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A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Gender in Persian Verbal Humor: The Case of Online Jokes

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Humor is to instruct, seriously take it!/Even though it looks pointless in disguise.

Any serious is humorous for humorists/any humorous is serious for the wise.

Mathnavi, Book 4 by Mawlana (Rumi), 13th century Persian poet, scholar and Sufi mystic

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the role of gender in Persian verbal humor. To do so, based on an Iranian mobile app, 354 trending jokes (‘liked’ by at least 50,000 users) were selected and scrutinized to discern how male and female Persian speakers were employed in creating humor. In the light of General Theory of Verbal Humor, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data revealed that a statistically significant proportion of the online jokes were gender-biased. Furthermore, female Persian speakers were by far the main target of humor in these jokes. Further inspection also indicated that ‘marriage’, ‘reasoning ability and intelligence’, ‘beauty and make-up’, ‘general knowledge and skill’ in the female-focused humor and, ‘(feminine) beauty’, ‘heterosexual orientation’, and ‘social position’ in the male-focused humor were the major themes of ridicule. The findings suggest that Persian verbal humor serves as a true reflection of the Iranian society, mirroring post-revolutionary as well as recent socio-cultural developments. Moreover, gender roles in Persian verbal humor (and perhaps the society), are in a transitory shifting phase to the effect that traditionally masculine hegemonic concepts are giving way, albeit gradually, to emerging patterns which are more in favor of female Persian speakers.

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Notes

  1. Given the traditionally male-dominated nature of Iranian society and culture, this finding may also imply gradual changes in favor of the female speakers or a more balanced view of both genders (see also the “Discussion and Conclusion” section).

  2. Joke 18 analyzed earlier, with great similarity paraphrases Friedl’s words and portrays almost the same picture of today’s Iranian girls in comparison with Iranian boys.

  3. As [18, p. 447] states “Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in transition. This transition is as much political and socioeconomic as it is demographic.”

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the support center of Tell a joke app for providing me with the information I needed. I am also grateful to the editors-in-chief, J. M. Simons-Rudolph and A. P. Simons-Rudolph and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Pasdaran St., Shahreza, Isfahan, Iran

    Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

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  1. Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza
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Correspondence to Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza.

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Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Heidari-Shahreza, M.A. A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Gender in Persian Verbal Humor: The Case of Online Jokes. Gend. Issues 36, 46–66 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-017-9206-9

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