Communicative Value of Jokes in English and Armenian Linguocultures

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Humor is an appeal to provoke laughter and provide amusement.

It is a universal phenomenon but is also culturally tinted. In this paper, we study how culture impacts individuals’ perception and usage humor as well as humor’s implications for psychological well-being.

Although humor has a biological basis rooted in our genes, it is also evident that cultural norms and learning play an important role in determining how it is used in social interactions, and what topics are considered appropriate for it. In addition, although all forms of humor seem to originate in a basic play structure, the complexity of human language and imagination enables us to create humor in a seemingly endless variety of forms. As human language, culture, and technology have evolved, we have developed new methods and styles of communicating it, from spontaneous interpersonal joking and banter to oral storytelling traditions, comedic drama and humorous literature, comedy films, radio and television shows, and jokes and cartoons disseminated over the Internet.