Humour in People with Handicaps: A Systematic Review

The overlapping terms “impairment”, “disability”, and “handicap” are distinguished. A range of sensory, physical, and developmental insults resulting from nervous and mental disorders are linked to mirth, laughter, comedy, and humour. Disability humour has a long and tumultuous history. Beginning with scepticism, taboo, and notions of whether these people are capable of humour themselves, there are issues for, against, or for the use of humour etiquette by those unaffected around them. If not as objects of pity or denigration, such themes have attempted to construct or de-construct stigmas and stereotypes associated with such individuals. There are varying types, styles, hues, intent, quality, quantity, intensities, degrees, depths, or dimensions to the disability humour that is raised. Several ethnic or cultural issues are interwoven with this theme. There is a need for exclusive theories or models to explain disability humour. This chapter seeks to undertake a thematic review of published research extracted and enlisted from internet search engines by using a laid-out procedure and methodology. A timeline and thematic analysis are used to examine the derived bibliographic data and summarize empirical evidence on the research design used, functions identified, and beneficial applications explained, before suggesting recommendations for potential areas for inquiry in future research.