Joke as Narrative Text and Instrument for Developing an Understanding of Interpersonal Relationships

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Abstract

Not every instrument involved in professional or everyday interaction with others allows one to move in the zone of proximal development in a communicative partnership. Despite a wide range of such work tools, for the most part they are of directive, expert format. The need to find psychotechnic means adequate to cooperative relations draws our attention to comic instruments (humor), namely to one of its forms – joke. Bringing joke into our communication with others appears a kind of tactics that allows partners to make certain statements about necessary things or actions from equal positions, without restricting each other’s freedom, making their intensions, values and meanings clear, while retaining an opportunity to correct their judgments and actions. Explanatory opportunities of the cultural-historical concept and narrative approach in psychology, as well as the ideas incorporated in the method of stage-by-stage formation of action, allow us to consider joke as a means of narrative understanding of the interpersonal relationships.

General Information

Keywords: understanding interpersonal relationships, humor, laughing action, orientation, joke, narrative, means

Journal rubric: Developmental Psychology

Article type: scientific article

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/chp.2018140103

For citation: Elfimova M.M. Joke as Narrative Text and Instrument for Developing an Understanding of Interpersonal Relationships. Kul'turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya = Cultural-Historical Psychology, 2018. Vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 23–29. DOI: 10.17759/chp.2018140103. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.)

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Information About the Authors

Mariya M. Elfimova, PhD in Psychology, Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor, Department of Developmental and Pedagogical Psychology, Orenburg State Pedagogical University, Orenburg, Russia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0996-6309, e-mail: elfimovamarya@yandex.ru

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