“Some people work a bit more than me, and so we tease them”: the production of an elite student community in an elite French higher education institution

Abstract

Abstract This article presents the results of an ethnographic study of student humor in a French elite higher education institution, specifically how students in the student community use the term polard. The data was collected between 2014 and 2018 in one of France’s most prestigious elite higher education institution. There are two main ways this term is used as humor, indirectly mocking students, notably those outside the student community, a practice that constructs the polard as a foil figure of a student who spends all their time doing schoolwork and refrains from participating in extracurricular activities, and teasing friends and acquaintances in interactions following a devalued behavior, seeming over-concerned with studies. Furthermore, there exist interactional scripts students can use to successfully navigate these teasing interactions without losing face. Finally, this humor is discussed in relation to the elite setting, as it is linked to the social closure of these elite higher education institutions, and it contributes to the production of an elite student community, by socializing students to privileged self-presentations characterized by ease and by creating distinctions between students, separating the truly elite students from the others.