Joke Comprehesion by Spanish B2 level learners of English : A preliminary empirical study

Abstract

This work undertakes an empirical study of one of the least researched issues in interlanguage pragmatics so far: comprehension of jokes by Spanish learners of English as a second language (L2, henceforth). It seeks to examine whether these learners grasp the humor some joking texts are intended to produce, which types of jokes prove to be more difficult to understand and why. Adopting a relevance-theoretic perspective on comprehension, and, more precisely, the model of comprehension envisaged in the cognitive-pragmatic framework put forward by Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995), this work relies on the classification of jokes recently proposed by Yus (2016), where jokes are sorted out into seven different types depending on three parameters which are purportedly exploited by humorists in their creation and are, therefore, responsible for their triggering the expected effect. Consequently, this work presents the results obtained through an online questionnaire that was administered to students of English as an L2 with an upper intermediate, B2 level who were enrolled in one of the compulsory courses of the Degree in English Studies taught at the Universidad de Sevilla. Owing to its limitations, this work cannot but be considered an initial, exploratory study that aims to spark off further research contributing to a better and deeper understanding of the problems that L2 learners may face when processing humorous texts.