The Language Teacher
02 - 2003

"So, What's So Funny?":
Some Cross-Cultural Evaluations of Humorous Stories

Bill Teweles

Kwansei Gakuin University



Regina Barreca, editor of the Signet Book of American Humor, notes in her introduction that "The best humor isn't about jokes, it's about stories" (1999). As a number of my advanced students demonstrated in a writing/speaking assignment last year, student stories come from a variety of subjects and sources and may contain considerable wit and wisdom as well. I took some of their stories and had them read and rated by ten native and ten non-native speakers of English. Not surprisingly, preferences differed according to first language and cultural background.

Collecting the Humorous Stories

After presenting them with a humorous sketch as an example (from Viney & Viney, 1996; see Appendix B), I asked my students to create and record (on tape) their own humorous anecdotes of up to a page in length as a take-home assignment. The stories they returned to me varied in depth and range from the approximately two-minute "Mr. Baseball" (Story #1) and "Husband & Wife Quarrel" (Story #2) to a couple of stories exceeding ten minutes in length which had to be omitted due to space limitations. After appraising and giving the contributors some feedback on tape immediately following their spoken renderings of the stories, I asked the students to submit second drafts of their stories for further evaluation. I selected five stories based on effectiveness of delivery and clarity of content, and distributed them to ten advanced-level undergraduates and to a separate "control" group of ten native English speaking adults to rate. At the time, it was my feeling that Japanese speaking appraisers and English speaking appraisers would react to and rank the stories differently. This is basically what happened. (Story rankings are shown in Appendix C).

Two of the stories in particular, "Jealous Older Brother" (Story #3) and "Lemon Chuuhai (or Highball)" (Story #5), elicited decidedly mixed reactions among the raters. (All five stories are in Appendix A.)

While neither the Japanese students nor the native English speakers were required to give reasons or add comments, a number of them voluntarily added comments, which shed some light on what was found to be (or not to be) humorous. Regarding the somewhat bawdy tale "Jealous Older Brother" (Story #3), the following comments by Japanese students reveal why they tended to rate that story lower than the native speakers:

Conversely, the concept or title of "Lemon Chuuhai" (Story #5) did not translate well into English; thus that story was generally rated less favorably by the native English speaker (NS) respondents compared to the Japanese respondents. Other comments attesting to its overall low ranking follow:

This second NS story rater also offered a telling reason as to why the native speakers, in general, tended to rank "Jealous Older Brother" at or near the top. "[Story #3] worked better...and while most audiences would have trouble reconciling the humor of the ending with the child's intent to kill a baby, the writer seems to have the best grasp of how jokes work, build, etc."

In taking the extra step of having native and non-native English speaking readers appraise and rate the stories, I felt that more objectivity could be lent to the evaluation process. Although half of the Japanese student-evaluators were returnees or had lived overseas for several months/years, it became evident upon reading their comments that a sense of humor is both a personal and culture-bound entity.

Possible Classroom Applications

A number of educational ideas or discussion themes are suggested by the preceding stories. First of all, they can be used to explore the notion of a humorous or surprise ending (or in terms of "punchline value" for joke-like stories). Discussion-worthy points or writing topics suggested by the stories might also include the following:

Of course any discussion of humor and jokes could lead to examinations of cultural values and of what kinds of things are treated humorously and/or seriously by cultures around the world.

Conclusion

Humor, much like grammar, may be thought to possess universal elements, but in its actual expression it varies markedly from culture to culture, and ultimately from person to person. Although all of my students' submissions were sincere efforts to tell funny stories, their success at doing so ranked differently, as expected, according to personal variables, but also notably according to cultural variables. Perhaps a wider examination of a larger sample of "humorous stories" would yield more generalizable cultural patterns in humor and storytelling.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the students at Kwansei Gakuin University for their participation in this project and for showing an extra dose of good humor and patience throughout.

References

Barreca, R. (Ed.) (1999). The Signet book of American humor. East Rutherford, NJ: Penguin.
Viney, P., & Viney, K. (1996). Handshake. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Appendix A

In presenting the students' work, I would like to remind other EFL instructors that some types of humor evidently translate better than others or, as the Japanese are fond of saying, "\l\F" (jyuunin touiro--"to each his/her own"; lit. "ten people, ten colors")

Story #1: "Mr. Baseball"

He is a "hot dog" and very popular baseball player. Under any severe situation, he can make the team win. He's a true hero. In the baseball stadium, he can do anything he wants. He can hit. He can run. He can catch. And he can throw. However, he has a big problem. Out of the stadium, he can't do anything.
One day he couldn't find his baseball glove and every player and staff member were searching for it. It took a long time, and it was hard to find. Finally, he found his glove by himself. The baseball glove was in his back pocket.
Another day he went back home and his wife said to him, "Welcome back! But where's our son?" He had no idea. He said, "What do you mean?" She said, "This morning you brought our son to the stadium by car." He was very surprised and became pale. He said, "I forgot my son in the stadium. I came back home by train."

Story #2: "Husband & Wife Quarrel"

My husband and I quarreled as usual and did not talk to each other for more than a week. However, as long as we live together, it is necessary to exchange ideas about daily matters even if we do not want to talk. So, I started writing my comments on a piece of paper to show him. He also did the same thing when he wanted to tell me something. One day, he gave me a memo and it said that he had to go to a business trip tomorrow, so to wake him up at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning. Next morning he jumped out from the bed and said to me, "Why didn't you wake me up at 6:00 AM--it's already 7:00 AM!" I pointed to the memo that I left at his bedside table. That memo said, "It's 6:00 AM now."

Story #3: "Jealous Older Brother"

This is a very scary and sad story of a 7-year-old boy. He was an only child until he got to be 7 years old. He was very much spoiled by his parents and had their love all for himself. His Mom and Dad were always willing to give him anything he wanted. He was so spoiled with everything. But when he was 6, his Mom was pregnant and he was happy to have a brother/sister not yet knowing what it is like, but excited. When he was 7 years old, he had a brother. At first he was happy to have a brother. But things got tough as his parents always took care of the baby and did not spend time with him as much as they did before. He was so jealous and sometimes abused the baby when no one was watching. The abuse escalated as time went by. One day, the scary, crazy idea hit him. He thought, "If the baby is dead, I'll be the only child again."
He decided to kill his brother. He spent time thinking of how to put the plan into practice. One day he saw the baby drinking mother's milk from [his] mom's breast. He hit on this idea to put poison on [his] mother's nipples--then the baby will be dead when he drinks milk! Around midnight, he took poison from his father's consulting room (his father was a doctor) and put the poison on his mom's breast while she was asleep. He went back to his room and went to sleep wishing [for] his brother's death the next morning.
The next morning...he found his father dead!!

Story #4: "WC"

When I was a high school student, I became interested in English, because I liked my English teacher who was from England. I started to exchange diaries and it continued for one year until she went back to her country. One day she invited me and my friends to her house. She cooked dinner for us, and we played an English card game. I was enjoying [myself] very much. Suddenly, I wanted to go to a toilet, but I didn't know how ask where the toilet is in English. In Japanese, we usually say toire for toilet, but at that time I thought, "Toire is Japanese English. I don't want to use Japanese English." I wanted to speak perfect English to her, because she was my English teacher. So I hesitated in asking where the toilet is for a while. At last, I hit upon the best word. I remembered the word "WC". I believed it was the appropriate word for the toilet. Then, I thought, "What's the abbreviation for WC?" Oh yes! It's 'water closet.' I got it!" Then I said to her, "May I use your Water Closet?" To hear my strange English, she laughed and said, "M___, you mean the toilet, right? The toilet is over there." I was disappointed I made the mistake of choosing the wrong word, though I came to that conclusion after thinking everything through. All I could do was just say, "Thank you." After that, she explained to me, "We don't use 'water closet' now. It's old, that expression. You can just say, 'toilet.'" I was embarrassed to make such a mistake. But since then, I have mastered asking where the toilet is in English.

Story #5: "Lemon chuuhai"

When I was a university student, my friends and I had a Christmas party at a restaurant. We enjoyed eating and drinking. One of my friends said that she couldn't drink alcohol and was going to have oolong tea first. After finishing her tea, she said that she was interested in lemon chuuhai [highball], and she was going to have it next. She liked the lemon chuuhai very much. She said that this was very nice and she would like to drink one more glass. Although she said that she could not drink alcohol, she drank several glasses of chuuhai. She seemed to be so happy. Someone told her that chuuhai was not [a] soft drink; it was alcohol. But she did not understand what we said.
The next day, we asked her if she remembered what she did the previous night. She did not remember anything at all, but said that she had a bad headache. Also, we asked her what kind of drink lemon chuuhai was. She answered it was a kind of soft drink because it was made of lemon. As we expected, she did not know chuuhai was alcohol. We told her that lemon chuuhai was alcohol, but she did not believe that.
Next time we went to the restaurant, she ordered [a] cocktail, though she said that she couldn't drink alcohol. She had chuuhai again, too. She really liked those drinks. We told her that [a] cocktail was alcohol. But she said that this was sweet, so this was not alcohol. She believed that she had not drunken beer or sake and she could not drink alcohol, so the drinks were not alcohol to her. The next day, she did not remember anything at all. Later, she often ordered lemon chuuhai. We thought that she was the strongest in alcohol [of all].

(Note: Minor errors or omissions from the above stories have been edited to facilitate reading and rating--the author apologizes for any inaccuracies that may have occurred as a result.)

Appendix B

Sample Humorous Story Handout

[Story excerpted from Viney, P., & Viney, K. (1996). Handshake. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 100.]

A FUNNY STORY or PERSONAL ANECDOTE
Instructions: After reading the story below, write in what you consider to be the "punchline" (or humorous conclusion). For the next class, you will need to write out (and be ready to record on tape) your own funny story. It doesn't have to be full of laughs, but rather may reveal something that you learned or relate an amusing experience that you had. Three to five minutes should be quite sufficient for the recording (or approximately half a page on paper). Please remember that clear pronunciation and varied intonation are important to get the listener involved in the story.

Sample Story:
A man had bought a new car, and he was very proud of it. There was only one problem. There was an irritating noise--a rattle--in the front of the car. The man had taken the car to a garage several times, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it. After several months they found the problem and explained it to him. The man was a non-smoker. He used the ashtray to keep small change for car parks and parking meters. He kept several pounds in the ashtray in 20p and 10p coins. That was the cause of the rattle. They hadn't discovered this before, because every time the man had taken his car to the garage, he had removed the money from the ashtray. He didn't trust the mechanics--he thought they might steal it. The last time he took the car to the garage he forgot to remove the money.

(Identify the) PUNCHLINE:

Appendix C

STORY RANKINGS

Highest ranking = 1, lowest = 5; numbers given are composite

  Story #1Story #2 Story #3 Story #4 Story #5
Overall Ranking by Japanese Students29 = 2nd17 = 1st34 = 4th37 = 5th33 = 3rd

Number of respondents = 10

  Story #1Story #2 Story #3 Story #4 Story #5
Overall Ranking by Native English Speakers27 = 3rd21 = 1st26 =2nd37 = 4th39 = 5th

Number of respondents = 10


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