Wolfman Jay and the Writing Center Gang: Humor in Listserv Community Development

Abstract

As individuals become more immersed in online discourse, the rhetorical ways in which face-to-face humor emerges as an important part of the written lexicon remain an important facet of effective communication. Social media, listservs, blogs, email, and collaborative virtual environments all require sophisticated forms of communication; the rhetoric of humor and laughter is no small part of this written discourse (Hubler & Bell, 2003). Interestingly, in electronic spaces, linguistic forms of humor, joking, and laughter disconnect from verbal and nonverbal cues; instead, laughter, joking, and humor become increasingly more textual (Bell & Hubler, 2003), thus increasing the need to understand the rhetorical power of humor in these virtual environments. Williams, Caplan, and Xiong (2007) posited that “the diminished nonverbal cues in text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) have given rise to a variety of theories seeking to explain how reduced relational cues may affect interpersonal interactions online” (p. 427).