Humorous Stories And The Identification Of Social Norms

• Date: 01 March 2003
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399702250352
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Author: Dean L. Yarwood
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0095399702250352ARTICLEADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2003Yarwood / THE SENATE CLUB

HUMOROUS STORIES AND THE

IDENTIFICATION OF SOCIAL NORMS

The Senate Club

DEAN L. YARWOOD

University of Missouri–Columbia

The literatureof formal organizations holds that stories handed down by word of mouth are

important for understanding prescribed behavior and attitudes in organizations. In this

study,the author analyzes humorous stories told and retold in the U.S. Senate as a sourcefor

the inculcation of senate norms. The author asks, “Is it possible that by drawing on the oral

tradition of telling humorous stories in the Senate, we can identify the same norms that

Matthews identifiedin his pioneering study of senate folkways?” “Might these data point to

the existence of still other norms?” This study suggests that stories passed along by the oral

tradition are a sourceof useful data for understanding the informal processes in political

institutions.

Keywords: political science association; presidential address

It sometimes seems that we political scientists take ourselves and our sub-

ject too soberly....Nooneofushaseverwritten a dissertation on the im-

portant function of humor in public affairs.

—Charles E. Merriam (1926, p. 5)

Students of organizations stress the importance of informal structures in

shaping formal organizational structures and thus behavior (March &

Olsen, 1989; Martin, 1992; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Ott, 1989). A particu-

lar aspect of informal structure that has received some attention by

9

AUTHOR’S NOTE:Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dean

L. Yarwood,Department of Political Science, 206 Professional Building, University of Mis-

souri–Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211-6030. The author gratefully acknowledgesthe gen-

erous support provided for this projectby the University of Missouri Research Board. The

author would like to thank Gary Young for his helpful comments.

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 35 No. 1, March 2003 9-28

DOI: 10.1177/0095399702250352

© 2003 Sage Publications

students of formal organizations is story telling in organizations

(Hummel, 1991; Martin & Powers, 1983; Mitroff & Kilmann, 1975; Ott,

1989; Wilkins, 1983). Stories are told and retold and passed along from

old to new members. They are held to be important to organizations

because information that is acquired in story form is more easily remem-

bered and because stories thus told are more likely to generate belief and

commitment by members of the organization than are those presented in

other formats (Hummel, 1991; Martin & Powers, 1983; Wilkins, 1983).

Withal, they contribute to control in formal organizations (Mitroff &

Kilmann, 1975; Martin & Powers, 1983; Wilkins, 1983). Some of these

stories amount to scripts that teach approved behavior to members of the

organization (Martin & Powers, 1983; Ott, 1989; Wilkins, 1983). These

scholars feel that stories told in organizations are an important type of data

for seeing the world as it is seen by organizationalparticipants and thus are

key to understanding their behavior. It seems reasonable that stories

passed on to new members of political institutions by old members should

be important to students of politics if we are to understand the actions of

political leaders in their institutional settings. In this article, we have stud-

ied a particular kind of story, the humorous story, that has been passed

along in the U.S. Senate during the years of the “Senate Club.” We com-

pare the “scripts” or prescriptions suggested in these stories to the norms

discussed by Donald R. Matthews (1960) in his book, U.S. Senators &

Their World, which identified norms of the Senate during the time of the

Senate Club.

Social scientists who study humor agree with students of organizations

in that they stress the importance of social context for meaning attached to

humorous stories. The anthropologist, Mary Douglas (1975), asserted,

“The social dimension enters at all levels into the perception of a joke”

(p. 97). The Dutch sociologist, Anton C. Zijderveld (1983), wrote,

“Humor and laughter often mark the boundaries of a group” (p. 47).

Whereas scholars of organizations emphasize howstories contribute to

order in formal organizations, scholars of humor discuss the playful char-

acter of humorous stories. For them, an important type of humor is that

which results from a lack of congruency between systems of thought. The

work of Arthur Koestler (1964/1989), The Act of Creation, is often cited

by humor scholars. He wrote that humor is the consequence of

“bisociation” or the merging of different matrixes of thought. Koestler

uses the term matrix to refer to “any ability, habit, or skill, any pattern of

ordered behavior governed by a ‘code’ of fixed rules” (Koestler, 1964/

1989, pp. 38).

10 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2003