This study aims to investigate topic choices of humour as well as how humour is conjointly constructed in podcasts, with particular focus on the similarities and differences between men and women in both same- and mixed-gender groups. Six podcasts were chosen to be investigated through two different methods: 1. instances of humour were categorised based on the topic of the humour and 2. conversation analysis (CA) was used to analyse the contributions of the different groups of participants with a focus on the pragmatic force and the discursive effect of the contributions. The pragmatic force of the contributions could be supportive or contestive and the discursive effect could be maximally collaborative or minimally collaborative. This study found that the similarities were greater than the differences between same- and mixed-gender groups, regarding both topic choices and how the humour was constructed; however, there were some differences between the groups regarding both aspects. Men tended to make more self-deprecating jokes while women made more jokes about Personal Anecdotes; furthermore, contestive and minimally collaborative humour was more common in groups involving men. This study indicates that podcasts can be an important area of research for future studies regarding humour and gender.

This study addresses questions of gender and genre in early writing by drawing on systemic linguistic theory, It is a longitudinal case study that compares the writing development of two children, a boy and a girl/ who learned to write in classrooms that adopted an approach to writing known in Australia as 'process writing1, The children's written texts were analysed using the systemic functional grammar as developed by MAK, Hallidey and the models of genre and register as proposed by J,R, Martin. The children were followed for the first two and a half years of their schooling, from the first day of kindergarten to the middle of grade two. They were observed weekly during the daily ‘writing time’ and all texts were collected. Although the children were ostensibly 'free’ to determine both the writing topics and text types they produced, systemic analysis revealed that: 1) the majority of texts written were of one genre, the Observation genre, in which the children reconstructed their personal experience with family and friends and offered an evaluation of it. 2) a significant pattern of gender differences occurred within this genre, such that the boy reconstructed experience in terms of the male cultural stereotype of being an active participant in the world, while the girl reconstructed experience in terms of the female stereotype of being a more passive observer of experience. It is the strength of systemic linguistic analysis that it revealed how the choices the children made in language were constrained by a number of social and cultural contexts, including: a) the teacher's theoretical orientation to literacy; b) the models of spoken and written language available to the children; and c) the ideology of gender in the culture. In particular, the analysis made visible how children appropriate the meanings of their culture and socialise themselves into gender roles by constructing the ideology of gender in their writing. The study contributes to an understanding of genres by offering a revised description of the Observation genre, which derives from the Observation Comment genre originally identified by Martin and Rothery (1981). It also raises a number of implications for teacher training and classroom practice, including the need for: 1) increased teacher consciousness about gender and genre, especially an understanding that choices in language are socially constructed 2) a critical reassessment of the notion of 'free topic choice’ promoted by 'process writing' pedagogy, a practice which may limit choice and tacitly support the gender status quo.