Ethnic Humor: The Role of Culture in Mirth, Comedy, and Laughter

Abstract

Humor is the quality of being amusing or comic. Although it is a universal phenomenon, humor takes different forms and styles at different ages or stages in an individual’s or society’s life. More specifically, ethnic humor is based on ideas, beliefs, and stereotypes about racial or specific groups. The goal of this narrative review was to seek internet search engines for peer-reviewed research articles, books, and publications on ethnic humor’s meaning, characteristics, types, sources, dynamics, measurement, benefits, applications, and negative aspects. The results showed a collection of 97 publications with an abundance of narrative essays or descriptive qualitative studies. A topic or theme-wise, and the analysis of results by timelines is reported. The contemporary status of research on ethnic humor appears to be plagued by limitations. There is paucity of studies on data-based, empirical, survey-type, hypothesis-driven, case-controlled, experimental, or higher-order randomized control designs within and across groups in the community of nations. The future of research is recommended as a promise and an invitation to cover ethnic humor in advertising, mass media, digital, or the virtual social worlds.