I have been watching this list with interest for some time now,
enjoying the repartee, and printing off screeds of messages,
supposedly for later reference. Now, it's time to join in....
Humour is an important part of our lives, and I find it difficult
to operate in the learning environment without humour. My premise
is that students learn better, enjoy a class, and have greater
interaction with others if there is shared laughter. But
here we strike a problem - does the humour of one person (or indeed
culture) relate to the humour of another (person or culture)?
The second question that is raised is, "What is the function of
humour?" At a recent conference in Communication, one speaker
discussed four different classifications of humour: cognition
("jumping" or cognitive reframing); incongruence ("bumping" or
smoothing out the unexpected); superiority ("lumping" or in-groups and
out-groups); and finally psychoanalysis ("dumping" when humour becomes
a coping mechanism).
The difficulty of cross-cultural humour is highlighted by the
following case, (though will you American's understand Kiwi
colloquilisms?):
...my Chinese student, wasa struggling with English, and needed to
resit a test. I wanted to affirm the correctness of his second
attempt so I ticked every answer as we moved down the page, saying as
I went, "Spot on, spot on, spot on." At the bottom of the page I
looked at this solemn young man and said, "Do you know what spot on
means?" " Yes", he replied, "It means the end of a sentence."
I cannot live without humour, but for it to be functional in a
training situation, I need to get it right!
And just for those of you who are waiting for a joke:
Do you know about the post modernist Mafia?
They make you an offer you can't understand.
SS
Sandy Millar
Manukau Institute of Technology
Private Bag 94006, MANUKAU, NZ.
email:
smillar@manukau.ac.nz