Challenges in Non-Native Speakers' Understanding of English Humorous Texts.

Abstract

This work investigated the issues of interpreting humour by non-native speakers of the language. Humour is claimed to be universal in its structures, but local in its content as it always draws on linguistic, discourse, and cultural elements. Accordingly, it is not easy or straightforward to comprehend for people who come from a different culture. Videlicet, this research aimed at exploring the competencies involved and challenges faced in understanding and appreciating English humorous texts by Algerian learners of English as a foreign language, at the Department of Letters and English Language, University of Guelma. To this end, the research combined qualitative and quantitative analyses. Qualitative research was required to examine the humorous materials used in the test. The latter was conducted to explore the learners’ (non)comprehension and (non)appreciation of authentic humour. Therefore, the second part of the test analysis covered quantitative data on the participants’ understanding and appreciation of the test’s materials. Additionally, the second set of quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire, which aimed at accounting for English Language Learners’ (ELLs) self-perceived proficiency level, cultural competences, and attitudes towards humour, in addition to self-reported challenges in understanding English humorous texts. Next in order is probing into possible associations between proficiency level and cultural competences, on one hand; and the ability to understand English humour, on the other. Spearman’s correlation tests were calculated to reveal a positive association between both independent variables, language proficiency and cultural knowledge, and the dependent variables of humour recognition linguistically, and culturally, with (r = 0.311 ) and ( r = 0.618 ), respectively.