Humour Across Cultures
It is generally accepted wisdom that what may be funny in one culture is not necessarily so in another.
A Toastmaster from Singapore, Eric Feng, wrote an article for a blog for Americans. Read it here.
He's talking about speaking to Singaporeans from the perspective of a 'foreigner' speaking to a homogeneous group of Mandarin speakers. That would almost never happen - either in Singapore or in Hong Kong!
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Unfortunately, it's very easy but dangerous to make assumptions about your audience. We don't know what languages they speak, whether they are foreign, local, married, divorced, straight or gay.
Anyway, reading that article prompted me to reflect on the quirks of "Hong Kong Humour". As I see it:
Physical humour is more effective than verbal humour. Word play, sarcasm, irony, satire and the like do not go down so well. Costumes, props, exaggerated body language and drama do get lots of laughs.
Humour in the context of boy/girl relationships is funny. Most speakers choose to situate their story in a torrid love affair or a failing relationship. If not, the boss/employee partnership comes in second.
And, as mentioned in previous posts, speakers sometimes pokes fun at others because of their differences - in looks, origin, sex, etc, which, to my astonishment, often gets the audience laughing.
Going back to Eric's article, we have to remember that humour is culturally bound. And, therefore, to be funny when speaking to an audience outside of Hong Kong, or even Asia, requires knowledge of their culture and, ideally, experience.
What do you think?
A Toastmaster from Singapore, Eric Feng, wrote an article for a blog for Americans. Read it here.
He's talking about speaking to Singaporeans from the perspective of a 'foreigner' speaking to a homogeneous group of Mandarin speakers. That would almost never happen - either in Singapore or in Hong Kong!
,
Unfortunately, it's very easy but dangerous to make assumptions about your audience. We don't know what languages they speak, whether they are foreign, local, married, divorced, straight or gay.
Anyway, reading that article prompted me to reflect on the quirks of "Hong Kong Humour". As I see it:
Physical humour is more effective than verbal humour. Word play, sarcasm, irony, satire and the like do not go down so well. Costumes, props, exaggerated body language and drama do get lots of laughs.
Humour in the context of boy/girl relationships is funny. Most speakers choose to situate their story in a torrid love affair or a failing relationship. If not, the boss/employee partnership comes in second.
And, as mentioned in previous posts, speakers sometimes pokes fun at others because of their differences - in looks, origin, sex, etc, which, to my astonishment, often gets the audience laughing.
Going back to Eric's article, we have to remember that humour is culturally bound. And, therefore, to be funny when speaking to an audience outside of Hong Kong, or even Asia, requires knowledge of their culture and, ideally, experience.
What do you think?
Yes. Humour is obviously culture-bound. One will enjoy the humour when he senses the pleasant surprises. There is no humour when there is no surprise, and there is no humour either when he perceives some obnoxious surprise.
Having humour about personal differences and word play is like treading a thin wire over an abyss, or swimming in an uncharted swamp. There is a great danger of getting dead-air or even offending others. I think one may safely laugh at himself, but not others.
This danger is mitigated when the jokes are told within inner circles who know one others quite well, and when the abyss and the swamp had been measured and assessed. Otherwise there is indeed a clear and present danger of some less than pleasant experience rather than humour.
The rules have some bearing on the observed phenomenon. In a recent comedy contest that I recently participated, the rule was to get most laughs within one to three minutes. The judge aimed at achievement of "six laughs per minute" and was impressed when he saw "ten laughs per minute". He was the judge.
Time was perhaps too short for the premises to build up and for a more elegant plot to take shape. I believe that if each was allowed a drawn out time slot of 7 to 10 minutes rather than one to three what turned out would have been different. There was no time for an intellectual and informational build-up and sufficient tension to gather before the comedian's snatch.
I hope to reserve any normative statement; it is a matter of personal preferences.
Mr Rambo is thrilled when he sees the smoke from his heavy artillery; and Mr Maugham is happy with just a couple of rifle shot of marksman quality, at the prettiest pheasant only.
Fans of ice hockey and basketball, are probably different from fans of football and cricket. Similarly, the makers of Ford Model T and of classic Rolls Royce had different targets.
Can't agree less with your culture-bound humour message (couldn't see Eric's article). This should be why phisical jokes and themes on romance, jealousy and greed are more well received, as they can stride across cultural differences. Word play, sarcasm, irony, satire fail because they are more confined, both in comprehension and impact, within certain cultures.
I agree with you.
I like this remark,
the perception of humor depends
upon the perception of an appropriate incongruity–that is the perception of an appropriate
interrelationship of elements from domains that are generally regarded as incongruous”
found in the article at :-
http://dsc.dixie.edu/owl/ForumTalk14Jan03.pdf
What perceived as 'appropriate' and 'incongruous' must be culture-related.
So...great minds think alike, my little mind concurs.