Paul Butterfield

This article considers the options for moral criticism of joking speech. It denies that it is always appropriate to say, of socially offensive jokers, that they must have malicious intentions or bigoted beliefs—and, in the absence of this kind of claim, it searches for a more appropriate criticism of offensive humor. Ultimately, the article identifies callousness as the moral charge that can fairly be leveled at offensive jokers when they do not tell their jokes maliciously. Speakers who tell unflattering jokes about social groups are risking the reputation of their targets in order to induce comic amusement amongst their audiences. In doing so, these jokers can demonstrate a callous disregard for the esteem in which their targets are held by others.

This article posits and explores the concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice: a type of hermeneutical injustice that disadvantages members of marginalized groups in the arena of humor-sharing. First I explain the concept of comedic hermeneutical injustice: that agents who are hermeneutically marginalized are less able to successfully participate in the sharing of humor. Then I suggest that, to prove the existence of such an injustice, two things need to be shown: first, that hermeneutically marginalized groups do suffer some disadvantage in how well their attempts at humor are received, and, second, that this disadvantage amounts to a significant harm.In proving the existence of a comedic disadvantage, this article notes that all jokes require some epistemic content to be shared between joke-teller and joke-hearer. Thus, since being hermeneutically marginalized obstructs one from sharing knowledge with proximate speakers, hermeneutical inequalities can lead to inequalities in the sharing of humor. To show that this constitutes a significant disadvantage, the article observes the various ways that sharing humor successfully can serve agents’ social interests. It concludes by noting some idiosyncrasies of comedic hermeneutical injustice, relative to other forms of epistemic injustice, and situating it within the wider framework of humor's general social-ethical influence.