Bridging Activities for Humor/Irony in Languages and Technologies (class)

References at the end.

Pragmatic and Humor Failure/Divergence:

(Ishihara & Cohen, 2014; Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman, & Vallenga, 2014; Bell & Attardo, 2010).

In the scope of language learning and teaching: Pragmatics -
Ishihara & Chohen
Discuss research and suggestions for incorporating the teaching and learning of Pragmatics in language learning.

In Chapter 5, Ishihara & Cohen describe the types of Pragmatic failure/divergence from a language learner’s primary language background to the language being learned.

Some is attributed to negative (pragmatic) transfer, which means the conventions of language and behavior from a learners’ background is applied to the context of the language and social behaviors of the new language. Positive transfer means that behaviors in the new language context are compatible with the learners’ background language(s). In contrast, negative transfer means that the expected social and language norms are not (Ishihara & Cohen).

For example, American English is generally informal except in certain contexts. We do not have a lot of situations where formal titles or address forms apply. Compare that to Korean Honorifics which are the ways in which speakers address one another: familiar and formal, age/generation, etc. (Reinhardt & Ryu, 2012).

Imagine how awkward it would be to use honorifics in a setting where it isn’t anything close to the norm and vice versa. In fact, it could be considered rude or off-putting.

Pragmatics (language behavior) is a relatively new aspect incorporated into language teaching. Many scholars state that if it is included in teaching materials (i.e. textbooks) at all, it is too intuitive and doesn’t really translate to the ways in which people actually communicate (Bardovi-Harlig, Mossman, & Vallenga, 2014; Ishihara & Cohen, 2014). Therefore, teaching materials and instruction can also contribute to pragmatic failure/divergence.

Bardovi-Harlig, et. al (2014) and Ishihara & Cohen (2014), provide several suggestions and resources to explore for adapting text/instructional materials to the classroom with naturalistic/authentic examples via certain linguistics studies which can be informed by Corpus Linguistics and/or Conversation Analysis.

However, some scholars on language learning and technology have some compelling insights worthy of exploration. This is where I segue into language and technologies and the proposed “Bridging Activities” model (Thorne, 2009; Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008; Reinhardt & Thorne, 2011; Reinhardt & Ryu, 2013).

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Here is an outline/paraphrase of the basic ideas:

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Thorne & Reinhardt (2008):

Overview, helping learners to become their own autonomous teachers well after they leave the classroom.

Given that we have an explosion of new communication genres that continues to diversify and change rapidly, it is time to introduce new models to the language classroom which can be used to increase ‘sociopragmatic awareness’ and development whenever there is a new communicative context in which to engage. Since using computers and mobile technology to communicate online has become so common place, this is considered a highly significant and necessary part of language learning for both social and professional purposes. However, language education cannot possibly address every genre of digital communications because of how many new genres surface and change at its current rate, hence Throne and Reinhardt’s proposed teaching model: “Bridging Activities.”

1. Students observe and collect data from an assigned online communicative source such as from social networks like Facebook.

2. Students are guided through exploring and analyzing the samples collected.

3. Students participate in creating and practicing the conventions they have found and learned about therefore helping with the process of developing sociopragmatic awareness and capabilities.

Studies have been conducted in testing this model.

One of them was on Spanish language learners who joined groups on Facebook, observed certain interactive behaviors such as greetings and leave taking. Students observed and collected data for the guided exploration and analysis. A specific observation concerned how a general greeting opened the floor to all group members. A greeting would only be specified for certain members when explicitly named. Leave taking (saying ‘goodbye’) did not occur since it was essentially means to close a group discussion (comment thread). One student took the initiative to post to a group following the Bridging Activity phases and shared it with the teaching researchers (Blattner & Fiori…)…

Another study was on beginning level learners of Korean and the use of Korean Honorifics (Reinhardt & Ryu, 2012). These learners were given some extra steps: “pre-activities” as a means of scaffolding since they were beginners. These pre-activities include, but are not limited to, teacher selected data from “anonymized” Facebook comment threads. There are two pre-activities in the modified version by the authors.

A Summary of the Modified Bridging Activities (Reinhardt & Ryu):

1. To situate learners, profile creation. - Students create character profiles for later use.
2. Students create an “advanced” organizer - to reference the forms and uses of those forms which they have just learned.

For the Bridging Activities (modified):

1. Students identify these conventions in authentic, but anonymized samples (such as Facebook threads) collected by the instructor rather than the students because the learners were lower level.

2. The second activity is similar to the first except the uses are “unfamiliar or unusual” and the discussion is concerning these uses.

3. Students use the fake profiles they created taking on the roles of the character and practice these uses in a “simulated” setting. This was done in a way that all learners remained anonymous with respect to one another for easing potential anxiety (over possible mistakes) and as well as encouraging risks by alleviating that anxiety.

The mixture of textbook instruction and the activities enabled learners to notice and understand the sociopragmatic forms, including unconventional forms for certain effects (intentional “flouting,” such as for humor), with relative ease (2012).

The authors reported a lot more than this, which includes limitations, implications, and suggestions.

A very brief and broad summary of the authors’ discussion.

• Have students stick to one profile rather than switch them out (which, in the study, they had done the latter) because it is inconsistent and potentially confusing.
• Having access to more resources such as corpus and/or conversation analysis data (actual use) may also help in connecting context to form.
• Utilize a genre useful and relevant to learners such as a situated everyday/vernacular text which is far more relevant in terms of regular use than the classical literature/academic essay genre. Therefore, learners can connect the learning material to more practical and useful situations of everyday use in which the more formal, academic, genres do not apply.
• In general, the model was helpful in developing sociopragmatic awareness and development (for communication purposes).

End of the study’s very basic summary

Why are studies on Spanish and Korean language learners included?

• In terms of language teaching, many approaches can be applied to different language learning contexts, such as the above.

• This model could prove useful to English language education, particularly in the North American context.

• There is much to improve regarding pragmatic instruction and especially concerning everyday interaction where very complicated and nuanced forms are used in multiple settings.

Take humor, for example. Friends bond and joke together. Colleagues use it for various purposes on the job as well. It can even happen in business meetings. In the United States, strangers will even joke with one another under certain circumstances. As native speakers of American English, most of use know implicitly that it has a large variety of functions and it is used in most contexts—except for situations like at the Airport with TSA agents----. Well, professionals in language teaching and linguistics know that humor outside of one’s primary language is incredibly difficult to recognize, understand, appreciate, and join in on. That means, for English language learners in the United States, full access to the ‘native speaker’ world isn’t available, which is problematic. Even in international business settings where English is the lingua franca and interlocutors are from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, joking can take place and can serve to unite or divide members of the conversational contexts (Rogerson-Revell, 2007).

Even advanced level English language learners often fail to grasp humor and participate (Bell & Attardo, 2012; Petkova, 2013). However, that does not mean it is impossible since even beginning level learners can understand and contribute to humorous conversational joking when they are in a supportive environment and share contextual knowledge (Davies, 2003).

One particularly difficult style of humor involves irony/sarcasm (Bell & Attardo, 2010). It is also worth noting that irony/sarcasm is also used for non-humorous expressions as well (Attardo, 2000a).

As a way to teach high-performing upper intermediate and advanced English language learners, the following is a suggested pre-activty, for a Bridging Activity-like approach in helping students to learn how to recognize, understand, acknowledge, address, and, possibly, even use irony/sarcasm.

The design is influenced by the Bridging Activities proposal and studies previously mentioned, as well as Attardo (2000a; 2000b) and Burgers, et al. (2012): Five (required) Factors of irony. It is also, somewhat, informed by some studies concerning computational linguistics on programming sarcasm detectors for Tweets on Twitter (Barbieri & Saggion, 2014; Liebrecht, et al., 2013; Maynard & Greenwood, 2014).

Like Reinhardt and Ryu (2012), this approach includes preactivities. However, rather than use Facebook or solely one source, it aims to target simpler use of language through the likes of Twitter, Yik Yak, and meme databases like Very Demotivational and the TV Tropes section on Irony (the latter for help with identifying irony).

For curiosity’s sake, I explored Yik Yak. While I did observe some lewd/obscene content, it did not appear that there were specific/explicitly named targets. Common use: expressing the amusing and frustrating moments of student life in college. Quite often, posts are loaded with irony/sarcasm. Therefore, it is a useful resource for finding authentically produced samples of ironic/sarcastic expressions. Additionally, like Twitter, Yik Yak posts are reasonably short and therefore limiting the added mental processing (Attardo, 2000b) required to successfully interpret irony/sarcasm. It may also be even closer to authenticity than Twitter since there is no real way of knowing who made the posts (Twitter allows non-real names/identities, but it is still possible to connect the real person to it).

The language content in memes generated from Very Demotivational is also quite brief. Much of the context is also presented in visual form. This can be helpful for extralinguistic support in language learning, provided whomever is viewing the meme understands the sociocultural context of it. In other words, a meme referencing a well known American icon or film, as in the Kenny Rogers, “I don’t always…, but when I do” or the Chuck Norris jokes, will be more easily understood by people from the same sociocultural background. However, those from Iran or China, may not understand them because they might not share the same background knowledge.

The proposed idea is to begin with having students learn about the five (required) factors of irony which includes:
vocabulary - similar to pre-reading/pre-listening activities.

Follow the link here for the proposed pre-activity with examples from the aforementioned internet domains:

References

Attardo, S. (2000a). Irony markers and functions: Towards a goal-oriented theory of irony and its processing. Rask, 12, 3-20.

Attardo, S. (2000b). Irony as relevant inappropriateness. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 793-826.

Attardo, S., Eisterhold, J., Hay, J. and Poggi, I. (2003). Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 16(2), 243–60.

Barbieri, F., & Saggion, H. (2014, April). Modelling Irony in Twitter. In Proceedings of the Student Research Workshop at the 14th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 56-64).

Bardovi‐Harlig, K., Mossman, S., & Vellenga, H. E. (2014). Developing Corpus‐Based Materials to Teach Pragmatic Routines. TESOL Journal.

Bell, N., & Attardo, S. (2010). Failed humor: Issues in non-native speakers’ appreciation and understanding of humor. Intercultural Pragmatics, 7(3), 423-447.

Blattner,, G, & Fiori, M. (2011). Virtual social network communities: An Investigation of language learners’ development of sociopragmatic awareness and multiliteracy skills. Calico Journal, 29(1), 24-43.

Burgers, C., van Mulken, M., & Schellens, P. J. (2012). Verbal irony: Differences in usage across written genres. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 31(3), 290-310.

Davies, C. (2003). How English-learners joke with native speakers: an interactional sociolinguistics perspective on humor as collaborative discourse across cultures. Journal of Pragmatics 35(2003), 1361-1385.

Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2014). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Routledge.

Liebrecht, C. C., Kunneman, F. A., & van den Bosch, A. P. J. (2013). The perfect solution for detecting sarcasm in tweets# not.

Maynard, D., & Greenwood, M. A. (2014, May). Who cares about sarcastic tweets? investigating the impact of sarcasm on sentiment analysis. In Proceedings of LREC.

Reinhardt, J., & Ryu, J. (2013). Using Social Network-Mediated Bridging Activities to Develop Socio-Pragmatic Awareness in Elementary Korean. International Journal of Computer-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching (IJCALLT), 3(3), 18-33.

Reinhardt, J., & Thorne, S. (2011). Beyond comparisons: Frameworks for developing digital L2 literacies. Present and future promises of CALL: From theory and research to new directions in language teaching, 257-280.

Rogerson-Revell, P. (2007). Humour in business: A double-edged sword. A study of humour and style shifting in intercultural business meetings. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(1), 4-28.
Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/85678420?accountid=13265

Squire, K. (2009). Mobile media learning: multiplicities of place. On the Horizon, 17(1), 70-80.

Thorne, S. L. (2009). ‘Community’, semiotic flows, and mediated contribution to activity.Language teaching, 42(01), 81-94.

Thorne, S., & Reinhardt, J. (2008). ‘Bridging activities,’ new media literacacies and advanced foreign language proficiency. CALICO Journal. 25(3), 558-572.