Türkiye’de Toplumsal Cinsiyet Kapsamında Popüler Türk Mizah Kültürü’nde Cinsiyetler Arası Mizah Algılarının Farklılaşması

Abstract

In recent years, as gender studies in Turkey have come to be accepted as a research field by various disciplines, the direct influence of culture on gender made it a necessity to study the subject in the field of Turkish Folklore. This study, which views the sense of humor from a gender based perspective, by addressing the basic definitions of gender discusses the position of feminine and masculine genders in Turkey in a few fields where this concept is influential, such as family, media and work life. In the thesis, while describing the definition of humor from the perspectives of the researchers in different disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, basic concepts and classical humor theories, the notion of “sense of humor” is explained by viewing humor from another angle. A possible differentiation in humor perceptions of feminine and masculine genders has been the main point of the study. In the study, a Gender and Humor Questionnaire Form was developed to analyze how each gender is influenced by humor, how they affect humor, and whether they look in different perspectives when it comes to humor. The survey was conducted among 152 students studying in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes of Turkish Folklore, English Language and Literature, Contemporary Turkish Dialects and Translation and Interpreting departments of Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters. The data was analyzed with Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests. In accordance with the data, the differences in humor perceptions of feminine and masculine genders and the reasons for these differences have been revealed. The results of the analysis were consistent with the gender stereotypes as predicted for both sexes, but some contradictory results were also obtained.