Individual variations in British humour appreciation among Chinese–English bilinguals: Role of socialisation and acculturation

Abstract

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

The primary aim of this study is to investigate individual differences in the appreciation of humour in an L2 with a special focus on British humour. It examined the predictive effects of variables including sociobiographical factors, linguistic profiles, domain-specific communication, and degree of acculturation on L2 (British) humour appreciation among late Chinese–English bilinguals.

Design/methodology/approach:

This study adopted a quantitative approach and used a video-embedded online questionnaire for data collection. A total of 131 UK-based late Chinese–English bilinguals rated the funniness of two short extracts from British sitcoms and answered questions regarding sociobiographical, linguistic, domain-specific communication, and cultural factors.

Data and analysis:

Funniness rating scores were calculated for each participant and for each humour extract. Spearman’s rho correlation analysis was used to find out the correlations between funniness ratings and different variables. Other non-parametric statistical tests such as Kruskal–Wallis test, Mann–Whitney U test, and Wilcoxon signed-ranks test were run to compare the differences between variables.

Findings/conclusions:

Chinese–English bilinguals who were more frequently engaged in humour-specific communication with friends and L1 speakers of British English and acculturated to a higher level tended to perceive L2 (British) humour funnier.

Originality:

The study highlights the role of humour socialisation and acculturation, along with L2 proficiency, in the appreciation of L2 humour. Sociobiographical factors associated with the appreciation of L1 humour may not necessarily predict the appreciation of humour in an L2.

Significance/implications:

The study contributes to the literature on the predictive factors for the domain of humour in an L2 among bilinguals and offers implications for both the field of bilingualism and humour.

Keywords

Individual differences British humour appreciation late Chinese–English bilinguals acculturation humour socialisation

Introduction

Although humour can be elusive and easily dismissed, it serves social, cognitive, and psychological functions (Martin, 2010). The ability to recognise, appreciate, and communicate humour is crucial for multilinguals. As American anthropologist E. T. Hall (1959/1973) argued, ‘If you can learn the humor of a people and really control it, you know that you are also in control of nearly everything else’ (p. 52). However, the interplay of linguistic, cultural, and emotional factors in L2 humour adds to the elusiveness and ambiguity of humour, making L2 humour even more challenging to comprehend. For example, Hungarian–English bilingual writer, George Mikes (1980/2016) described the elusiveness, unintelligibility, cruelty, and uniqueness of British humour as,

English Humour resembles the Loch Ness Monster in that both are famous but there is a strong suspicion that neither of them exists. Here the similarity ends: the Loch Ness Monster seems to be a gentle beast and harms no one; English Humour is cruel. (Mikes, 1980/2016, Part 1, Section 1, para. 1)

As part of sociopragmatic competence of an L2, L2 humour appreciation involves split-second detection, reflects distinct semantic and conceptual representations in bilinguals’ mind, and can thus be a rich and challenging area of investigation in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) or bilingualism. Vaid (2006) listed areas of potential interest in studies on humour, emotion, and bilingualism, directing future research to investigate whether and how humour changes as a function of socialisation and acculturation.

However, with a few exceptions (e.g., Shively, 2013), research to date has yet to probe into individual differences in L2 humour appreciation among bilinguals. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the extent to which sociobiographical factors, language profiles, domain-specific communication experiences, and acculturation influence the appreciation of L2 (British) humour among a cohort of UK-based late Chinese–English bilinguals.

The next section is a comprehensive review of the literature on the relevant topics, starting with an understanding of humour in general. Then, humour in an L2 and three factors involved in the appreciation of L2 humour are reviewed. Potential variables regarding sociobiographical factors, linguistic profiles, and socialisation that possibly lead to individual variations in L2 humour appreciations are then discussed and reviewed. Following the literature review, research questions and results are provided. The final parts are a discussion on the findings and a concluding remark.

Understanding humour

Humour appreciation involves a process of cognitive disjunction – an appraisal of a situation as incongruity (between frames of references, scripts, or category boundaries) which is resolved or made congruous sequentially (e.g., Suls, 1972) or simultaneously (see Martin, 2010), either as a forced act (e.g., Attardo & Raskin, 1991) or of hearers’ own volition (Veale, 2004). The cognitive shift caused in humour processing elicits processing cost and regressive eye movements, indicating that humour appreciation is complex and cognitive challenging (Coulson, 2015).

The understanding of humour also involves a process of emotional shift, a subjective appraisal of humorous stimuli which triggers heightened emotional arousal, mainly, surprise and mirth of varying degree of intensity. Most of the approaches to humour processing suggest that emotion is just a reaction, an accessory or a companion of the cognitive aspect of humour. However, Veale (2004) noticed the insufficiency of incongruity-resolution theory for humour appreciation and proposed to include emotion as a necessity and prerequisite for appreciating humour. Humour is a social construct and the success of it relies on the joint effort of the teller and the listener to be ‘both actively, consciously – and cooperatively – engaged in the joke-telling non-bona communication mode’ (Raskin & Attardo, 1994, p. 37). In other words, the search for the needed incongruity and (or) resolution requires the listener to be emotionally or psychologically prepared, that is, be in a playful mind at the moment.

L2 humour appreciation

Humour processing is affected by the complexity of humorous stimuli, ease of understanding, and emotional intensity (Raskin, 2008), which is possibly further determined by the dynamic interplay of linguistic, cultural, and emotional factors involved in humour. When humour is presented in an L2, the processing of it gets more complicated and challenging to bilinguals. The next part of this section provides a literature review on how the three factors (language, culture, and emotion) are possibly involved in L2 humour and how the potential three variables related to the three factors respectively (L2 proficiency level, cultural identification, and emotional acculturation) in the field of SLA and bilingualism could affect L2 humour appreciation.

Linguistic factor

The first factor complicating L2 users’ appreciation of L2 humour is the linguistic property of humour. The incongruity involved in humour processing can be elicited at various linguistic levels including phonological, lexical, and syntactical level. It can also be elicited when those factors deviate from the L1 linguistic norms in L2 humour. As Vaid (2000) viewed, the construction and resolution of the incongruity ‘may reflect semantic representation as when, for example, core versus peripheral word meanings are placed in competition with one another’ (p. 28), like the word ‘stable’ in example a:

a. A guy was admitted to hospital with 8 plastic horses in his stomach. His condition is now stable.

In example a, the word ‘stable’ in the mind of a bilingual with English as L2 is likely to be associated with its central meaning – not deteriorating in health after an injury or operation, rather than its less frequent, peripheral meaning – a building set apart and adapted for keeping horses. The meaning follows through naturally when its central meaning is activated, whereas humour is only evoked when its peripheral meaning is activated, causing a cognitive shift from the central to peripheral meaning in the L2 user’s mind. Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) maintained that, depending on frequency and recency of use, the levels of lexical representations, and the links between them vary in strengths, which affects the accessibility, the mental route accessed through and the likelihood of being activated. The access and retrieval of both meanings can be slower and less easy for bilinguals, which makes the appreciation of L2 humour even more challenging. One of the linguistic factors that are likely to affect the access and retrieval of L2 meanings is L2 proficiency level.

Recent research has documented the important role of L2 proficiency in L2 humour appreciation (e.g., Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al., 2018; Bell & Attardo, 2010; Chen & Dewaele, 2019; Erdodi & Lajiness-O’Neill, 2012). For example, Bell and Attardo (2010) identified seven levels at which bilinguals might fail to engage in humorous activities, with the first two levels being ‘failure to process language at the locutionary level’ and ‘failure to understand the meaning of words (including connotations)’ (p. 430), and the other five related to the pragmatic aspect of humour and the nature of humour appreciation. Chen and Dewaele (2019) found that L2 proficiency level does not have any influence on L2 humour appreciation until bilinguals have reached a certain threshold in L2 linguistic, pragmatic, and sociocultural knowledge.

Cultural factor

Humour can be culture-dependent. The nature of incompatible frames, scripts, or codes involved in humour processing reflects culturally influenced conceptual representations (Vaid, 2000). The lack of one-to-one mapping between word and culture-specific concept or the incongruent conceptual representation in bilinguals’ mind may result in the loss of sparkle in L2 humour, like the word ‘turkey’ in example b:

b. Daughter: ‘Mom, can I get a cat or a dog at Christmas, please?’

Mom: ‘No honey, you will be getting turkey, like every Christmas’.

Turkey is not only a kind of large gallinaceous bird native to the Americans; it is also usually valued as a table fowl on special occasions such as Thanksgiving or Christmas in western countries. Without activating the cultural knowledge associated with turkey, bilinguals such as Chinese–English bilinguals, would fail to detect the incongruity which is central to elicit the humour.

In addition, humour itself can be culture-specific, shaped by cultural norms, which divides humour into types based on nationalities (e.g., American humour, British humour, Chinese humour, Danish humour), even though the exact cutting line and the extent to which the national characteristics expressed in humour have been debated.

Lundquist (2021) proposed the concept of humour socialisation which highlights the dynamic role of language society in moulding a person’s humour. She also used it to explain why people of different background do not share the same kind of humour, particularly, why the Danes are not as funny to non-Danes. Erdodi and Lajiness-O’Neill (2012) investigated culture-specific factors in humour perception using 32 jokes themed with sexual, ethnic, gay, and Eastern Europe, among English only (no firsthand exposure to Hungarian culture), Hungarian only (no firsthand exposure to English culture), and Hungarian–English speakers (fully acculturated to American culture). It was found that jokes themed with ethnic and Eastern European were rated as most funny in the Hungarian only group, least funny in the English only group, with bilinguals in between.

British humour, the focus of this study, is viewed to be characterised by dry or deadpan humour (Kiss, 2017). Dry or deadpan humour is defined by Shively (2013) as a form of humour delivered expressionlessly and impassively without prosodic, lexical, or morphosyntactic contextualisation cues. British humour also has a sense of self-deprecation and understatement (Mikes, 1980/2016) and a heavy use of sarcasm and irony (Fox, 2004). The nature of humour – culture-dependence and culture-specificity – denotes that the degree of bicultural bilinguals’ (Grosjean, 2015) identification with a specific L2 culture may predict their appreciation of L2 humour.

Biculturals are defined as those who ‘take part, to varying degrees, in the life of two or more cultures’, ‘adapt, at least in part, their attitudes, behaviours, values, languages etc.’ and ‘combine and blend aspects of the cultures involved’ (Grosjean, 2015, p. 575). At some point, they have to make a decision on which culture they prefer to be identified with, heritage culture, or mainstream culture (Ryder et al., 2000).

As Vaid (2006) asserted, a dual cultural perspective may change bilinguals’ attitudes towards, or belief, in humour and ‘expand their types of humour they can produce and appreciate’ (p. 176). According to her, the development of bilinguals’ cultural knowledge and the change of their cultural identity as a result of acculturation or conceptual socialisation during L2 acquisition may lead to the change in humour perception in either L1 or L2 or both languages. She investigated 80 Spanish–English bilinguals’ humour practices and beliefs as a function of language experiences and cultural identification. It was found that cultural identification influences one’s appreciation of the humour of one’s cultural group, and that the variation in one’s humour depends on the situations, the ways humour was used to express oneself and one’s emotions. She suggested that ‘the development of a dual cultural identity may even foster a readiness to perceive humour’ (p. 177).

Emotional factor

Research has mostly revealed that bilinguals generally experience reduced emotionality and increased detachment elicited by an L2 (Caldwell-Harris & Ayçiçeği-Dinn, 2009; Dewaele, 2013; Dewaele & Salomidou, 2017; Opitz & Degner, 2012), which has the potential to affect the emotional arousal in L2 humour processing and the final appreciation of L2 humour – the so-called ‘emotional blunting’ (Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al., 2018, p. 10).

Chen and Dewaele (2021) highlighted the culture-specificity of British humour and found that even L1 users of the same dialect, American English L1 users, felt difficulty in grasping the ironic aspect of British humour, partly due to subtle differences in semantic and conceptual representation of emotion and emotion-laden words as well as variations in cultural references. The study also suggested that one needs to be emotionally or psychologically prepared – attuned in emotion or emotionally acculturated (De Leersnyder et al., 2011) – for the search for the needed incongruity and (or) resolution upon receiving the humorous stimuli, so as to appreciate the humour. This is particularly important for the appreciation of humour such as British humour which is almost omnipresent in the British society, and one of its salient features is the delivery of humour in an unexpected, dry and deadpan style (Kiss, 2017). Likewise, the extent to which bilinguals’ emotions are acculturated to the specific emotional pattern in an L2 culture may predict their appreciation of L2 humour.

The emotionality and emotional pattern experienced by bilinguals, especially bilingual immigrants, may not always remain static. De Leersnyder et al. (2011) found that, with certain exposure to and engagement in an L2 culture, bilingual immigrants might approximate to L1 speakers in emotional patterns, predicting emotional acculturation. They defined emotional acculturation as ‘changes in emotional patterns due to immigrants’ exposure to and contact with a new or second cultural context’ (p. 452); it consists of ‘changes in psychological processes, particularly in the ways the same situations are appraised’ (p. 462). As a facet of acculturation, emotional acculturation may be related to the successful appreciation of humour in an L2.

Individual variations in L2 humour appreciation

This section reviews the literature regarding the possible relationships between sociobiographical factors, linguistic profile as well as humour communication experiences and social networks and L2 humour appreciation.

Sociobiographical factors

Previous studies on L1 humour have found gender and age effects on humour appreciation. Azim et al. (2005) conducted a study among 20 healthy native English speakers through studying brain activity, revealing a biological basis for gender effects on humour appreciation. Specifically, women enjoyed comic cartoons more than men did, as women had greater activation in the left prefrontal cortex and mesolimbic regions including nucleus accumbens which is particularly important in pleasurable emotions associated with humour.

Age effects on humour appreciation were demonstrated by the study of Svebak et al. (2004) on all the population aged above 20 in Nord-Trøndelag, Norway. Compared to younger people, older people tended to express less mirth and laughter, enjoy humour less and notice less humour. This finding is advised to be further validated with different samples of different cultures to improve its generalisability. Moreover, it is likely that education level is linked to humour appreciation as intelligence predicts creativity which is associated with humour ability (e.g., Greengross & Miller, 2011). However, little is known about the relationship between such variables and L2 humour appreciation among bilinguals.

Linguistic profiles

Individual variations in trajectories of L2 acquisition and use may result in conceptual and emotional changes affecting humour appreciation among L2 users (Dewaele, 2013). To date, research on the impacts of bilinguals’ trajectories of L2 acquisition and use on L2 humour appreciation is still in its infancy, a gap needed to be filled. Given the interplay of language, culture, and emotion in humour processing, variables affecting a bilingual’s L2 humour appreciation are likely to include multilingualism (number of languages/dialects known), age of onset of acquisition (AoA), context of acquisition (CoA), length of residence (LoR) in L2 community, frequency of L2 use, language dominance, and frequency of code-switching. The impacts of these factors are documented in various areas of SLA.

Effects of multilingualism are documented in areas such as self-perceived competence of each language known, self-reported frequency of code-switching, and the perceived usefulness of all languages (Dewaele, 2013). The effects of AoA have been found in the automaticity of affective processing. Caldwell-Harris et al. (2011) showed that early Mandarin–English bilinguals judged both their L1 and L2 as emotional, while late Mandarin–English bilinguals perceived only L1 as emotional. Meanwhile, the failure to find any effects of AoA (e.g., Bylund, 2011) may suggest that this effect may vary in different language domains.

CoA and LoR are contextual factors affecting L2 acquisition. Dewaele (2013) operationalised the variable CoA as one including the following three types of contexts: naturalistic context, mixed context, and instructed context. He found that contextual effects existed in expression of emotions, language choice for feeling expression, expression of anger, attitudes towards language and perception of the emotionality of swearwords, as well as levels of foreign language anxiety (FLA). LoR is found to predict cognitive restructuring, a cognitive dissonance between words and/or concepts as a result of intense exposure to an L2 and L2 culture, as ‘seen in the cases where speakers diverge from the L1 pattern in order to accommodate or approximate the divergent pattern of the L2’ (Pavlenko, 2014, p. 304) and ‘readjustment of the category structure and boundaries in accordance with the constraints of the target linguistic category’ (p. 141); the start and end point of restructuring vary depending on the domain, the language involved and the learners themselves. It should be noted that a recent study on British humour appreciation found that LoR is irrelevant for the appreciation of British humour in another dialect of the English language (Chen & Dewaele, 2021).

Frequency of L2 use and language dominance are another two predictors of cognitive restructuring (Pavlenko, 2014). Languages frequently used in various contexts will have higher levels of activation and can be acquired at a faster rate (Dewaele, 2013). Higher frequency of L2 use, as seen in increased exposure to L2 and socialisation with native speakers, appears to be linked to a reduction of failed humour in Spanish L2 humour (Shively, 2013). A dominant language is defined as a language used relatively more proficiently and frequently and across a wider range of domains (Silva-Corvalán & Treffers-Daller, 2016). Language dominance has been found to be a strong predictor for the directionality of transfer in acquiring some areas of a language. For example, Erdodi and Lajiness-O’Neill (2012) asked a group of US-based Hungarian–English bilinguals to rate the funniness of 32 jokes and found that the English dominant group perceived the jokes in both languages as equally funny, while the Hungarian dominant group perceived the Hungarian jokes as funnier than English ones. However, the finding should be considered with caution as participants’ language dominance was based on language proficiency only, not on use.

Code-switching is defined as ‘changes from one language to another in the course of conversation’ (Wei, 2007, p. 14) and is argued to be a creative discourse strategy used by multilinguals who ‘are known to be very inventive, creating novel structural forms with elements of different languages spontaneously and deliberately flouting linguistic and social conventions for special effects’ (Dewaele & Wei, 2014, p. 226). It can be used to frame humour, as the creativity can arise from word play or ‘the fact of engaging in code-switching itself where the norm involves a strict separation of languages’ (Vaid, 2006. p. 159) and the use of a particular code signals the way of interpreting the utterance and interlocutors’ social and contextual identity. There remains a gap regarding the possible effects of code-switching on humour practices, especially on L2 humour appreciation.

However, although grouping bilinguals based on their linguistic profile (e.g., AoA, CoA, LoR, proficiency, and frequency of L2 use and code-switching) may provide implications for the study of affective processing, it may have limitations in real life use (Pavlenko, 2017). More factors should be involved and thus discussed so as to understand individual variations in L2 humour appreciation.

Humour communication experiences and socialisation

Due to the static nature of sociobiographical factors and the limitations of linguistic factors in real life use, Pavlenko (2017) urged researchers to concentrate on the specific type and quality of L2 users’ emotional experiences (e.g., opportunities to joke, flirt, date, argue, and fight in L2). The underlying mechanism may be related to Hammer’s (2019) idea that there exist effects of context-specific language selection and use on ‘broader phenomena of frames of reference in the bilingual mind, as well as culturally-specific ways of appraising events’ (p. 14). Also, Dewaele (2013) viewed that the communication of emotion in an LX (a language acquired later in life) can be particularly difficult due to limited means to express the full range of emotions that are appropriate and needed in real communication, and thus he called for future studies on affective socialisation in an LX. Therefore, it is reasonable to investigate bilinguals’ communication experiences in the specific domain of humour in specific languages, besides the general L2 communication experiences.

In the domain of humour, Lundquist (2021) proposed a concept of ‘humour socialisation’. Using Danish humour (irony and self-irony) as an example, Lundquist (2021) focused on the following three aspects of humour socialisation: linguistic, social, and cultural aspect, which partially overlaps and differs from those in this study: linguistic, cultural, and emotional aspect. Lundquist (2021) argues that this notion describes ‘the dynamic role played by language and society in moulding a person’s humour’ (p. 1), that is, individuals develop the ‘common ground’ and a ‘total state of personality’, that is, ‘the big humour’ (p. 12), by socialising to different uses and forms of humour in the communities where they grow up and through the mother tongue they speak. In other words, humour socialisation can be understood as a process of developing a culture and language-specific humour and a humour related personality (a specific view of and attitude to life). This idea could also extend to explaining how bilinguals could gradually form the culture and language-specific L2 humour by socialising to the L2 society and the L2 language.

Apart from the specific domain, the interlocutors with whom the emotional experiences (humour experiences) are shared – size and quality of social networks of interlocutors – is crucial. The importance of social networks has been documented in various areas of L2 development. For instance, Hammer (2019) demonstrated that social network profile strongly correlated with acculturation level and had impacts on frequency of L2 use (in all inner speech domains). Moreover, Gautier (2019) showed that Chinese learners studying abroad usually form unique types of networks (concentrated and dissociated networks), and implied that different types of network may influence areas such as sociolinguistic, intercultural or pragmatic competence in the L2. In other words, social networks influence acculturation level and pragmatic factors which happen to be related to humour processing (Chen & Dewaele, 2019; Skalicky, 2019; Vaid, 2006). Therefore, the study on the role of social networks in L2 humour appreciation seems necessary.

This study focuses on the type of interlocutors: family, friends, colleagues, strangers and non-Chinese speakers. It should be noted that the term ‘stranger’ indicates not only the type of interlocutor but also the size of the network. Particularly, it implies random and unknown encounters and points to ‘an absence of network’ (Dewaele, 2013, p. 61). However, for bilingual immigrants, strangers may not indicate the absence of network. Instead, strangers for them may constitute a group of interlocutors that remain beyond their usual reach, as demonstrated by Gautier (2019). Through qualitative cluster analyses, Gautier (2019) demonstrated that Chinese learners studying abroad were predominantly representative of concentrated and dissociated networks, meaning that Chinese learners tended to form small and concentrated network with close friends (mostly fellow Chinese L1 users and Chinese L0 English LX users). They reported to have difficulty in establishing friendship with native French speakers for the lack of opportunities and the failure of meaningful conversations with the latter. Native French speakers remained outside of Chinese learners’ social networks. Likewise, while residing in the United Kingdom, Chinese L2 users of English seldom had British English L1 users included in their regular network of interlocutors.

Research questions

This study aims to investigate the predictive effects of a range of variables – as discussed in the above literature review – on L2 (British) humour appreciation among late Chinese–English bilinguals by answering the following research questions:

To what extent, if any, do sociobiographical factors predict the appreciation of British humour among Chinese–English bilinguals?

To what extent, if any, do linguistic profiles predict the appreciation of British humour among Chinese–English bilinguals?

To what extent, if any, do humour communication experiences (including social networks) predict the appreciation of British humour among Chinese–English bilinguals?

To what extent, if any, do degrees of acculturation predict the appreciation of British humour among Chinese–English bilinguals?

Method

This study adopted a quantitative approach and used a video-embedded online questionnaire for data collection. Potential participants were contacted to fill out the questionnaires and were invited to spread the call for participation to their family members, friends and colleagues who met the criteria. The study received ethical approval from the authors’ research institution.

Participants

A total of 131 UK-based late Chinese–English bilinguals took part in this study. They were dominated by females (97 females and 34 males) and young adults (age: M = 24.9, SD = 6.7). They tended to be highly educated, with the majority holding a Master’s degree at 55.7%, followed by a Bachelor’s degree at 30.5%, and a Doctoral degree at 10.7%, by the time they filled out the questionnaire. The predominance of female, highly educated participants is quite normal in foreign language related surveys, as participants were self-selected and only those highly motivated and having access to Internet were likely to complete the survey (Wilson & Dewaele, 2010). Besides, they all had Mandarin or other varieties of Chinese as L1 and English as L2. Many of them reported to have knowledge of (up to 5) other languages and (up to 3) dialects (or language varieties).¹ The mean length of residence is 2.97 years, ranging from 0.42 years (5 months) to 25 years.

Instruments

Part 1: demographic information and linguistic profile

Participants started with answering questions concerning their demographic information and language profiles, including age, gender, education level, LoR, number of languages known, number of Chinese dialects known, AoA,² CoA, frequency of L2 use, frequency of code-switching, and language dominance.

Part 2: humour appreciation tasks

Participants were instructed to rate the funniness of the scenario in two 1-minute-long video extracts on a five-point rating scale, with 1 representing ‘not funny at all’ and 5 ‘extremely funny’. The deliberate use of one item to judge degree of funniness is to elicit a holistic snap judgement from the participants. In this study, we argue that humour, especially multimodal humour, is an integrated entity. Humour comes from the interplay of various aspects, layers and modals rather than from one or the sum of them.

The two video extracts were selected from the following two British sitcoms: Yes, Prime Minister and Outnumbered (the same ones used in Chen & Dewaele, 2019, 2021), both using British English-speaking actors. They could be viewed as representative of British humour as indicated by results from a pilot study. Participants (N = 23) in the pilot study were British English L1 users (mostly monolinguals³) who reported to have no experiences in other countries. They were asked to make snap judgement on the funniness of the two video extracts and then interviewed to make introspective reflections on their judgements. Results of Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests showed that they perceived the two videos as equally funny (Z = –1, p = ns) and agreed that the humour in the selected video was quite ‘typical’ of British humour. The transcripts and URL to the video clips are available in Appendix 1.

The first extract was selected from the last episode ‘The Tangled Web’ of the sitcom Yes, Prime Minister, an award-winning political satire. It zoomed in on the relationship between two contrasting characters: the Prime Minister and his Permanent Secretary. Based on various sources including inside government, contemporary news stories and published materials, the show was viewed as ‘unhealthily close to life’ (Crisell, 2002, p. 201). The video extract shows a conversation between the Permanent Secretary and the Prime Minister. It is a high wire act by the highly educated Permanent Secretary who accuses the not-so-highly educated Prime Minister of lying while avoiding a direct face threat. To do so, he resorts to euphemisms in a tangled, complicated, roundabout, impressive-sounding yet increasingly ridiculous sentence, with carefully chosen terms, longwinded technical jargon and circumlocutions.

The second extract was selected from the episode ‘Keeping up with The Joneses’, from the sitcom Outnumbered. Aired from 2007 to 2014, the sitcom portrayed a middle-class family in London, centring on how two parents (Sue and Pete) were outnumbered by their three unruly and raucous children. The scripts were semi-improvised to obtain as genuine and natural performances as possible and to elicit the children’s own voices (Typers, 2007). The selected video clip shows a doorstep conversation between two middle-class neighbours in plain English. It portrays a stark social contrast between the neighbour Barbara’s well-behaved children who go to a private school, and Sue’s children who swear and misbehave.

Part 3: humour communication experiences

Three sets of questions were included in this part. The first one was about participants’ networks of interlocutors, that is, their self-report on frequency of engaging in humorous activities with different interlocutors – family, friends, colleagues, strangers, and non-Chinese L1 speakers. The second set of questions concerned self-report on language preferences and frequency of the use of each language in humour communication, including ‘Chinese only’, ‘English only’, ‘both English and Chinese’, and ‘other languages’. The last question was about the frequency of switching between Chinese and English while engaging in humorous activities. All of these questions were answered on a five-point scale from 1 (never) to 5 (very frequently).

Part 4: acculturation

The 20-item Vancouver Index of Acculturation (VIA; Ryder et al., 2000) was slightly adapted. Participants were instructed to indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement on a nine-point Likert-type scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree). This scale aimed to elicit bicultural bilinguals’ decisions on which culture they would be identified with, heritage culture (Chinese culture) or mainstream culture (British culture). Higher subscale scores could translate to higher levels of identification with the represented culture. The scale displayed excellent internal consistency in this study. Cronbach’s alpha for all the items was .93. Cronbach’s alpha for each subscale was heritage culture .95 and mainstream culture .86.

Results of Shapiro–Wilk test indicated that the collected data were not normally distributed (p < .01). Therefore, for data analysis, non-parametric statistical tests such as Spearman’s rho, Kruskal–Wallis test, Mann–Whitney U test, and Wilcoxon signed-ranks test were used as alternatives for parametric tests.

Results

Funniness ratings

Descriptive statistics showed that average scores of 2.77 and 3.02 were recorded for the ratings of humour in Yes, Prime Minister and Outnumbered respectively. A Wilcoxon signed-ranks test revealed that Chinese–English bilinguals perceived the scenario in Yes, Prime Minister as significantly less funny than that in Outnumbered (Z = –2.4, p < .05).

Effects of sociobiographical factors on L2 humour appreciation

Spearman’s rho rank correlation analysis indicated a nonlinear relationship between age and the ratings of humour in Yes, Prime Minister and Outnumbered (both p = ns).

A series of Kruskal–Wallis tests showed that neither of the two factors – gender and education levels – were found to have effects on the ratings of humour in Yes, Prime Minister and Outnumbered (all p = ns).

Effects of linguistic profiles on L2 humour appreciation

Spearman’s rho rank correlation analysis indicated that variables including LoR, number of languages known, and number of Chinese dialects known were not significantly correlated with the ratings of humour in Yes, Prime Minister and Outnumbered (all p = ns).

Kruskal–Wallis tests revealed that none of the other factors including AoA, CoA, frequency of L2 use, frequency of code-switching and language dominance had any effects on the ratings of humour in both video extracts (all p = ns).

Effects of humour communication experiences on L2 humour appreciation

Similarly, Kruskal–Wallis tests showed that humour communication experiences did not make any differences in the ratings of humour in Yes, Prime Minister (all p = ns; Table 1).

Table 1.

Effects of humour communication experiences on funniness ratings of L2 humour (χ²).

Frequency (of)	Yes, Prime Minister	Outnumbered
Joking with family	4.9	6.2
Joking with friends (df = 3)^a	5.3	9.5*
Joking with colleagues	3.1	8.1
Joking with strangers (df = 3)^b	6.9	13.4**
Joking with non-Chinese speakers (English as lingua franca)	3.1	2.2
Joking in Chinese only	6.3	2.4
Joking in English only	9.2	8.4
Code-switching between Chinese and English while joking	2.2	2.7

None of the participants reported to have ‘never’ switched between Chinese and English while joking, thus the option was excluded from analysis.

Only one participant reported to have joked with strangers ‘very frequently’, thus it could not be included in statistical analysis.

p < .05; **p < .01; df = 4.

However, two variables – frequency of joking with friends (p < .05) and frequency of joking with strangers (p < .01) – were found to have significant effects on the ratings of humour in Outnumbered. Follow-up Mann–Whitney U tests showed that significant differences in the ratings of humour in Outnumbered were not found between Chinese–English bilinguals who joked with friends ‘regularly’ and ‘very frequently’ (U = 1,380, Z = –0.5, p = ns), but were found for the ‘sometimes’ and ‘regularly’ group (U = 310.5, Z = –2.8, p = .005 < .008, Bonferroni correction applied). Nevertheless, this result can still be understood as that the more frequently Chinese–English bilinguals joked with friends, the funnier they had perceived the humour in Outnumbered (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Funniness ratings between bilinguals with different frequency of joking with friends.

Likewise, there were no significant differences in the ratings of humour in Outnumbered between bilinguals who joked with strangers ‘regularly’ and ‘sometimes’ (U = 36.5, Z = –0.6, p = ns). Bilinguals who joked with strangers ‘regularly’ rated the humour in Outnumbered significantly funnier than L2 users who never joked with strangers (U = 318.5, Z = –2.9, p = .003 < .008, Bonferroni correction applied). To sum up, bilinguals who ever joked with strangers outperformed those who never did it (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Funniness ratings between L2 users with different frequency of joking with strangers.

Effects of acculturation on L2 humour appreciation

Spearman’s rho rank correlation analysis indicated that level of identification (measured by VIA) with the mainstream culture (British culture) was positively and significantly correlated with the ratings of humour in both Yes, Prime Minister and Outnumbered. However, the level of identification with the heritage culture (Chinese culture) was found to be linked to the ratings of humour in neither of the two video extracts (p = ns; see Table 2).

Table 2.

Acculturation and L2 humour appreciation.

	Yes, Prime Minister		Outnumbered
	rho	p	rho	p
VIA – Heritage culture	.10	.281	.06	.525
VIA – British culture	.22*	.011	.25**	.004

VIA: Vancouver index of acculturation.

p < .025; **p < .005(Bonferroni correction applied).

Discussion

The first research question concerns the extent to which sociobiographical factors – age, gender and education level – predict the appreciation of British L2 humour among Chinese–English bilinguals. Results show that none of the sociobiographical factors had any effects. It appears that sociobiographical factors which are intrinsic and less subject to change do not have the same effects on the appreciation of L2 humour as they have on the appreciation of L1 humour (cf. Azim et al., 2005; Greengross & Miller, 2011; Svebak et al., 2004).

The second research question addresses the extent to which linguistic profiles predict the appreciation of British L2 humour among Chinese–English bilinguals. The answer is negative as none of the factors relating to Chinese–English bilinguals’ linguistic profiles were linked to the appreciation of humour in the two video extracts. The finding indicates that linguistic profile is unlikely to be a strong predictor for L2 humour appreciation. The result differs from previous studies which documented that language dominance is associated with L2 humour ratings (e.g., Erdodi & Lajiness-O’Neill, 2012). However, language dominance in Erdodi and Lajiness-O’Neil (2012) was only measured by self-reported language proficiency (using a visual scale), which might have resulted in limited implications. Based on the definition by Silva-Corvalán and Treffers-Daller (2016), language dominance should be measured by both proficiency and frequency of domain use. Its lack of effects in this study may point to the need for more accurate measurement of language dominance in future efforts. Moreover, the lack of effects of LoR on L2 humour appreciation indicates that longer length of stay in the host culture does not translate to more appreciation of the humour in that culture. This result is in line with that of Chen and Dewaele (2021) which failed to find any effects of LoR on the appreciation of humour in another dialect. Bilinguals being acculturated in British culture or engaging in high-quality intercultural interaction might contribute more to cognitive structuring (Pavlenko, 2014) related to humour appreciation and would thus probably be more sensitive to certain features of British humour. More will be discussed in the responses to the last research question.

Our study manifests that L2 humour appreciation is more complicated than many other L2 developmental areas or domains and more efforts from the individuals are needed to make a difference in this specific developmental area or domain. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the term ‘linguistic profile’ utilised in this study only refers to Chinese–English bilinguals’ self-reported data on LoR, number of languages known, number of Chinese dialects known, AoA, CoA, frequency of L2 use, frequency of code-switching, and language dominance. In a broad sense, linguistic profile should include more information such as L2 proficiency as measured with standardised tests such as LexTALE (Lemhöfer & Broersma, 2012) used in Chen and Dewaele (2019) which found a relationship between L2 proficiency and British humour appreciation. This study would benefit further from the inclusion of more observational data of language use and language ability measured with standardised measures in the analysis.

The third research question probes into the effects of the specific type and quality of domain-specific L2 experiences on L2 humour appreciation. In doing so, we zoomed in on the network of interlocutors and language preferences while engaging in humorous activities, as conversing with different interlocutors in different languages should bring bilinguals varied humour communication experiences (or humour-related emotional experiences; for example, Dewaele, 2013). For one thing, statistical results indicated that the frequency of joking with friends was linked to the appreciation of L2 humour in Outnumbered. It highlights the role of networking in a specific domain in specific contexts in developing domain-specific scripts and frame of references for apprising events. Besides, the scenario in Outnumbered depicts the relationship between friends and neighbours, a familiar scene going on in everyday lives. Bilinguals’ prior experiences might have accelerated the process of script activation and cognitive shift, facilitating humour appreciation (Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al., 2018). That said, one may argue that the link between the frequency of joking with friends and the appreciation of L2 humour in Outnumbered may simply be interpreted as a result of individuals’ humorous disposition, not necessarily the other way around. Those who tend to joke more are usually those who appreciate humour more, consistent with the idea of sense of humour which is a personality trait and refers to habitual individual differences in behaviours, experiences, and abilities relating to humour appreciation, creation, and comprehension (Martin, 1998). The dataset in this study, however, does not allow for the confirmation of it. Nevertheless, this interpretation does not necessarily negate the role of social networking or humour socialisation as it also contributes to forming a humour-related personality trait, or a ‘total state of personality’, that is, ‘the big humour’, by socialising to different uses and forms of humour in the communities where they grow up and through the mother tongue they speak (Lundquist, 2021, p. 12).

For another thing, it was found that the Chinese–English bilinguals who joked with strangers frequently perceived the humour in Outnumbered as funnier than those who had never joked with strangers. Since the term ‘stranger’ implies random and unknown encounters and points to ‘an absence of network’ (Dewaele, 2013, p. 61), the finding seems to suggest that the appreciation of L2 humour is negatively linked to the size of the network of interlocutors. This is surprising at first glance. However, Gautier (2019) demonstrated that Chinese learners studying abroad reported to have difficulty in establishing friendship with native French speakers for the lack of opportunities and the failure of meaningful conversations with the latter. Likewise, while residing in the United Kingdom, Chinese–English bilinguals seldom had British English L1 speakers included in their regular network of interlocutors. Hence, it is highly likely that British-English L1 speakers constituted most of Chinese–English bilinguals’ random and unknown encounters (bilinguals living in London might be not the case though) in this study. Therefore, the more frequently they joked with strangers (i.e., mostly British-English L1 speakers), the funnier they would perceive British humour. The finding also suggests that bilinguals maintained different networks not only for different languages (Dewaele, 2013) but also for different domains.

Therefore, this study argues that the role of socialisation with specific type of interlocutors in L2 humour appreciation can be tentatively referred to as (L2) humour socialisation, a concept resembling and extending Lundquist’s (2021) idea of humour socialisation. Lundquist (2021) describes humour socialisation as ‘the dynamic role played by language and society in moulding a person’s humour’ (p. 1) through focusing on the following three aspects of humour socialisation: linguistic, social, and cultural aspect, which partially overlaps and differs with those in this study: linguistic, cultural, and emotional aspect. The construct ‘L2 socialisation’ posits that ‘the cognitive and the social are interconnected, and that learning an L2 is a process of coming to understand socially constructed meaning distinctions’ (Vickers, 2007, p. 621). In the same vein, this study argues that L2 humour socialisation assumes that emotion, culture, language, and cognition are interconnected. Humour abilities develop while socialising into humour-related norms, scripts, and frames of reference of the community. The process of L2 humour socialisation resembles a process of spontaneous and conscious playback and revoice of words, expressions, and culture-specific humour (e.g., British deadpan humour and irony) to which bilinguals are exposed to in L2 contexts (cf. Shively, 2013), and a process of gradual approximation of implicit psychological processes particularly in the ways of appraising the same situations, that is, emotional acculturation (De Leersnyder et al., 2011). Chinese–English bilinguals who had more embodied experiences (humour experiences) gained through interacting with British-English L1 speakers perceived British humour as funnier than those without embodied experiences.

One should note that the quantitative nature of the data in this study does not allow for a more nuanced and comprehensive analysis of the role of socialising with friends and strangers in L2 humour appreciation. Future studies may triangulate quantitative data with qualitative ones to further validate this finding.

However, the result that the above-mentioned relationship was not found for the extract Yes, Prime Minister might be accounted by its high linguistic complexity. L2 proficiency level might be the main factor associated or even the prerequisite to humour appreciation (for detailed analysis, see Chen & Dewaele, 2019).

In response to the last research question which concerns whether the degree of acculturation predicts the appreciation of British humour among Chinese–English bilinguals, level of identification with the mainstream (British) culture was found to be significantly correlated with the appreciation of humour in both video extracts. It suggests that the appreciation of L2 humour requires the familiarity or even mastery of relevant cultural and sociopragmatic knowledge, as well as the adoption of values, beliefs, and traditions of the L2 culture. This finding may lend moderate support for Vaid’s (2006) argument that one’s cultural identification influences one’s appreciation of the humour of one’s own cultural group. It is also in line with previous findings which highlight the role of L2 attitudes or investments (Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al., 2018) and the importance of multi-cultural competence in humour comprehension (Erdodi & Lajiness-O’Neill, 2012). Taken together, cultural identification is revealed to be a strong predictor of the appreciation of L2 humour regardless of its linguistic complexity.

The study is not without limitations and should be considered as a preliminary investigation on this multifaceted construct. First, since real laughter may facilitate humour processing by setting a tone and a mood, and simulating a community experiences (Cai et al., 2019), the laughter track used in the extract Yes, Prime Minister was likely to influence participants’ funniness judgements. However, the significant lower ratings of humour in Yes, Prime Minister indicate that its linguistic complexity might have largely neutralised the impacts of laughter track. Second, using two distinct multimodal humorous stimuli might only provide a glimpse of British humour and it is difficult to pinpoint specific types of humour. However, the use of multimodal stimuli is to improve ecological validity and accommodate as many types of humour as possible (irony, banter, understatement, self-deprecation, and mockery can be found in both video extracts). The reason is that another feature of British humour is that there seems to be no ‘off’ switch for humour in daily conversation. Third, one may wonder if a funniness rating scale is an adequate measurement for humour appreciation. Despite the differences between the two terms, both funniness and humour refer to the quality of being amusement, and funniness rating has been widely used as a measurement for humour in many previous studies which have yielded sound research results (e.g., Ayçiçeği-Dinn et al., 2018; Erdodi & Lajiness-O’Neill, 2012). Finally, as commonly seen in psychological studies, self-report data might be subject to various response and sampling biases and other limitations. The use of self-report data is out of practical considerations as the primary advantages of self-report data are its high accessibility and the possibility of reaching a wider range of participants.

Nevertheless, it is suggested that future studies expand this exploration by using a wider range of stimuli in a larger variety of contexts and without a laughter track. Future research should also include humour appreciation measurements that enable more detailed and accurate capture of humour processing such as ERP (Event-Related Potential) or fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging).

Conclusion

The findings of this study highlight the value of humour socialisation and acculturation for L2 humour appreciation. The assumption that trajectories of L2 acquisition and L2 use may lead to L2 humour development as a function of conceptual and emotional changes is only partially true. L2 humour appreciation is more likely to occur when one engages in frequent and in-depth domain-specific humour socialisation with certain interlocutors and goes through a high degree of identification both culturally and emotionally with the host culture. Bilinguals’ linguistic profiles prove not to be a strong predictor for the appreciation of L2 humour that is both cognitively and emotionally challenging. Also, sociobiographical and psychological factors that have impacts on the appreciation of L1 humour do not necessarily predict the appreciation of L2 humour. Nevertheless, the lack of impacts of humour socialisation on the appreciation of humour in Yes, Prime Minister might be due to the neutralising effects from the high lexical and syntactic complexity in the stimulus, suggesting that L2 proficiency is a prerequisite factor for L2 humour appreciation. To sum up, with the necessary and sufficient linguistic, sociocultural, pragmatic and emotional knowledge, bilinguals have the opportunities to trace the ‘Lock Ness Monster’ (British humour) and tame it.

Footnotes

Appendix 1 Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by the grant from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Y030202059018029) and (Y030202059018034).

ORCID iDs

Xuemei Chen

Tiefu Zhang

Notes

Author biographies

Xuemei Chen got her Ph.D. at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. She is currently a lecturer in the School of Foreign Languages, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Her research interests include, but not limited to, second language acquisition, language learning and teaching, bilingualism, emotion and humour studies, psycholinguistics and intercultural communication. Currently, she is working on the psycholinguistic aspect of humour appreciation and communication.

Tiefu Zhang received his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2018. He works as a lecturer in applied linguistics and coordinates the EGAP writing course at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His main areas of research are second language acquisition, second language writing, and TESOL. He is currently working on research related to feedback practices and literacy in second language writing, CSE application, emotions in language classrooms, and English medium instruction in higher education.

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