Week 12. Mar 29. Enculturation; developing sociolinguistic competence; language play and humor

The title of Nancy D. Bell’s article, Exploring L2 language play as an aid to SLL: a case study of humour in NS-NNS interaction, made me anxious to read as I love humour. I was stunned by the analysis that Bell has done from the simple conversations between NS and NNS, so many clues. By the time I finished reading, recalling my experience of humour in L2 settings, however, humour is not that simple as far as NNSs are concerned. What stood out to me most was the  pragmatic feature of language play.

Kecskes (2014) stated that “Nonnative speakers almost always process the literal meaning of lexical units first, and if it does not match the context they go on trying to figure out the actual situational meaning (p. 195) whereas native speakers process literal, figurative, and both (Gibbs, 2002, Giora, 2003 as cited in Kecskes, 2014, p. 195). Humor is difficult for NNSs in the beginning because of their lack of vocabulary and skill how to read cues from the context, feeling nervous and of uncertainty. I assume that humorous and playful words might not be found in the 7000 words that one needs to have a conversation and they could mean something different. Even if NSs laugh at a joke or playful language exchange, NNSs are not really sure why. Unfortunately, that’s when they feel left out and isolated. According to Cook, language play has pragmatic function of social inclusion and/or exclusion (as cited in Bell, 2005, p. 102).

Belz and Reinhardt (2004) stated that proficiency as a symbolic resource in order to effect membership in social groups (as cited in Bell, 2005, p. 194). NNSs begin to notice humor and playful conversations more and get curious as they feel better about the target language with their good vocabulary size. Language learners are eager to learn slangs, idioms, and jokes at some point of their learning process because the language is alive whereas the one in classroom is academic and formal. Advanced NNSs feel comfortable being in a playful conversation because their grasp of what is being said and the cues from the context are high. Laughing together with NSs is really special, a feeling of ’Oneness’ that amplifies the joy. Enculturation is the process by which people learn the requirements of their surrounding culture and acquire values and behaviors appropriate or necessary in that culture (WIKI).

Humor and playful language not only aid NNSs to understand the target language better but to make the relationships between NSs and NNSs stronger. Humor is not only a tool to learn the language but the ticket to its group, community, and culture. It could be a challenge in the beginning but a big reward in the end. “Pragmatics socialization is a lifelong process.” (e. g., Duff 2003 cited in, Kecskes, 2014, p. 66) My endeavor to English language humor will never end.

 

References

Bell, N. D. (2005). Exploring L2 language play as an aid to SLL: A case study of humour

in NS–NNS interaction. Applied Linguistics, 26(2), 192-218.

 

Enculturation. (n.d.).  In Wiki online. Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enculturation
Kecskes, I. (2014). Intercultural pragmatics. New York, NY: Oxford.

6 thoughts on “Week 12. Mar 29. Enculturation; developing sociolinguistic competence; language play and humor”

  1. jarediha
    Reply

    Humor is something that also gets me going because I feel like when I can have fun and laugh at thing I tend to enjoy them more often. I currently am enrolled in a class where the professor created a humorous environment where I find myself enjoying the topics and subjects and find myself learning a lot more than in some of my other classes. I like how you said that humor is not only helpful for learning a language but its the ticket to a group, community and culture! Its like the universal grammar of laughter, laughter and happiness creates an environment for everyone that’s more enjoyable and creates a better learning environment in everything you do! great post!

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  2. arthiseri
    Reply

    I’ve been told many times by my non-native English speaking friends that they feel so integrated when they understand jokes and puns and anything that has a deeper meaning to it. I couldn’t imagine living around NSs that laughed and giggled all the time and I had no idea what was being said. That would make me feel like an outlier and in essence make me hate that the culture allows for such exclusion of NNSs. With or without consciously noticing, we all do this around NNSs and it’s something we should become more aware of and try to include them in conversations by speaking in a more neutral language.

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  3. camslanguageblog
    Reply

    Great citations of this weeks article in which the analysis of the NNS ability to process the L2 humor comes into play with comprehension and the use of it as a tool. Of course an L2 learner cannot fully use humor as a tool to explicitly learn a language, but may use it to get cues from social pragmatics and to use these to learn about the language’s unique humor and maybe apply further understanding of various aspects of the language is an interesting observation.
    Arthi I do agree in that if I am around people who dont let me in on a joke I would feel uncomfortable (which I have experienced when traveling abroad) but if that is the case I would not let that demotivate me. I would try to find a new group who would maybe explain jokes to me. (which I have done and found) Keep pushing and dont give up!

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