Jokes and Targets [Paperback]

Jokes and Targets takes up an appealing and entertaining topicthe social and historical origins of jokes about familiar targets such as rustics, Jewish spouses, used car salesmen, and dumb blondes. Christie Davies explains why political jokes flourished in the Soviet Union, why Europeans tell jokes about American lawyers but not about their own lawyers, and why sex jokes often refer to France rather than to other countries. One of the worlds leading experts on the study of humor, Davies provides a wide-ranging and detailed study of the jokes that make up an important part of everyday conversation.

The most distinguished scholar of ethnic humor in the postwar period . . . has collected and organized a large body of jokes and identified and described the contradictory values or ideas they manipulate.

Christie Davies is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Reading, UK. He was president of the International Society for Humor Studies in 20082009. His previous books include Ethnic Humor around the World: A Comparative Analysis (IUP, 1990); Jokes and their Relation to Society; and The Mirth of Nations.

I recommend Jokes and Targets as a valuable scholarly study where thoughtul analysis is brought to bear on a wide variety of significant materials and the writing style is pleasantly engaging.Christie Davies Jokes and Targets is a well-written and well-researched book.Jokes and Targets is well worth the price of admission. It is a valuable addition to Daviess existingand esteemed corpus of humor research.This is a serious book, clearly written (no sociological jargon from this sociologist!), about something that makes no political difference . . . but that is, after all, deeply embedded in us to the extent that we are social creatures.Why are stupidity, cunning, and a variety of sexual proclivities attributed in jokes to particular groups and social classes? Christie Davies reviews a broad range of jokes to formulate an answer.A definitive acl“¯