Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace:

negotiating norms and identifying contestation

JANET HOLMES and STEPHANIE SCHNURR

Abstract

After first considering some of the challenges of defining and measuring
the concept of politeness, the analysis draws on data from the Wellington
Language in the Workplace Project to illustrate the value of complemen-
tary quantitative and qualitative approaches to the issue of what it means
to be polite at work. Using the concept of relational practice, an analysis
of workplace humor serves to illustrate what each approach offers in terms
of distinguishing different communities of practice, as well as providing a
means of exploring the issue of politeness as a gendered concept. Instances
of how two women leaders use humor in their very different communities
of practice exemplify the diversity of ways of responding to gendered inter-
actional workplace norms.

Keywords: relational practice; humor; gender; workplace discourse analy-
sis; methodology

1. Introduction

1

What does it mean to be “polite” at work? Since the issue of what it
means to be polite in any context is a hotly contested one (e. g., Watts
1992, 2003; Wierzbicka 1999; Eelen 2001; Mills 2003), and one which
will no doubt continue to be debated in the pages of this journal, the
question of what constitutes workplace politeness is clearly not straight-
forward. In earlier work, Janet Holmes (1995: 4

⫺5) defined politeness

as follows:

Politeness is an expression of concern for the feelings of others …
In this book [following Goffman 1967 and Brown and Levinson 1987]
“politeness” will be used to refer to behaviour which actively expresses
positive concern for others, as well as non-imposing distancing behav-

Journal of Politeness Research 1 (2005), 121

⫺149

1612-5681/05/001

⫺0121

쑕 Walter de Gruyter

122

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

ior. In other words, politeness may take the form of an expression of
good-will or camaraderie, as well as the more familiar non-intrusive
behaviour which is labelled “polite” in everyday usage.

Naturally the field has moved on in the last decade, and a current defini-
tion would adopt a more dynamic perspective. But Sara Mills (2003) has
also taken issue with definitions of politeness which assume analysts can
categorize utterances as affiliative or distancing, questioning “the notion
that most people would agree about what constitutes a polite or impolite
act” (2003: 6). As sociolinguists and discourse analysts, this seems to us
like shooting oneself in the foot. Identifying linguistic devices used to
express concepts such as politeness is surely exactly what we can and
should be doing.

Certainly, it is often difficult to be sure about the interpretation of

specific speech acts, and perhaps we can never be totally confident about
the ascription of politeness or impoliteness to particular utterances, even
for members of our own communities of practice (Wenger 1998). As
Mills notes, even consulting the interactants, as she did in her own re-
search, is no guarantee of uncovering intentions, or getting at “what
really went on” (Mills 2003: 45). Firstly, many linguistic items are multi-
functional, secondly, many people have never reflected on such issues
and may not have the meta-linguistic skills required to articulate the
levels of politeness they intended or interpreted (O’Keefe 1989), and,
thirdly, the ensuing discussion between the analyst and the interactants
simply produces “another text, another conversation, only this time the
interaction is with the analyst” (Mills 2003: 45). Analysis will always be
complex and challenging.

We have learned an enormous amount about the complexities of the

expression of linguistic politeness from the qualitative analyses which
have burgeoned within a social constructionist framework in the last
decade. Attention to context, to the community of practice in which
people are participating (as illustrated in the papers in Holmes 1999),
awareness of the dynamic and negotiated nature of interaction, and of
the constantly shifting assessments which participants make when en-
gaged in talk

⫺ these are all considerations which have improved the

quality of the socio-pragmatic analysis of politeness. As a result, our
analyses are more sensitive, more perceptive, more likely to be judged as
illuminating and enlarging understanding of “what is really going on”.
But there is also a place for generalization, and for the identification of
patterns in linguistic behavior. In a book which whole-heartedly em-
braces a social constructionist framework, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
(2003: 80) point out, “Generalization is at the heart of research and in
the study of language and gender we ultimately seek global generaliza-

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

123

tions”. They go on to note that “we need to exercise care in how we
form those generalizations

⫺ how we move from observations of the

behavior of particular people in particular situations to broad societal
patterns” (2003: 80), but they clearly endorse the goal of sociolinguistic
and sociopragmatic research as the identification of supportable gener-
alizations about linguistic behavior.

As Eelen (2001) and Mills (2003) point out, tacit norms play an impor-

tant part in determining people’s linguistic behavior. Whether from mo-
ment to moment participants conform to or flout hypothesized norms
and social rules, they clearly assume their existence as they negotiate
their way through an interaction. So the central issue is: how can such
norms be described? Inference from the analysis of particular conversa-
tions seems as unreliable a method as generalization from large scale
quantitative analysis which has bleached out the complexities. The move
from observed particular behaviors to deductions about patterns of be-
havior, and from individuals to categories of people is fraught with diffi-
culties; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet emphasize the importance in this
process of taking “careful steps” rather than “broad leaps” (2003: 80).
One route through this maze involves using the concept of “relational
practice” as a valuable thread linking sociolinguistic norms to individual
practices. Relational practices may be construed as intervening steps on
the route between “doing gender” and selecting specific pragmatic par-
ticles, grammatical constructions, lexical items and pronunciations to
encode and instantiate gender identity in a particular discourse context.

In previous work Janet Holmes has described how, in one-to-one in-

teractions, different individuals draw on and negotiate sociolinguistic
norms that have been identified by large scale quantitative surveys. In a
paper given at the Fourth Berkeley Women and Language Conference
in 1996, she illustrated how two young Maori men drew productively on
recognized sociolinguistic norms of “Maori English”, both to signal their
ethnicity and identification with Maori culture, and to make fun of
mainstream Pa¯keha¯ ways of doing things (Holmes 1998). (Pa¯keha¯ is a
Maori word denoting a New Zealander of European origin). Holmes
(1997) demonstrated that a woman used standard phonological variants
in proportions which precisely reflected their use in the speech of middle-
aged, middle class Pa¯keha¯ women, as described in earlier quantitative
sociolinguistic analyses (Holmes 1994; Holmes et al. 1991), in a situation
where she wanted to construct a conservative, mainstream, social and
gender identity, very different from her identity in some other contexts.
(See also Holmes and Stubbe 2003a.) In other words, over the last de-
cade, Janet Holmes has been engaged in exploring ways in which individ-
uals draw on established norms to encode particular aspects of their

124

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

identity in particular interactions. And, recognizing the dangers of over-
generalization, simplification, and loss of delicacy involved in any degree
of abstraction, we would argue that establishing contextual norms
through quantitative analyses is an important component of such work
(cf. Eckert 2000; see also Holmes and Meyerhoff 2003: 8

⫺10; Swann

2002: 60).

In this paper then, we draw on the extensive analyses of workplace

discourse undertaken by members of the Wellington Language in the
Workplace Project to illustrate the value of complementary quantitative
and qualitative approaches in throwing light on the issue of what it
means to be polite at work. In the first part of the paper, using work-
place humor for exemplification, we explore what each approach offers
in terms of distinguishing different communities of practice. Humor is a
rich and multifaceted strategy for doing both positive and negative po-
liteness (Hay 1995; Holmes 2000). Workplace humor also provides a
means of exploring the issue of politeness as a gendered concept, a topic
we turn to in the second half of the paper. In the final section, we discuss
how two women leaders use humor in their very different communities
of practice, one to deal with and the other to deal to or “trouble” the
gendered interactional norms of their communities of practice.

2. Politeness as “relational practice” in workplace talk

We have used the term “politeness” to establish common ground for
discussion. But it is clear from the literature referred to above that this
term is fraught with problems, not least because its everyday meaning
constantly distorts discussion, no matter how much effort researchers
devote to attempts to maintain a precise technical definition. We have
therefore adopted, and adapted, a different term for use in this paper,
namely “relational practice”, a term associated with the work of Joyce
Fletcher (1999), a management researcher: “Relational practice is a way
of working that reflects a relational logic of effectiveness and requires a
number of relational skills such as empathy, mutuality, reciprocity, and
a sensitivity to emotional contexts” (1999: 84). While our emphasis is a
little different from Fletcher’s, the workplace behaviors on which we
focus are clearly encompassed by her definition. Relational practice is a
useful term for discussing politeness in the workplace, since it provides
a less loaded way of focusing on other-oriented behavior at work. It also
has the advantage of avoiding the definitional traps, referential slipperi-
ness, and emotional baggage of the term “politeness”.

In our analysis of Fletcher’s concept, workplace “relational practice”

(henceforth RP)

2

has three crucial components:

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

125

(i)

RP is oriented to the (positive and negative) face needs of others

(ii)

RP serves to advance the primary objectives of the workplace

(iii)

RP practices at work are regarded as dispensable, irrelevant, or
peripheral (Holmes and Marra 2004).

Firstly, then, in linguistic terms, RP includes friendly, positive, or sup-
portive verbal behavior (positive politeness in Brown and Levinson’s
(1987) terms), as well as linguistic strategies and devices which respect a
person’s autonomy and wish to be unimpeded (negative politeness in
Brown and Levinson’s terms)

3

. The precise ways in which these orienta-

tions are expressed will of course differ in different communities of prac-
tice (CofP), as well as in different specific workplace contexts and in-
teractions within a CofP, a point we illustrate below. Secondly, RP is
always relevant to the goal of furthering organizational objectives. This
sometimes involves a relatively broad interpretation, in that any work-
place behavior which contributes to improving workplace relationships
can be regarded as “good for business”. In general, however, we have
chosen to interpret this criterion more stringently in our analyses (see
Holmes and Marra 2004). Thirdly, despite their relevance to workplace
objectives, relational practices are typically regarded as dispensable,
marginal, and in some cases even distracting in the workplace. As noted
in our previous research (Holmes and Marra 2004), this off-record status
is sometimes explicitly signaled by the use of discourse markers such as
to get back to the point, enough digressing, moving right along, anyway,
OK, and so on. Paradigmatic examples of RP include workplace anec-
dotes (Marra and Holmes 2004), small talk, backstage supportive en-
couragement of others (Holmes and Marra 2004), and humor in the
workplace. We discuss humor in more detail below.

Fletcher identifies four categories of RP which she labels preserving,

mutual empowerment, self-achieving and creating team (1999: 48). The
first two are somewhat more oriented to transactional or organizational
objectives, the second two to personal and interpersonal goals. In this
paper, we focus predominantly on RP as a means of “creating team”, a
term Fletcher uses to discuss activities aimed at “creating the back-
ground conditions in which group life [can] flourish” (1999: 74). In what
follows, we use workplace humor in particular to provide insights into
the range of ways in which people accomplish this aspect of relational
practice in different workplaces, and then turn to consider its role in the
construction of differently gendered managerial styles.

3. Creating team

Creating team, as defined by Fletcher (1999: 48), includes all the typi-
cally unobserved behind-the-scenes behaviors which foster group life and

126

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

the development of team esprit de corps

⫺ taking the time to listen and

respond empathically to non-work-related information, creating oppor-
tunities for collaboration and cooperation, facilitating productive in-
teraction, and defusing potentially confrontational situations. Holmes
and Marra (2004) identified social talk, giving approval, and supportive
humor, as three specific strategies oriented to creating team in our work-
place data. Here we focus on verbal humor exploring, in particular, the
varied ways in which it functions as a positive politeness strategy for
creating team (Duncan et al. 1990; Morreall 1991; Caudron 1992; Case
1994; Clouse and Spurgeon 1995; Barsoux 1993).

Example 1 illustrates humor functioning in this way in a New Zea-

land workplace.

Example 1

4

Context: During an IT managers’ meeting the participants are discussing
next year’s budget.

1 Tri:

also your guys are they gonna

2

(need) cameras this year

3 Car:

er this year I’m getting some

4

cameras out of that money

5

we’ve got this year //but if\

⫽

6 Tri:

/okay\\

7 Car

⫽we need more next year we will

8

//yeah\

9 Tri:

/mhm\\

10 Noe: not (even) a DVD player
11

Ser:

I want a web cam on the wetas

5

12

[laughs]

13 All:

//[laughs]\ [laughs]
[partially tongue-in-cheek discussion

14 Tri:

okay are there any other things

15

[laughs]

16 Gar: can I get a plasma screen
17 All:

[laughter]

18 Car:

sure

19 Tri:

Trev’s //got a few toys upstairs

20

you’ll have to go\

21 Gar: /[laughs]\\
22 Tri:

//talking to him\

23 Car:

/about\\ about //that width\

24 Gar: /oh no I mean\\ at home

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

127

25

permanently

26 All:

[laughter]

27 Car:

about that width there and

28

two thirds the height is only

29

twenty eight thousand for //you\ sir

30 Gar: /mm\\ thank you

The humor in this section of the IT managers’ meeting clearly has a
supportive positive function; it creates team or constructs in-group soli-
darity. The excerpt comes at the end of the annual list of budget requests
to the organization’s finance centre. The manager Tricia is checking there
is nothing they have forgotten to include, and asks about cameras (lines
1

⫺2). Carol responds that they are getting cameras out of the current

year’s budget (lines 3

⫺5), indicating they do not need to be on the list.

At this point, having run out of ideas for reasonable requests, the team
begin to fantasize about what they would like to add if they faced no
budget constraints. Noel initiates this collaborative humor sequence
(Holmes ip) with a rueful comment not even a DVD player (line 10).
Serena contributes with a suggestion that they get a web-camera to allow
him to watch some New Zealand insects that live in a glass cage else-
where in the organization. There follows a brief discussion of how to
hire such equipment and then Tricia laughingly checks that the list is
complete okay are there any other things (line 14). The humor continues
with Garth’s mischievous contribution can I get a plasma screen (line
16), a totally indefensible suggestion, especially since Garth’s position
does not even entitle him to request equipment. When Tricia laughingly
tells him to go and see what the technician has upstairs, he makes the
request even more outrageous by indicating he wants this for home not
work (lines 24

⫺25), and Carol extends the humor by playing the role of

a salesperson ensuring he gets good value for money (lines 23, 27

⫺29).

This humorous sequence comes at the end of a discussion which has
been relatively tense, since it has involved considerations of budget prio-
rities. The sequence involves all members of the team, and the tone is
light-hearted and exuberant. It re-establishes good humor and a more
cheerful tone to the discussion. The excerpt thus nicely illustrates the
way in which humor may contribute to constructing good workplace
relationships and strengthening in-group solidarity (e. g., Coser 1960;
Morreall 1991; Caudron 1992; Barsoux 1993. See Schnurr (fc) for further
discussion of the way humor operates in this workplace team.).

As a paradigmatic means of “creating team”, a core component of

RP, the analysis of workplace humor provides one means of responding
to the challenge of describing how people “do politeness” in workplace
interaction. Recognizing that humor is just one way of creating team,

128

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

and that creating team is just one dimension of RP, and that, of course,
the full complexity of talk can never be fully captured in any analysis, we
turn now to the issue of how to approach the description of workplace
politeness norms, using humor for exemplification.

4. Humor as one RP strategy in the workplace

4.1 Distribution of humor in workplace meetings

The ethnographic methodology adopted in the Wellington Language in
the Workplace project has been well documented (e. g., Holmes and
Stubbe 2003b). The detailed material we have gathered from project
teams in a range of workplaces has enabled us to develop a variety of
ways of describing the particular features which distinguish different
teams as distinctive communities of practice (see, for example, Holmes
and Marra 2002a; Holmes and Stubbe 2003a, 2003b). One feature which
recurs throughout our analyses is the emergence of preferred ways of
using humor to construct and negotiate RP in workplace interaction in
different project teams. We are not, of course, claiming that every team
or every individual in any particular team uses a consistently similar
amount or type of humor throughout our recordings. Rather, what we
have identified is interesting indications of favored patterns of humor,
both in relation to the amount of humor and the kind of humor used in
the different project teams we have studied. We illustrate first with a brief
consideration of differences in the amount of humor which occurred in
the regular meetings of different workplace teams, a feature which our
participants generally agreed distinguished different workplace cultures
and communities of practice. (For definitions and for more detail and
discussion of the bases for the analysis underlying the material summa-
rized here, see Holmes, 2000; Holmes and Marra, 2002a, 2002b.)

All humor makes some contribution to workplace RP (Holmes and

Marra 2004). A comparison of the amount of humor which occurs in
meetings in different communities of practice can thus serve as one
means of distinguishing different communities of practice (Holmes and
Marra 2002a). In order to compare different meetings on this measure,
we used an index based on the proportion of humor per 100 minutes.
Figure 1 represents the results of this analysis, providing a summary of
the relative amount of humor which occurred in meetings with similar
agendas of project teams we studied in four different workplaces: a
factory-floor production team (FAC), a client-oriented project team in a
large private commercial organization (PRLA), an IT team in another
large private commercial organization (PRLB), and an IT team in a
small private commercial organization (PRS).

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

129

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Ratio per

100 mins

PRLA

PRLB

FAC

PRS

Figure 1. Amount of humor in meetings by workplace.

It is clear that, overall, the amount of humor varies quite markedly in

the meetings recorded in different workplaces, and the pattern accurately
represents the informal impressions gained from our ethnographic obser-
vations, as well as the comments made by members of the different pro-
ject teams. There is a great deal of humor in the meetings of the factory
team (FAC), and a considerable amount in the meetings of the client-
oriented private commercial sector organization (PRLA), while the
meetings of the IT teams both in the large (PRLB) and the small com-
mercial organizations (PRS) involved considerably less humor. Indeed,
participants in one of the factory meetings averaged more than one in-
stance of humor per minute, while, at the other extreme, in one IT meet-
ing, people produced humorous remarks only about every six minutes
on average

6

.

We do not want to claim too much for this kind of quantitative data,

especially since it is based on just a small number of meetings per organi-
zation, though these were typically selected from the middle of a larger
set of meetings to ensure the recording effect had diminished, and subse-
quent analyses of additional meetings in some of these organizations
confirm the overall patterns identified. Moreover, even within these
meetings, there was considerable variation in the amount of humor from
one part of the meeting to another, and between different meetings with
different agendas, or involving different combinations of members of
the project teams. Obviously, the varied and complex reasons for such
variations are best explored qualitatively, as we have done elsewhere
(Holmes and Marra 2002b, 2002c). Nevertheless, the patterns revealed
by this quantitative measure provide valuable background information

130

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

for interpreting individual instances of humor as expressions of RP in
these meetings. We turn now to the important issue of different ways of
expressing humor in the workplace.

4.2 Types of humor in workplace meetings

Holmes (ip) identifies broad differences both in types and styles of work-
place humor, providing a more sensitive means of distinguishing between
different communities of practice on the dimension of creating team
(Holmes and Marra 2002a). Humor can often be classified as broadly
positive and supportive in its orientation, or as predominantly critical
and negative. It can be argued that humor always has some positive
component, however minimal in some cases, in that it has a softening
effect on even the most corrosive comment. But, as this comment im-
plies, there is a considerable difference between a supportive comment,
positively oriented to indicate agreement with the last speaker, as il-
lustrated in example 2, and a critical, subversive, and face-threatening
comment, as illustrated in example 3, where each contribution un-
dermines or challenges the proposition or implied claim of the previous
speaker.

Example 2

Context: Regular reporting meeting of 8 people in large commercial or-
ganization (PRLA). They are discussing acronyms and what the initial
“D” for “deferred” means.

1

Cla:

deferred means //put it on hold\

2

Tess: /mm

⫹\ \deferred yeah

3

Cla:

//[laughs]\

4

Tess: /means that you’re not going

5

to\\ think about it just now

6

Cla:

we’ll do it some other time

7

[general laughter]…

8

Rob: deferred deferred means it

9

might get done one day if it’s lucky

This is a typical example of a supportive, collaborative humor with each
participant adding to and elaborating the original idea. Clara simply
defines the meaning of “deferred” in their meeting notes, but Tess elabo-
rates with a humorous expansion you’re not going to think about it just
now (lines 4

⫺5), and Clara quickly picks up the theme and expands it

further we’ll do it some other time (line 6). Finally, Rob adds yet another
supportive amusing paraphrase means it might get done one day if it’s
lucky (lines 8

⫺9). This is clearly supportive and collaborative humor,

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

131

with each contribution demonstrably in tune with the previous one. Ex-
ample 3 is rather different.

Example 3

Context: Regular Meeting of six men in a project team in a large private
commercial organization. Callum has failed to update a header leading
Barry to think he’s got the wrong document.

1

Call: I definitely sent you the

2

right one

3

Barr: [laughs]

4

Eric: yep Callum did fail his office

5

management [laugh] word processing

6

lesson

7

Call: I find it really hard being

8

perfect at everything

In this example, from a meeting of a team whose interactive style is
typically contestive and challenging, Eric makes Callum the target of a
subversive, jocular insult (lines 4

⫺6). Callum asserts that the document

Barry has received is the correct document (lines 1

⫺2), despite the fact

that, as it emerges, he has failed to up-date the header. Barry, apparently
realizing the reason for his confusion, laughs. Eric then delivers his jocu-
lar insult (lines 4

⫺6) using a very sarcastic tone of voice, and Callum

responds by challenging Eric’s claim with his own ironic, mock-modest
claim (lines 7

⫺8)

7

.

There are, of course, many positions between those illustrated by these

examples of humor which is primarily supportive in its orientation, and
humor which is more challenging and contestive. The multi-faceted na-
ture of humor means it has the potential to serve in many different ways
and convey a range of meanings. Any kind of categorization can thus
be criticized as forcing complex colorful data into black and white boxes,
and we are very aware of the dangers of attempting to capture patterns
by such a procedure. The complexity of example 4, for instance, from
the small IT company (PRS) data, illustrates what we lose when we
simply classify humorous utterances along the supportive-challenging di-
mension.

Example 4

Context: The Board meeting is almost finished and the main agenda
items have been covered. The participants are now discussing only mi-
nor points.

132

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

1

Sam: ke- keep going until there’s

2

only one person standing

3

Jill:

[laughs] oh you’ve been to our

4

board meetings before [laughs]

Sam’s humorous comment draws attention to the fact that Jill has not
yet called the meeting to a close. His remark is delivered in a good-
humored tone, with smiling voice, and needs to be interpreted in the
light of the fact Board meetings always last a long time (sometimes up
to 5 hours). Nevertheless, though modified by its style of delivery, in
terms of content and pragmatic intent, this could be regarded as a sub-
versive comment: i. e., implicitly criticizing Jill for the length of the meet-
ing and the fact that she has not yet called it to a close. By contrast, Jill’s
laughter and her humorous reply are supportive in intent and content,
indicating she agrees that their meetings are lengthy. In order to interpret
the exchange, we need to know that these two people get on well, and
that they work together in a very positive and supportive community of
practice where good-humored teasing is part of the interactional com-
mon currency. All this is evident from our detailed ethnographic infor-
mation gathered by participant observation in the workplace over a
number of weeks.

Categorizing Sam’s contribution as simply contestive and Jill’s as sim-

ply supportive reduces this richness to a single dimension which clearly
sacrifices a good deal. Nevertheless, while recognizing that more detailed
analysis provides valuable and illuminating insights into what is going
on, it is our contention that classifying humorous exchanges by type can
provide useful information about the broad patterns which constitute
the backdrop to the individual exchanges which are the proper focus of
more detailed qualitative analysis.

Using these broad categories of supportive vs. contestive or challeng-

ing humor, then, it proved possible to characterize different communities
of practice according to their patterns of humor in interaction (Holmes
and Marra 2002a), a characterization which was consistent at a general
level with our ethnographic observations of the kinds of relationships
evident between members of different workplace teams. In the meetings
where humor was most prolific, for instance, namely those in the large
commercial organization PRLA, and the factory, the proportion of
contestive humor was generally relatively high. And in both teams the
exchanges were typically good-humored and jocular in tone. “Sparky”,
contestive humor was particularly frequent in the meetings of PRLA,
though it is worth noting that this team also produced a good proportion
of supportive humor. In the factory context too, the proportion of
contestive humor was relatively high, especially since this figure is almost

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

133

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Ratio per

100 mins

PRLA

PRLB

FAC

PRS

Supportive
Contestive

Figure 1. Type of humor in meetings by workplace.

certainly conservative

8

. Indeed, exchanges between the male Polynesian

team members, who made up 16 of the 20 core members, often com-
prised a series of abusive jocular insults, including comments on people’s
physical features (see, for example, Holmes and Stubbe 2003b: 118). In
the meetings of the large private organization (PRLB), there was very
much less humor, but a high proportion of it was contestive in content
and distinctly challenging in style of delivery. Many of the humorous
comments produced by this team took the form of sarcastic and negative
jibes, intended to put down the addressee or deflate them. (See Holmes
and Marra 2002a, 2002b for examples.) Providing another pattern, the
meetings at PRS, the small IT organization, were not characterized by a
large amount of humor compared to the factory meetings or the PRLA
meetings. However, most of the humor which did occur in the PRS meet-
ings was supportive in its orientation. And, interestingly, as illustrated
in example 4, much of the contestive humor in this workplace was deliv-
ered in a collaborative and friendly style, or accompanied by supportive
comments. These different communities of practice seemed to be charac-
terized, then, by different patterns of humor both in terms of the fre-
quency with which it occurred, and the relative proportions of support-
ive vs. contestive humor which was used. (See Schnurr (fc) for further
discussion of patterns of humor in this workplace.)

Patterns of supportive vs. competitive talk have been extensively iden-

tified with masculine vs. feminine stereotypes of interaction in research
extending back to the 1970s (e. g., Lakoff 1975; Tannen 1993; Crawford

134

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

1995; Coates 1996), suggesting that a quantitative analysis of humor
such as this could provide an interesting starting point for examining the
notion of RP as gendered discourse. In the next section, we turn to
consider the relationship between gender and humor. First we consider
how gender impacts on RP, and then we discuss how two particular,
effective women leaders use humor, with its multi-faceted potential, to
deal with and to deal to gender stereotypes

9

.

5. RP as gendered discourse

10

In Fletcher’s terms, RP is not only gendered behavior; it is “women’s
work”, characterized as invisible and off-record relational support work
(1999: 15). “Relational practice is not gender-neutral behaviour. It is
behaviour that engages deeply held gender identities and beliefs” (1999:
133). In Fletcher’s analysis, then, the gendering is definitively “femi-
nine”: the behaviors that Fletcher (1999) describes as components of
RP are behaviors stereotypically associated with feminine rather than
masculine ideals.

Exploring a range of discursive manifestations of RP in New Zealand

workplaces, Holmes and Marra (2004) first demonstrated that, adopting
Fletcher’s criteria for RP as face-oriented, transactionally useful, but
interactionally peripheral behavior, there was extensive evidence of this
marginalized, “feminine” behavior in the discourse of many of the men
in our recorded workplace interactions. As a discursive resource, RP was
clearly available to and routinely exploited by both the women and men
in our data as a component in the construction of a considerate, support-
ive and facilitative workplace identity.

Secondly, and more radically, Holmes and Marra (2004: 392) sug-

gested that there might be other distinctly unfeminine ways of doing RP.
In other words, while Fletcher’s definition of RP conceptualized it in
ways that neatly equated it with feminine ways of doing support work,
Holmes and Marra suggested that in some communities of practice,
other less feminine strategies (including more contestive kinds of humor)
might be used for the same purposes. As mentioned above, humor is
multi-faceted and may express both positive and negative politeness, as
well as a wide range of ways of creating team. Thus, as one important
means of doing RP by creating team, humor provides an ideal exemplar
for the purposes of examining this hypothesis.

Indeed, the analysis in the previous section has provided some evi-

dence to support the suggestion that different communities of practice
construct at least some aspects of RP in rather different ways. Figure 1
indicated that different communities of practice make use of the strategy
of humor, which is one way of doing RP, to different extents in their

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

135

meetings. Figure 2 showed different patterns in the relative proportions
of contestive and supportive humor which occurred in the recorded
meetings of the four different communities of practice, with a good deal
more contestive humor in the project team from the large commercial
IT company than in any other workplace, and a high proportion of
supportive humor in the small IT company, RLS, as well as in the
factory (cf. Alvesson and Billing 1997: 116).

Our detailed case studies also support the suggestion that ways of

doing RP differ between communities of practice, and that ways of con-
structing and maintaining solidarity and creating team in more stereo-
typically “masculine” workplaces draw on a different range of discursive
strategies than those explored in Fletcher’s book. (See Kuiper 1991 and
Kiesling 2001 for strategies characterizing ‘masculine’ discourse among
New Zealand rugby players and US fraternity members respectively.) So,
for example, Holmes and Stubbe (2003a) compared women managers
in two very different communities of practice, one more traditionally
“feminine”, the other stereotypically “masculine” on a range of criteria.
While both women used a wide range of discourse strategies, Holmes
and Stubbe (2003a) noted in the more “feminine” workplace “a marked
orientation towards collaborative styles and processes of interaction, to-
gether with a high level of attention to the interpersonal dimension” and
a preference by the manager, Leila, for “less direct, more linguistically
polite strategies to achieve her goals in a consensual way” (Holmes and
Stubbe 2003a: 587

⫺588). She used self-deprecating humor, for instance,

to re-establish good relations and create team after being particularly
directive. In the factory team, a more “masculine” community of prac-
tice, the team leader, Ginette, generally adopted more direct, authoritar-
ian and forceful strategies to communicate with her team (though she
was also skilled in using more mitigated strategies when appropriate),
and, as mentioned above, the patterns of humor in this workplace were
very different from that in the “feminine” workplace: humor was very
frequent, and much more “sparky”, contestive and aggressive, with a
good deal of jocular abuse, good-humored insult, and sarcastic comment
(Holmes and Stubbe 2003a: 589; see also Stubbe 2000).

In other words, we are arguing that what counts as RP differs in

different communities of practice. In Leila’s team, the humor used to
create solidarity involved collaborative work and amusing anecdotes,
often with a self-deprecating function (Holmes and Marra ip); not a
single instance of jocular abuse was recorded, and the most frequent
swear word we recorded in this workplace was bloody, a remarkably mild
expletive by comparison with those recorded by the factory team, where
much stronger swear words were frequent (see Daly et al. 2004). In Gi-
nette’s factory team, then, jocular abuse was the basic currency, and

136

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

amusing anecdotes frequently had a twist in the tale, making fun of
someone, or describing the victim of a practical joke (Holmes and
Marra ip).

In another community of practice, referred to above as PRLB, yet

another RP pattern was evident in the amount and kind of humor used
to establish rapport and create team. The amount of humor was rela-
tively low compared to levels in some other teams, and it was predomi-
nantly contestive in orientation and competitive in style, with frequent
challenges and disagreements, i. e., directly face-threatening rather than
supportive. In terms of topic, the team’s humor was predominantly
work-focused to a much greater extent than in other communities of
practice (a pattern also noted in this team’s small talk which though off-
record and off-topic in terms of the agenda of the current meeting, was
generally related to some other aspect of the team’s work). Challenging
humor, expressed in a competitive style was clearly one of the team’s
strategies for creating team. Their contestive humor functioned as RP,
with participants often competing to out-do each other and “top” a
previous witty comment with a focus generally closely related to their
workplace objectives: e. g., lambasting an individual for failing to meet
their targets, ridiculing someone for overly meticulous attention to de-
tail, accusing someone of claiming too much, and so on (Holmes 2000;
Holmes and Marra 2002b).

As Holmes and Marra (2004) note, what frequently happens in such

communities of practice is that those who “can’t hack it” leave. Often,
but not always, it is women who depart (see Beck 1999: 205)

11

. But in

some cases, our data revealed alternative responses to the challenging
patterns of interaction in more “masculine” workplaces, an issue to
which we turn in the final section.

6. Dealing with and to masculine workplace norms

It has been claimed that the norms for behavior in many workplaces,
including norms for interaction, are predominantly masculine norms
(e. g., Kendall and Tannen 1997; Sinclair 1998), and that men’s discourse
styles have been institutionalized, especially as ways of speaking with
authority (Hearn and Parkin 1988; Case 1988; Pearson et al. 1991; Case
1994). But adopting the position that “gender is not simply imported
into the workplace: gender itself is constructed in part through work”
(Leidner 1991 cited in Alvesson and Billing 1997: 106), opens up the
possibility of using RP as one dimension of analysis, and of examining
how humor can be exploited as one strategy in the construction of gen-
der in the workplace. Clearly, the range of variation described above
suggests a continuum from more stereotypically “masculine” to more

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

137

stereotypically “feminine” communities of practice at work. And al-
though the grounded reality of everyday talk obviously refers to these
norms to different extents in exploiting discursive resources for con-
structing gender identity, any individual is likely to be heavily influenced
and even constrained by what is regarded as masculine and feminine
behavior in their particular organizational culture, as well as by the gen-
dered interactional norms of their specific community of practice (cf.
Alvesson and Billing 1997: 106; Wenger 1998; Tannen 1999; Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet 2003).

Humor offers people a creative and acceptable way of responding to

workplace norms, especially if they find them constrictive (Collinson
1988; Linstead 1988; Rodrigues and Collinson 1995). As one way of
doing certain kinds of RP, humor is a subtle, off-record strategy for
signaling one’s positioning or demeanor (Goffman 1967; Kendall 2004).
We found that women and men in our data made use of humor as a
discursive resource in a range of interesting ways in responding to the
kinds of gendered expectations which characterized their workplaces. In
this section, we adopt the social constructionist approach which predo-
minates in more recent language and gender research (e. g., Hall and
Bucholtz 1995; Bergvall et al. 1996; Holmes 1997; Bucholtz et al. 1999;
Litosseliti and Sunderland 2002), in order to describe the ways in which
women in two different organizations responded to the gendered expec-
tations of their workplaces, using qualitative analysis to capture some of
the complexities, and focusing on the function of humor as one way of
doing RP to illustrate our points.

6.1 Ginette, factory team manager

Ginette, the factory production team leader, appeared to enjoy and pro-
ductively exploit rather than resent the relatively masculine norms evi-
dent in many aspects of her team’s ways of interacting, and particularly
in their humor. Her response to the situational expectations of her role
as team leader was to play it with authority and make use of discursive
resources which emphasized her powerful position in order to get results.
She was perceived as a demanding taskmaster, and especially in the early
morning meetings which involved reviewing performance and setting ob-
jectives she pulled no punches in exposing inadequacies and stating her
high expectations (see Stubbe 2002; Holmes and Stubbe 2003b: 126

⫺

130). Humor was an important resource for keeping control and main-
taining attention, as well as an appropriate means of creating team in
this contestive and aggressive community of practice, as mentioned
above.

138

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

Here is an example of Ginette’s style (discussed in Holmes and Stubbe

2003b: 117, 129). She is addressing the team at a 6am meeting where it
is quite clear that everyone is not present.

Example 5

Context: Regular 6am briefing meeting of factory team.

1 Gin:

good morning everybody

2

it’s just lovely to see you all this

3

morning

⫹ just can’t imagine my

4

life coming into work not seeing you

5

every day

⫹ nice to see you all well

[general laughter and a range of
indecipherable responses with tone of
good-humored riposte]

6 Gin:

one one three

⫹⫹⫹ nice to see

7

everybody’s here on time

⫹⫹⫹

[The meeting continues for a few
minutes and then Sue arrives]

8 XM: there’s run upon run upon run so
9

that’s I’d do at least five or six

10 Gin:

good afternoon Sue

11

Les:

good afternoon Sue

12 Sue:

hi everybody I’m here

As mentioned above, sarcasm and jocular insult is the standard currency
of this predominantly male team’s interaction, and Ginette foots it with
the best of them. As people gradually drift in, Ginette maintains her
ironic tone to comment on their tardiness (e. g., line 10). She uses humor
strategically to maintain attention, creating a “sparky”, engaged inter-
active style, while simultaneously getting over her point that people are
expected to arrive on time for morning meetings, a point supported by
Les who collaboratively reinforces Ginette’s ironic greeting (line 11).
Judging by the audience response, this is very effective RP.

Thus Ginette’s response to the typically masculine interactional norms

of her workplace, which are well exemplified by the patterns of insult
and jocular abuse referred to above (and exemplified further in Daly et
al. 2004) is to make use of them, and harness them to serve her ends.
Humor is an important resource in this response. She uses it to make
criticism and high demands more palatable, but she also uses it very
positively to construct solidarity, adopting the persona of “a good joker”
(a role usually associated with men), regularly telling jokes, and even

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

139

playing practical jokes, as well as trading insults with her team members.
Ginette exploits humor as a valuable relational resource to achieve inte-
gration into the factory culture, but especially as a means of achieving
the balancing act of maintaining her authority as a team leader alongside
acceptability and respect as a collegial team member. By contrast, Jill,
one of just five women working in a small IT organization of about
twenty employees, takes a different approach.

6.2 Jill, Chair of the Board

Jill is one of the company directors in a small IT company (PRS above),
and chair of the company board. Like Ginette, Jill encourages and sup-
ports humor among her colleagues, as an obvious means of creating
team, but the kind of humor she uses is very different from Ginette’s
(see Schnurr fc for examples).

By contrast with Ginette who, in a blue collar and very masculine

context, emphasizes her authority and power, Jill, in a white-collar male-
dominated professional environment seems to relish her position as a
woman in the masculine world of IT (Trauth 2002), and far from empha-
sizing her status as company director, she appears to deliberately play it
down and accentuate her difference, and even her femininity (Holmes
and Schnurr 2004). This is evident in many aspects of her behavior (see
Schnurr fc); here we focus on just a few examples of her use of humor
to construct her role as a “feminine” manager in the male-dominated
world of IT.

In example 6, Jill takes charge of a meeting after a diversionary skir-

mish between two of the company’s senior management team, Donald
and Tessa, who also happen to be husband and wife. Jill achieves this
by humorously adopting the role of “mother” or at least “understanding
older adult” rather than “boss”, and she mischievously constructs the
distracting pair as lovers who need a moment’s privacy.

Example 6

Context: Board meeting of six people in an IT company. Tessa cannot
find the mouse which she needs to take the minutes on the computer, as
is normal in these meetings.

1 Tess: where’s my mouse
2 Sam: ([laughs])
3 Tess: //(er)\
4 Don: /(no well)\\ you’re sitting too
5

far away from the //receiver\

140

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

6 Tess: /oh for\\ goodness sakes #
7

how am I going to be able to do this

8 Don: eh? oh well I’ll do it if you
9

want [laughs]

10 Tess: well f- just tell me from there
11

Don: no I can’t do that

12 Jill:

okay well while while Tessa

13

and Donald [laughs]: have a

14

moment: //[laughs]\…….

15

um so I’ll go for a quick flick

16

through the agenda

Tessa and Donald engage in a little skirmish, with Tessa complaining
about the placing of the computer (lines 1, 6

⫺7) and Donald dishing out

advice (lines 4

⫺5) and offering to come and help (lines 8⫺9), which

Tessa irritably rejects (line 10). Jill’s teasing comment (lines 12

⫺14) is an

effective strategy for asserting her authority in a low key yet effective
way in the face of this diversionary spat. She humorously comments on
the distracting behavior, but then clearly indicates that she intends to
proceed with the meeting (line 15

⫺16). This is effective RP and it is a

consistent aspect of Jill’s behavior as chair in the meetings we recorded.
She uses a light touch and maintains an atmosphere of collegiality, even
when hard decisions must be made (see Schnurr fc). So, like Ginette, Jill
uses humor to skillfully balance the need to be authoritative with atten-
tion to workplace relationships, but her humor (like her management
style), is low-key and gentle, rather than aggressive and “in your face”.

Consistent with her low-key approach to doing power in this IT com-

pany is Jill’s apparently conscious adoption of a very “feminine” leader-
ship style in other areas of interaction within her rather masculine com-
munity of practice. This is evident in her facilitative approach in a range
of situations, pouring oil on troubled waters, ensuring people understand
each other. So, for example, when Tessa does not understand a technical
explanation from Donald about what he has done to her computer, he
makes a peremptory and rather patronizingly dismissive comment sit
back and eat your biscuit. Responding to the possibility of conflict, Jill
provides a laughing humorous and positive “gloss”, he means that in the
nicest possible way. Jill thus creates team by turning a potentially nega-
tive situation into a positive one, reducing friction and re-establishing
smooth relations (Caudron 1992: 67; Ross 1992: 57). This “feminine”
facilitative style of discourse is a consistent feature of Jill’s interactional
behavior, and humor is one of her most frequent resources for accomp-
lishing the RP which is an aspect of this.

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

141

Interestingly, Jill pushes this feminine identity to its limits, consciously

exploiting, and even parodying, masculine expectations of women in the
male-dominated IT company. So, far from acting as invulnerably compe-
tent, and adopting masculine styles of behavior to integrate with her
male colleagues, she rather emphasizes her femininity and even exagger-
ates her helplessness and ignorance (albeit with ironic self-awareness).
Example 7, taken from an informal interaction with her colleague Lucy,
illustrates this tendency.

Example 7

Context: Jill has had a problem with her computer and has consulted
Douglas, a software engineer, for help. She reports her experience to
Lucy.

1 Jill:

[walks into room] he just

2

laughed at me

3 Lucy: [laughs]: oh no:
4 Jill:

he’s definitely going to come

5

to my aid but ( ) he just sort of

6

laughed at me

7 Lucy: [laughs]
8 Jill:

(and then) I’ve got this

9

appalling reputation of being such

10

a technical klutz and //( )\

11

sometimes look it’s not me

⫹

12 Lucy: /[laughs]\\
13 Jill:

I work with what I’ve got

14

⫹ //( )\

15 Lucy: //I know\ it’s the tools
16

you’ve been prov//ided\

17 Jill:

/that’s\\ right

⫹⫹⫹

In this exchange, Jill draws laughing attention to her reputation as tech-
nically ignorant and incompetent, a technical klutz (line 10) in the area
of the organization’s specialization, computer technology. Although she
laughingly refutes this to some extent, by blaming her tools (lines 11,
13), this comment is clearly tongue in cheek since we have abundant
evidence from her recordings to suggest that this is an identity she regu-
larly and willingly embraces, milking it for humor and emphasizing her
role as helpless ignoramus in this area. Indeed, in this interaction Jill
goes on to entertain Lucy further with this computer illiterate persona
by reporting that her husband says, referring to her, the biggest bug I
have problems with is the one between the keyboard and the chair.

142

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

It is also worth noting in relation to example 7 that Jill stresses the

fact that this helpless feminine identity elicits laughter from the technical
guys (lines 1

⫺2, 4⫺6), supporting the interpretation that her construc-

tion of this incompetent persona is one strategy for creating team and
doing RP. Moreover, this self-denigrating humor enables Jill to not only
construct a stereotypical “feminine” identity, but also to play down her
experience and knowledge, thus minimizing status differences and fur-
ther creating team (Duncan and Feisal 1989; Ervin-Tripp and Lampert
1992; Barsoux 1993; Hay 1995; Morreall 1997). As Morreall says, a lead-
er’s use of self-denigrating humor makes people “feel like members of
the team” (1997: 207).

So, like many effective leaders, Jill encourages and supports humor as

a way of doing RP. However, as mentioned, a closer look at her interac-
tional behavior reveals that many aspects of her approach are interest-
ingly subversive. Jill might be expected, as a leader, to accommodate to
the predominantly masculine norms of this IT community of practice,
as did most of the women in another larger IT organization where we
collected data. Instead, she could be characterized as subversively con-
testing workplace expectations, and perhaps even working to feminize
them, though in a relatively unobtrusive manner. To this end, as noted,
she deliberately adopts (stereotypically) “feminine” facilitative ways of
running meetings, and uses gentle humor to reduce potential areas of
miscommunication and conflict. She nurtures a technically ignorant per-
sona, and adopts a self-deprecating style, often expressed through self-
denigrating humor.

As a woman leader in a male-dominated organization and a “mascu-

line” area of business, then, Jill uses humor to resolve the tensions be-
tween her gender identity and her professional identity. She appears to
have made an interesting decision about how to deal with “the contradic-
tory ideals of being feminine and being managerial, [and with the] great
risks of negative evaluation for being either unfeminine or unmana-
gerial” (Alvesson and Billing 1997: 150; see also Jones 2000; Brewis
2001). She deliberately asserts her femininity, and so subtly challenges
the widespread assumption that leadership behavior is masculine behav-
ior (Mills 1999). And humor serves as an ideal means for achieving this.

The extent to which she has comfortably resolved this problematic

conflict is apparent in her ability to explicitly make fun of the contradic-
tions. So, in response to Lucy’s comment that by not having a monitor
she will have space for a potted plant, Jill comments humorously to a
male colleague, you can tell the girly office can’t you. The comment is in
no way apologetic: Jill asserts her femininity with assurance. Using hu-
mor to create team most obviously with her female colleague in this

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

143

instance, she concurrently challenges the norms for office “furniture” in
this male-dominated workplace.

Though Jill’s “feminine” approach may seem at odds with her IT envi-

ronment, and would certainly be regarded as out-of-place in the large
IT organizations we have studied (including PRLB), it can be accom-
plished at PRS where the discursive norms generally tolerate more “femi-
nine” ways of interacting. As shown above, this community of practice
employs predominately supportive humor in meetings. Indeed, the hu-
mor makes an important contribution to establishing a friendly and posi-
tive working atmosphere, which is valued by all team members (see
Schnurr fc). Hence Jill can use self-deprecating humor, downplaying her
experience and knowledge, without fearing she will lose respect or status
within the organization.

Kendall notes that “[s]ituations in which women and men consciously

choose language options to create femininity or masculinity are rare. In
contrast, women and men do consciously choose language to best fulfill
their roles as managers” (2004: 76). Ginette and Jill both make use of
humor in accomplishing their leadership roles in their respective commu-
nities of practice. In the first instance, the amount and type of humor is
matched to the tough factory environment in which Ginette operates.
Creating team presents a challenge when the highest proportion of the
team members are male Polynesians whose preferred means of interact-
ing includes a large amount of jocular insult. Ginette’s solution is “if
you can’t beat ’em join ’em”, and she engages very successfully in ex-
changes which maintain her authority while nurturing good team rela-
tions. In a white-collar, professional workplace, Jill interacts with a very
different kind of masculine community of practice. Indeed, the IT busi-
ness itself seems a major factor contributing to the gendered nature of
this workplace. With relatively little apparent difficulty, and no obvious
evidence of negative response (judging from our ethnographic work), Jill
adopts a relatively feminine leadership style of interaction in meetings
and workplace interactions. Going further, she uses humor with self-
aware irony as a subversive strategy to explicitly “do femininity” in ways
that would be considered totally unacceptable in many workplaces (see
Holmes and Schnurr 2004).

7. Conclusion

What it means to be “polite” at work is not a straightforward issue. In
this paper, we have adopted and adapted the term relational practice in
order to avoid the ambiguities and slipperiness of the term politeness.
Focusing predominantly on ways of creating team or constructing and
maintaining good relations at work, we have illustrated the work done

144

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

by humor as a rich and multi-functional discursive strategy for instanti-
ating relational practice in workplace interaction.

We have argued that both quantitative and qualitative approaches can

contribute in illuminating what is going on in workplace interaction, and
more specifically that both approaches are important in understanding
how politeness, or better relational practice, is enacted in specific interac-
tions. In support of this claim, we have drawn on data from our rich
database of workplace interaction to show how different communities of
practice can be distinguished both by the amount of humor and the type
of humor in which members typically engage. This quantitative analysis
provides a valuable backdrop, capturing some of the norms and patterns
of different communities of practice, against which the behaviors of indi-
viduals can be more relevantly interpreted. As Holmes and Meyerhoff
(2003: 13) argue, there is “a place for quantitatively oriented studies, at
least as a background for understanding the social significance of par-
ticular linguistic choices at specific points in an interaction”.

The second part of the paper addressed the issue of RP as a gendered

concept, arguing that, contrary to Fletcher’s identification of RP with
women’s ways of doing things, RP is best conceptualized as differently
constructed in different communities of practice. So what counts as RP
differs in different workplaces, different organizational cultures, and
even in specific workplace teams. Exploring this notion, we examined
the ways in which two women in leadership positions in very different
workplaces used humor to manage the challenges presented by their rela-
tively “masculine” working environments. This analysis indicated that
differences in the ways in which masculinity is expressed in different
communities of practice are likely to result in very different responses.
In the factory environment, where the work and the language are much
rougher and tougher, Ginette manages the challenges of doing RP by
matching, and even out-doing, her team mates in the quantity and qual-
ity of her relatively “masculine” humorous contributions. Humor pro-
vides an effective management strategy in a very challenging environ-
ment. In the white-collar IT organization where Jill acts as Board Chair,
the gendered behavior of the team members much more closely resem-
bles the interactional norms described in the extensive language and gen-
der literature of the 1980s and 1990s (e. g., Coates 1996; Tannen 1993;
Holmes 1995). In this more conventional environment, Jill is free to
adopt feminine interactional norms where it suits her, but she is also able
to make fun of the gender stereotypes and assumptions of her colleagues,
playing up to their expectations, and parodying them in a range of skill-
ful ways. Humor provides her with a means of “troubling” gendered
workplace norms (Jones 2000). Paradoxically by emphasizing her femi-
ninity, Jill skillfully reconciles the need to do RP and maintain positive

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

145

relations at work, with a subtle questioning and in place a “sending up”
of the gendered norms of the IT professional world.

In considering the issue of women’s place at work, we are aware that

many questions remain unanswered. We have focused here on humor,
but there are many other ways of doing RP which deserve attention.
And we plan to pursue further the extent to which, and the ways in
which, many women in white-collar, male-dominated and “masculine”
workplaces feel obliged to conform to the dominant ways of doing things
in these communities of practice, as well as how some women (whether
subtly or overtly) manage to challenge and subvert masculine workplace
norms. Being polite at work is a complex business.

Appendix: Transcription conventions

[laughs] : :

Paralinguistic features, colons indicate start/finish

⫹

Pause of up to one second

... //......\ ...

Simultaneous speech

... /.......\\ ...
(hello)

Transcriber’s best guess at an unclear utterance

?

Rising or question intonation

XM:

Unidentifiable male

solidar-

Incomplete or cut-off utterance

#

Signals end of “sentence” where it is ambiguous on paper

… …

Section of transcript omitted

⫽

Utterance continues

[note]

Editorial comments

Notes

1. We wish to thank those who allowed their workplace interactions to be recorded

and other members of the Language in the Workplace Project team who assisted
with collecting and transcribing the data. We would also like to thank Meredith
Marra, in particular, for her assistance with the humor analysis, and with prepar-
ing the paper for publication. Finally, we express our appreciation to Miriam
Meyerhoff and to the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

2. Although RP is generally associated by linguists with the term Received Pronunci-

ation, the acronym seems unlikely to cause confusion in this very different
context.

3. While recognizing the limitations of Brown and Levinson’s approach to analyzing

politeness, such as their focus on individual utterances rather than more dynamic
aspects of interaction, their terms negative and positive politeness continue to
prove valuable in research in the area, as illustrated more fully in Holmes and
Marra (2004).

4. This example and examples 4, 6 and 7 are discussed in more detail in Schnurr

(fc). Transcription conventions are provided in the Appendix.

146

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

5. A distinctive New Zealand insect which can be observed in a particular building.
6. We emphasize that these are averages. In practice, of course, humor is not evenly

distributed but tends to occur in spurts as we have discussed elsewhere (Holmes
et al. 2001; see also Marra 2003).

7. In such instances, an interpretation which regards the humor as making a mini-

mally positive contribution requires consideration of alternative more overtly hos-
tile and critical comments which could have been made. Moreover, as one re-
viewer insightfully noted, some participants may experience insults masquerading
as humor as more face-attacking than unmitigated direct insults. Part of the
power of humor as a discourse strategy lies precisely in its potential ambiguity.

8. A number of the factory exchanges which paralinguistic clues indicated were al-

most certainly contestive, were untranscribable due to factory noise.

9. It should be noted that these women were identified not by us but by their col-

leagues as effective leaders. They were both regarded with respect and admiration
by colleagues, and in one case subsequent promotions provided further evidence
of her success as a leader.

10. This section draws on discussion in Holmes and Marra (2004) as necessary back-

ground for what follows.

11. The issue of the gender double bind facing ambitious women in the workplace

has been well explored in the management literature. See Beck (1999) for a useful
review of this literature. See Holmes (fc) for a discussion of this issue in relation
to the discourse of the New Zealand women leaders in this workplace corpus.

References

Alvesson, Mats and Yvonne Billing (1997). Understanding Gender and Organizations.

London: Sage.

Barsoux, Jean-Louis (1993). Funny Business. Humour, Management and Business Cul-

ture. London: Cassell.

Beck, Dominique M. (1999). Managing discourse, self and others: Women in senior

management positions. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Western Sydney,
Nepean.

Bergvall, Victoria L., Janet M. Bing, and Alice F. Freed (eds.) (1996). Rethinking

Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice. New York: Longman.

Brewis, Joanna (2001). Telling it like it is? Gender, language and organizational theory.

In The Language of Organization, Robert Westwood and Stephen Linstead (eds.),
283

⫺309. London: Sage.

Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson (1987). Politeness. Some Universals in Lan-

guage Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bucholtz, Mary, A.C. Liang, and Laurel A. Sutton (1999). Reinventing Identities: The

Gendered Self in Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Case, Susan Schick (1988). Cultural differences, not deficiencies: An analysis of mana-

gerial women’s language. In Women’s Careers. Pathways and Pitfalls, Suzanna
Rose and Laurie Larwood (eds.), 41

⫺63. New York: Praeger.

Case, Susan Schick (1994). Gender differences in communication and behaviour in

organizations. In Women in Management. Current Research Issues, Marilyn J. Da-
vidson and Ronald J. Burke (eds.), 144

⫺167. London: Paul Chapman.

Caudron, Shari (1992). Humor is healthy in the workplace. Personnel Journal 71 (6):

63

⫺68.

Clouse, R. Wilburn and Karen L. Spurgeon (1995). Corporate analysis of humor.

Psychology: A Journal of Human Behaviour 32 (3

⫺4): 1⫺24.

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

147

Coates, Jennifer (1996). Woman Talk. Conversation Between Women Friends. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Collinson, David L. (1988). “Engineering humour”: Masculinity, joking and conflict

in shop-floor relations. Organization Studies 9 (2): 181

⫺199.

Coser, Rose Laub (1960). Laughter among colleagues. A study of social functions of

humor among the staff of a mental hospital. Psychiatry 23: 81

⫺95.

Crawford, Mary (1995). Talking Difference. On Gender and Language. London: Sage.
Daly, Nicola, Janet Holmes, Jonathan Newton, and Maria Stubbe (2004). Expletives

as solidarity signals in FTAs on the factory floor. Journal of Pragmatics 36 (5):
945

⫺964.

Duncan, W. Jack and J. Philip Feisal (1989). No laughing matter: Patterns of humour

in the workplace. Organizational Dynamics 17 (3): 18

⫺30.

Duncan, W. Jack, Larry R. Smeltzer, and Terry L. Leap (1990). Humor and work:

Applications of joking behavior to management. Journal of Management 16 (2):
255

⫺278.

Eckert, Penelope (2000). Language Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet (2003). Language and Gender. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eelen, Gino (2001). A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Ervin-Tripp, Susan and Martin Lampert (1992). Gender differences in the construction

of humorous talk. In Locating Power. Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women
and Language Conference (Vol. 1), Kira Hall, Mary Bucholtz, and Birch Moonwo-
mon (eds.), 108

⫺117. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group Uni-

versity of California.

Fletcher, Joyce (1999). Disappearing Acts. Gender, Power, and Relational Practice at

Work. Cambridge: MIT.

Goffman, Erving (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behaviour. New

York: Anchor Books.

Hall, Kira and Mary Bucholtz (eds.) (1995). Gender Articulated: Language and the

Socially Constructed Self. New York: Routledge.

Hay, Jennifer (1995). Gender and humour: Beyond a joke. Unpublished MA Thesis,

Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington.

Hearn, Jeff and P. Wendy Parkin (1988). Women, men, and leadership: A critical

review of assumptions, practices, and change in the industrialized nations. In
Women in Management Worldwide, Nancy J. Adler and Dafna N. Izraeli (eds.),
17

⫺40. London: M. E. Sharpe.

Holmes, Janet (1994). New Zealand flappers: An analysis of T Voicing in New Zealand

English. English World-Wide 15 (2): 195

⫺224.

Holmes, Janet (1995). Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
Holmes, Janet (1997). Women, language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 1 (2):

195

⫺223.

Holmes, Janet (1998). Women’s role in language change: A place for quantification.

In Gender and Belief Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Women and Lan-
guage Conference April 19

⫺21 1996, Natasha Warner, Jocelyn Ahlers, Leela

Bilmes, Monica Oliver, Suzanne Wertheim, and Melinda Chen (eds.), 313

⫺330.

Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Women and Language Group University of California.

Holmes, Janet (ed.) (1999). Language in Society: Special Issue: Communities of Prac-

tice in Language and Gender Research. 28 (2): 171

⫺320.

Holmes, Janet (2000). Politeness, power and provocation: How humour functions in

the workplace. Discourse Studies 2 (2): 159

⫺185.

Holmes, Janet (in press). Sharing a laugh: Pragmatic aspects of humour and gender

in the workplace. Paper presented at the New Zealand Linguistics Society Confer-
ence, Massey University November 1999. To appear in Journal of Pragmatics.

148

Janet Holmes and Stephanie Schnurr

Holmes, Janet (forthcoming). Women’s Talk at Work. Oxford: Blackwell.
Holmes, Janet, Allan Bell, and Mary Boyce (1991). Variation and Change in New

Zealand English. A Social Dialect Investigation. Wellington: Department of Lin-
guistics Victoria University.

Holmes, Janet and Meredith Marra (2002a). Having a laugh at work: How humour

contributes to workplace culture. Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1683

⫺1710.

Holmes, Janet and Meredith Marra (2002b). Over the edge? Subversive humour be-

tween colleagues and friends. Humor 15 (1): 1

⫺23.

Holmes, Janet and Meredith Marra (2002c). Humour as a discursive boundary marker

in social interaction. In Us and Others: Social Identities Across Languages, Dis-
courses and Cultures, Anna Duszak (ed.), 377

⫺400. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:

John Benjamins.

Holmes, Janet and Meredith Marra (2004). Relational practice in the workplace:

Women’s talk or gendered discourse? Language in Society 33 (3): 377

⫺398.

Holmes, Janet and Meredith Marra (in press). Narrative and the construction of pro-

fessional identity in the workplace. In The Sociolinguistics of Narrative: Theory,
Context and Culture in Oral Story-telling, Jennifer Coates and Joanna Thornbor-
row (eds.) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Holmes, Janet, Meredith Marra, and Louise Burns (2001). Women’s humour in the

workplace: A quantitative analysis. Australian Journal of Communication 28 (1):
83

⫺108.

Holmes, Janet and Miriam Meyerhoff (2003). Different voices, different views: An

introduction to current research in language and gender. In Handbook on Lan-
guage and Gender, Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff (eds.), 1

⫺17. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Holmes, Janet and Stephanie Schnurr (2004). Doing femininity at work: More than

just relational practice. Paper presented at 3rd Biennial Conference of the Interna-
tional Gender and Language Association, Ithaca, NY.

Holmes, Janet and Maria Stubbe (2003a). “Feminine” workplaces: Stereotypes and

reality. In Handbook of Language and Gender, Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyer-
hoff (eds.), 573

⫺599. Oxford: Blackwell.

Holmes, Janet and Maria Stubbe (2003b). Power and Politeness in the Workplace. A

Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work. London: Longman.

Jones, Deborah (2000). Gender trouble in the workplace: “Language and gender”

meets “feminist organisational communication”. In Gendered Speech in Social
Context. Perspectives from Gown and Town, Janet Holmes (ed.), 192

⫺210. Welling-

ton: Victoria University Press.

Kendall, Shari (2004). Framing authority: Gender, face and mitigation at a radio net-

work. Discourse and Society 15 (1): 55

⫺79.

Kendall, Shari and Deborah Tannen (1997). Gender and language in the workplace.

In Gender and Discourse, Ruth Wodak (ed.), 81

⫺105. London: Sage.

Kiesling, Scott F. (2001). “Now I gotta watch what I say”: Shifting constructions

of gender and dominance in discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(2):
250

⫺273.

Kuiper, Koenraad (1991). Sporting formulae in New Zealand English: Two models

of male solidarity. In English Around the World, Jenny Cheshire (ed.), 200

⫺209.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, Robin (1975). Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper Colophon.
Linstead, Steve (1988). “Jokers wild”: Humour in organisational culture. In Humour

in Society. Resistance and Control, Chris Powell and George E. C. Paton (eds.),
123

⫺148. London: Macmillan.

Litosseliti, Lia and Jane Sunderland (eds.) (2002). Gender, Identity and Discourse

Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Politeness, humor and gender in the workplace

149

Marra, Meredith (2003). Decisions in New Zealand business meetings: A sociolinguis-

tic analysis of power at work. Unpublished PhD thesis, Victoria University of
Wellington, Wellington.

Marra, Meredith and Janet Holmes (2004). Workplace narratives and business reports:

Issues of definition. Text 24 (1): 59

⫺78.

Mills, Sara (1999). Discourse competence: Or, how to theorize strong women speakers.

In Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language, Christina Hen-
dricks and Kelly Oliver (eds.), 81

⫺97. Albany, NY: State University of New

York Press.

Mills, Sara (2003). Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Morreall, John (1991). Humor and work. Humor 4 (3

⫺4): 359⫺373.

Morreall, John (1997). Humor Works. Amherst, MA: HRD Press.
O’Keefe, Barbara J. (1989). Communication theory and practical knowledge. In Re-

thinking Communication, Brenda Dervin (ed.), 197

⫺215. Newbury Park: Sage.

Pearson, Judy C., Lynn H. Turner, and William Todd-Mancillas (1991). Gender and

Communication. (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rodrigues, Suzana B. and David L. Collinson (1995). “Having fun?” Humour as resis-

tance in Brazil. Organization Studies 16 (5): 739

⫺768.

Ross, Bob (1992). That’s a Good One! Corporate Leadership with Humor. San Marcos,

CA: Avant Books.

Schnurr, Stephanie (forthcoming). Leadership, humour and gender. An analysis of

workplace discourse. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Victoria University of Welling-
ton, Wellington.

Sinclair, Amanda (1998). Doing Leadership Differently. Gender, Power and Sexuality

in a Changing Business Culture. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Stubbe, Maria (2000). “Just do it ...!” Discourse strategies for “getting the message

across” in a factory production team. In Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the
Australian Linguistic Society, John Henderson (ed.), http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/
LingWWW/als99/proceedings.

Stubbe, Maria (2002). Managing the contradictions: Gender, ethnicity and power in

the discourse of a factory team. Paper presented at ICLASP 8, Hong Kong.

Swann, Joan (2002). Yes, but is it gender? In Gender, Identity and Discourse Analysis,

Lia Litosseliti, and Jane Sunderland (eds.), 43

⫺67. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA:

John Benjamins.

Tannen, Deborah (ed.) (1993). Gender and Conversational Interaction. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Tannen, Deborah (1999). The display of (gendered) identities in talk at work. In Rein-

venting Identities. The Gendered Self in Discourse, Mary Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, and
Laurel A. Sutton (eds.), 221

⫺240. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Trauth, Eileen (2002). Odd girl out: An individual differences perspective on women

in the IT profession. Information Technology and People 15 (2): 98

⫺118.

Watts, Richard (1992). Relevance and relational work: Linguistic politeness as politic

behaviour. Multilingua 8 (2/3): 131

⫺166.

Watts, Richard (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, and Identity.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1999). Emotions Across Languages and Cultures. Cambridge Uni-

versity Press.