1.1. Humour and its importance in tourism
1.1.6. ELT tour guide students‘s ability to make sense of humour in English jokes
1.1.6.2. Pragmatic competence and its interface with humour competence
Pragmatic competence (PC) is defined as ―the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context‖
(Thomas, 1983). Understandably, it is ―the ability to communicate your intended message with all its nuances in any socio-cultural context and to interpret the message of your interlocutor as it was intended‖ (Frazer, 2010). In this present study context PC is defined as the ability to understand language in context or to interpret the message of interlocutor as it was intended. PC is seen as a subcomponent to the more level of communicative competence (Frazer et al., 1980, Chomsky, 1980; Canale & Swain, 1980; Bachman, 1990).Bachman's (1990) and later Bachman and Palmer's (1996) propose an overarching model, named
"Communicative language ability" consisting of both the knowledge or competence and the capacity for implementing, or executing that competence in appropriate, contextualized communicative language use" (Bachman, 1990: 84).
It can be seen that components of Bachman‘s language competence drive for humour competence comprising linguistic-semantic competence, socio-cultural competence and poetic competence which a person should accomplish who to appreciate humour. Deniere (1995: 295) points out that ―well-developed communicative competence implies humour competence, and vice-versa‖.Deniere (1995) also stresses the language learners also need to develop ―a certain level of cultural competence in the target languagebecause a language learner cannot appreciate the humour of that language even if he/she is competent at the target language (Bell, 2007). That is, the non-native speaker needs to become acculturated in the culture of the language she is learning if she ever hopes to understand that speech community‘s humour. Thus pragmatic competence is essential for humour competence because it provides knowledge of pragmatic conventions to be acceptable and knowledge of sociolinguistic conventions to be appropriate for the language functions in a given context both in competence and performance
Especially, Illocutionary competence, in Bachman‘s (1990) pragmatic competence, relates to the theory of speech acts referring to utterance acts, propositional acts, and illocutionary acts. These acts respectively indicate ―saying something‖, ―expressing a prediction about something‖ and ―the function performed in saying something‖
(Searle, 1969). Additionally, perlocutionary act is the effect of a given illocutionary act on the hearer (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969). Bachman (1990: 90) clearly describesa range of abilities that to accomplish a success in driving a meaningful utterance it is necessary to use illocutionary competence.
Then, Sociolinguistic competence refers to the ability to perform the language functions, mentioned above, in appropriate ways for various language use contexts.
Sociolinguistic competence includes sensitivities to language variety differences, to register or language use variation within a variety, to naturalness or native-like manner, to cultural references and figures of speech. Of all the sensitivities such as the ones to differences in dialect or variety, to differences in register, and to naturalness which concern the language performance, and especially the ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech which is related with the interpretation of cultural and figurative language is one important and essential element for humour competence.The ability to interpret cultural references and figures of speech is taken as one important element which is suitable with humour interpretation as the key point of the current research.
A person who wants to be able to interpret the humour in jokes or tell jokes shoud be pragmatically competent. He/she should be able to perceive the humorous language of the joke, be aware of the figurative and cultural styles in the joke and agree with the humorous type of the joke text for appreciating it.Actually, it can be stated that humour competence is interfaced with pragmatic competence in terms of appreciation and performance (Table 1.4).
Table 1.4: Interface of humour competence and pragmatic competence
Humour competence (Appreciation)
Pragmatic competence (Performance)
System of competence 1 - To recognize the source(s) of ambiguity
- To detect and mark the source of anomaly
- To disambiguate a potentially ambiguous sentence in a context - To detect and interpret implicatures
Linguistic- Semantic competence
2 - To discover the presupposition of the sentence
- To characterize the world in which the situation described by the sentence takes place.
To interpret cultural references and figures of speech
Socio- cultural competence (Poetic competence) 3 - To understand the humorous language
in social context and culture
- To agree to the message that the joke conveys
To appreciate the humorous language
- To determine which statement is the most appropriate in a specific context
- To perform a
propositional act which is grammatically well-formed and has signification - To be able to be complied by non-language
competency performance
Illocutionary competence (Poetic competence)
Finally, the ―ability to make sense of humour in English jokes‖ for EFL tour guide students should be induced by the interface of humour competence (Raskin, 1985;
Chiaro, 1992; Hay, 2001) and pragmatic competence (Bachman, 1990) (Table 1.5).
Thus in order to be able to appreciate the humour in English jokes, EFL learners need to have the ability to recognize it is a joke, comprehend the humour language then agree with the philosophy of the joke content and finally appreciate it and finally recite in appropriate manner and context. Based on the models of humour competence and pragmatic competence, EFL learners ought to have knowledge of linguistics, semantics, socio-culture and illocutionary acts. Hence, a series of six competencies (Table 1.5) should be used as the standard to measure ELT tour guide students‘ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes.
Table 1.5: EFL TG Sts’ ability to make sense of humour in English jokes
No Competencies System of competence
1. To recognize the linguistic elements (vocabulary and the grammar…) in the English text of jokes
Linguistic competence
2. To understand and interpret the ambiguities, the implicature and presupposition in English jokes
Semantic competence Socio-cultural competence 3. To appreciate and determine the appropriateness of the
jokes in context
Socio-cultural competence
4. To tell a full joke with good pronunciation in appropriate context
Illocutionary competence
5. To tell a full joke with good pronunciation and gesture in appropriate contexts
6. To tell a good full joke and make people laugh