Humour In ESL Classroom: A Literature Review

Humour as a teaching tool has a good potential to be used in language classrooms by offering a rich source of authentic linguistic and cultural input. Indeed, many researchers suggest the use of homour in the language classroom (Bell, 2009; Gomes de Matos, 1974; Trachtenberg, 1979, Maurice 1988 and Deneire 1995; Schmitz, 2002; Ziyaeemehr, Kumar and Abdullah, 2011). In fact, research has shown that the incorporation of humour into EFL classes have positive effects on learning (Askildson, 2005; Hayati, Shooshtari and Shakeri, 2011; Stroud, 2013).

However, understanding humour in a foreign language may be a great challenge for language learners. Deneire (1995) notes the necessity of specific linguistic and cultural proficiencies to understand and appreciate a joke. As Bell (2007) states, ‘‘the construction and comprehension of verbal humor in an L2 constitutes a great challenge

Several taxonomies of joke types have been identified by researchers (Attardo (1994a); Attardo et al. (1994b); Chiaro, 1992; Ross (1998); Green & Pepicello (1978)). Quite pertinent to the objective of this study is the taxonomy of jokes developed by Lew (1996, 1997) in which jokes were classified into three different categories: (i)lexical, (ii) phonological, and (iii) syntactic. In other words, the linguistic ambiguity may depend on variance in sound (phonological), variance in meaning (lexical), or variance in sentence structure (syntactic).

Lexical ambiguity often relies on “homophones, homonyms, or polysemes where sounds remain the same and the ambiguity lies in the lexical unit or lexeme” (Attardo et al. 1994b, p. 34). Oaks (1994) defines lexical ambiguity as conveyed by ‘‘a word with more than one possible meaning in a context’’ (p.378) as in this example where an alternative interpretation of the word ‘suit’ creates ambiguity and humour: "Have you ever appeared as a witness in a suit before?" asked the