Social Uses
It is argued that gallows humor often occurs in societies whose inhabitants have limited means of expressing discontent, yet in which significant discontent is experienced. In these instances gallows humor can provide an outlet for airing subjects which people may feel is safer than open dialogue.
In her ethnography "Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday life in Brazil" (1993), anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes describes the use of gallows humor by the inhabitants of an impoverished shantytown in northeastern Brazil.
Read more about this topic: Gallows Humor
Famous quotes containing the word social:
“I have more in common with a Mexican man than with a white woman.... This opinion ... chagrins women who sincerely believe our female physiology unequivocally binds all women throughout the world, despite the compounded social prejudices that daily affect us all in different ways. Although women everywhere experience life differently from men everywhere, white women are members of a race that has proclaimed itself globally superior for hundreds of years.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost—that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization—is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)