Before beginning an in-depth study of the concept of Humor,” I would think a definition of the word would be necessary. One of American college students’ favorite (but unfortunately, sometimes misleading) source of information, Wikipedia defines humor as “the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.” Another source, Dictionary.com defines it as “a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement.” In short, both Web sites refer to humor as a situation that is either funny or creating amusement.
In that case, does universal humor exist? Perhaps it does. But if it does, I can’t think of any at the moment… Can you?
Humor isn’t simply a situation but a compilation of cultures, views, beliefs and the way of understanding things of a certain geographic area that shares a similar ideology. In order to understand a situation to be funny or amusing, one also needs to understand how and what the creators of that humor are thinking. As a native South Korean who had to go through rigorous training in the English language during my younger academic years prior to coming to the States, I’ve heard many teachers define the standards of mastering a language and this was one of them. “There are two measurements to help you find out whether you’ve mastered a language or not. The first is to hear yourself sleep-talking in that language. The second is when you understand the humor of the language you’re studying and can actually make others laugh.” The point this teacher wanted to get across was that only when you can understand the humor, otherwise defined as the culture and the way people of another culture thinks, can you truly speak their language.
In other words, while universal humor may exist, it is also likely that different types of humor exists… Something that the people of a certain segment of culture would find amusing while people of other cultures may find the same material to be boring, random or even offensive.
Hopefully we will all getter a better sense of how humor is different according to culture as we spend more time studying for this project.
- Written by, Jae Ha
