This paper will discursively examine the complex power structures involved in the university setting, as exposed by a student’s verbalised objection to a tutor’s racist humour which targeted Asian international students. By speaking out, this student then became the target of censure from another student who defended the tutor’s use of humour. Such an incident illustrates the dilemmas presented by the (inappropriate) uses of humour in the educational setting, in the context of increasingly literate and confident challenges to such uses/abuses of humour. Using various Discourse Analysis approaches, including Face Theory, this paper will demonstrate how this instance of failed humour invoked many competing social aspects of power, collisions of literacy, hidden institutional assumptions, and emerging notions of how humour can be identified and resisted.
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