Qualitative_data_analysis

FINDING A FOCUS 69
to reflect upon our own experience of humour. For example, one factor stimulating
my own interest in the humour of Victoria Wood was the laughter one of her
sketches provoked when we watched it during a discussion of interviewing in a
methods class. Humour is part of everyday life, and we probably all have our
favourite humorous programmes, books, anecdotes and incidents. Reflection on
personal experience can be a rich mine of insights and ideas which may prove useful
in directing our analysis.
The general culture may provide another rich source of ideas for analysis. There is
a ‘non-academic’ literature on humour, to be found in newspaper reviews, comedian
biographies and the like. There may also be non-literary sources, such as radio and
TV interviews. I write in a city which is fortunate to have an annual book festival
devoted to literary issues, such as the social functions of humour. Academics
thankfully have no monopoly over the dissection of humour. Indeed I suspect
discussion of what was ‘funny’ or ‘not funny’ on last night’s TV may run the
weather a close second as a topic of everyday conversation.
As we have seen, accumulated knowledge need not refer only to the results of
previous research and scholarship. But undoubtedly the academic literature may
prove one of the most useful sources of analytic strategy. This is because previous
research or scholarship may have examined issues in a thorough and systematic way.
Some of the concepts and relationships observed or hypothesized in previous work
may suggest questions which require further exploration. Of course, replication is
seldom on the agenda in social science research, since novelty has a strong career
value; and it is even less likely to commend itself to qualitative researchers. On the
other hand, plagiarism is rife. In a research context, it makes sense to ‘borrow’ freely
from other authors, providing we acknowledge our sources and subject their ideas to
a critical assessment through examining evidence.
In this case, we could review the existing literature on humour. Fortunately,
computer-based bibliographies now allow us to track down relevant literature
through a few interactive exchanges at the computer terminal. We can locate
immediately all the texts catalogued under humour, or related subjects such as wit
or comedy. We can explore other parts of the bibliography, using search facilities to
find texts which include relevant words in their title, such as ‘laughter’. Our search
may take us across different disciplines, for example, to texts on the psychology or
anthropology of humour. It may take us through the nooks and crannies of the
bibliography to unsuspected texts.
We may begin with an eclectic approach to the literature, but we must quickly
sort out what texts seem promising and which seem irrelevant. Here we cross our
first Rubicon, for the literature tends to be organized along disciplinary lines. Do we
adopt a literary approach, and explore issues of style, idiom and the use of irony? Do
we take a linguistic view, and investigate the communication of humorous intent