The Pragmatics of Rude Jokes with Grandad: Joking Relationships in Aboriginal Australia

Abstract

The classical joking relationship has fascinated anthropologists for decades, especially in relation to African societies. The existence of joking relationships in Aboriginal Australia has also been noted in ethnographies, but rarely described in a way that acknowledges that kinship-mediated humour can actually be creative and funny. Kinship is obviously central to an understanding of these relationships, but the institutions that engender joking relationships have (surprisingly) rarely been discussed in detail for any Australian Aboriginal group. Taking the Bininj Kunwok and Dalabon-speaking peoples of western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory as a case study, I seek to demonstrate a generalisation that, in this part of Australia, joking relationships index the absence of actual affinity. The pretentious bluster, vulgarity and teasing of joking relationships ironically echo appropriate ways of behaving with actual affines. Whereas respect and avoidance are the hallmarks of interaction between actual affines, one jokes with a class of potential affines with whom actual affinity is not envisaged or has been renounced. The two forms of behaviour are intimately linked. Respect for affines is the default form of behaviour and the markedness of the departure from this expectation in joking relationships signals the existence of a different type of affinal relationship.