Distinctions of fun, enjoyment and leisure

Abstract

This paper comparatively distinguishes the social meanings of fun, enjoyment, and leisure. Fun and enjoyment are often unidimensionally collapsed as descriptors of the distinctive experiential emotionality of the leisure experience. Yet distinctive phenomenological and interactive processes can be established. Empirical evidence is provided, from a sample of 49 young adults, of their meanings of fun, enjoyment and leisure. Their open-ended responses were categorized into four emergent aspects: activity, emotions, attitudes, others. Both fun and enjoyment were described by activity and emotions aspects. Fun is an active social structuring in direct face-to-face interaction, wherein the individual is externally or interactively engaged to create a with-equal-other social-human bond. The individuals are simultaneously emotionally attached in and through their structuring of an activity. Enjoyment has some similarities to fun, though the process is more internal or phenomenologically self-reflective, indicating a detachment to the other's emotionality. Both are experiential processes within leisure. Leisure is conceptualized in a free time and passive attitude in which one relaxes.