Humour in Dirty Work with High-Impact Ambiguities and Paradoxes: The Looking Glass of Military Jokes and Laughter

What is it about?

This article explores how humour in high-impact professions such as the military reflects the experiences of soldiers. It discusses how soldiers can be both affected by and involved in violence as part of their job. The article uses detailed descriptions of military humour to show how it deals with the ambiguous and paradoxical aspects of military life. The military's complex and contradictory nature leads to a unique kind of humour, which includes dark jokes, making fun of themselves, and downplaying serious matters. This black humour, self-deprecation and humorous understatement serve different purposes, such as releasing emotions, bringing soldiers together, and criticizing the military system. Overall, this humour helps soldiers deal with the challenges they face in a way that serious rhetoric of reason and logic cannot achieve. Humour thus provides employees with the language and means to articulate complex experiences. In doing so, humour is not solely a functional coping mechanism, but also offers insightful and even existential commentary of the soldier’s world.

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