Bridging the Humor Barrier

Humor Competency Training in English

Language Teaching

Edited by John Rucynski Jr. and Caleb Prichard

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 Contents

Introduction
John Rucynski Jr. and Caleb Prichard

PART I: HUMOR COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT OUTSIDE THE

CLASS

1 Working Backward from Funny: Preparing Language Learners to

Use Humor in Intercultural Encounters
Anne Pomerantz

2 Humor Competency: The Role of Sociopragmatic Knowledge in

Expressions of Humor in Intercultural Interactions
Jules Winchester

3 Feeling Inadequate: Lessons from Cross-Cultural Adaptation to

Help Learners Get over Inadequacies in Humor Competency
Maria Ramirez de Arellano

PART II: INTEGRATED HUMOR INSTRUCTION

4 Humor-Integrated Language Learning (HILL): Teaching with and

about Humor
Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza

5 Junior High English Textbook Interactional Humor: Pragmatic

Possibilities
Scott Gardner

6 Reading Jokes in English: How English Language Learners

Appreciate and Comprehend Humor
 Nadezda Pimenova

PART III: EXPLICIT HUMOR COMPETENCY TRAINING

7 Humor Competency Training for Sarcasm and Jocularity

Caleb Prichard and John Rucynski Jr.

8 Theory, Content Knowledge, Input, and Output: Elements in the

Teaching and Learning of Humor Competence
Richard J. Hodson

9 Using Diaries to Research and Develop Humor Competence in a

Second Language
Maria Petkova

10 Training English Language Learners to Recognize English

Satirical News
John Rucynski Jr. and Caleb Prichard

About the Contributors

 Introduction

John Rucynski Jr. and Caleb Prichard

Early in his teaching career, Caleb Prichard, one of the editors, was
having his Japanese university-aged English learners play a review
game before a final test. One female student (let’s call her Tomoko)
was dominating, so Caleb approached her and asked with a smile,
“Wow! Are you cheating or something?” He continued the class,
thinking nothing of the exchange. That is, until after the class, when
Tomoko approached him with tears streaming down her face. She
exclaimed, “Why did you say I was cheating? I don’t cheat!”
Caleb felt shocked and miserable for having crushed the poor
student’s feelings. He explained that he was joking; he knew Tomoko
was not cheating, and actually he did not care even if she had been
because it was just a silly game with no consequences! Couldn’t she
understand this context? Didn’t she notice his friendly expression
and tone of voice? However, Tomoko was still distraught. Fearing he
had made her permanently demotivated toward learning English,
Caleb vowed never to use humor again in his English classes.
A few weeks later, however, of course Caleb was joking again in
class. How could he not? In English classroom settings like Japan,
where students can be notoriously shy about speaking up, what
better way is there to lighten the atmosphere and make using
English seem more fun and less intimidating? And more importantly,
humor is extremely common in communication and media. If
students like Tomoko could learn to get humor in English, they would
not be confused or offended in future interactions outside the
classroom. On the contrary, they would instead be amused and feel
a closer personal connection to target language speakers. In other
words, rather than avoiding humor in the class, part of English
language teaching should include helping learners to overcome the
humor barrier.

1
 Like this anecdote, many language learners and teachers have
realized the great importance of humor in second language (L2)
learning and communication. Indeed, as is discussed below, there is
a growing body of research (largely theoretical) on humor and an
increasing number of teaching resources on not only using humor in
the L2 classroom but also humor competency training.
When the editors of this volume have given presentations on
humor instruction at language teaching conferences, we are often
approached by two different types of teachers. One type is fully
convinced of the value of teaching with and about humor and is just
looking for ideas and tips. However, the other type is concerned how
it will go or is skeptical about whether humor is really teachable. With
this volume on humor competency training in English language
teaching, our target audience is both types of educators above.
While we wholeheartedly agree that students are likely to
appreciate the teaching or use of humor in language classes, claims
about its impact often tend to be merely theoretical or anecdotal.
There remains a lack of research investigating the most effective
techniques for humor instruction. With this unique volume, we aim to
further the field by presenting and making recommendations for
empirical research on humor competency training by language
teachers and researchers from a range of teaching contexts around
the world. Chapters in this book will either empirically examine
humor competency training or present related research that has
important implications for humor training. Readers can thus come
away with a deeper understanding of research-informed methods for
helping language learners improve their humor competency.

HUMOR AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION

While there is an ever-expanding body of research on humor in

English language teaching, much of the focus has been on using
humor as a tool, not as the objective. Language teachers and
researchers from a wide range of global contexts have reported on
the power of humor as an aid in language acquisition. Teachers from

2
Japan (Neff and Rucynski 2017) to Malaysia (Ziyaeemehr and
Kumar 2014) to Nigeria (Olajoke 2013) to the UAE (Aboudan 2009)
have published research detailing their students’ positive reaction to
humor as a tool in making learning the English language more
comprehensible and interesting. Other language teachers and
researchers have narrowed this focus on the potential of using
humor to assist in the teaching and acquisition of specific English
language skills, including reading (Hayati et al. 2011) and listening
(Rafiee et al. 2010).
Despite an increasing number of advocates of the use of humor in
the foreign language classroom, many teachers still avoid the use of
humor, fearing that the linguistic or cultural barriers could cause
misunderstandings or confusion (Askildson 2005). Some teachers
and researchers also argue that humor should be used only with
highly proficient students (e.g., Deneire 1995) since, as Shively
(2013) explains, comprehension of humor requires a great level of
“linguistic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and cultural knowledge” (931).
However, the complexity and potential negative consequences of
humor does not mean it is something that language teachers should
avoid. On the contrary, this volume has been published because the
editors strongly believe that the pros of using and teaching about
humor far outweigh the cons. Thus, the job of language teachers is
not to dismiss the humor barrier as too big, but rather more
thoroughly investigate ways of helping our learners cross it. Caleb
learned that using humor can indeed backfire in the language
classroom (as it can in any context!), but for every misunderstanding
like this the editors of this book have dozens of stories where humor
has enhanced their teaching. Still, language teachers and
researchers need more empirical research on humor competency in
order to empower English language learners (ELLs) to overcome the
humor barrier. To quote an old popular song, the editors aspire to
“accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative” (Johnny Mercer and
The Pied Pipers1944) when it comes to how humor is used and
taught in the language classroom.

3
The Need for Humor Competency Training in English
Language Education

Elizabath Claire (1984) was prompted to write her book What’s So

Funny? (A Foreign Student’s Introduction to American Humor) after
noticing the struggle international students had, despite their relative
proficiency in academic English, in understanding the humor used by
students at American universities. Although this book was written
more than thirty years ago, a great number of ELLs have yet to crack
this mysterious English humor code. More recent research on humor
in language education (e.g., Bell 2006; Wulf 2010; Lems 2013)
continues to address Claire’s claim that ELLs can be socially
marginalized due to their lack of understanding of the humor of the
target language. Indeed, failing to recognize a humorous utterance
can have significant consequences (Gibbs and Colston 2002;
Cheang and Pell 2011). Therefore, rather than look at humor as
something to avoid, language teachers need research-informed
approaches to help empower our learners to get over this humor
barrier and realize their full potential in cross-cultural communication.
While misunderstanding humor can have significant
consequences, comprehending humor or effectively producing it can
help learners “win friends or a mate,… defuse tension,… or
persuade others” (Wulf 2010, 156). Sociology research has shown
how humor can bond those with differing values and backgrounds
(Cann, Calhoun, and Banks 1997), and this suggests that
understanding and sharing humor can strengthen bonds between L2
learners and the target community despite often huge cultural
differences. In addition, as appreciating humor is necessary to fully
grasp a culture, it can potentially also motivate learners to become
more immersed in the target language media and society.
Despite the increasing interest in the role of humor in language
acquisition and cross-cultural communicative competence,
researchers (e.g., Wulf 2010) have noted that there is still a lack of
empirical research investigating how language teachers can
evaluate and improve their learners’ target language humor

4
competence. Bell (2009) has also warned that, despite all the
possible benefits of using humor, many researchers and teachers
have not “examined these complexities in the detail necessary for
the target audience (i.e., classroom language teachers) to be able to
make informed judgments concerning its humor possible role in their
classrooms” (241). Thus, as noted above, this volume aims to help
further the field by presenting empirical research and providing
guidelines and examples of detailed accounts of humor competency
development in (and, in some cases, outside of) the language
classroom.

Aspects of Humor Competency

In this volume, we define L2 humor competency as having sufficient

ability to deal with humor both receptively and productively to meet
one’s needs in the target language. The needs may vary for each
language learner, but could be to enjoy L2 media, bond with target
language speakers, or simply to avoid misunderstandings or conflicts
with them. The humor could be in oral, written, or paralinguistic form,
in interpersonal communication or the media. Humor competence
involves several aspects (Bell 2009, 2011). While these vary in the
literature, here we distinguish the following: recognizing,
comprehending, appreciating, responding, and producing.
Recognizing intended humor, also termed detecting or identifying,
is the first step in receptive competence, and is necessary for
comprehension and appreciation. It involves noticing markers or
cues which signal that humor is intended. It is important to remember
that it is possible to recognize intended humor, but not “get it,” which
is the next aspect of humor competency.
Comprehending humor means understanding the meaning of the
intended humor. Depending on the type of humor, this may involve
correctly interpreting verbal irony, recognizing how the target of the
joke was criticized, identifying the intent, etc. This requires detecting
and accurately interpreting the cues to humor and fully
understanding the context behind the utterance. However, this does

5
not always mean agreeing with the message or enjoying the
humor…
Appreciation is another aspect of humor competence. Again,
comprehension does not always have to result in humor
appreciation, as a person’s sense of humor can reflect one’s
personality, identity, and opinions. Nevertheless, one goal of
instruction can be to enjoy and value target language humor
because different cultures appreciate different kinds of humor and
this appreciation can be developed. If acquired, learners’ chances of
connecting with target language speakers would increase, as would
their motivation; humor can have the same power as, say, movies or
music in increasing language learning motivation.
Effectively responding to humor is another related competency. In
communication, learners need to respond appropriately depending
on their goals and on whether the intended humor was
comprehended and appreciated. If they do not get a joke, they could
use clarification strategies to grasp the meaning or they could just let
it go depending on the situation. If learners do appreciate a joke,
they could just laugh or choose to play along, depending on their
persona, their desired relationship with the interlocutors, and other
factors. Finally, if the humor is understood but deemed unfunny, they
may choose to politely give one’s opinion, to not react, or even to
fake laughter. Again, this depends on one’s goals (e.g., do they want
to bond with speaker, avoid conflict, stand up against prejudice?).
Producing humor is obviously a separate aspect of humor, different
from the receptive layers above. It is likely the most difficult to do and
not always necessary. However, it can lead to multiple benefits for
language learners, as research suggests effectively producing
humor serves several purposes from indicating intelligence to
lightening a tense situation. This stage of humor competency can
also be empowering for learners who frequently use humor in the L1.

Guidelines for Implementing

L2 Humor Competency Training

6
Humor competency development can and does happen outside the
classroom. This fascinating process of cultural adaptation and
growth through intercultural communication has implications for ELT
teachers seeking to help students develop their humor competence
(see chapters by Pomerantz, Ramirez de Arellano, and Winchester).
However, while growth happens outside the classroom, certain
aspects of humor competency may be more quickly and effectively
acquired through instruction. Some researchers suggest that humor
instruction can be effectively mixed with language learning (see
chapters by Heidari-Shahreza, Gardner, and Pimenova). Indeed,
extensive training is not always feasible, and briefly touching upon
humor points in the language lesson or including an activity on
humor may have a positive effect.
Nevertheless, the editors feel that for more complex aspects of
humor, explicit and extensive training is needed for significant
improvements to be made. This is especially the case when target
culture humor norms greatly differ from those in the students’ L1.
Research suggests that explicitly teaching about humor can lead to
results (see chapters by Hodson, Petkova, and the editors), but even
extensive training and practice is not always enough.
While more research is necessary to ascertain best practices in
humor competency training in language education, we strive to
emphasize some basic guidelines. Based on the research described
throughout this book, we propose the following guidelines.

1. Humor competency training should have a clear objective

related to student needs and the curriculum. While we argue
that humor competency training should be a part of the
language teaching curriculum, careful consideration is needed
about the content and extent of the instruction. There is a
great variety of forms of humor that could potentially be
taught, including but not limited to puns, jokes, jocular
responses in conversation, sitcoms, and comic strips. Also, as
previously explained, humor competency involves humor
recognition, comprehension, appreciation, response, and
production. Effectively teaching even just one aspect for one

7
 form of humor can be a huge undertaking. Therefore, it is
imperative to select only the most needed aspects for
instruction; educators should consider exactly how the humor
unit will help learners meet their needs and whether
effectively teaching this would take away from more useful
activities. If the lesson is deemed worthwhile for the students’
needs, the educator should specify the objectives before
planning the rest of the unit.
For example, coming from a culture in which sarcasm is
used differently and less often, do high-intermediate
proficiency Korean learners planning to study abroad in the
US need to better recognize sarcasm in English? Probably
yes. However, do they need to be taught to produce sarcastic
humor? Probably not. While producing sarcasm does have
several uses, it is rarely necessary. Even worse, making a
sarcastic utterance could have consequences if not executed
perfectly to the right audience. Finally, even if it is possible to
teach the learners to effectively produce sarcastic jokes in the
perfect way in the right context, this would takes weeks of
instruction that could be better used on more needed skills.
2. The training should overview the potential functions, benefits,
and consequences of humor. The instructor should clearly
overview the functions of the form of humor being taught. By
grasping the big picture and the positive roles of humor first,
learners may be more motivated to learn and they may be
able to implement the humor at the right time in the correct
setting. On the other hand, the students must also be made
aware of the consequences of failed humor and realize that
different people have different interpretations. Related to this,
it is essential to remember that there is not one form of
English humor. Learners need to be fully aware that the
attitudes toward different types and targets of humor vary
greatly depending on the culture, subculture, and even from
person to person. While a specific humorous utterance can
deepen a relationship with one person, it can lead to

8
 disregard or interpersonal conflict (even violence!) with
another.
3. The training should include explicit instruction on the most
relevant microskills that need to be acquired. There has been
a great amount of research identifying detailed characteristics
of various forms of humor, and language educators should
utilize these findings. Humor is often misunderstood, and for it
to be successfully comprehended, the relevant aspects need
to be grasped. Tiny variances in the timing, word choice,
syntax, expression, and intonation, for example, can
completely change the meaning. Educators need to consider
which of the microskills are most essential to teach based on
differences in humor in the L1 and the target culture (while
again recognizing these aspects may vary within each
culture). As previously stated, learning deeply about the
humor of the students’ culture is an invaluable aspect of
understanding learner needs when it comes to humor
instruction. In this sense, humor competency training is a way
to fill the gap. Of course, learners will likely not benefit from
(or be particularly interested in) an in-depth linguistics lecture;
rather the focus should be on developing awareness of the
most relevant aspects related to the objective.
4. The training should include numerous examples. Just as
vocabulary acquisition requires encountering a word multiple
times in varied contexts, learners need to be exposed to
multiple amusing examples to fully grasp and acquire the
essential aspects related to humor. Developing automaticity is
needed, since humor cues not immediately grasped are often
missed forever.
Again, rather than using academic explanation, practical
examples can be much easier to understand. These could
include written texts, comics, GIFs, memes, media clips, or
teacher modelled examples, depending on the overall needs
of the class. When teaching cues to recognize sarcasm, for
example, learners do not need to memorize the term averted
gaze, but can instead be shown the meaning through visual

9
 examples (images from the web or teacher demonstration).
Interpretation tasks are needed for students to correctly
recognize the key aspects. These aspects may be better
isolated at first (e.g., focusing just on intonation), but humor
examples should eventually be presented in their full context
since humor relies on the interplay of various aspects. Even
just recognizing an ironic utterance, for example, involves
considering the context, intonation, eye movement, word
choice, etc. simultaneously.
5. Humor training needs to include extensive practice
opportunities using communicative methods. Perhaps even
more so than typical language education, humor competency
training should involve principles of good pedagogy and
communicative language teaching. This is because humor is
a social construct involving interpersonal communication, and
there are many subtle aspects that can affect its success.
Basic communicative principles that should be applied include
moving from structured drills to freer activities and numerous
chances for interaction and collaboration through language
play. While discussing different interpretations of humor or
sharing their own creative playful attempts at it, learners can
develop their humor competency in a safe, meaningful, and
motivating environment.
6. Humor training should encourage reflection and the teacher
should offer personalized feedback throughout (and after) the
lesson. People’s sense of humor varies greatly. What
humorous media they select, when they do and do not laugh,
and the humorous utterances they choose to produce (if any)
all reflect their unique identity, personality, values, tastes, and
objectives. How they produce and react to humor has huge
implications, determining which people they bond with and
affecting their ability to achieve other personal goals.
Therefore, while it can be argued that all training needs
reflection and support, humor competency training especially
requires careful introspection and guidance, with learner
autonomy in mind. In addition to in-class instruction, one-on-

10
 one communication via oral interviews or journals are possible
techniques for promoting reflection and offering personalized
support.

The above points are just general guidelines when explicit humor
training is deemed necessary. Once again, how teachers implement
humor competency training will greatly vary depending on the
English level, native culture, and needs of the learners. The
“Recommendations for Humor Competency Training” section at the
end of each chapter offers more specific tips related to particular
forms and aspects of humor.

Guidelines for Implementing and Researching L2 Humor

Competency Training

While the editors feel confident about the guidelines presented

above, it should be noted that all of these points still require further
research. Past research evaluating humor competency training,
including some of the action-research studies in this book, has often
not utilized empirical methods. Indeed, it is often not feasible to carry
out a full empirical study, and action-based research and preliminary
studies are also innovative and insightful. However, where possible
follow-up research is needed using empirical methods to more
reliably evaluate the efficacy of humor training. Some of the key
areas humor competency research should continue to improve
include the following:

1. If focusing on humor detection or comprehension, items

should be pre-tested to examine their validity and reliability.
Vocabulary, speaking rate, background knowledge, etc. and
other factors need to be tightly controlled.
2. The test should be authentic. For example, recognizing
humor in a sitcom is a more authentic measure than
identifying humor cues in its transcript, which is more of a
linguistic exercise.

11
 3. Both a pretest and posttest should be designed to empirically
examine if significant gains were made. (If possible, a
delayed posttest is needed to see if the gains made are
lasting.)
4. A control group is needed to ensure any gains made can be
attributed to the training, not other factors, such as weak test
design or competency developed outside of class.
5. Especially if there is no control group, steps should be taken
to ensure pre- and posttest items have a similar difficulty
level.
6. If focusing on responses to humor or humor production, the
utterances should be externally rated by those from the
target culture.
7. A qualitative component (follow-up interviews with learners,
etc.) is preferable to triangulate the findings and to better
understand participants’ feelings about the instruction and
their humor development.

These are general guidelines we hope future research on humor

competency will better utilize. For specific guidelines and suggested
areas of research related to specific aspects of humor competency,
see the “Recommendations for Research” sections at the end of
each chapter.

OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS

As previously stated, there is no shortage of research illustrating the

potential of humor in making language learning more enjoyable and
memorable. There is also no shortage of quantitative research
showing that ELLs in a great range of cultural contexts welcome the
addition of the use of humor in their language classes. However,
there is a big, and often misunderstood, difference between teaching
with humor and teaching about humor. While both of these areas can
certainly coexist and complement each other, this book is more
concerned with the less-explored area of how English language

12
educators can make humor competency training a viable component
of the language teaching curriculum. In other words, we hope to offer
concrete, classroom-tested methods for helping ELLs finally
overcome the humor barrier. While not all chapters include research
directly focused on humor competency training, they all end with
recommendations for implementing such training and researching
the efficacy of it.
In this volume, we have compiled 10 chapters from contributors
from a range of cultural and teaching contexts. In addition, these
chapters also vary in which aspect of humor competency training
they focus on, be it helping learners to detect/recognize,
comprehend, appreciate, respond to, or even produce, humor in the
target language. (Of course some chapters will focus on more than
one of these categories.) Finally, the chapters also consider a wide
range of genres of humor, from joke telling to satire to verbal irony.
While all chapters in this volume offer important implications for
humor competency training, the book has been divided into three
parts to reflect different research approaches and different ways
competency can be developed. In Part I, “Humor Competence
Development Outside the Class,” contributors focus on how learners
develop competency in “the real world” through intercultural
communication and suggest implications for in-class humor
competency training.
This section begins with “Working Backward from Funny:
Preparing Language Learners to Use Humor in Intercultural
Encounters” by Anne Pomerantz. In this chapter, Pomerantz
provides an account of the steps Moroccan-born French comedian
Gad Elmaleh took as he attempted to perform stand-up comedy in
the new cultural and linguistic context of the United States.
Pomerantz then frames this as a model of how language educators
can assist their learners in the complex task of producing humor in
English.
This section continues with two chapters investigating the role of
humor competency in intercultural communication and cross-cultural
adaptation. First, in her chapter “Humor Competency: The Role of
Sociopragmatic Knowledge in Expressions of Humor in Intercultural

13
Interactions,” Jules Winchester describes her ethnographic study of
Japanese women and their experiences with humor while living in
the United Kingdom. Based on the results of her qualitative study,
Winchester makes recommendations for the focus of humor
competency training in a language classroom context, with an
emphasis on the importance of pragmatic awareness.
Next, we move to a more personal account of understanding and
using humor in a new cultural setting. In her chapter “Feeling
Inadequate: Lessons from Cross-Cultural Adaptation to Help
Learners Get over Inadequacies in Humor Competency,” Maria
Ramirez de Arellano begins by describing her own experiences with
the humor barrier as a migrant from Spain to Ireland, explaining the
frustrations of not understanding humor despite already being fluent
in the target language. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective,
existing theories of humor are reviewed and linked to relevant
theoretical models of intercultural communication and cross-cultural
adaptation. The occurrence and relevance of these connections is
based on the analysis of primary research data from a qualitative
study on the role of humor in the adaptation process of Spanish
migrants living in Ireland.
In Part II, “Integrated Humor Instruction,” we journey inside the
English language teaching classroom. Contributors to this section
share their research and suggestions on integrating humor and
language instruction.
As noted, the use of humor in language teaching should aim to
provide value beyond merely giving learners a laugh. Moreover,
there is not always enough time or curricular flexibility for explicit and
extensive competency training. As a practical reminder of this, this
section begins with the chapter “Humor-Integrated Language
Learning (HILL): Teaching with and about Humor.” In his chapter,
Mohammad Ali Heidari-Shahreza outlines his model for integrating
language and humor teaching and provides numerous examples
from his experiences as an English language teacher and trainer in
Iran. Numerous practical classroom-tested examples are included.
A constant struggle for teachers hoping to include a component of
humor competency training in the language teaching curriculum is

14
the availability and appropriateness of materials. In his chapter
“Junior High English Textbook Interactional Humor: Pragmatic
Possibilities,” Scott Gardner provides a thorough overview of to what
extent interactional humor is included in existing English language
teaching textbooks. He then offers practical suggestions on how
these humor instances can help teachers promote L2 pragmatic
competence in their students, such as by tasking students with
analyzing the style and purpose of humor found in textbook
dialogues.
An important example of English interactional humor in humor
competency training is joke telling, as ELLs often struggle to respond
to jokes that they cannot understand. Nadezda Pimenova
experienced this confusion firsthand as an international student from
Russia in the United States and uses this experience as the basis for
her chapter “Reading Jokes in English: How English Language
Learners Appreciate and Comprehend Humor.” Her chapter focuses
on her investigation of how English language learners comprehend
humor when reading different jokes in English.
The book concludes with Part III, “Explicit Humor Competency
Training.” In the four chapters of this section, contributors summarize
their efforts to design and evaluate the efficacy of humor
competency training in English language teaching.
One of the most complicated aspects of humor for ELLs to grasp
is when there is incongruity between the literal meaning and true
intent of English words. In their chapter “Humor Competency
Training for Sarcasm and Jocularity,” Caleb Prichard and John
Rucynski Jr. explore humor training techniques for helping learners
to better recognize the use of verbal irony. As prosodic, non-verbal,
and lexical markers differ across languages and not all cultures use
verbal irony as frequently, this chapter offers classroom-tested tips
for helping learners better recognize this complex aspect of the
humor barrier.
In his chapter “Theory, Content Knowledge, Input, and Output:
Elements in the Teaching and Learning of Humor Competence,”
Richard J. Hodson provides an overview of several experiments he
conducted to help his learners overcome the humor barrier. In

15
addition to the comprehension and appreciation of English humor,
Hodson also describes activities designed to give learners the
opportunity to produce humor in the target language. He carries this
out be carefully explaining the structure of English jokes, then
tasking students with rewriting the cultural content.
As previously mentioned, one important aspect of humor
competency training is to provide ongoing support for learners. In her
chapter “Using Diaries to Research and Develop Humor
Competence in a Second Language,” Maria Petkova provides an
overview of how journal writing is one way for instructors to gain
valuable insights into their learners’ comprehension and views of
English humor. Learners’ writing on differences between how humor
is used in the United States and their native culture helped to inform
in-class humor competency training.
As with verbal irony, satire is a form of humor not prevalent in all
cultures, so it can cause great confusion for ELLs, especially
considering the incongruity between literal meaning and intended
message. In the chapter “Training English Language Learners to
Recognize English Satirical News,” John Rucynski Jr. and Caleb
Prichard discuss the results of their experiments designed to help
learners detect satirical news. As a starting point for helping students
in an English reading course identify this popular form of English
humor, the authors designed a series of tests that randomly mix
English satirical news headlines and blurbs with real, but offbeat
news items.

CONCLUSION

This introduction started with an anecdote that seemed to serve as a

warning of what can go wrong when instructors attempt to use
humor in a language teaching context. As argued previously,
however, the pros of using and teaching about humor far outweigh
the cons. A deeper understanding of the humor of the English-
speaking world can empower ELLs to be more confident, creative,
and proficient English users.

16
 When we give presentations about humor at language teaching
conferences, we often start with the seemingly ironic words “We take
humor seriously.” Indeed, making humor competency training a
component of the language teaching curriculum is no simple task. As
Bell and Pomerantz (2016) so aptly warn “even the most engaging
lesson on humor loses its value if it is built on a shaky foundation!”
(179). Properly implementing a humor competency component into
the language teaching curriculum takes a great deal of research,
collection and/or creation of materials, and, most importantly, trial
and error.
We are extremely fortunate and grateful to have found a selection
of contributors who also take humor seriously. They share our
passion in that they do not merely want to provide their learners with
a laugh, but to equip them with the humor competency necessary to
become fully proficient English speakers. We see this volume as just
a first step in advancing the field of humor competency training in
English language education and we hope you enjoy the journey as
much as we have.

REFERENCES

Aboudan, Rima. 2009. “Laugh and Learn: Humor and Learning a

Second Language.” International Journal of Arts and Sciences 3,
no. 3: 90–99.
Askildson, Lance. 2005. “Effects of Humor in the Language
Classroom: Humor as a Pedagogical Tool in Theory and
Practice.” The Arizona Working Papers in Second Language
Acquisition and Teaching 12: 45–61.
Bell, Nancy D. 2006. “Interactional Adjustments in Humorous
Intercultural Communication.” Intercultural Pragmatics 3, no. 1:
1–28. https://doi.org/10.1515/IP.2006.001.
———. 2009. “Responses to Failed Humor.” Journal of Pragmatics
41: 1825–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.10.010.
———. 2011. “Humor Scholarship and TESOL: Applying Findings
and Establishing a Research Agenda.” TESOL Quarterly 45, no.

17
 1: 134–59.
Bell, Nancy D., and Anne Pomerantz. 2016. Humor in the
Classroom: A Guide for Language Teachers and Educational
Researchers. New York: Routledge.
Cann, Arnie, Lawrence G. Calhoun, and Janet S. Banks. 1997. “On
the Role of Humor Appreciation in Interpersonal Attraction: It’s No
Joking Matter.” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research
10, no. 1: 77–90. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1997.10.1.77.
Cheang, Henry S., and Marc D. Pell. 2011. “Recognizing Sarcasm
without Language: A Cross-Linguistic Study of English and
Cantonese.” Pragmatics and Cognition 19, no. 2: 203–23.
https://secureweb.mcgill.ca/pell_lab/files/pell_lab/cheng__pell_20
11.pdf.
Claire, Elizabeth. 1984. What’s So Funny? An International Student’s
Introduction to American Humor. Virginia Beach, VA: Eardly
Publications.
Deneire, Marc. 1995. “Humor and Foreign Language Teaching.”
Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 8, no. 3: 285–
98. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1995.8.3.285.
Gibbs, Raymond W., and Herbert L. Colston. 2002. “The Risk and
Rewards of Ironic Communication.” In Say Not to Say: New
Perspectives on Miscommunication, edited by Luigi Anolli, Rita
Ciceri, and Giuseppe Riva, 181–94. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Hayati, A. Majid, Zohreh Gooniband Shooshtari and Nahid Shakeri.
2011. “Using Humorous Texts in Improving Reading
Comprehension of EFL Learners.” Theory and Practice in
Language Studies 1, no. 6: 652–51. doi:10.4304/tpls.1.6.652-
661.
Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers. 1944. “Accentuate the
Positive.” Capitol Records, catalog no. 180.
Lems, Kristin. 2013. “Laughing All the Way: Teaching English Using
Puns.” English Teaching Forum 51, no. 26–33.
Neff, Peter, and John Rucynski. 2017. “Japanese Perceptions of
Humor in the English Language Classroom.” Humor: International
Journal of Humor Research 30, no. 3: 279–301.
https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2016-0066.

18
Olajoke, Akinkurolere Susan. 2013. “Students’ Perception on the
Use of Humor in the Teaching of English as a Second Language
in Nigeria.” International Education Research 1, no. 2: 65–73.
Prichard, Caleb, and John Rucynski Jr. 2018. “Second Language
Learners’ Ability to Detect Satirical News and the Effect of Humor
Competency Training.” TESOL Journal 10, no. 1: e366.
https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.366.
Rafiee, Marzieh, Zohre Kassaian, and Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi.
2010. “The Application of Humorous Song in EFL Classrooms
and Its Effects on Listening Comprehension.” English Language
Teaching 3, no. 4: 100–8.
Shively, Rachel L. 2013. “Learning to be Funny in Spanish During
Study Abroad: L2 Humor Development.” The Modern Language
Journal 97, no. 4: 930–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-
4781.2013.12043.x.
Wulf, Douglas. 2010. “A Humor Competence Curriculum.” TESOL
Quarterly 44, no. 1: 155–69.
https://doi.org/10.5054/tq.2010.215250.
Ziyaeemehr, Ali, and Vijay Kumar. 2014. “The Relationship between
Instructor Humor Orientation and Students’ Report on Second
Language Learning.” International Journal of Instruction 7, no. 1.

19
 Part I

HUMOR COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT

OUTSIDE THE CLASS

20
 Chapter 1

Working Backward from Funny

Preparing Language Learners to Use Humor in

Intercultural Encounters

Anne Pomerantz

In 2015, Moroccan-born, French comedian Gad Elmaleh took his

French stand-up act to the United States of America. Known as the
Jerry Seinfeld of France for his witty observations of everyday life,
Elmaleh is credited with introducing French audiences to American-
style stand-up routines, albeit with a French spin. Why, then, would
this award-winning, so famous he gets stopped on the street,
multilingual (French-Arabic-Hebrew-English) comic want to deliver
his act to a new audience? For the challenge, Elmaleh told
interviewers at the start of his venture.1 In the United States, he
would be performing in English—the language in his plurilingual
repertoire in which he felt the least comfortable communicating—for
a largely American audience used to a certain style of stand-up
comedy. Could he make his act work across various, complex, and
likely unpredictable, linguistic and cultural borders?
While few language learners aspire to do stand-up comedy
professionally in their new language, scholarly accounts of second
language development have long illustrated that being recognized as
funny and making others laugh within and through an additional
language is something that some learners desire and actively work
toward in their day-to-day interactions (e.g., Bell 2005; Davies 2003;
Shively 2013, 2018). Spontaneous turns at interactional humor, both
in person and online, can serve as displays of a speaker’s

21
intelligence, quick-wittedness, and good cheer. Indeed, for some
learners, being funny is a central part of who they are socially and
psychologically and not being able to enact this publicly is akin to
losing a part of themselves (Bell 2005). Likewise, as sociolinguists
have aptly demonstrated, interactional humor is a key resource for
deftly accomplishing an array of social functions, from building
rapport and easing tensions, to leveling critiques and challenging
relations of power (e.g., Norrick 1993; Holmes 2000; Tsakona and
Chovanec 2018).
Yet, as research on the use of humor by second language users
(see Bell and Pomerantz 2015 for review) and Elmaleh’s experience
illustrate, being funny in an additional language is not as simple as
translating one’s humorous utterances to a new idiom. As Elmaleh
told Zach McDermott in an interview on This American Life,2 cultural
knowledge, genre, language forms, timing, and prosody are just
some of the many factors that must be considered in making his
humor meaningful and, more important, funny to an English-
speaking, yet ethnically diverse and potentially bi/multilingual, US
audience. As anyone who has ever tried to be funny in conversation
or online knows, there is no “one-size-fits-all” recipe for getting a
laugh. Producing humor requires the flexible and contextually
contingent cobbling together of various communicative resources—
some formulaic and rehearsed, others novel and created on the spot
—and there is no guarantee, no matter how good the performance,
that recipients will understand, acknowledge, or appreciate its
funniness.
What, then, might Gad Elmaleh’s story have to offer to language
educators—aside from hope that additional language users can
become successful stand-up comedians in their L2? Approaches to
teaching for humor competence have tended to focus on the
receptive dimensions of language in use (e.g., Hodson 2014; Kim
and Lantolf 2016; Prichard and Rucynski 2018; Wulf 2010). That is,
they have focused on helping learners identify, comprehend,
appreciate, and reflect on the meanings created within and through
particular instances of humor. In a word, they have tended to

22
foreground what people need to know in order to arrive at particular
interpretations.
Teaching people to use humor interactionally, however, provides
an additional entry point. It asks us to consider what communicative
resources, at what levels of language, might be used to achieve the
goal of making someone else identify, comprehend, acknowledge,
and hopefully appreciate an utterance or text as humorous. That is,
instead of asking What social meaning(s) are being constructed
here? We might take humor as our starting point and ask How do we
create “funny” as a possible social meaning here? In other words,
focusing on teaching humor production pushes us to work backward
from funny and to ask how we get there communicatively.
In this chapter, I discuss how pedagogical activities that position
learners as creators and enactors of interactional humor, rather than
solely interpreters or recipients of humorous discourse, can
contribute to ongoing work on developing approaches to humor
competence training. To this end, I draw on both Elmaleh’s story and
research on additional language use to highlight aspects of
successful humor production that are both isolatable and amenable
to instruction. In so doing, I argue that an approach that asks us to
work backward from funny resonates with scholarly efforts to specify
what it takes to communicate successfully and with intention across
multiple linguistic and cultural frontiers simultaneously. That is, it
brings humor squarely into discussions about intercultural
communication. Thus, in addition to contributing to this volume’s aim
of developing robust approaches to humor competency training, my
chapter shows how a focus on doing humor and being funny can add
to ongoing work in language education on articulating the
dimensions of intercultural competence.

FUNNY BY DESIGN

Whereas Elmaleh’s story is by no means representative of the

experiences of typical language learners who engage in interactional
humor spontaneously, it does highlight the communicative

23
dimensions of being funny from the perspective of a professional,
and highly successful, transnational comedian—a perspective that is
missing from research on additional language use. Indeed, Elmaleh
talks openly and in detail about his work with a language coach in
New York City who helped him to refine aspects of his act. These
adjustments, Elmaleh notes, were crucial to help him get laughs from
English-speaking audiences and, ultimately, landed him a multi-city
tour and several shows on Netflix. Thus, his story provides some
guidance as to what aspects of language and interaction—including
topics, genres, lexical choices, and intonation—might be implicated
as humorous in the construction of a given utterance.
Moreover, rather than offering prescriptions, Elmaleh’s story can
also help language educators think about how they might help
language learners recognize the meaning-making potential of
particular communicative resources and how they might go about
bringing these elements together for the purpose of amusing others.
The research literature consists primarily of detailed descriptions of
learners using humor of their own accord and without explicit
instruction both in and out of the classroom (e.g., Bell 2005; Broner
and Tarone 2001; Bushnell 2009; Davies 2003; Garland 2010;
Moody 2014; Pomerantz and Bell 2007, 2011; Shardakova 2016;
Shively 2013, 2018). Reading this literature in the context of
Elmaleh’s story can help language educators identify what
instructional activities and experiences might help learners become
more confident, comfortable, and successful engagers in
communication that is both intended to amuse and intended to
confer on the speaker the identity of being funny or witty. In the
sections that follow, I discuss four areas of humor production that
both Elmaleh and researchers have identified as important.

Creating, Establishing, and Checking for Shared

Knowledge

As Elmaleh notes, a joke about serving ice water to guests in overly

air-conditioned US restaurants was a big hit in France, where room

24
temperature water and less aggressive cooling are the norm, but it
fell flat among Americans who did not understand or perhaps did not
appreciate the irony of serving drinks meant to cool in an already
very cold room. Whereas efforts aimed at humor identification and
comprehension have focused on familiarizing language learners with
the cultural knowledge and logical mechanisms necessary to identify,
comprehend, and appreciate particular instances of humor, such
work has also illustrated just how large and seemingly endless a task
this might be (e.g., Hodson 2014; Kim and Lantolf 2016; Prichard
and Rucynski 2018; Wulf 2010).
In contrast, research on spontaneous humor by language learners
suggests that language educators might also focus their efforts on
highlighting the ways that people go about creating shared
knowledge, establishing whether knowledge is shared, or checking
for familiarity with the logical mechanism at play in a particular
attempt at conversational humor. For example, much of the research
on language learners’ spontaneous uses of humor, both in and out of
the classroom, has shown that learners—and in particular those with
less developed proficiency—often rely on aspects of the immediate
interactional context as affordances for producing humor as a way to
ensure that knowledge is shared (e.g., Bell 2005; Broner and Tarone
2001; Bushnell 2009; Pomerantz and Bell 2007, 2011).
Davies (2003), for instance, recounted an episode in which
learners of English were discussing idiomatic expressions with their
monolingual English-speaking peers. In Davies’ example, a
monolingual English speaker had asked for “examples of funny
things that happened in trying to communicate with Americans”
(1371). As one Indonesian learner laughingly described his
confusion when confronted with the question what’s up?, a Japanese
learner exploited the humorous frame emerging during the
storytelling to coin a new idiom, what’s down? Among features of this
interaction, Davies noted how the Japanese learner was able to use
the semantic opposition between the prepositions up and down to
humorously mock the arbitrariness of idiomatic expressions in
English. This bit of humor, Davies observed, was tied to the local

25
interactional context and made possible by the fact that the idiom,
what’s up, was the focus of the Indonesian learner’s story.
In addition to capitalizing on the immediate context, learners might
also be encouraged to think about what they know about their
interlocutors and their shared interactional histories. For example,
Shively (2013) highlighted deepening friendships and the amount of
time spent with particular peers as responsible, at least in part, for
one learner’s increasingly successful efforts to do humor in Spanish
during a study abroad program. These factors, Shively argued, led to
the growth of “shared knowledge about each other’s experiences,
attitudes, and [interactional] styles” (942) and provided a base for
producing novel instances of humor. But beyond familiarity, teachers
might also help learners develop strategies for identifying or
establishing shared knowledge prior to the humorous moment itself.
Elmaleh himself references this practice, as he describes modifying
the sequential ordering of jokes to provide enough in-the-moment
context to increase the chance of jokes being perceived as funny.
Yet, he also acknowledges that, no matter how much shared
knowledge he builds, some jokes just don’t seem to fly.

Playing to and with Expectations

When Elmaleh took his stand-up routine to North America, he quickly

discovered that his new audience was surprised by the physicality of
his performance. Whereas in France it is common for comics to act
out humorous stories and jokes as they relate them, this practice
struck his new public as odd and unexpected. It was not so much
that his new audiences did not understand or appreciate his
tendency to embody his comedy, but rather that they were not
accustomed to seeing this kind of activity in a performance billed as
stand-up comedy. Their underlying assumptions and expectations
about genre were challenged. Hyland (2008) defines genre as the
ways in which “writers typically use language to respond to recurring
situations,” arguing that “texts are most successful when they
employ conventions that other members of the community find

26
familiar and convincing” (543). The concept of genre, however, need
not be limited to written texts. As linguistic anthropologists have long
argued, oral interactions are also guided by expectations around the
goal, sequence, participant roles, and interactional rights and
responsibilities, as well as by assumptions about what should or
should not be said and how (see Rampton, Maybin, and Roberts
2015 for discussion). Shively (2013), for example, found that one
learner’s attempts to use humor with Spanish-speaking peers were
more successful when he moved away from the genre of deadpan
humor and began to use other, more locally recognizable, genres,
like the humorous revoicing of others’ utterances. Likewise, Moalla
(2015) found that in interactions between Tunisian learners of
English and users of English from the United States, both groups
favored affiliative humor over forms of humor that were more dis-
affiliative in form and function.
While such findings might lead language educators to focus on
what genres of humor typically circulate in particular communities
and to instruct learners on what might constitute “conventional”
humor use, such an approach has its limits. On the one hand, it is
useful for teaching learners how to recognize, comprehend, and
produce formulaic kinds of humor, like bar jokes (i.e., a man walks
into a bar…). In terms of reception, a genre approach can help
learners recognize the signaling of a humor frame and to look for a
humorous interpretation. In terms of production, a genre approach
can also give learners access to clusters of communicative
resources that are conventionally associated with cuing humor and
thus help them use these pre-existing frames for signaling and
crafting novel instances of humor use (see Bell 2012 for discussion).
On the other hand, a genre approach must not be understood as
offering rigid prescriptions, because humor is often produced by
violating genre expectations. Thus, metapragmatic awareness and
learner agency must enter the picture, as language learners come to
terms with the effects of manipulating or violating expectations
around conventional aspects of language use. As Bell (2012),
quoting Wray, put it:

27
 In many instances, the ability to playfully manipulate—and understand the
playful manipulation of—formulaic strings will indeed demonstrate that the
user is “sensitive not only to what is possible, but also what is likely” (Wray
2008, 240). This ability allows the user to create or comprehend language
that is “sufficiently right to be acceptable but sufficiently wrong to cause
amusement” (Wray 2008, 240). (Bell 2012, 199)

Indeed, it is important to note that Elmaleh did not rid his stand-up
act of its physical elements just because North American audiences
were not used to this kind of performance. Instead, he played on this
difference as a strength. In playing with the genre of stand-up
comedy and its various nationally situated iterations, Elmaleh was
able to craft a style that was at once familiar enough to be
recognized as local form of comedy and strange enough to be
attention-getting and potentially amusing. Moreover, he was able to
find a way of being funny that was consistent with not only who he
wanted to be in English, but also how he saw himself as funny in
French.
Indeed, Elmaleh’s story is instructive here, as it foregrounds the
importance of considering whether and to what extent being funny
accords with learners’ actual and aspirational identities. Whereas
some learners may consider themselves funny people and desire to
enact this kind of identity within and through an additional language,
others may not. Thus, the relationship between humorous language
use and leaner identities cannot be ignored in planning instruction. In
addition, teachers might want to stress that being funny in an
additional language may require engagement in forms of humor that
feel personally or culturally strange or uncomfortable. Like Elmaleh,
learners may need to make some changes to their ways of being
funny or take some risks in order to (eventually) get the responses
they desire (see the chapter by Ramirez de Arellano in this volume
for more on humor competency and cultural adjustment).

Attending to the End Game: Making Intentional

Repertoire Choices

28
An additional aspect of Elmaleh’s backstage preparation concerns
the work he did with a language coach in New York City. Elmaleh
noted that he spent approximately two hours per day with this
educator, refining his communicative choices. For example, in a joke
about his childhood, Elmaleh worked with the coach to figure out
what tense/aspect markers to put on the main verb in order to
convey the precise meaning he was aiming for in the set up. He
credits this intensive, language-focused work in helping him get
North American audiences to laugh.
This attention to fine-grained communicative choices echoes
accounts of what happens when teachers encourage learners to
write humorous texts in monolingual contexts. For example, Hogue
(2011) reported that students in her university writing course were
particularly deliberate in their language choices when the resulting
product included the goal of amusing readers. Moreover, Moalla
(2015) found that when people desire to use humor across what they
perceive to be salient linguistic or cultural borders, they rely on
discourse staging as a way to prepare for and potentially mitigate the
potential for misunderstanding or lack of humor appreciation in
interaction and thus adjust their utterances accordingly. Moalla noted
that the participants in her study “reported to think ahead before
exchanging humor with someone from another culture,” taking into
account “the hearer’s point of view and possible reactions to their
speech” (2015, 373). Likewise, she found that participants also drew
on an array of what she called “accommodation strategies,” including
repetition, explanations, and the overt contextualization of their
utterances as humorous through laughter, smiles, and direct
references (e.g., “here’s something funny”) as a way to pre-empt the
possibility of failed humor.
Thus, both Elmaleh’s story and research on humor suggest a need
for language-focused instruction that centers on meaning and
audience reception rather than on correctness or conformity. Instead
of asking, is this the right communicative repertoire element to use?
We should be asking, will the use of this repertoire element here and
now make people laugh? While a positive response cannot be
guaranteed, shifting the instructional focus from correctness to

29
meaning has implications not only for developing learners’
capabilities with respect to humor but also for their overall
understanding of intercultural communication more broadly.

Focusing on Delivery: Pronunciation and Timing

A final lesson from Elmaleh’s story relates to pronunciation and

timing. As Elmaleh noted, successful oral humor relies, in part, on
the ability to construct contrasts by carefully manipulating stress,
syllable length, juncture, pauses, and other meaningful phonetic
resources. For a professional comic, this means paying rigorous
attention to and rehearsing the delivery of every joke to make the
humorous juxtapositions stand out within the ongoing stream of talk.
Again, much like in the preceding sections, attention to pronunciation
from a humor perspective puts the emphasis on the listener and not
some idealized notion about correctness. In line with intercultural
approaches to language education, helping people be funny in an
additional language is not about teaching them to mimic the
pronunciation patterns of native speakers, but rather about helping
them construct their utterances in ways that are comprehensible and
meaningful to others.
Indeed, Elmaleh’s story echoes calls from contemporary work on
pronunciation teaching in English language education, which has
increasingly urged educators to focus on issues of intelligibility and
comprehensibility within particular interactional contexts, rather than
some externally defined notion of “nativeness” or correctness (see
Ketabi and Saeb 2015 for review). For example, Murphy (2014)
reported on a study in which he explored the possibility of “non-
native” role models for pronunciation teaching. Inspired by an
interview on US television with the Spanish actor Javier Bardem,
Murphy developed a questionnaire for experienced language
educators to assess whether Bardem’s speech could serve as an
exemplar text for pronunciation teaching in particular settings. Briefly,
Murphy’s questionnaire focused on aspects of Bardem’s speech that
past research had identified as contributing to intelligibility and

30
comprehensibility, including topic; degree of deviation from what
listeners considered a “familiar” accent; ease/difficulty of
understanding content of talk; how much energy listeners had to
expend to understand a speaker; rate of speech; use of “thought
groups, rhythm, prominence (i.e., sentence-level stress), and
contrastive stress; clarity of word endings; uses of facial
expressions, body language, intonation, clarifications; and clarity of
sound segments” (263).
Whereas Murphy’s emphasis was on assessing the pedagogical
suitability of the Bardem speech in terms of “what he does well”
(262), one might imagine instructional activities that help learners
identify and improve aspects of their pronunciation based on the
funniness of their delivery. Indeed, Smorenburg, Rodd, and Chen
(2015) offer one such example, as they provided Dutch learners of
English with explicit access to a training program intended to
increase their ability to produce recognizable instances of a type of
humor—namely, sarcasm. The training, which focused on rate of
speech, loudness, pitch range, and emphasis, included both
exposure to recorded examples and opportunities to practice using a
software program that documented pitch contour. They also received
explicit feedback from the study authors on their ability to
recognizably produce sarcasm. Smorenburg et al. found a positive
effect for the training, suggesting that focused attention on issues of
pronunciation can increase the likelihood of success with respect to
learners’ intent to be funny.
Beyond the enunciation of particular sounds and contrasts,
however, the issue of timing bears mention as well. Here, it is worth
bringing in the voice of John C. Reilly, the actor who plays Oliver
Hardy in Stan & Ollie, the film about the comedy duo Laurel and
Hardy.3 In the following quotation, taken from an interview with Dave
Davies on the radio program Fresh Air, Reilly observes the
choreography that goes into producing physical comedy:
And in order to get that comedy to look right so it just looks like we’re just
accidentally missing each other 15 times in a row (laughter)—in order to do
that, it requires this diligence with the timing. And it’s almost like a ballet or

31
 a piece of music that you’re playing when you’re doing it because what
looks like very nonchalant just kind of like normal human behavior from the
outside, inside is Steve and I going, five, four, three, two, turn. Wait—two,
three, turn—right? So it’s almost like this choreographed thing in our mind.

Whereas Reilly’s comments describe the work he and his fellow

actor had to do in order to produce a credible rendition of a Laurel
and Hardy routine that was predicated on coordination, they echo
findings by humor researchers that report on the frustration language
learners feel with regard to the need to produce humorous
utterances in ways that keep pace with the ongoing flow of
interaction (e.g., Shively 2013, 2018) and will be understood as
efforts to be funny. Thus, pedagogical activities that focus on turn-
taking patterns in interaction, as well as strategies for getting a turn
at talk and maintaining the floor, may also help learners to develop
the interactional resources necessary for engaging in spontaneous
humor.

HUMOR AND INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCY

While research on efforts to both specify what humor competency

might entail and how it might be facilitated through instruction is still
in its infancy, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider how these
lines of inquiry might intersect with and inform a much larger body of
scholarship in language education: research on intercultural
competence. The latter, like scholarship on humor competency, aims
to specify what knowledge, skills, and attitudes learners might draw
on to communicate successfully and with intention across multiple
and perhaps unanticipated linguistic and cultural frontiers, albeit on a
much larger scale. Whereas the goal of humor research is to look
specifically at how learners identify, comprehend, produce, and
acknowledge/appreciate instances of communication that
intentionally (or unintentionally) produce a feeling of mirth in oneself
or others, the goal of research on inter-cultural competence has a
broader purview. It is aimed at specifying the various competencies
learners might draw on to handle a limitless array of social situations,

32
functions, actions, intentions, and identities in new or unfamiliar
settings. Yet, in bringing these two lines of inquiry together, it is clear
that they both entail a shift from things one needs to know in order to
communicate in ways that are in line with one’s intentions and
identity aspirations, to how one might bring together particular
communicative repertoire elements to achieve particular meanings
and enact particular identities. Thus, I now turn to what research on
language teaching from an intercultural perspective might offer to
those interested in humor competence training and to what humor
scholars might offer to those working from an intercultural
perspective in language education.

REFLECTING ON THE STATE OF PLAY: WHERE ARE WE

AS LANGUAGE EDUCATORS?

Reflecting on the contemporary state of language education,

Kramsch (2014) observed that instruction has never been more
“interactive and imaginative” than it is today. Gone (well, mostly
gone) are the days of senseless choral repetition and endless
grammar drills. In their stead, teachers have developed an array of
communicative pedagogies to engage learners in meaningful
interaction in both face-to-face and online environments, including
humor. In many classrooms, the development of communicative
competence has become the goal, despite ongoing scholarly
debates about what, precisely, communicative competence might
entail (e.g., Leung 2005). Yet, despite these instructional and
theoretical advances, growing awareness of the inadequacy of
essentialist models of culture, mass migration, and rapid
technological changes to the ways in which we communicate have
left some language educators wondering “what they are supposed to
teach” and “what real world situations” they are preparing learners to
navigate (Kramsch 2014, 296), as many of the communicative forms,
routines, and rules that have long been the staple of language
instruction seem too scripted and too prescriptive for today. It is

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within this context that calls for humor competence training have
arisen.

From Language to Communicative Repertoire

In an effort to specify the “what” of language education in a changing

world, some applied linguists have called for an approach to
instruction that takes an intercultural perspective (e.g., Kramsch
2011; Liddicoat and Scarino 2013; Risager 2006, 2007),
foregrounding and leading to the development of learners’
intercultural competence (Baker 2011; Byram 1997) or what
Kramsch (2006) referred to as symbolic competence. Such a
perspective requires educators to rethink not only how they
understand and orient to fundamental concepts in their practice, like
language and culture, but also how they conceive of the goals of
language education.
An intercultural perspective begins from the premise that language
is more than a finite and unchanging set of linguistic forms and rules
for use. As comedians—and really anyone who has tried to use
humor—know, language must be understood as multiple, complex,
and dynamic, situated within particular contexts of use, and subject
to various social and ideological forces. There is not one unitary or
primordial variety of language to be acquired, but rather various
socially situated communicative repertoire elements that cohere
together with different degrees of fixity (Douglas Fir Group 2016).
Briefly, Rymes (2014) defined a communicative repertoire as the
“collection of ways individuals use language and other means of
communication (gestures, dress, posture, accessories) to function
effectively in the multiple communities in which they participate” (9–
10). From this perspective, communication becomes a matter of
assembling various repertoire elements to create various kinds of
socially situated meanings in both conventional and unexpected
ways. Such a shift pushes teachers and learners to think about acts
of language use in terms of meaning, perlocutionary effect (i.e., the
effect it has on the recipient—amusement, anger, etc.), and

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aesthetics, in addition to grammatical conventionality and “cultural
appropriateness.” Indeed, as Kramsch (2008), citing an earlier 2006
piece, noted,
social actors in multilingual settings, even if they are non-native speakers
of the languages they use, seem to activate more than a communicative
competence that would enable them to communicate accurately, effectively
and appropriately with one another. They seem to display a particularly
acute ability to play with various linguistic codes and with the various
spatial and temporal resonances of these codes. I have called this
competence symbolic competence (Kramsch 2006). (Kramsch 2008, 400).

Such a perspective asks language teachers to concern themselves

not only with the referential or denotational aspects of meaning in
language, but also with social, emotional, historical, and aesthetic
meanings that emerge in every act of language use. This expanded
view of language and of communication is precisely the one that
comes to the fore when people engage with and in humor, as they
must consider not only their intentions, but also the effects of their
utterances (Bell and Pomerantz 2014).
Indeed, Elmaleh speaks to this point when he describes the failure
he experienced when he tried to translate a joke that relies on the
double meaning of the verb violer in a colloquial expression in
French. In France, when one’s house has been robbed, it is common
to use the expression je me son viole (“I feel like I’ve been violated”).
The same verb (violer) can also mean rape. When Elmaleh tried to
this double meaning as the seed for a joke—a strategy that was
successful with French-speaking audiences—he was met with icy
silence. It was not that English-speakers did not understand the
double-meaning of violer. They did. What Elmaleh failed to anticipate
was that the negative connotations of the word rape in English were
much stronger than the negative connotations of violer in French. His
North American audience could not countenance this joke, even
when he tried to explain it. Some topics, like rape, or genres of
humor, like rape jokes, are embedded in larger cultural/ideological
frameworks that make them difficult candidates for lighthearted
humor.

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From Having to Doing Culture

An intercultural perspective also requires language educators to

rethink what they mean by culture and culture teaching. Within
language education, culture has been traditionally understood as
coterminous with particular nations (one language-one country-one
people) and in terms of the 5Fs: food, festivals, fashion, flags,
famous people, or more recently and robustly, the 3Ps: products,
practices, and perspectives (Cutshall 2012). Yet, such views of
culture, particularly when they are brought into the classroom, often
presuppose or imply that the boundaries between cultures are clear
and that cultural practices and values are shared uniformly across
the group and not subject to change or contestation. Indeed, even
when language educators take pains to recognize the “small
cultures” (Holliday 1999) within larger national groups (e.g.,
Republicans vs. Democrats), they often present these groups in
similarly essentialist and uniform ways. That is, rather than
challenging the underlying conception of what culture is, complexity
and nuance are introduced into the discussion by dividing large
cultures into smaller and smaller units. This is evidenced within
language textbooks whose attempts to present, for example, the
diversity of the Hispanophone or Francophone world, often fall prey
to the same criticisms that pushed them to consider language users
beyond nations like Spain, Mexico, and France in the first place.
Thus, in keeping with this perspective, arguments in favor of
teaching culture in language education have often begun from the
premise that there are intrinsic and unwavering cultural differences
that impede communication or at least make communication across
perceived cultural borders fraught with problems (Piller 2007).
Hence, culture teaching often takes the form of presenting facts
about a group’s homogeneous and unwavering beliefs, values, and
practices in order to help learners avoid or mitigate
misunderstanding and social gaffes. Learners are deemed culturally
competent to the degree to which they are able to put this knowledge
into practice in ways that illustrate their familiarity with and faith in

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the value of such bits of information (e.g., never discuss politics,
money, or religion with Americans).
Yet, as Elmaleh’s experience of bringing his French comedy
routine to US audiences reminds us, just knowing what topics might
be conventionally considered funny or not funny across national or
social borders is not enough. Like culture, people’s identification,
comprehension, production, and appreciation of humor is at once
shared and idiosyncratic. One can make predictions about whether
certain kinds of people, depending on their histories, experiences,
and social locations, will be more likely to find a certain utterance or
text funny, but one can never know until after the fact whether a
particular instance of humor will cause mirth, offense, go undetected,
or fall flat (like the violer joke). Thus, experience with the shared yet
individualistic, predictable yet ultimately uncertain, nature of humor
can help learners go beyond the “us versus them” kind of thinking to
which culture and culture teaching are often subjected in language
education (Bell and Pomerantz 2014). Moreover, focusing on humor
can also bring to the fore the relationship between language use and
social identity. Whereas in some situations language users may
desire to communicate in ways that are unmarked and
unremarkable, conformity and appropriateness are not the only ways
of being in the world. To be intentionally funny—a high-status identity
in some social encounters—is to engage in behavior that is
unexpected or transgressive in some form or another. Focusing on
humor in language education can expand learners’ views of what
language is while also serving to recognize and promote learner
agency as it provides options for being that go beyond static and
essentialized notions of cultural appropriateness.

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