Joking, Juries, and Jurisprudence: Informal Communication in a Formal Workplace Setting

Humor is used in our everyday lives and there is no exception in a work environment. Humor is often a way for people to cope with distress and anxiety. Those with a courtroom profession tend to use humor as a way of coping with some situations they experience in their daily lives too. Humor is used to make sense of what occurs in the courtroom and interact with other people outside of the job. This research should find that humor is a common use with courtroom personnel to deal with the events dealt with in a courtroom setting. In addition, those who have a longer time working in a courtroom setting tend to use and see humor more than those with a shorter time working there. This research goes in-depth on humor used by courtroom personnel compared to other jobs. This research will allow a better understanding of how courtroom personnel use humor. The future of this research is to find out how courtroom personnel use humor. In this study, I sent out emails with a consent form and a questioner link to courtroom personnel and asked them to fill it out. I found that many use humor outside of their workplace but few use it as a way of coping. In addition, humor used by judges is seemed as taboo where humor used by attorney is okay. Keywords: Dark humor, courtroom, attorneys, coping, stres