s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

Laughing at or with? Humor as no laughing (cultural) matter 83
mocked by the English. 21 What this specific character might be augmented by is
that, unlike is the case in other cultures, humor among the English is everpresent,
not only in defined humor acts (see, e.g., Fox 2005; Paxman 1999
/1997/). As Fox (2005) asserts, perhaps the English are not joking all the time,
but are constantly ready for a joke. Therefore, the first difficulty encountered by
the non-English speakers in understanding English jokes and sketches lies in
recognizing a particular communicative act as humor, and in differentiating it
from other, more bona-fide everyday discourses. My supposition is that English
humorous discourse is the more difficult to foreigners, because of this different
status with respect to culture. In the research intended for the British Isles,
therefore, humor in Figure 1 22 would have to be re-positioned in order to correspond
better to the English culture. The assumed direction of change can be
depicted as in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The re-positioning of humor for the English culture
To briefly recap the assumptions for the future study, humor in the English
culture is dammed for posing difficulties for foreigners from both perspectives
proposed by the ethnolinguistic approach to humor, i.e., linguistics and ethnology.
From the ethnological perspective, the problem is viewed as the result of
the English culture being a culture of humor, with the “tongue-in-cheek” approach
as a default mode of communication. This is the first stage at which the
joke reception might be impeded. The second difficulty for the non-English
might be explained from the linguistic perspective. English humor, the same
way as any other humor, is viewed as a culture-bearing and shaping device (see
the functions of humor in Section 2.2), thus it carries a selection of ethnolin-
21
22
This statement is based on the opinions a number of my Polish informants, as well as on my
own experience.
See Section 2.1.