SEMINAR PAPER

Katia Lachner
International Business Diplomacy and Cross-
Cultural Management

Matriculation number: 00079395

Lecturer: Anja Reicherstorfer

Humour Across
Cultures
Is There Such a Thing as Universal Humour?
Table of Contents
1 Introduction................................................................................................................................... 2
2 Aspects of Humour....................................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Brief history of humour – Example of the British...............................................................5
2.2 Different Cores of Humour................................................................................................... 5
2.2.1 Self-depreciating............................................................................................................ 6
2.2.2 Irony and Sarcasm......................................................................................................... 6
2.3 Humour preferences of countries.................................................................................... 7
3 Cross-Cultural Boundaries of Humor......................................................................................... 7
3.1. Edward Hall’s Cross-Cultural Theory.............................................................................8
3.1.1 History as a shaping factor...........................................................................................9
3.2 Interpretation under Hofstede’s Culture Dimensions....................................................9
3.2.1 Humour across Individualism-Collectivism.................................................................9
3.2.2 Humour across Uncertainty Avoidance.....................................................................10
4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................. 11

1
1 Introduction

„But how can you understand a country without knowing what makes it laugh?”
1

This statement by Paul Barker points to the fact that humour, one of the most
multifarious phenomenons of human communication, is an essential element of
a nation’s culture. It varies very widely from country to country, from mentality to
mentality. Therefore, in order to understand the mentality of a people you have
to become familiar with its humour.

All over the world the British are considered as a very witty people with a good
sense of humour. Whereas the Germans are said to lack of this gift. Being
rather earnest in general, they usually prefer a kind of humour which refers to
less serious topics. In marked contrast the British, whose sense of humour has
almost no limits and does not even stop at religion or death. A perfect example
thereof is the following joke told by Michael Fabricant, a conservative MP:
Gordon Brown dies and he meets St Peter at the pearly gates. Mr Brown
notices loads of clocks with different times on them on the wall behind St Peter.
“What are they for?” he asks, and St Peter explains: “Each clock is allocated to
an individual, and represents how much they lie. For each lie, the clock moves
forward one minute. Mother Teresa’s clock is still at noon, because he only lied
as a child.” “But where is Tony Blair’s clock?” Mr Brown asks. “Oh,” St Peter
says, “Jesus is using that one as a ceiling fan.”2
A prime example for British comedy is the team “Monty Python which should be
the first to become internationally extremely successful. Although their comedy
was popular in Britain that was no guarantee for persuading the audience all
over the world. Somehow they managed to do so and today almost everybody
has at least heard about the “Pythons”. Unfortunately, not everybody
1
Marhenke Dietmar: Britischer Humor im interkulturellen Kontext,PDF, http://digisrv-
1.biblio.etc.tu-
bs.de:8080/docportal/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/DocPortal_derivate_00001513/Document.p
df, accessed on 15/12/2017.
2
The Independent:The great British joke:Celebrities share their favourite old
chestnuts,28/09/2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-great-british-joke-
celebrities-share-their-favourite-old-chestnuts-5329433.html#commentsDiv, accessed on
15/12/2017.

2
understood the message the “Pythons” wanted to get across to the people. As
“Life of Brian” is about a man who lived at the same time as Jesus many people
assumed that Brian was Jesus. They were furious about the idea of Jesus
Christ being parodied. Although this was not the intention of “Monty Python”,
nothing could stop the international critics from condemning the film.

Why is it that some things are funny in one culture yet unfunny in another? Even
across countries with the same language like Great Britain and America humour
does not travel very well.

This leads to the question to what extent culture influences our ability of
perceiving humour. Can humour only be understood within a country?
Consequently: Is there such a thing as a universal humour?

2 Aspects of Humour

“Humor is one of the features of human interaction that makes us human” 3. We

use humour to drive social interaction. Not surprisingly, humour is a complex
social and psychological phenomenon. However, it is not only designed to make
everyone laugh but it also plays a great role in working life.
For instance in cross-cultural communication, humour is often used to ease
heavy situations and building relationships. 4 Instead of telling personal
information to start a conversation you can communicate with each other in a
relaxed way.5At the workplace today you are confronted with people whose
culture is very different from yours. In order to avoid having a humorous
statement as the cause of conflicting relationships within intercultural
understanding, it seems necessary to have the broadest possible idea of the
foreign self-image in general and the quality of the humor in particular.
3
G.Neil Martin and Erin Sullivan: Sense of Humor Across Cultures: A Comparison of British,
Australian and American Respondents ,PDF, accessed on 15/12/2017.
https://wenku.baidu.com/view/9d71e0d41a37f111f1855b8e.html?re=view
4
Reimann Andrew: Intercultural communication and the essence of humor pdf, PDF,
http://pisces.lib.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/10241/7770/1/29-3-reimann.pdf, accessed
on15/12/2017.
5
The Guardian: What it really means to be British,16/05/2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/16/britishidentity, accessed on 15/12/2017

3
Humour also seems to be a universal phenomenon as it is of great importance
in varied cases of business negotiation, workplace interaction, media and
advertising. However, although the use may be universal, there is striking proof
that national and cultural differences in the qualitative and quantitative use of
humour and how this is stated exist.6

2.1 Brief history of humour – Example of the British

To understand the story of humour it is important to know about its history. It

gets clear that it is a complex topic to understand why some countries favour
the same type of humour even they come from a different context. Take for
instance the British. They are known for being the nation of humour, so when it
comes to their history of humour it seems obvious that its roots go back deep
into the country's past. Actually, it was brought to the UK by the Vikings, a
Danish Ambassador claims.” The British use of understatement, satire is
thought to originate from the Vikings, typically noted for raping, and pillaging
throughout history, when they brought trade from across the world to British
shores.”7 Later it became a way to draw attention to the social evils of their time.
Due to the wars in the 20 th century, the British revived their humour and comedy
increased as a method to cope with their fears and self-protection. In the 1990s
as a result of the technological advance humour and entertainment like the
comedy series as ‘Monty Python’ came to the fore. Since then humour and
comedy became an integral part of everyday life in Britain. “It has always struck
me that in the UK we have the same sense of humour as in Denmark," 8 pointed
out author Claus Gruber. But knowing the history it is obvious that it results from
the shared context the British and Danish had. Not surprisingly the group Monty

6
G.Neil Martin and Erin Sullivan: Sense of Humor Across Cultures: A Comparison of British,
Australian and American Respondents ,PDF, accessed on 15/12/2017
7
The Telegraph:Vikings brought sarcastic sense of humor to Britain,05/03/2004,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10677904/Vikings-brought-sarcastic-sense-of-humour-to-
Britain.html, accessed on 15/12/2017.
8
l The Telegraph:Vikings brought sarcastic sense of humor to Britain,05/03/2004,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10677904/Vikings-brought-sarcastic-sense-of-humour-to-
Britain.html, accessed on 15/12/2017.

4
Python became extremely popular in Denmark due to their common cultural
heritage.9

2.2 Different Cores of Humour

Humour is, in fact, the end product and not the device itself. However, it makes
sense to separate conceptually the different cores of humour in order to
recognize the roots of different humour theories and to fully understand humour.

2.2.1 Self-depreciating

One common device, the British use a lot is Self-depreciating. Due to their
biggest fear to appear superior to others they make fun of themselves 10 The
anthropologist, Kate Fox points out: "Pomposity and self-importance are
outlawed. Serious matters can be spoken of seriously, but one must never take
oneself too seriously… As long as everyone understands the rules, they are
duly impressed both by one's achievements and by one's reluctance to trumpet
them."11

However, its use may also lead to misunderstandings, as some are not
accustomed to it. It is sometimes claimed that they only seek attention and use
self-deprecation to hide this fact by saying for instance: 12 “"Oh no, I'm a very
ordinary neurosurgeon, I only work on the bits of the brain that control gross
motor function"13

9
The Telegraph:Vikings brought sarcastic sense of humor to Britain,05/03/2004,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10677904/Vikings-brought-sarcastic-sense-of-humour-to-
Britain.html, accessed on 15/12/2017
10
Luke Thompson: What is this, British humor?08/05/2017,
https://teacherluke.co.uk/2017/05/08/447-what-is-this-british-humour/, accessed on 15/12/2017
11
Dodai Stewart: Why does everyone love self-deprecating humor?,
29/07/2008,https://jezebel.com/5030508/why-does-everyone-love-self-deprecating-humor,
accessed on 15/12/2017
12
The Guardian: What it really means to be British,16/05/2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/16/britishidentity, accessed on 15/12/2017y
13
The Guardian: What it really means to be British,16/05/2006,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/may/16/britishidentity, accessed on 15/12/2017y

5
2.2.2 Irony and Sarcasm

Irony can be understood as an indirect manner of speaking, due to the fact that
you will mean exactly the contrary of what you say. However, it is embedded in
a very subtle way and needs attentive and sensitive listeners to recognize the
existence of irony in a message.14 The purpose of this linguistic device is to
describe, distort and cover-up certain contexts, linked with the want to liberate
situations from possible problems. Apart from that, the understanding of irony
can be either positive or negative.
Sarcasm is a more aggressive form than irony, therefore it is impossible to
overhear this variant when spoken. It generally contains malevolence and is
meant as an insult. For example: "This is my brilliant son, who failed out of
college."15

2.3 Humour preferences of countries

One experiment outlined the wide humour differences between countries: It
came out that People from the Republic of Ireland, the UK, Australia and New
Zealand most liked jokes that involved word plays, whereas most European
countries, like France, Denmark and Belgium, enjoyed, next to surreal humour,
topics that make people feel afraid, like death, illness and marriage unlike
Americans and Canadians who preferred jokes with an intense sense of
superiority -- either because a character appeared silly or is made to look silly
by another person.16 Doctor Richard Wiseman commented on this experiment
Wiseman: "These results are really interesting. It suggests that people from
17
different parts of the world have fundamentally different senses of humour."

14
Innovate us: How do we use irony?15/06/2013, http://www.innovateus.net/innopedia/how-do-
we-use-irony, accessed on 15/12/2017.
15
Academic Brooklyn: English 2: Irony, Sarcasm, Satire, 18/07/2014
https://www.google.de/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi44dmrwvrXAhUCa
FAKHWtgAUQFggnMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Facademic.brooklyn.cuny.edu%2Fenglish
%2Fmelani%2Fenglish2%2Fhandouts
%2Firony.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2uK5PTNPxcEGyAMFD__p4g, accessed on 15/12/2017.
16
The Guardian: Revealed: The funniest joke in the world, 03/10/2002,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/oct/03/3, accessed on 15/12/2017.
17
Richard Wiseman: League table of humour:
http://www.richardwiseman.com/LaughLab/Documents/leagueTable.html, accessed on 15/12/20

6
3 Cross-Cultural Boundaries of Humor
Even though laughter happens due to general neurological reasons what makes
us laugh is a subject of variable factors. It depends very much on a perceptive
linguistic and cultural competence. Beside of this, expressing and
understanding humour is often a challenge in cross-cultural communication due
to cultural differences. For instance the British have always complained that
Americans do not understand British humour. How can this be due to the non-
existence if they even speak the same language? What factors prevent humour
from being understood universally?

3.1. Edward Hall’s Cross-Cultural Theory

18
First of all the countries way of communicating has to be analysed as this is
one of the main reason for cross-cultural misunderstandings. Anthropologist
Edward Hall created the field of intercultural communication in 1959 with his
book The Silent Language.19 He explained the communicating phenomenon
using the “The Culture Map.” At the end everything comes down to the
difference between high and low context communicating countries.

High-context cultures prefer implicit communication therefore in order to

understand a message you have to know a lot about their background
information. Cultures that are considered as high-context are Asia, Africa,

18
Business insider: here’s the real reason why Americans don’t get irony, 27/01/2015,
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-dont-get-irony-2015-1?IR=T, accessed
15/12/2017.
19
Brian Neese: Intercultural Communication: High and Low-Context Cultures,17/08/2016,
http://online.seu.edu/high-and-low-context-cultures/, accessed on 15/12/2017.

7
central Europe and Latin America. Generally, their way of communicating can
be described as: “saying a lot with very little”20

In contrast low context cultures with western European roots, like the United
States and Australia, tend to communicate very explicitly and nonverbal
elements are not of importance.21

Even small differences in the way of communicating can lead to understanding

difficulties. In comparison to the Americans British are far more high-context,
even though they are considered as low context cultures compared to other
countries. Their way of using humor tends to be more indirect, this is for
instance, what irony is about. The United States as a very high-context culture
is communicating very directly without making use of irony too often. Therefore
it is not very surprising that even though British and Americans share the same
language, their might result misunderstandings due to their different
communication. 22

3.1.1 History as a shaping factor

High-context cultures mostly had a long shared history. Their personal networks
and connections have been passed on long time ago to community members in
order to generate more shared context from generation to generation. In
contrast, the Americans had to cope with a great wave of inflation form all
around the world. Therefore it was not possible for them to gain that much of
common context. As a consequence their way of communicating differs very
much due to the fact that they had to make their messages as clear as possible
in order to avoid misunderstandings in communication. This theory has been
proofed by various modern humor theories, stating that “some form of shared

20
Brian Neese: Intercultural Communication: High and Low-Context Cultures,17/08/2016,
http://online.seu.edu/high-and-low-context-cultures/, accessed on 15/12/2017
21
Brian Neese: Intercultural Communication: High and Low-Context Cultures,17/08/2016,
http://online.seu.edu/high-and-low-context-cultures/, accessed on 15/12/2017
22
Business insider: here’s the real reason why Americans don’t get irony, 27/01/2015,
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-dont-get-irony-2015-1?IR=T, accessed
15/12/2017.T

8
knowledge is one of the key foundations of humor – that is, after all, what a
culture is”23.

3.2 Interpretation under Hofstede’s Culture Dimensions

Professor Geert Hofstede has tried to identify the cultural differences using a 4-
D Model. His criteria are: Individualism versus Collectivism, Masculinity versus
Femininity, Power distance versus Uncertainty Avoidance, and Long-Term
Orientation versus Short Term Normative Orientation. 24 Their relevance with
regard to humour varies very much, so only two dimensions will be examined:
The individualism- collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. Those two play an
important role in understanding the cultural context effects on humour.

3.2.1 Humour across Individualism-Collectivism

The cultural dimension of individualism versus collectivism depend to great
extent on the society’s self-image. Hofstede explicitly explains Individualism as
the “preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are
expected to take care of only themselves and their immediate
families,”25whereas collectivism “represents a preference for a tightly-knit
framework in society in which individuals can expect their relatives or members
of a particular ingroup to look after them in exchange for unquestioning
loyalty.”26So in the end it comes down to whether people see themselves as “I”
or “we.”27

Examples for individualistic societies are the US, Germany, UK and Australia
who prefer individualistic freedom over the prioritisation of the entire groups
unlike more collectivist countries such as China, Thailand, and Korea. A
research pointed (CHEN) out that “aggressive humour was found to be
23
Amy McPherson: Why people thing Germans aren’t funny, 04/12/2017
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170802-why-people-think-germans-arent-funny, accessed
15/12/2017.
24
Hofstede Insights: National culture, https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-
culture, accessed 15/12/2017.
25
Hofstede Insights: National culture, https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-
culture, accessed 15/12/2017.
26
Hofstede Insights: National culture, https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-
culture, accessed 15/12/2017.
27
Hofstede Insights: National culture, https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-
culture, accessed 15/12/2017.

9
consistently and very significantly related to […] individualism, suggesting that
those who are competitive and strive to win at the expense of others, tend to
use humour to enhance themselves by disparaging others” Therefore it is no
surprise due to a study students from Hong Kong liked more conservative, wise
28
humour, whereas American students preferred sexual and aggressive jokes.
Another very interesting aspect results from the analyzation of humorous
advertisements in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. It seems that ““the
number of individuals or characters playing major roles in ads in which humour
is intended is greater in high collectivism (low individualism) cultures than in low
collectivism (high individualism) cultures.”29

3.2.2 Humour across Uncertainty Avoidance

The central question of The Uncertainty Avoidance dimension is: “Should we
30
control the future or just let it happen?” It should explain to what extent
cultures feel comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Simply put in comparison Arabic-countries (scored 68) to the United States

(scored 46), to contrast different degrees of uncertainty avoidance. It is not
surprising that the results we can see in this example were also reflected in the
dimension of individualism collectivism. Mostly it is a combination of both risk
averse and individualism and the opposite. Therefore, countries with high
uncertainty avoidance will also prefer a more conservative humour with little
uncertainty whereas low uncertainty avoidance cultures may like riskier and
open-ended humour.31

In addition, the risk tolerance plays an important role when analysing the
narrator of jokes. It has been shown that somebody coming from a high risk-
averse culture tends to avoid telling aggressive and unusual humour as the risk
28
The change school: Can humour translate, 11/06/2015, http://thechangeschool.com/blog/can-
humour-translate, accessed on 15/12/2017.
29
Alden, Dana L., Wayne D. Hoyer, and Chol Lee: Identifying global and culture-specific
dimensions of humor in advertising: A multinational analysis." The Journal of
Marketing (1993): 64-75.
30
Hofstede Insights: National culture, https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-
culture, accessed 15/12/2017.
31
Kevin Lu: Why isn’t my joke funny everywhere? How humor crosses culture lines, 12/08/2015,
https://de.scribd.com/document/313493179/Humor-Across-Culture-Kevin-Lu, 15/12/2017.,

10
that the audience may not enjoy it is higher. As a result, the uncertainty
avoidance dimension has an essential effect on the perception but also
deliverance of humour, which has to be widely considered across cultures. 32

4 Conclusion

So, can you understand a country without knowing what makes it laugh? No
actually you cannot. As humour has a very close connection to people’s
mentality it cannot be separated from cultural studies. The example at the
beginning that the British film “Life of Bryan from Monty Python showed that
some people did not understand the type of humour that is displayed in it.
However, this phenomenon does not happen due to the fact that they are not
open-minded enough. More it has cultural reasons as examined before.

The biggest problem is that sometimes humorous content cannot be transferred

across cultures due to the previous examined dimensions and cross-cultural
theories. Factors like, high-context-low context, individualism-collectivism, and
uncertainty avoidance strongly influence the way in which humour is perceived.
33
However, it is important to consider that even though humour differs very
much across cultural contexts there are basic aspects of humour that can be
understood universally. Like the comedy series Mr. Bean that is also used very
often on on-board entertainment, due to the fact that it uses a gentle and safe
humour that we all can associate with.34

To answer the question at the beginning if is there something like universal

humour we have to differentiate clearly between ‘humour is universal across
cultures’ and ‘in every culture exists a sense of humour.’ The first statement
would signify that any type of joke is received the same way in any context,
which obviously is not the truth whereas the second truly states that every
35
culture is able to perceive humour. Those humour studies are of extremely
32
Kevin Lu: Why isn’t my joke funny everywhere? How humor crosses culture lines, 12/08/2015,
https://de.scribd.com/document/313493179/Humor-Across-Culture-Kevin-Lu, 15/12/2017.,
33
Quote siehe Referat
34
Mr. Bean siehe Referat
35
Kevin Lu: Why isn’t my joke funny everywhere? How humor crosses culture lines, 12/08/2015,
https://de.scribd.com/document/313493179/Humor-Across-Culture-Kevin-Lu, 15/12/2017.,

11
importance for advertising as they have to deliver a certain message to their
audience, mostly over language and cultural boundaries. This is extremely
important to the fact that a joke that is funny here may not be funny there.

“We all may laugh, but what makes us laugh depends very much on where we
are from, the language we speak, and the historical context with which we are
most familiar.”

12