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«Joking relationships» is a typical African phenomenon. We mainly find it in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, etc. It is a practice that allows to avoid conflicts between neighbouring ethnic groups. It is essentially practised through verbal exchanges, attitudes, behaviours, sometimes with “violence” and “aggressiveness”, but always with a joking tone. It mainly functions as follows: If a given ethnic group has joking relationship with another ethnic group, a member of the first group may “insult”, tease the member of the other group through the established joking relationship. Of course, the person belonging to the second ethnic group must welcome the joke with laugher. In general, the members of each ethnic group consider the others as their “slaves”, and vice versa. Joking relationships are a daily practice, a kind of “agreement” between the numerous ethnic groups, aimed at banning anger, hatred, that are sources of conflicts as we notice in some places around the world. It is important to notice that in some cases, joking relationships were established after social conflicts or wars, as a way of saying “no more”. We encounter it almost everywhere and in all circumstances: in the office, during religious or traditional ceremonies, during trips, in restaurants, in time of pain or happiness. Joking relationships are just part of every day life in many African societies, and particularly in Burkina Faso It is important here to make a precision: joking relationships are not only practised between ethnic groups. We also encounter relationships between regions, between two clans of the same ethnic group (smiths and farmers for example), between children and their grand-parents, between children and their uncles, etc. Our focus will be the joking relationships among ethnic groups. |