Puns and Language Play in the L2 Classroom: Pragmatic Tests on Swedish High School Learners of English
2018 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
ABSTRACT: Puns are short humorous texts that play on structural ambiguity in order to create incongruous scripts. The perception of their humour requires considerable pragmatic manipulation, which may present problems for L2 learners, which is why many scholars agree that they are best reserved for more advanced students. Using a combination of Quantitative and Qualitative analysis of data yielded from a survey containing puns and referential jokes, this study confirms that humour through puns is largely inaccessible to Swedish High School learners of English, with ambiguity being the main obstacle across the test groups. However, since language play has been proven to be facilitative to language learning, and since students themselves express a wish to be able to participate in humorous interaction, learners may well benefit from working with puns and language play in the classroom in order to gain greater linguistic abilities and well-rounded communicative competence.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2018. , p. 28
Keywords [en]
Humour, Puns, Ambiguity, Incongruity, Scripts, Language Play, Language Learning, Second Language Acquisition
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-26906OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hig-26906DiVA, id: diva2:1216212
Subject / course
English
Educational program
no programme (freestanding course)
Presentation
2018-05-29, Adobe Connect Meeting, n/a, n/a, 13:00 (English)
Supervisors
Examiners
2018-06-212018-06-112018-08-21Bibliographically approved