Teaching English to Rural and Semi Urban Students through Jokes
Alpana Gupta
Independent Researcher, Jaipur
Keywords: jokes as ridicule, various theories of humour, construction of coherent English discourse
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to teach English language to rural and semiurban college students through jokes. The paper has been divided into three parts. The first part presents various theories of humour and it attempts to show four interpretations of comedy: violation of expectation, punches coming as a surprise, resolution of incongruity through interpretation and the violation of Grecian maxims. In the second part of the paper, an actual classroom experiment is discussed where the B.A first year students of a semi-urban college were introduced to the jokes and then on the basis of those jokes they were instructed to write jokes in their own English. To the satisfaction of both the students and the teacher they were able to construct very interesting and instructive English language jokes. The third part of the paper presents conclusions.
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