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November 9, 2023OrganizationOpen Access

‘Just relax and ram it in’ : Dimensions of power in workplace sexual humour

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Authors

KHKristina HumonenAWAndrea Whittle

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Overview

Qualitative sociolinguistic study reveals how sexual humour mediates power dynamics in restaurant workers, highlighting mechanisms of bonding, resistance, and linguistic injury.

Key Points

  • Investigate how sexual humour functions as an enactment of interpersonal power and linguistic injury within an organizational setting where sexual conduct is officially prohibited.
  • Analyzed 15 live walkie-talkie radio audio recordings among mixed-gender staff in a Finnish restaurant where sexual behavior was proscribed.
  • Employed interactional sociolinguistics combined with Butler's theoretical framework of linguistic injury to evaluate discursive exchanges.
  • Identified that sexual humour functions dualistically as either 'bonding' (building solidarity) or 'biting' (inflicting social injury).
  • Demonstrated that the nature and extent of injury depend contextually on the humor's function, target, initiator, and recipient response.
  • Formulated a conceptual framework demonstrating how workplace sexual humour enacts distinct power relations involving resistance, subjugation, and exclusion.

Cite This Study

Humonen et al. (2023) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a1061d44fb650da4fff631fhttps://doi.org/10.1177/13505084231201277
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