Laughing for a change: Racism, humour, identity and social agency

The thesis explores the nature of humour as a tool for both social oppression and social progression, as well as its implications for student identity construction. The study examines the discourses of six inner city high school students who participated in focus group discussions on humour, racism, identity and social change. The theoretical framework of this thesis employs a socio-cultural approach (Bakhtin, Holland, Yon, Hall) to the complex, dynamic, fluid and often contradictory process of identity construction. It extends this approach to a consideration of humour, its complexities as well as its implications for identity construction in school spaces. The research reported here indicates that students navigate and negotiate complex and contradictory discourses of humour in ways that could be used in classrooms to help bridge the racial, linguistic and cultural differences that commonly separate peers from each other.