Laughing at Death: the Forms and Functions of Humor in Illness
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LAUGHING AT DEATH: THE FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR IN ILLNESS TRAUMA NARRATIVES Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in Communication By Nicholas Thomas Iannarino Dayton, Ohio December, 2010 LAUGHING AT DEATH: THE FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR IN ILLNESS TRAUMA NARRATIVES Name: Iannarino, Nicholas Thomas APPROVED BY: _______________________________ Teresa L. Thompson, Ph.D Faculty Advisor ________________________________ Louis P. Cusella, Ph.D Committee Member _________________________________ Kathleen B. Watters, Ph.D Committee Member __________________________________ James D. Robinson, Ph.D Committee Member Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Communication ii ABSTRACT LAUGHING AT DEATH: THE FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR IN ILLNESS TRAUMA NARRATIVES Name: Iannarino, Nicholas Thomas University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. Teresa L. Thompson This thesis attempts to demonstrate that public storytelling and memoirs – if crafted and shared effectively – may elicit beneficial private/intrapersonal and public/interpersonal functions, and might be utilized as effective media for the formulation and dissemination of humorous health narratives. Through the study of three illness trauma narratives that utilize humor, this thesis analyzes the forms in which productive humor was employed throughout the process of narrative construction, and the information the humorous aspects of the narrative product expresses to audiences about the illness experience. More specifically, this thesis attempts to demonstrate that the integration of humor with health narratives can effectively call attention to health issues such as REM sleep behavior disorder, severe drug addiction, and cancer. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My most special thanks are in order to Dr. Teresa Thompson, my advisor and friend, for putting an inordinate amount of time and effort into the development of this thesis. Her encouragement, motivation, and – most importantly – patience were tantamount to the formulation of a theoretical basis for research and an analysis of these texts. Most importantly, without Teri’s initial support, introduction into the fascinating and broad world of communication research, and genuine mentorship, I would not be blessed with the many amazing opportunities I have experienced, am experiencing, and will experience. She has truly changed my life and I will never forget it. I would also like to express my appreciation to everyone who has helped me with this work. The advice and ideas of my committee members – Dr. James Robinson, Dr. Kathy Watters, and Dr. Lou Cusella – have been invaluable and will continue to shape the development of this research. My fellow graduate teaching assistants Carrie Scherer, Pat Fries, Kathryn Lecklider, Sara Hoyt, Brittany Waag, and Rania Shakkour, and part- time instructor Jeff Geers have also provided me with essential feedback and support during my time at the University of Dayton. Finally, I’d like to thank my family for putting up with me for two hellish summer months during the development of this thesis. That they did not deadlock me in the basement during this process speaks to their infinite patience and love. And to anyone who invested their precious time to read this work from front to back, please go outside. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………..iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………iv INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER I. REVIEW OF LITERATURE……………………………………………………3 Narrative Approaches to Health Communication Scholarship……………….......3 Relevance of Humor in Health Communication Research……………………...51 Research Questions……………………………………………………………...91 II. METHODS……………………………………………………………………...92 III. MIKE BIRBIGLIA’S SECRET PUBLIC SLEEPWALKING DISORDER…. 101 IV. BURNT UP: RICHARD PRYOR AND THE PIPE……………………….......129 V. SHANGRI-LOST: JULIA SWEENEY AND THE “INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF CANCER”……………………………………………………………….....152 VI. DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………….204 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………...216 APPENDIX A: Humor in Illness Narratives Feedback Loop………………………………..226 v INTRODUCTION This thesis seeks to analyze the social construction of illness as it relates to the productive and receptive functions and purposes of humor in stories about one’s health. Three pre-existing narratives which utilize humor in the recounting of one’s experiences with illness – a one-person show, a stand-up routine, and a memoir – will be analyzed as case studies through qualitative narrative, rhetorical, and phenomenological methodology to determine how the author’s ability to craft humor from extremely serious and possibly traumatic and dehumanizing proceedings has impacted their portrayal or moralization of the illness. Additionally, this analysis will seek to understand whether the story’s construction and dissemination may have served a therapeutic function for the author, such as allowing them to reestablish a sense of their own identity and empowerment lost to a faceless, perhaps serious, likely humbling illness. These narratives will also be studied to determine their educational and stigma- reducing value (namely, their ability to enlighten the public regarding issues about which they may know little and create affinity through humanization and the “reimagining” of stereotypical sufferers of an illness). Past health communication research suggests that the use of humor has many benefits among audiences, such as enhancing recall, attention, and persuasiveness, which can be used to advance knowledge and salience of health issues through entertaining and approachable channels (Compton, 2006). 1 Three stories were selected based on their perceived effectiveness in telling a coherent, well-crafted, truthful, and – most importantly – genuinely humorous, personal, and heartfelt story. Fisher’s (1984) description of narrative rationality was used as a guide. Readers will be provided with three case studies analyzing the perceived effective use of humor in recounting traumatic experiences. These will be meant as guides for possible replication and instruction on how humorous health narratives have been written, and as an argument for the heuristic value of humorous health narratives as a new area of further study in qualitative and quantitative health communication research. Analyzed health conditions will include REM sleep behavior disorder, drug addiction, recovery from third-degree burns, and cervical cancer. The author will propose that public storytelling and memoirs – if done effectively – can elicit beneficial private/intrapersonal and public/interpersonal functions, and could be utilized as effective media for the formulation and dissemination of humorous health narratives. The following literature review will examine the value, relevance, and development of narrative production/analysis and productive/receptive humor in health communication research, and will attempt to provide a rationale for their integration. 2 CHAPTER I Review of Literature Narrative Approaches to Health Communication Scholarship “Storytelling…is a mode of coming to know ourselves…Stories are devices which shape agents and events into some intelligible pattern. They weld actors to their actions and doers to their deeds.” -Churchill and Churchill (1982, p. 74) What is Narrative? From both a productive storytelling and receptive audience standpoint, narratives possess the power to characterize and potentially transform our perceptions of the world (Eisenberg, Baglia, & Pynes, 2006). Narrative scholar Walter Fisher (1984) said that human beings are rational and inherent storytellers; that is, we make sense of the world through the social sharing of ongoing, action-oriented stories – as conflicts with plot, characters, beginnings, middles, and ends – from which we choose, and thus consequently, recreate our lives. Narration is viewed by Fisher (1984) as symbolic actions – words and exploits, for example – that have sequence and meaning for those who live, share, or interpret them. Furthermore, Lablov (1972) defines narrative as “one method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which [it is inferred] actually occurred” (p. 359-360). Narratives reflect our personal views of the world and our rationale for why things happen in certain ways. Telling stories about one’s life is the most common way of communicating and understanding individually-constructed ideas of the realities one experiences. 3 According to narrative theory (Fisher, 1984) humans participate in their lives through the formulation of value judgments. Our practice of constantly re-creating stories requires an author – a person who tells the story – and co-authors – people who receive the story and the audience that participates in the creation of meaning for the story. The social, cultural, historical, situational, personal, and relational forces in a person’s life influence plots, themes, and texts that the storytellers creatively reflect, negotiate, and retell, making meaning and value judgments as they do so. The narrative construction of meaning organizes seemingly meaningless, random events into larger, significant structures that are symbolically represented as stories (Eggly, 2002). For instance, you will often notice a great disparity in terms of how some event actually occurred (A man catches a minnow on his tenth cast of the day – “story lived”) and how the event is formulated