology of Humour and Laughter. Current Sociology 31: 1–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Stina Bergman Blix

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden

    Åsa Wettergren

Authors
  1. Stina Bergman Blix
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Åsa Wettergren
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stina Bergman Blix .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Literature, Arts and Media, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Jessica Milner Davis

  2. College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Sharyn Roach Anleu

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Bergman Blix, S., Wettergren, Å. (2018). Humour in the Swedish Court: Managing Emotions, Status and Power. In: Milner Davis, J., Roach Anleu, S. (eds) Judges, Judging and Humour. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76738-3_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76738-3_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76737-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76738-3

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation