Laughing at cancer: Humour, empowerment, solidarity and coping online

Abstract

In the context of cancer, humour and joking can still be seen as socially unacceptable. Yet people with cancer can find relief in making light of their often life-threatening situations. How and why they do this has received little systematic attention to date. This paper begins to address this gap by exploring 530,055 words of online patient–patient interactions on a thread explicitly dedicated to humour within a UK-based cancer forum.

A corpus informed analysis reveals that characteristic forms of humour make fun of cancer and its consequences (e.g. embarrassing bodily functions and paraphernalia required as part of treatment), sometimes via co-constructed fantasy scenarios developed over several posts.

Facilitated by the affordances of the online environment, the main functions of these humorous utterances and exchanges include enabling contributors to talk about frightening, sensitive, embarrassing and/or taboo experiences; potentially reducing the psychological impact of their experiences; facilitating a sense of individual and collective empowerment in a context where people can feel powerless; and building a sense of a cohesive, supportive community, thereby reducing potential feelings of isolation. In these ways, humour helps contributors cope with their illness.

Keywords
Conversational humour; Cancer; Online interactions; Health communication; Empowerment

1. Introduction
The title of this paper may make some uncomfortable: cancer, after all, is no laughing matter. Except that it is. In fact, for contributors to the online forum thread entitled ‘For those with a warped sense of humour WARNING- no punches pulled here’ (henceforth ‘Warped’) it has to be. They “cope by being irreverent and silly and able to laugh at all the bad stuff”, and they are not alone. At the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Beth Vyse, Alastair Barrie and Adam Hills were among those who based their comedy routines on their own or their partner's cancer experiences. Shortly thereafter, BBC Radio Scotland ran a two-part programme called A Funny Kind of Life and Death, interviewing Vyse and Barrie along with six others who all used humour and comedy to come to terms with death or cope with life-threatening illnesses.

4.2. Laughing at cancer and its consequences

I begin the discussion of humour on Warped with references to cancer using ‘Mr’. This is followed by a discussion of contributors’ descriptions of the consequences of having cancer, including bodily functions like breaking wind, and paraphernalia, such as stoma bags. Throughout, I discuss the potential discursive, interpersonal and psychological functions of these examples, including discussing taboo topics in a socially acceptable manner, empowerment, community building, and tension release.

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