Banal humour and social order: Overlooked affects in staff interaction with incarcerated boys

Abstract

Correctional institutions such as youth detention centres are highly emotional places, yet there are only a few studies of youth in locked institutions that take emotions as their starting point, and those who do primarily focus on explosive affects. Drawing on video ethnographic data from a Swedish youth detention home, this study highlights a mild form of joking, what we call ‘banal humour’, employed by staff and youth as a form of affective practice. Grounded in critical humour studies and affect theory, the paper demonstrates how banal humour contributes to maintaining positive affects, and to mitigate both anger and embarrassment, while simultaneously constructing social order and producing desirable subjectivities in the detention centre.

Introduction

Correctional institutions such as juvenile detention centres are highly emotional places. In particular, when children and youths are detained and submitted to treatment against their own will, the conditions are extreme and, not surprisingly, infused with strong, primarily negative, emotions (cf. Enell and Wilińska, 2021). However, studies of youths in locked institutions that take emotions as their starting point are scarce, even as detained youths are often understood through an emotional lens within the institutions themselves. Incarcerated young men, for instance, are often deemed as having emotional trouble in terms of uncontrollable and explosive anger (Abrams et al., 2008; Franzén, 2015; Laursen and Henriksen, 2019). The detention centre is also an emotional setting for the staff working there. Arguably, working with incarcerated youths involves high levels of emotion management, both an institutional level (through, for instance, the employment of anger management programmes, see for example Laursen and Henriksen, 2019) and an individual level through emotion work by the staff members (Biszczanik and Gruber, 2021; Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021). Emotions are thus highly relevant in detention centres, to be understood as part and parcel of the treatment and control practices of incarceration (cf. Crawley, 2004).

Scholarly writing and research on adult incarceration have often indirectly studied negative emotional aspects (for instance, the classical examples: Foucault, 1991; Goffman, 1961; Sykes, 1958), and recent research of incarcerated youths also often touch upon youths’ emotional experiences (for instance, Bengtsson, 2012; Enell and Wilińska, 2021; Pettersson, 2021). However, in-depth studies of emotion and incarceration are few, although growing, and not many focus on incarcerated youths (Andersson, 2022; Bengtsson, 2012; Biszczanik and Gruber, 2021; Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021). A few focus on (adult) inmate emotion regulation (Laws and Crewe, 2016), the pains of adult imprisonment (Crewe, 2011), and staff-(adult)inmate relations (Crawley, 2004; Nylander et al., 2011). Some studies focus on prison masculinities and (indirectly) emotion (Abrams et al., 2008; Crewe, 2014). There are also a few recent studies of the emotional atmospheres or geographies of imprisonment (Crewe et al., 2014; Moran, 2015), charting the ‘emotional map’ of an institution with its various affective zones, taking into account that physical environments affect people emotionally but in unpredictable and varied ways (Laws, 2022).

In general, studies on emotion and incarceration primarily draw on research interviews and highlight negative emotions such as fear, aggression, and control (Andersson, 2022; Biszczanik and Gruber, 2021; Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021). Research has also showed that conflicts and violence are common at the institutions (Wästerfors, 2009, 2019), including staff mistreatment of youths (Vogel, 2021), and that treatment practices may contribute to a reproduction of problematic and aggressive masculinities and criminal norms (Abrams et al., 2008; Bengtsson, 2016; Laursen and Henriksen, 2019). In addition, it has been found that staff may escalate conflicts with youths (Vogel, 2021; Wästerfors, 2019). However, little attention has been paid towards the mild and less threatening conflicts, nor the subtle emotional work enacted in the everyday life and work of juvenile detention centres.

Drawing on data from a juvenile detention centre in Sweden, this paper will zone in on a type of emotion work among staff that has not been highlighted in previous research and easily goes unnoticed, namely the use of a particular type of very mild humour. We will argue that mild forms of humour and laughter are to be understood as affective practices (Franzén et al., 2021; Wetherell, 2012) enacted by staff daily. We call this practice ‘banal humour’ and shall investigate what affective work the use of such humour makes in the everyday life of a detention centre, both among the incarcerated youths and the staff.

Between the mundane and the extreme: Affective paradoxes in detention centre practice

Studies of juvenile detention centres have pointed to an ambivalent emotional aspect of the institutions involving a particular combination of boredom and risk of violence (Biszczanik and Gruber, 2021; Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021; Wästerfors, 2019). The everyday life and work at the centres are often mundane and repetitive, involving much waiting and filling in of time, both for youths (cf. Bengtsson, 2012) and staff, yet there is an ‘omnipresent potential for violence’ (Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021: 1027). Wästerfors (2019) describes as characterizing of the Swedish detention centre context: apprehensive ordinariness (sw: anspänd vardaglighet), meaning that the atmosphere is simultaneously relaxed and restrained. Others similarly depict it as ‘monotonous but violent’ and ‘structured but unpredictable’ (Biszczanik and Gruber, 2021: 58). Furthermore, it has been illuminated how seemingly insignificant everyday incidents, such as a youth putting ‘too much’ sugar in their tea, may quickly and suddenly escalate into large-scale conflict (Pettersson, 2021). Wästerfors (2019) has similarly found that there can be a lot of joking and fun, but at the same time the good spirits can, at any moment, turn into aggression and violence. Thus, there are good reasons to turn the analytical gaze towards the affects of humour practices, when studying juvenile detention centres.

Staff emotion work and humour in locked institutions

What we have portrayed as a lack of research on emotions in detention centres can also be said about research on staff's emotion work in relation to youths at the institutions. A few studies have looked at staff emotions and emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) in juvenile detention centres, including how staff handle their emotions to regulate the affects of incarcerated youth. Studies have highlighted emotional strategies used by staff such as concealing frustration when dealing with demanding youth, as well as avoiding overly positive or empathetic emotional displays, instead portraying a calm and collected demeanour (Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021). Other studies have shown staff's preoccupation with control and safety in their work with presumably dangerous and violent youths (Andersson, 2022). Biszczanik and Gruber (2021) show that staff use emotional labour to construct ‘security’ in an otherwise care-oriented institution, such as performing a type of ‘being on guard without showing it’ to avoid conflict, as well as suppressing feelings of fear.

Furthermore, studies highlight that working with incarcerated youths may be exceptionally taxing because of the particular emotional demands on staff, for instance, due to working in such close proximity to the incarcerated (Crawley, 2004), and the continuous dealing with inmate behaviour, such as manipulation and defiance (Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021). In this article, we show that the use of mild or banal humour can serve to handle potentially troublesome emotions and as a means of making incipient conflict more light hearted.

We agree with Billig's (2005) assertion that humour should not be perceived solely as inherently positive, relieving, or subversive. Rather, humour is famously a multifaceted, ambivalent, and fleeting phenomenon, known to have both bonding and biting effects, particularly when it comes to interactional humour (Boxer and Cortés-Conde, 1997). We draw here on a broad understanding of humour as an umbrella term to include all forms of interactional moves that signal that funniness was intended or interpreted (cf. Billig, 2005).

Nonetheless, previous studies of humour in coercive settings often understand staff humour from a relief theory perspective (see Critchley, 2002), as a coping strategy among staff both in juvenile correctional facilities (Inderbitzin, 2006) and in prisons (Crawley, 2004). Crawley, for instance, mentions humour among prison officers as an emotional strategy that helps them perform tasks that cause anxiety or discomfort (involving feelings of fear, disgust, or anger, for example). Gallows humour and banter among prison officer staff is specified as a particularly important form of humour for coping (Charman, 2013; Crawley, 2004; Garrihy, 2022; Schmidt, 2013).

Drawing on Radcliffe-Brown's (1952) notion of joking relationships, other studies have demonstrated how humour in prison work may build community between staff and serve as a relational lubricant between different groups of people that are in possible conflict or competition, such as between occupational roles (Charman, 2013), or between staff and inmates (Nielsen, 2011). In a study of humour among Danish prison officers, Nielsen (2011) demonstrates how staff use humour to manage their relationships with inmates and how it is used to build community between staff. Another (small) strand of studies has explored humour between staff and inmates as intrinsically tied to social order, including aspects of power/resistance or discipline/subversion dynamic in humour practices. These studies have demonstrated how humour may both in disciplinary ways (Franzén and Aronsson, 2013) and as means of (soft) resistance or ‘friction’ from inmates (Laursen, 2017).

Overall, these studies on humour among staff in punitive institutions primarily analyse tabooed humour, humour that ‘bites’ and/or draws on cultural or institutional norms, and roles and either reproduce or attempt to subvert these (see also Billig, 2005). In the present paper, we turn our eye to a different type of humour, which could instead be classified as innocent, in Freud's understanding, and which at first glance seems less clearly integral to social order (cf. Billig, 2005).

Innocent and banal humour

Taking a historical perspective on banal humour, in his work Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud makes a distinction between two types of jokes: tendentious jokes and innocent jokes. Tendentious jokes are those that break social conventions and, in Freud's view, are related to the unconscious and to what is taboo. These jokes, Freud wrote, ‘[are] either hostile (used for aggression, satire, defence) or obscene (used to strip someone naked)’ (Freud, 2001: 94). Innocent jokes, on the other hand, are for example puns and other types of wordplay. Freud calls these innocent jokes because, unlike tendentious joking, they are not connected to the unconscious. A key point in Freud's text is that we are not aware of why we laugh, and that the deepest laughs come from impulse and from all that is taboo. Hence, much attention has been directed towards tendentious joking and the relief of laughing at what is otherwise repressed. However, as we will show here, there are good reasons to also investigate what emotional work the innocent jokes can do. Although our analysis is not informed by Freud's concepts, there is a resemblance between what he called the innocent joke and what we will discuss as banal humour. We will argue that this type of humour is doing affective work and can be employed to handle social relations and conflicts – despite the everydayness, mundanity, and unpretentiousness of these jokes.

In our analysis, we will investigate some cases of particularly mild humour practices, which recur frequently at a Swedish detention centre for teenaged boys. Drawing on data from a video ethnographic study at one such centre, we take a close look at a type of humour that was steadily ongoing, a type of humour that involves puns, dialect stylizations, or merely pronouncing words with a slightly funny voice or intonation. This type of humour could be classified as ‘benign’ (Berger, 1997: 99), or innocent (Freud, 2001), but we suggest the introduction of a different term: banal humour.

What we here call banal humour may also be understood in light of Michael Billig's theory of humour as integral for social order (2005). He argues that even seemingly innocent humour, such as puns or mock impoliteness, may be understood as rebellious in the sense that they exploit the social order of conversation to create surprise and pleasure at breaking the order. Billig's theory on humour primarily highlights the crucial functions of ridicule for social order, including the disciplinary aspects of humour drawing from people taking pleasure in seeing others squirm in embarrassment – triggering a disciplinary laughter that teaches the lesson of embarrassment and social order (2005).

By using the term ‘banal’, we do not intend to make a judgement about the worth or value of the humour. We merely seek to highlight that there are a vast number of humorous interactions going on in this (and many other) contexts that typically go unnoticed, in particular by prison researchers and ethnographers interested in humour. The term draws (somewhat loosely) from Michael Billig's highly influential notion of ‘banal nationalism’, which is a concept used to point out that nationalist signs or practices, like a ‘flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’ (Billig, 1995: 8), can be so familiar and common that they go unnoticed both by ordinary people and by social theorists. Billig was ‘seeking to expose the ideological blindness which routinely calls politics aimed at altering nationalist boundaries “nationalist”, but which equally routinely withholds the same label from politics aimed at maintaining those same boundaries’ (Billig, 2017: 310).

Billig's concept has been employed in many other fields, such as in analysis of gender, sexuality and ‘banal sexed signs’ (Milani, 2014), ‘banal colonialism’ (Carlsson, 2020), and discussion of ‘banal globalization’ (Thurlow and Jaworski, 2011). By introducing the term ‘banal humour’, we do not intend to expose grand ideologies or social injustices on a national level. However, we will argue that the types of mild and toned down humorous affective practices, to a large extent, go unnoticed both by practitioners and researchers of prison-like institutions in favour of other, more negative, explosive affective practices, such as fear, aggression, or disciplinary/subversive humour. While these practices are so common and mild that they are hardly noticeable, they serve important social and affective functions, particularly by dealing with every day, seemingly miniscule, conflicts that hold potential to escalate into large-scale conflicts and even violence. Banal humour is fundamental for maintaining, or challenging, norms and social order – which makes it ideological in all its mundane forms.

Our analysis will thus investigate how banal humour is constructed and what it accomplishes in interaction. Furthermore, we will argue that this banal humour is highly relevant at the detention centre, particularly due to the institution's paradoxical emotional environment, including everyday life consisting of a series of banal activities, yet with a constant underlying implicit threat of conflict or violence.

Banal humour as affective practice

To this interest in banal humour, we add affect theory as a theoretical lens and, more specifically, an interest in how affects are handled through jokes and laughter. Drawing on notions from Ahmed (2004), Billig (2005), and Wetherell (2012, 2013), we will argue for the relevance of banal humour as an affective practice, which is so mild and common that it is hardly noticeable. Following Wetherell (2013: 52), we understand affect as embodied and intertwined with social interaction and discursive practice – always situated in specific contexts; that is, we see affect as inseparable from the discursive context in which it is produced and made meaningful (see also Franzén et al., 2021). Affect and discourse are thus understood as ‘coupled, feeding back to one another’ (Kiesling, 2018: 8). This understanding is also in line with Ahmed's (2004) thoughts on how emotions contribute to the production of subjectivities and boundaries between groups of people, thereby constructing meaning. In Ahmed's understanding, language, texts, and labelling practices are crucial to the understanding of emotions/affects, and emotions are thus neither located exclusively to the individual nor the social but take shape in the circulation between different objects and bodies in discourse (see also Milani and Richardson, 2021).

Affect theory highlights ‘the importance of affect in making sense of the social world’ (Bosworth, 2019: 543). From that follows that emotions/affects are productive (Ahmed, 2004); it is through emotions that we make sense of ourselves and the social world around us, and emotions also act as a form, and a means, of control (Ahmed, 2004; Bosworth, 2019). This is not to say that affective displays or subject positionings are intentional or planned but rather that discourse is ‘construct[ing] physical arousal, turning it into recognizable and communicable emotion’ (Wetherell, 2012: 52; see also Bosworth, 2019). Ahmed highlights how this production of subjectivities happens in between people, rather than being isolated within separate individuals: ‘It is not simply that the subject feels hate, or feels fear, and nor is it the case that the object is simply hateful or is fearsome: the emotions of hate and fear are shaped by the “contact zone” in which others impress upon us, as well as leave their impressions’ (Ahmed, 2004: 194).

We combine Ahmed's take on affect as circulating, productive, and performative, with Wetherell's (2013) call for looking at people's everyday affective practices: ‘Affective practice focuses on the emotional as it appears in social life and tries to follow what participants do’ (Wetherell, 2013: 4). The point of analysing affects as practice is that it also allows us to understand affects (including humour) as doing things, part of performative work (Butler, 1990). Within this perspective, affects and humour, just like social positions, are constructed in interaction and are therefore possible to collect data on for detailed interactional analysis. As Wetherell (2012: 23) writes, affective practices can be common and mundane, as well as extraordinary: ‘Sometimes affect starts from scratch, and sometimes, as Laurent Berlant (2008) points out, we are very obviously engaged in a process of “emotional quotation” or “affective citation”, endlessly plagiarizing out own and others’ past practice’.

In sum, we make a specific contribution to the analysis of affective practices among young incarcerated men through the lens of banal humour. We see the use of banal humour as a form of affective practice, but not with a single meaning; as discussed above, jokes and laughter can be used both to mock and reproduce social order (Billig, 2005).

Method and setting

The data analysed in this article were derived from an ethnographic study, conducted by author 1, at a Swedish juvenile detention centre for boys aged 13–16. The study involved a documentation of the local treatment culture through ethnographic methods, including participant observations, semi-structured interviews with staff and youths and, as a primary method, video recordings of everyday interaction between youths and staff at the centre. Video recordings involved author 1 using a hand-held camera during participant observations, setting it up on a tripod during mealtimes or hang-out sessions on the sofa (during which she would also participate herself, in her role as an ethnographer). The videotaped observations were aimed at capturing everyday life at the centre, that is, so called ‘naturally occurring’ interaction (cf. Duranti et al., 2012). The fieldwork took place over a 2-year period, during which author 1 would periodically visit and stay at the centre for several days (and nights) at a time. In total, more than 30 h of interaction were recorded.

Ethnographic video recording calls for careful ethical considerations; this study was reviewed and approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Etikprövningsmyndigheten) and has followed the national guidelines for ethical research. However, research ethics in ethnographic studies (video ethnographies in particular) involve much more careful ethical consideration than is normally specified in ethical guidelines, which tend to focus on ethical concerns prior to, and after, data collection. For instance, it involves researcher sensitivity to how ongoing consent may be collected, in terms of paying close attention to how research participants, moment by moment, may be willing or unwilling to, for instance, be caught on film (for a detailed discussion on methodology and ethical considerations in this project, see Franzén, 2014; see also Aarsand and Forsberg, 2010).

While research ethics must be carefully considered continuously throughout the whole research process and the fieldwork (not least in terms of researcher-participant power dynamics), video ethnography holds a particular potential within sensitive settings, such as juvenile detention centres, due to the advantages of capturing and allowing for detailed analyses of the complexity of everyday interaction, including multimodal details (cf. Cekaite and Goodwin, 2021; Duranti et al., 2012). However, few studies of correctional institutions draw on video ethnography and detailed analysis of face-to-face interaction (however, see Cromdal and Osvaldsson, 2012; Franzén, 2015; Franzén and Aronsson, 2013; Franzén and Jonsson, 2024). We argue that this is unfortunate, because recording naturally occurring mundane interaction, particularly with video, in contexts involving high levels of power imbalance (such as between adults and children, Cekaite and Goodwin, 2021, or staff and inmates, Franzén, 2015), can help researchers analyse and illuminate issues of power. Since video recordings allow for repeated viewing of the detailed interaction, studying naturally occurring interaction in this detail enables the researcher to follow and highlight the emic perspective, that is, participants’ own meaning making processes (cf. Cekaite and Goodwin, 2021). Put differently, video ethnographic methods enable the participants’ perspectives to be given ample space, which in itself is an important ethical choice for a research project in an institution characterized by power imbalances. ¹

For our ongoing project on humour as affective practice, we reviewed and coded the corpus of data for laughter and humour instances. A collection of banal forms of humour around the dinner table was compiled, transcribed in detail (see Appendix for transcription notations), and analysed, and from this collection, examples have been drawn for the present paper. The dinner table is a suitable place for collecting these types of examples since a lot of humour takes place there, and mealtimes also collect all participants, both staff and youth for a longer period of time. The participants share food and talk much about nothing; feeding must be accomplished, but otherwise ‘pleasant dinner conversation’ appears to be the general goal. However, dinner talk in the detention centre is also linked to institutional rules and potential conflict. Food and negotiations around food are known to be potentially sensitive or even explosive topics in total institutions such as prisons and detention centres. As highlighted by Pettersson (2021), conflicts around food are highly significant in these settings as part of inmate resistance, in the small (such as engaging in forbidden food activities; Ugelvik, 2011) or as something larger that may escalate into further conflict or even into a food strike (see for instance Edgar et al., 2002). But food negotiations are also part of the institutional disciplining of inmates through control of what, when, and how they may eat (Goffman, 1961; Foucault, 1991).

The sequences selected for analysis illuminate the collection of data at large and involve recurring features of the mild affective practices that we call banal humour. Methodologically, we combine our ethnographic approach with an interest in detailed analyses of social interaction. The analyses are informed by discursive psychology (Billig, 2005; Wetherell, 2013) and linguistic ethnography (Duranti et al., 2012). These perspectives foreground an understanding of language and affects as performative, taking an interest in what language and affects do or accomplish in interaction (Wetherell, 2013). We are also inspired by studies that combine linguistic analyses with other semiotic fields such as embodiment, including gestures, posture, and other movements in physical space (Goodwin, 2000).

Setting

In Sweden, children and youths with extensive social problems or who commit serious offences (under the age of 15) are primarily dealt with within the framework of the social services provision. These youths are primarily managed through voluntary measures, but a small group is admitted to compulsory rehabilitation in one of the state-run, so called ‘special approved homes’ (sw: särskilt ungdomshem), i.e. juvenile detention centre, on an indetermined time basis. ² Placements can be made due to criminality, substance abuse, and/or other socially destructive behaviour. The detention centre in this study admits young men, 13–16 years old, and accommodates up to eight residents at a time in home-like conditions, but with locked doors, alarms, and a locked metal gate to the floor on which the boys sleep at night. These institutions also have special powers; for instance, in terms of restraining and isolating the youths, the staff have padded isolation rooms at their disposal. All boys at the centre are offered treatment for anger and aggressive behaviour, and a behaviour modification programme (see Franzén, 2015). The centre also has its own educational programme, where the majority of the boys would study on weekdays (this research study however did not cover the institutional school, but rather focused on treatment practices and treatment staff). While the institutional setting involves a heavy focus on security and correcting of emotions and behaviour, the detention centre is also a place where the youths live their lives, eat meals together, play cards, or go fishing with the staff. Overall, there is frequent teasing and laughter among the youths and staff at the centre, alongside conflicts and disciplinary moves (see also Franzén and Aronsson, 2013).

Analysis

Banal humour

The joking culture at the juvenile detention centre is, at first sight, primarily warm and silly, and the type of banal humour we explicate below is frequent in everyday interaction when nothing else in particular is happening, or during mundane activities such as cleaning, preparing food, or eating. At times, the detention centre staff also engage in both harsher and more instrumental types of humour, including disciplinary humour (as we have discussed elsewhere; Franzén and Aronsson, 2013). The banal humour is extremely mild and often involves dialectical jokes, mock politeness, or simply pronouncing a word in a funny way. Much of the social life at the centre is organized around mealtimes, which are served to a strict time schedule. There is breakfast, morning ‘fika’ (a Swedish custom in which coffee/tea is served, typically with sandwiches or pastries), lunch, afternoon ‘fika’, dinner, and evening ‘fika’. During these meals, the staff and boys sit together, eat, and talk, and the food and eating also provide material for banal humour. In the following, we present typical examples of banal humour in the detention centre. Thereafter, we explore three longer excerpts where this kind of humour is used as forms of affective practices in interaction.

Stylizations and repetitions

The first example illuminates a common way of joking at the detention centre through stylizations of the Swedish dialect Skånska. Rampton (2009: 149) explains stylizations as interactional occasions when participants produce ‘specially marked and often exaggerated representations of languages, dialects and styles that lie outside their own habitual repertoire (at least as this is perceived within the situation at hand)’. This, in Coupland's (2007) words, allows speakers to play with ‘stereotyped personas and genre’ derived ‘from well-known identity repertoires’ (Coupland, 2007: 154). In the analysis of the interaction at the detention centre, we identified a typical way of joking by stylizing the Skånska-speaking voice, although it is seldom followed by marked laughter. This type of humour is exemplified in the excerpt below.

It is afternoon at the detention centre and a group of four incarcerated boys and three staff members are sitting around the large dinner table in the living room, having fika (coffee and sandwiches). The mood is light and mildly cheery, and the conversation moves between subjects such as planned activities at the centre and talk about the food that they are eating. There is a lot of banal humour going on, and a typical example can be seen below as one of the boys asks for another slice of bread. The joking is so mild, that it is almost unnoticeable.

Over the course of the fieldwork, this humour practice was commonly used and can be understood as a type of shared humorous resource used by the participants. When Nilla (a staff member) in line 4 says ‘che:::se’ (stylized Skånska), she indicates that the very mundane act of serving butter and cheese is done in a humorous manner. Also typical of the banal humour in the detention centre is repetitions, as can be seen in this example – the funny pronunciation of cheese is repeated twice in the short example. The repetition emphasises the humorous part of an expression ‘che:::se’. This banal and almost invisible joke is thereby constructed as funny by Nilla, by saying it twice.

Baby talk and repetitions

The following excerpt exemplifies another common type of banal humour used in the detention centre – drawing on playfulness and childishness, again flavoured with repetitions and stylizations. This time, it is not dialect but age and childishness that are the target of the joke.

It is evening time, and the group of boys and staff have just finished dinner. Micke (a staff member) is clearing off the table. He asks Lotta (another staff member) what to do with the left-over slices of bread he has found on the table.

Lotta's funny voice ‘Go and toss ‘em, they’re “dwy”’ (line 3) is a joke on not being able to pronounce ‘r’. The word ‘dry’ becomes ‘dwy’, which is emblematic of a toddler's voice. ‘Dwy’ is picked up and repeated by both Jesper (one of the boys, line 4) and the staff member Micke (line 5), to finally be repeated again by Lotta, together with a laugh. The many repetitions of the silly phrase add a sense of ridiculousness (see Jaspers, 2005) to the interaction. There is an aspect of playfulness in using baby talk and in taking turns to repeat the position of the child. Playing with immaturity and childishness in the interaction (see also Franzén and Jonsson, 2024) become a humorous recourse in interaction, yet in a very mild form. Notably, this form of banal humour does not seem to require laughter.

In the following, we will demonstrate how these practices of banal humour are not just nonsense actions but also ways of handling mild conflicts, which in this context have a particularly explosive potential.

Banal humour to handle mild conflicts

The following sequence is another representative example of the type of steadily ongoing banal humour that often takes place at the centre. Typically, nothing dramatic happens in the interaction at first sight. Nothing that is said provokes any major reactions, and the humour used is not met with any explosive laughs. Nonetheless, the practice of humour by the staff signifies affective work in the institution's everyday life – it is a tool for creating a homely, family-like, safe place and, at the same time, a way of dealing with potential aggressiveness and escalation of conflicts.

At the detention centre, dinner has just begun and the group, consisting of four admitted boys (Toma, Janek, Jesper, and Marcus), three staff members (Åke, Nilla, and Britta), and the researcher (AGF), has just sat down around the table.

Åke is offering to dish up food onto the others’ plates, but he constructs his suggestion in a slightly funny manner, saying, with a straight face, ‘Should – I can scoop a little if you like (.) I’m really good at scooping, I am. Do you want me to scoop?’ Åke's turn could be understood as a mildly humorous/self-ironic comment, drawing on childishness as he argues that he is proficient in something very simple: bragging about something not worth bragging about as a grown man. He is also using repetition, which is a recurring aspect of the banal humour, here, repeating the word ‘scoop’ three times (lines 1–3) for comic effect. As far as can be seen on the tape, no one is really reacting in any particular manner to his slightly funny utterance. From a conversation analytical standpoint then, it is noticeable that the utterance is not being handled as humour. Either way, it is clear from the construction of the utterance that it is meant to be (mildly) funny.

At first glance, this instance may not appear as a sensitive situation or a conflict, but Jesper's refusal of food, in line 4, could be understood as mild resistance, something that the staff must deal with in some way. On this particular day, Jesper has repeatedly talked about not wanting to eat and has refused food. Previous studies have highlighted how seemingly banal conflicts or rule enforcements, in particular around food intake and food-related rules, risk escalating into serious conflicts and even violence (Pettersson, 2021; Wästerfors, 2019). The use of banal humour here, we argue, has the potential to de-escalate a potential conflict, or avoid it altogether. Jesper clearly states twice (lines 4 and 7) that he does not want spaghetti, which is a transgression of the norms of the dinner situation. In terms of affective practices (Wetherell, 2012), he can be seen to enact mild aggression/anger here; it can be heard in his voice and seen in his stern face and body language, sitting slouched over, rocking quickly on his chair, shaking his head vigorously but briefly as he says, ‘No I don’t want any!’ (line 7). This could potentially escalate into a large-scale conflict. However, Åke now turns to one of the other staff members with a second slightly humorous utterance, ‘The lady says?’ (line 8), as he bows his head slightly, the banal humour here building on mock politeness, i.e. use of slightly exaggerated politeness. Mock politeness can be understood as humour drawing on a playful breach of the social order of informal talk at the dinner table (cf. Billig, 2005).

While the humour is still very mild, the humour responses are slightly upgraded at this point, as both the staff members Britta and Nilla acknowledge the humour. Britta smiles and gives a slight chuckle, and Nilla's response (line 9) can be seen as an instance of playing along (cf. Drew, 1987), as she also answers with slight exaggerated politeness (‘yes please’; in Swedish, the use of ‘please’ is less standard) and a smiley voice. Furthermore, Toma explicitly acknowledges the funniness of Åke's and Nilla's interaction in lines 11 and 14, with smiles and laughter, and by pleasurably repeating their utterances. Toma even verbally acknowledges that the mock politeness is funny, commenting appreciatively on Nilla's use of ‘thank you’. These repetitions of Åke's ‘lady says’ both recognize the turn as humorous and at the same time strengthen Åke's position as being a humorous person. The mild anger affected by Jesper is met by banal humour in a way that evokes more cheerful affects. Following line 16, several people talk at once, but it can be heard that Jesper begins talking to Britta about why she did not want more pasta; he says that she is just like his mother, being skinny but still wanting to diet. Britta whispers back to him. Then Jesper asks if they are going to have a talk today and smiles, as Britta says yes. It appears that the mild conflict is resolved, and the risk of escalation has been averted.

Banal humour in the face of embarrassment

The following example shows how banal humour may work to handle embarrassment by drawing on the existing social order (Billig, 2005) in warm and silly manners. In the excerpt below, a staff member can be seen to employ banal humour as an affective practice that deals with a potentially embarrassing situation for one of the boys. Here, banal humour differs from, for instance, the face-saving type of humour Goffman (1961) describes (briefly) as part of his theory on embarrassment and the social order. When an embarrassing situation occurs, or someone commits a faux pas, the onlookers may laugh an empathetic laugh at the embarrassing situation – denying its seriousness, but with the embarrassed actor as opposed to at the victim (Goffman, 1961; see also Billig, 2005). However, through the affective practice of banal humour, i.e. a silly joke, the onlookers instead make themselves the object of silliness and mild embarrassment.

The following excerpt is towards the end of the same dinner as in the example above. The group is still sitting around the dinner table, a few of them have finished. Several people are talking at the same time as Britta quietly asks Jesper if he can go put on a pot of coffee. Jesper quietly says ‘but I don’t know how to do it’. Britta and Jesper whisper back and forth about scoops and water, and Britta gestures how to fill the coffee maker up. Jesper get up and goes into the kitchen. After a moment, he calls out that there is no coffee. Britta asks, ‘you can’t find a half kilo of Löfberg?’, and then she goes into the kitchen to help him look. Britta then returns and announces that she will run to the basement to fetch a new box of coffee.

Here, Britta produces a slightly joking tone as she calls the box of coffee ‘an Uncle Löfberg’ (line 1, Löfbergs is a Swedish brand of coffee but also a surname). Jesper answers with a po-faced receipt (Drew, 1987), and as Britta reappears from the basement, she produces another similar joke, ‘here is Mr Löfberg!’ This utterance is not responded to, a reaction to humour that is often, in interactional analysis, treated as an example of ‘unlaughter’ (Billig, 2005), i.e. a dismissive way of not laughing when laughter was expected. However, the absence of laughter is not working as disciplinary in this interaction. On the contrary, Jesper's ‘Yea, do that’ (line 2) is confirmative of the Uncle Löfberg joke, and same joke of Mr Löfberg is repeated by Britta (line 4) in a cheery mood. No one laughs, but the pleasant, friendly mood remains, and this is precisely what the banal humour appears to achieve: not explosive laughter, but good spirits. The repetition of the joke can also be seen as part of the affective practice – forming a kind of emotional common ground through the repetition of banal jokes, creating a community of sharing a ridiculous expression for a brand of coffee.

The ‘Uncle Löfberg joke’ is very mild and neither receives nor demands any explicit laughter, but nonetheless handles the possibly embarrassing situation Jesper is placed in, obviously not knowing such a basic thing as how to make coffee (which is expected knowledge given the cultural context; Sweden is one of the most coffee-drinking countries in the world). But instead of losing face, the focus of the interaction is drawn to the invented nick name of the coffee. Britta thus manages to make herself the object of mild embarrassment and silliness, and the (potential) laughter is aimed towards her rather than at the first victim of embarrassment, Jesper (cf. Goffman, 1961; see also Billig, 2005). Britta invokes a mild joyfulness, which Jesper appears to respond to with joyfulness as well. Jesper asks for help with opening the box of coffee and Britta assists. In line 9, Britta exhibits a typical banal humorous utterance in this context, as she pronounces the word ‘can’ in a slightly funny way, stylizing a particular dialect from the southern part of Sweden (Skånska). This turns into a short, mild joking sequence between her, Nilla, and Jesper: Jesper asks ‘which can?’, Nilla answers ‘the tea can’, which can be understood as a very mild teasing of Jesper's incompetence. Jesper responds in a happy, funny voice, repeating Britta's previous funny pronunciation of ‘can’, thereby picking up and confirming Nilla's humorous tease, to which Britta and Nilla laugh briefly and quietly together.

It can be argued that little moments and interactions like these, stacked together, perform affective work in constructing a friendly and familiar mood. The joke tones down Jesper's incompetence and maintains warm and close relationships in the room.

In summary, Jesper's lack of basic knowledge in the kitchen threatens to make him lose face, so Britta adopts a silly and harmless joke, which is an affective practice that deals with the potentially embarrassing situation, by turning the embarrassment towards herself instead. The staff manage to help a teenager brew coffee, without sounding patronising. At the same time, these warm, silly jokes still exploit existing social orders in all their triviality (Billig, 2005). The mild funniness of ‘Mr Löfberg’ is constructed through a disruption of the conversational order – of how we expect normal conversation to flow. What is more, the stylization of dialects also draws on social order and power hierarchies related to dialect and place; not all dialects are understood as equally funny. In this aspect, even these mundane and minor humour practices may still be seen to construct social order (Billig, 2005).

Disciplinary humour turned banal

The next and final excerpt exemplifies how banal humour is produced and is intertwined with more disciplinary humour – that is humour from those in a position of power, ridiculing or mocking breaches of social order, with the effect that social order is enforced (Billig, 2005; Franzén and Aronsson, 2013). This instance involves the boys wanting a sweeter juice and the staff attempting to limit their intake. It appears as a typical risk situation for anger, resentment, and escalation of strong emotions and conflict, as highlighted by previous research on food-related conflicts (Pettersson, 2021; Ugelvik, 2011; Wästerfors, 2019). There are thus potential difficult affects to be dealt with in the situation, and they are handled here through both disciplinary and banal humour.

Again, it is dinner time, and everyone is collected around the dinner table: four admitted boys (Toma, Janek, Markus, and Jesper), two staff members (Per and Henke), and the researcher (AGF). The dinner has been going on for a little while, and a moment ago, Toma and Janek complained that the juice was too weak, and Per encouraged them to get some more juice (concentrate). Toma now just returned from the kitchen with the juice and is pouring concentrate into the pitcher on the table.

The staff member Per invokes disciplinary humour as he says ‘a a a’ (which we would argue involves humorously enacting a kind of paternal or police-like authority figure). The expression ‘a a a’ can be understood as pointing out a rule or drawing a line and indexes (Kiesling, 2018) authority and adultness. In the first instance (lines 2–3), this is performed with a serious face, less humour, and more authoritarian discipline, which Toma also obeys, as he stops pouring right away and starts walking back into the kitchen. An authoritative voice can evoke self-disciplinary practices, linked to affects of embarrassment. In lines 6–7, Per repeats his command, but this time, clearly within a playframe (showing off a quirky face) as Toma is walking towards the kitchen, constructing the command as disciplinary humour (Billig, 2005). ‘A a a’ could possibly be interpreted as dull and too authoritative; however, by repeating it this time with a slightly self-ironic tone, Per manages to both address the rules and soften his disciplinary turn. The immense power imbalance between staff and the youths is exposed here, as not only Toma, but also Janek answers the command. By doing so, both Janek and Toma respond to Per's disciplinary call, adopting the position of mischievous child, disciplined by an authority figure.

Per laughs as he realises that Janek also responded to his command (lines 10–11); both the joke and the subsequent laughter from Per could be seen to be dually aimed at himself (for being too authoritarian, cf. Franzén and Aronsson, 2013), as well as at Toma and Janek, for being too submissive. It thus mitigates the disciplinarian move that the first command made, through the affective practice of humour, invoking laughter and joy where otherwise resentment/anger could grow. The difference in tone, when Per goes from his initial disciplinary voice to laughter, evokes for a moment a more relaxed atmosphere in the room. However, despite the humorous framing, the disciplinary action is still enforced: Toma did stop pouring, and sugar intake was controlled. It is important to note that while the humorous and friendly atmosphere is maintained, and potential conflicts and violent situations are evaded, an immense control of these youths is still sustained (cf. Pettersson, 2021). The example shows that banal humour (like other forms of humour) exists on a sliding scale from the harmless to the disciplinary. This brings us to another point: banal humour is not always innocent, but part of reproducing social order (Billig, 2005). It can be used to avoid conflict, to mildly tease, or to discipline.

In the second part of this sequence, Henke, also part of the staff, uses humour to further engage in dinner table rules. By a simple instruction, different from the more disciplinary move made by Per, Henke tells Janek not to use his own fork to stir the juice (line 12). This instruction is followed up with banal ironic humour, ‘No, right, you haven’t touched it’ (line 14) and ‘But you’re touching it now’ (line 17). This is a form of banal ‘dad joke’, a silly pun (in Swedish, ‘stir’ and ‘touch’ are the same word), where Henke jokingly teases Janek for the illogical claim that he has not touched the fork that he is holding in his hand. Teaching youths the basic rules of table manners can be a potentially sensitive situation as it risks positioning Janek as subordinated. However, through banal humour, Henke handles the possibly embarrassing situation, while at the same time, the positive and joyful mood is preserved in the midst of the banal conflict situation where the boys wanted sweeter juice.

Discussion

In this article, we have highlighted a form of banal humour that is very common in the juvenile detention centre and yet so modest that we often do not even notice it. It is a form of humour that does not expect laughter, but nonetheless plays a crucial role in social relations, in creating a good mood, showing a humorous side or building a relaxed atmosphere. As shown in the analysed examples, this humour may come in various forms – as mock politeness, repetitions, stylized dialects and silly wit, or as mild self-irony, baby talk, and puns. We have borrowed Michael Billig's concept of the ‘banal’ to understand this form of humour, thereby highlighting the crucial importance of the mundane and mild in construction of social order (1997). Banal nationalism and its subsequent concepts have successfully been applied in other research to expose underlying ideologies or troublesome discourses in seemingly mundane and innocent practices (i.e. Carlsson, 2020; Milani, 2014). As we will explicate below, our application of the concept shifts the emphasis slightly, arguing that it is not the mundane practices in themselves that reproduce troublesome discourses, but rather the invisibility of those practices. Furthermore, our analysis makes use of the term banal humour to show how these mundane affective practices serve important social functions and we will argue that these practices may be understood as banal in at least three aspects: relating to social order, the affective work it performs in interaction, and in relation to the production of affective identities.

Firstly, the relation between banal humour and social order can be expressed in breaches of the conversational order, for example through puns, or when very mild jokes are made about social orders based on age, place, and dialects. Funny stylizations (cf. Coupland, 2007), for instance, are constructed by exploiting and mildly mocking certain dialects and ages, constructing some as laughable, and others as normative. Even puns or the slight (intentional) mispronunciation of words may be understood as rebellious against the social order of language and conversation: pleasure is derived from rebelling against the expected (Billig, 2005). Thus, the banal humour may actually be employed to both mock (as mild rebellious and subversive play with communicational order) and restore social order and for reproducing social norms. To be perceived as funny, or as someone who has humour, can be understood as normative in the detention centre, and while these humour practices indeed are mild, and at times almost unnoticeable, they still, to a large extent, draw on social order. However, the forms of banal humour that we have analysed lack viciousness, or the ridicule and enjoyment of others’ embarrassment (as Billig discusses in his theory on humour and social order, 2005). Rather, the banal humour does the opposite, keeping the mood good, as well as inciting a mild joyfulness in others.

Secondly, despite the apparent trivial character of this practice, we want to highlight its affective nature, as well as argue that it is far from insignificant in the context of incarceration. Here, we align ourselves with the small group of researchers who highlight the centrality of emotions in prison life (for instance, Crawley, 2004; Crewe, 2014; Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021) and who attempt to nuance accounts of incarceration that are ‘affectively “narrow” and emotionally flat’, by also highlighting how warm, positive emotions can exist alongside misery in prison (Laws, 2022: 224; Crewe et al., 2014; Laws and Crewe, 2016). This article contributes to the field of practitioner emotional work by illuminating and analysing an affective practice that appears as warm and helpful but might go unnoticed by both practitioners and researchers. Previous research has shown that violence is common in juvenile detention centres and that the staff's interventions can actually escalate conflict situations into physical violence (Wästerfors, 2009, 2019). We have highlighted the details of how these risk situations are handled through an affective practice that is also less conflict oriented. Banal humour can thus manifest itself through affective work to deal with mild potential conflicts or to handle risks of embarrassing situations – such as when Jesper says he does not want to eat or does not know how to make coffee. The banal humour works as a way of counteracting these risks, reducing tensions in the room, and inciting mild joyfulness in others, including the youth who otherwise might have experienced anger, resentment, or shame. This, however, is not to infer that the affective practice is necessarily employed consciously and strategically; as Wetherell (2012) points out, the fact that affects are simultaneously discursive and embodied does not mean that they must be conscious and planned.

Thirdly, as highlighted by Ahmed (2004), affects stick to bodies and construct boundaries between people and social contexts. By inciting joy in others and addressing them in humorous ways, they are at the same time positioned as humorous, joyful beings. This is fundamental in everyday encounters and highly important in an institution that otherwise interprets the incarcerated individuals primarily through a filter of individual, negative and pathological emotions (cf. Wästerfors, 2009). We have focused on what happens, in Ahmed's terms, when emotions other than aggression or anger circulate among staff and incarcerated youths. From our analysis, we state that banal humour, as a form of affective practice, appears to be at least as common as harsher emotional work. Yet, it risks being trivialized, in the sense that it is not often taken seriously, nor made visible in research and practice. In research, it most often affects such as aggression and anger that are attached to young men. Studies on emotional work among staff at detention centres have primarily highlighted the negative and threatening feelings, and the harsh humour (for instance, Andersson, 2022; Bengtsson, 2016; Biszczanik and Gruber, 2021; Franzén and Aronsson, 2013; Perry and Ricciardelli, 2021). While these studies are highly significant, we argue that, by extension, the attention that emotions such as anger, resentment, and fear in these contexts routinely receive, and the subsequent neglect to also explore the warmer emotions that may exist alongside these, all contribute to a reproduction of a troublesome, affective positioning of these young men and the institutions that contain them (cf. Crewe, 2011, 2014).

To conclude, banal humour, by definition, does not make much noise. It does not evoke lots of laughter but is nonetheless fundamental in the affective work of the institution. On the one hand, we have made visible a positioning of young male inmates, in research and practice, with an overly one-sided focus on tough masculinity and aggressive emotions, forgetting the soft and gentle affects contained in use of, for instance, banal humour. On the other hand, banal humour can be part of both challenging and reproducing norms despite its invisibility. A neglect of the banal in the analysis, we argue, means risking a limited understanding, not just of what emotional work takes place in the everyday life of the juvenile detention centre but also the one-sided positionings of the young people living there.