Humor and foreign language teaching

Mouton de GruyterBerlin· New York

HUMORInternational Journal of Humor Research

Editor-in-ChiefVICTOR RASKIN

Offprint

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Humor and foreign language teaching

MARC DENEIRE

Abstract

The benefits of humor in education have been widely assessed in recentresearch. Theorists and teachersfrom differentfields have made suggestionsabout possible uses of humor in the classroom. Among them, languagemethodologists have tried to demonstrate how jokes and puns could be usedin language teaching. Ho we ver, a harmonious integration of humor intoexisting language teaching approaches is still lacking. The present papershows how classroom humor can enhance language learners' linguistic andcultural competence if introduced at the right time in the teaching sequence.

"1 could never keep the attention of my students for a whole classperiod," one of my colleagues told me, further explaining how, when shesaw how Johnny Carson managed to magnetize the interest of thestudents for several hours a week, she decided to try it, and ... it worked.

The use of hum or in the American classroom is weil documented. Itsbenefits have been assessed in areas as varied as statistics (Ziv 1988),special education (Wolfgang 1987), and reading (Whitmer 1986). Whatfor a long time seemed to be opposite concepts - the serious undertakingsof education and the leisurely character of humor - suddenly appear tobe complementary. ln a study conducted at the University of Ontario,for example, the use of humor was considered one of the five mainteaching behaviors that distinguished "outstanding" from "average" and"poor" lecturers (based on student evaluations) (Murray 1983). Humorhas further been shown to have a positive effect on the learning environ-ment, to initiate, maintain, and enhance learner interest, and to facilitateretenti on (Hill 1988: 20-24).

ln spite of ail these attributes, humor is still largely underused in actual

Ilumor 8-3 (1995), 285-298. 0933-1719/95/0008-0285© Walter de Gruyter

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teaching. One of the reasons is that we do not yet know enough aboutits mechanisms to generate it at will and use it in daily teaching. Mostof the published material so far has been more descriptive than prescrip-tive, and tends to reflect isolated enthusiastic experiences rather thanwell-designed integrations into existing or developing teaching methodol-ogies or approaches. As we try to look at a possible integration of humorwith methodology, sorne important questions arise: (1) Which kinds ofhumor can be used in the foreign language classroom? and (2) Whenand how should humor be used in the teaching sequence? For example,should we use humor as a technique to introduce linguistic phenomenaand cultural knowledge, or rather as an illustration and reinforcementof already acquired cultural and linguistic knowledge? This paper arguesin favor of the latter procedure within the framework of interculturalcommunication.

ln foreign language learning, smiling and laughter have both intellec-tual and emotional components. ln the interactive context of the languageclassroom, they allow the expression of discomfort, annoyance, hostility,and aggressivity on the one hand, and of satisfaction, relief, complicity,approbation, and pleasure on the other hand. The high anxiety experi-enced by beginning foreign language learners may provoke frustrationand aggressive reactions. The resulting tension can be released throughhumorous situations created by the teacher, the students, and/or thematerials used. ln the cognitive approach (Koester 1964), humor isconsidered as a creative act that consists of relating ideas and behaviorsin unusual and original ways. Teachers who regularly involve theirstudents in skits and role-playing will have experienced the inexhaustiblecreativity of their students. The desirability of creating a relaxed atmo-sphere has been underscored in Krashen's popular "Affective FilterHypothesis" which asserts that anxiety can "keep the input from gettingin" (1982: 25). For Krashen, "the newer methods, the more successfulones, are the ones that encourage a low filter. They provide a relaxedatmosphere where the student is not on the defensive." Humor andlaughter can be of invaluable help in this context.

It is important to note that laughter is not only related to humor inthe classroom. ln Foerster's study in which six hours of instruction wereanalyzed, only 33.4% of the "Iaughters" resulted from humorous situa-tions or messages, whereas the other occurrences expressed annoyance,satisfaction, complicity, or approbation. ln the next pages, however, 1will focus on verbal humor and humor-induced laughter in the classroom.

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My intention is to look at how different theories of language learninghave approached that kind of humor and tried to incorporate it in theirmethodology.

Humor in the classroom: A "special" kind of humor?

Even though many scholars have argued that the classroom is a micro-cosm of society at large (Vega 1989: 1), most students would probablyagree that their behavior and activities in the classroom are sometimesradically different from what they are in the "real" world. Along thesame line, classroom humor is only a very restricted part of the largerepertoire of humor varieties we use in daily life. When we think ofhumor, we often think of sexual, ethnie, and social hum or whereasintellectual humor (the kind of humor used in the classroom)' is by farthe least popular form in most societies (Ziv 1988).

Sexual humor is quite naturally excluded from the classroom for bothpsychologieal and social reasons. While the main function of sexualhumor is, according to Freud, to release repressed feelings in what hecalls "tendentious humor," education has often seen its role as a repressorofthese sexual and aggressive urges and considered it its dut y to transformthese into more sublime desires. This task reflects what society expectsfrom school, for example, the circulation of values shared by the com-munit y so as to integrate children into mainstream culture.? However,the prevalence of sexual jokes in American humor (compared to, forexample, Belgian or Hong Kong humor; see Ziv 1988), outside the educa-tional setting seems to confirm the hypothesis that the more puri tan and"peaceful" a society, the more it will need an "escape" through humorto express its repressed feelings.

Ethnie jokes arise from the common beliefs of a certain group ofpeople (often a nation) about another group (often another nation). Theyoften express feelings of superiority as the first group considers the otherone as stingy (Scottish jokes), or dumb (Polish jokes). Interestingly,different nations can have different types of jokes directed toward thesame nation. For example, next to the humor directed toward the"Belgian accent," shared by both the French and the Dutch, the Frenchhave a tendency to ridicule the "petit Belge" for his proverbial taste ofbeer, steak, and French fries, while the Dutch seem to focus more on theso-called coarseness of the Belgian community.

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That intergroup jokes have little or no cultural validity appears fromthe fact that they can easily be inverted. Within Belgium itself, anti-Walloon and anti-Flemish jokes are usually the same, and it is oftendifficult to tell which generated the other. The problem, however, is thatmembers of a community often believe that this kind of humor doescontain valid cultural information. A popular French humorist used tobe the comic Coluche. However, one is always surprized at the numberof French people who interpreted his jokes Iiterally and came to believe,for example, that Belgian people ate French fries every morning forbreakfast. Thus, we cannot assume that listeners will systematically doubtthe information contained in the text of inter-ethnie jokes. Commentingon intergroup humor, Dupréel (cited in Milner 1972: 9) notes that, whengroup "A" laughs at group "B," laughter often has the effect of incorpo-rating certain individuals within a group (laughter of inclusion), but alsovery often excludes the members of the other group (Jaughter of exclu-sion). Even sixth-grade children found that "jokes about sorne womenor men, ethnie or racial groups, handicapped or aged persons werediscriminatory or hurtful, not relieving tension but creating it" (Harris1989: 270). Interethnic jokes should thus be excluded from the ForeignLanguage classroom as they may lead to the formation of stereotypesand seriously undermine teachers' attempts to develop interculturalunderstanding.

Political humor can be rejected for similar reasons. Indeed, outsidersoften perce ive a community through its leaders and have therefore adistorted perception of the individu aIs within the other community. ManyWesterners, for example, perceive ail Russians as the enemies of peace.For them, living in a communist regime has become synonymous ofeither being an oppressor or a victim; in their view, it seems almostimpossible to lead a peaceful and happy life in the Eastern Bloc. Moreprecise political humor (from foreign newspapers and magazines, forexample) is often even more difficult to use because of the detailedinformation it requires about ever-changing political situations.

Finally, sorne jokes will be rejected within certain cultures because oftheir cultural inappropriateness. Jokes such as the following more oftencreate reactions of indignation than amusement:

Q: What does NASA stand for?A: Need Another Seven Astronauts. (Nilsen, et al. 1987: 73)

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Talking about one of her colleagues, Harris comments that in spite ofthe latter's humorous nature, she believed that such jokes were inappro-priate and "could signal approval of such behavior in students. Whenshe asked, "is nothing sacred?", she was indicating that the Challengerdisaster had become sacred for her and worthy of her protection (1989:290).

The preceding constraints on the kind of hum or that is appropriate inthe classroom narrows our choice of intellectual humor which is, accord-ing to Ziv (1988), the less popular form of humor in most Westerncultures. However limited, this form of humor can be of great help inreaching the objectives of Foreign Language teaching methodology.

Humor and language teaching theories

A. Humor in the grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods

The aim of language learning in the grammar-translation method was tomas ter the grammar of the foreign language and to acquire the abilityto translate it. No attention was given to the communicative aspect oflanguage.

The au dio-lingual method tried to compensate for these shortcomings.Based on structural linguistics (Bloomfield) and behavioral psychology(Watson and Skinner), the foreign language was acquired throughoverlearning (repetition) of structures.

Despite of the differences in emphases, these two methods (as weil asJess popular methods such as the direct method or cognitive code-learning) essentially rest on the assumption that the major problem inlearning a language is to master the structure and that this problemdemands almost exclusive attention. ln both approaches, corn pa ring andcontrasting the structures of the first and the second language will pro-gressively lead to a mastery of the latter. Errors in production are believedto originate from the interference with structures from the first language.ln line with a structural perspective, discrete attention is given to phonol-ogy, morphology, lexicon, syntax, and the cultural aspects of language.

ln humor research, sorne scholars have focused on the same "grammati-cal" categories in their classification of sources of humor within andacross languages (Milner 1972, Nilsen 1989). Examples follow:

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language. The necessity to perceive different strata at the phonological,morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels justifies the popular claimthat the understanding of jokes in a foreign language refiects a fairlyhigh level of proficiency.

The use of humor in teaching has been advocated as a tool to makestudents sensitive to the structural and semantic differences betweendifferent languages (Nilsen 1989, Vega 1989). However, if contrastiveanalysis is quite naturally used in the teaching of translation, its usefulnessin foreign language teaching is doubtful, especially at advanced stages ofproficiency, for example when learners have developed a fully autono-mous cognitive system for the foreign language and do not normallyresort to their first language when faced with unfamiliar meanings and/orsyntactic constructions (Lamendella 1977).

Language instructors working in this approach may have a tendencyto use humor as a technique to make students aware of the mechanismsunderlying verbal humor, such as polysemy, homonymy, etc. However,1 would like to suggest using verbal hurnor as an illustration of thesemechanisms rather than as an introduction to them; indeed, if the studentsdo not understand a joke instantaneously because of a lack of linguisticor world knowledge, the humorous effect will inevitably be destroyed. Ajoke (as any other text) is more than the sum of its parts. "Humor," saysE.B. White, "can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in theprocess and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientificmind" (cited in Nilsen 1987: 69). Raskin further notes that laughter tendsto disappear "when we focus our intellect on it and try to understandit." ln other words, "one gets a joke or does not get it" (Raskin 1985:13). Milner also warns us against the use of hum or in contacts withpeople from other cultures, for example, Samoans: "ln any case, the verywide gap between Polynesian and European language and culture makesit necessary to give such elaborate explanations that the whole fiavor ofthe joke is lost" (Milner 1972: 3). A joke that needs an explanation mayresult in a (often polite) smile, but rarely laughter. The most interestingjokes are those that provoke immediate laughter, then make the listenerthink about the hidden meaning and implication (allusions) of its text.

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1. PhonologyAn American in a British hospital asks the nurse: "Did 1 come hereto die?" The nurse answers: "No, it was yesterdie." (Nilsen 1984:114)

2. MorphologyJohn Kennedy's famous blunder in Berlin: "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("1am ajelly doughnut"), instead of "Ich bin Berliner." (Nilsen 1984: 15)

3. LexiconHomonymy, homophony, and polysemy are at the origin of mostpuns, and thus of classroom humor:A: "Waiter, do you serve crabs here?' asks a customer.B: "We serve everybody. Just have a seat at this table, sir." (Vega1989: 59)

4. SyntaxStudent 1: "The dean announced that he's going to stop drinking on

campus."Student 2: "No kidding! Next thing you know, he'll want us to stop

drinking too." (Vega 1989: 60)5. Syntax + lexicon

Q: How do you make a horse fast?A: Don't give him anything for a while. (Vega 1989: 60)

JI.

Most recent textbooks and methods claim to be communicative, meaningthat their aim is to develop communicative competence. The concept of

The precedingjokes are, in Milner's terms, aIl examples of paradigmaticreversaI. ReversaI, as illustrated by Milner, can also take place at thesyntagmatic level (spoonerisms), for example in "Time wounds ail heels"(1972: 18) or in the numerous "What's the difference ... " questions:

- What's the difference between a mouse and a pretty girl?- One harms the cheese, the other charms the he's.

Finally, Milner's paragrammatic reversals are not based on clichés orwell-known structures, but merely underline the difference between twoantithetical or mutually complementary statements, for example in:

- Girls who do not repu Ise men's advances,- Are often girls who advance men's pulses. (Milner 1972: 20)

Humor in the communicative approachesThe understanding of these jokes requires a fairly high level oflanguageproficiency. Indeed, at the beginning of the learning process, studentstend to equate one word with one meaning and often fail to perceiveambiguous meanings, even though these mechanisms exist in their own

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"communicative competence" was developed by Dell Hymes in theUnited States and Jürgen Habermas in Europe as a reaction to Chomsky'snotion of "linguistic competence" which excluded ail aspects of perfor-mance. The insistence on language use instead of usage (grammar) madethese theories more attractive to applied linguists and language teachingmethodologists. ln the British tradition, Halliday's theory of socialsemiotics continues the social and situational trend initiated by Firth inthe thirties.

Most scholars working within this tradition (H. G. Widdowson,S. Savignon, M. Berns) do not reject the notion of linguistic competenceor knowledge of the code, but consider it as only part of the largercontext of the communicative event. Notions such as situation, context,perception, and culture have become key terms in these theories. Theaim of language learning, says Christina Bratt Paulston, the first method-ologist to apply the notion of communicative competence to languageteaching, is to acquire the "social mies of language ... the [necessary]'set of interactional rules.' " (1974: 350).

ln 1980 and 1983, Canale and Swain proposed a framework that hasnow been widely adopted in the communicative language teaching theory.Their framework "minimally" consists of four competencies: linguistic,sociolinguistic, strategie, and discourse competence.

Linguistic competence refers to the knowledge of the code (or usage),as illustrated in the preceding section. Sociolinguistic competence, on theother hand, refers to the social rules oflanguage use. Topic, role, situation,and norms of interaction are sorne of the key concepts. Sociolinguisticcompetence implies the ability to use the language appropriately both inmeaning and form. ln the following joke, for example, the pupil und er-stands his teacher, but in an inappropriate way:

Teacher: Billy, if you had two dollars in one pocket and five dollars inanother, what would you have?

Billy: Sornconc clsc's pants, ma'am. (Vega 1989: 61)"

The use of an inappropriate linguistic form may lead to humoroussituations. The unintentional use of the wrong register may lead tosituational incongruities. One day, ail of my students burst out laughingwhen 1 said: "Before we split, let me give you this handout ... "!

Discourse competence, i.e. the way "sentencesjutterances are connectedto make up meaningful unified written or spoken text" through coherence

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and cohesive deviees (Vega 1989: 53) will help the learner in reconstruct-ing the meaning of a text in which sorne of the information may beabsent. Failure to understand a joke often reflects a failure in perceivingits irnplied meaning. Joel Sherzer underscores the importance of cohesionin reference to puns:

Puns play a role in discourse cohesion .,. in linking various utterances or partsof a discourse to each other. The puns are doubly anaphoric; this derives fromtheir inherent or potential ambiguity. (cited in Nilsen 1988: 333)

lndeed, a pun always has a metaphorical, and a concrete or literalreferent. Sherzer (1978: 370) further notes that puns can be viewed as"indexical" expressions, and that the meaning only becomes clear oncewe know what these expressions are pointing to. Once we know whattheir specifie referents are, we will be able to give a double interpretationbecause of the two contexts in which they can occur. These contexts,usually called scripts or schemas, may sometimes be shared across cultures(for example, taking the plane or a bus), but they are usually languagespecifie. The foreign language learner will therefore need to activate thenecessary schemata to interpret the joke correctly. If in joking, "[w]hatis crucial is that one accepted pattern is confronted by something else"(Douglas 1964: 364), the immediate perception of the involved patternsis essential. For Johnson,

[shared knowledge) is necessary for the perception of the joke, the referentialcontent of the joke itself, and the process by which the joke is constructed aroundits object by the joker for ils audience around a given social context ,.. To definea joke is to define the society in which the joke occurs. (330)

Thus, different categories of social experience correspond to differentcategories of perception and thought to make up culturally defined sche-mata. The categories of social experience themselves consist of routinizedand socially approved norms. ln this context, jokes operate as sociallysanctioned violations, as sort of institutionalized contextually regulatedsubversive behaviors. Indeed, many jokes are considered funny in onecontext, but "bad taste" in another context. Social requirements mayjudge a joke to be in bad taste, too near the bone, risqué, or irrelevant.As was the case with the "Challenger" jokes, in the American culture,sorne values are judged too precarious to be challenged. As Johnsonfurther notes, the difference between potentially dangerous behavior thatis accepted and that which is rejected is "highly tenuous.' The social

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rules that regulate the use of humor in one culture are therefore verydifficult to acquire for people from another culture.

The preceding discussion shows how linguistic competence and culturalcompetence' interact in the understanding of humor. Research in readingcomprehension can further help us understand why beginning languagelearners usually fail to understand sorne jokes.

Patricia Carrell (1984) shows how most beginning Foreign Languagelearners (or po or readers in their first language) have a tendency toprocess information word by word (bottom-up processing), and thususually fail to activate the necessary schemata for an appropriate under-standing of the text. Other readers tend to impose their own culturalschemata, thus distorting the intended meaning of the text. This top-down processing tends to be reinforced by the amount of semanticprirning characteristic of slow readers (Stanovich and West 1979).

ln his analysis of the perception of comic strips by foreign languagelearners, Galaricha (1978) warns us against possible systematic misinter-pretation by students. Indeed, comic strip readers are often merely passive"while the written information is active in a sui-generis way - it presentsmaterial to be decoded, but cannot ... prevent the decoder from misunder-standing the material presented, which is Iikely to occur when the readeris unfamiliar with the cultural background" (38). The so-called "passiv-ity" of the reader may have to be reinterpreted in light of schema-theory,but Galaricha rightfully warns us against the failure of the learners toactivate the right script.

Thus, the necessary linguistic and cultural information needs to beintroduced before a joke is presented to the students. Conversely, humorshould never be used as a technique to acquire new linguistic and worldknowledge, but rather as an illustration and reinforcement of acquired(if not assimilated) knowledge. If this sequence is respected, humor willindeed both contribute to a relaxed atmosphere and facilitate retention.

Conclusion

The linguistic and cultural complexity of humor explains why its under-standing requires a fairly high level of linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategie,and discourse competence. One will also note that this competence isnecessary, but also sufficient. Postulating a fifth component (humorcompetence) in the framework of communicative competence therefore

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seems unjustified (Vega 1989). Indeed, well-developed communicativecompetence implies humor competence, and vice-versa."

Furthermore, the language learner will need to develop a certain levelof cultural competence in the target language. Indeed, humor contains alot of hidden cultural meaning and therefore functions as a social unifierwithin groups. However, it is also often directed against outsiders inintergroup communication and makes it difficult, sometimes impossible,for the latter to enjoy the humor of the target culture.

ln order to perceive and understand humor in intercultural contact,the learner needs to become acculturated in the other group; he or sheneeds to recognize, legitimize, accept, and appreciate the fundamentaldifferences between cultures, and be ready to bridge these differences inorder to "feel" as people in the other culture do. Being aware that (1)every culture has its own internaI coherence, integrity, and logic, (2) allcultures are equally valid, and (3) aIl people are at least partially culturebound (Adler 1977), the learner will be armed to switch from one modeof thinking to another one in different cultural contexts. There is nodoubt that reaching such a stage necessitates extended exposure to theforeign culture and the overcoming of many hurdles, negative reactions,stages of cultural anomie, sometimes even complete rejection of the othergroup's values (Bennett 1986). T hope that the introduction of humor asproposed in this paper will help our students in the long and psychologi-cally demanding enterprise of language and culture learning.

Michigan Technological University

Notes

1. The definition or intellectual humor in terrns of specifie domains and behaviorswill of course vary from culture lo culture. For example, in the United States,most of the intellectual humor might be derived from television, while in tbeFrench context, it might relate more explicitly to the French concept of highculture (see Lamont 1992).

2. Using Bourdieu's terminology (1991), the field of education is the locus (or"habitus") of officially acceptable ("Iegitimate") knowledge; it is this kind of(cultural, scientific, literary, etc.) knowledge which it tries to reproduce. Otherkinds of knowledge and behaviors are excluded from the domain of educationfor the very reason that they have not been legitimized (through institutionallyaccredited groups, but also dictionaries, grammars, the scientific community,

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etc.). For example, in the French educational system, humor will only becomeacceptable if it is explicitly connected to the cultural field. If it is not, it willbe considered as despicably commercial, sexual, etc.; consequently, it wouldviolate the most basic rules of the educational field. Thus, by nature,the educational field restricts the number of functions humor can fulfill.Classroom humor, in this paper, refers to these specifie functions.

3. Cultural competence reflects cultural knowledge as weil as the capacity touse that knowledge both interpretively and creatively. It will therefore beconsidered as part of sociolinguistic competence in the following discussion.

4. ln other words, if a person X can be said to have communicative competencein a language, i.e., linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategie, and discoursecompetence, s/he will also have humor competence, i.e., "the native speaker'sjudgement as to the funniness of texts" (Raskin 1985: 58). Thus humorcompetence both encompasses these four competences and is part of them.

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