2.2. A SENSE OF HUMOUR

2.2. A SENSE OF HUMOUR

2.2.1

Introduction

Do you have a sense of humour? Do you know people

who lack it? How important is this quality?

2.2.2

Listening

Translate the text. Do you agree with the author’s

point of view? Why / Why not?

The Most Important of All Human Qualities is a Sense of Humour

Biologically, there is only one quality, which distinguishes us from animals: the ability to laugh. In a universe, which appears to be utterly devoid of humour, we enjoy this supreme luxury. And it is a luxury, for unlike any other bodily process, laughter does not seem to serve a biologically useful purpose. In a divided world, laughter is a unifying force. Human beings oppose each other on a great many issues. Nations may disagree about systems of government and human relations may be plagued by ideological factions and political camps, but we all share the ability to laugh. And laughter, in turn, depends on that most complex and subtle of all human qualities: a sense of humour. Certain comic stereotypes have a universal appeal. This can best be seen from the worldwide popularity of Charlie Chaplin’s early films. This little man at odds with society never fails to amuse no matter which country we come from. As the great commentator on human affairs, Dr Samuel Johnson, once remarked, ‘Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed in the same way.’

A sense of humour may take various forms and laughter may be anything from a refined tinkle to an earthquaking roar, but the effect is always the same. Humour helps us to maintain a correct sense of values. It is the one quality which political fanatics appear to lack. If we can see the funny side, we never make the mistake of taking ourselves too seriously. We are always reminded that tragedy is not really far removed from comedy, so we never get a lop-sided view of things.

This is one of the chief functions of satire and irony. Human pain and suffering are so grim; we hover so often on the brink of war; political realities are usually enough to plunge us into total despair. In such circumstances, cartoons and satirical accounts of somber political events redress the balance. They take the wind out of pompous and arrogant politicians who have lost their sense of proportion. They enable us to see that many of our most profound actions are merely comic or absurd. We laugh when a great satirist like Swift writes about war in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. The Lilliputians and their neighbours attack each other because they can’t agree which end to break an egg. We laugh because we are meant to laugh; but we are meant to weep too. It is no wonder that in totalitarian regimes any satire against the Establishment is wholly banned. It is too powerful a weapon to be allowed to flourish.

The sense of humour must be singled out as man’s most important quality because it is associated with laughter. And laughter, in turn, is associated with happiness. Courage, determination, initiative – these are qualities we share with other forms of life. But the sense of humour is uniquely human. If happiness is one of the great goals of life, then it is the sense of humour that provides the key.

Listening

Comprehension

Which of the issues below are shared by the author?

Laughter unites people.
All human qualities are important. It’s absurd to stress one quality at the expense of others.
Laughter depends on a sense of humour.
The sense of humour is a key to happiness.
Tragedy and comedy are closely related.
Humour cannot alleviate suffering.
The sense of humour is uniquely human.
Political fanatics lack humour.
Humour emphasizes less serious aspects of human life, therefore it’s not important.
There is much grimness in the world, so humour redresses the balance.

Opinion

Agree or disagree with the following statements.

Prove your point of view.

Love, charity, compassion are far more important than humour.
The ability to laugh is universal, but the sense of humour differs from country to country.
Humour does not solve any problems, only blinds us to them.
Happiness results from the combination of great many qualities.
Politicians don’t lack humour.
Satire and irony can be harsh and cruel, not at all funny.

2.2.3

Vocabulary

Translate the sentences into Russian. Explain the

meaning of the words and expressions in bold.

He told me some hilarious jokes – I burst out laughing and couldn’t stop!
I must tell you what happened today – it was hysterical!
She’s witty and very good at telling jokes.
They got drunker and drunker and the jokes got dirtier and dirtier.
I think he upset a lot of people with that sick joke about the plane crash.
His meanness has become a bit of a standing joke in our family.
His friends are always playing practical jokes on him. Last week they phoned him pretending to be the police.
If you think I’m going to drive you fifty miles to the airport at three o’clock in the morning, you must be kidding!
Children can be very cruel in the way they make fun of anyone who’s slightly different.
I don’t really think your shirt is horrible – I’m only teasing.
All the other children take the mickey out of him, because he’s no good at games.
She laughed her head off at his pathetic attempt to speak French.
I know it was a good joke, but I can’t remember the punch line.

Word Choice

Choose the word or phrase that best completes

each sentence.

1. Her awful singing is a _______ joke at school.

a. dirty b. sick c. standing d. practical

2. He made a _______ joke about the Ethiopian famine victims.

a. dirty b. sick c. standing d. practical

3. Have you had the joke about the bishop and the actress? It’s a bit _______.

a. dirty b. sick c. standing d. practical

4. I haven’t laughed so much in years. It was absolutely _______.

a. amusing b. hilarious c. funny d. diverting

5. He loves _______ her about her boyfriends.

a. teasing b. joking c. kidding d. pulling

6. I can’t say I find his jokes particularly _______.

a. enjoying b. amusing c. standing d. fun

Word Use

Fill each of the blanks with one suitable word.

He ruined the joke by saying the _______ line before the end.
When he told her what had happened she burst ______ laughing.
He has a strange ______ of humour and laughs at all sorts of peculiar things.
They _______ a practical joke _______ him by pouring vodka in his lemonade while he wasn’t looking.
His friends make ______ of him because he’s got an enormous nose.
She _______ me a very funny joke, but I can’t remember it now.

2.2.4

Idiom

Explain the meaning of the following sayings and

proverbs. Supply Russian or Belarusian equivalents to them.

Many a true word is spoken in jest.
Laugh today and cry tomorrow. After joy comes annoy. God send you joy, for sorrow will come soon enough.
After rain comes fair weather. The darkest hour is before the dawn. In the evening tears, in the morning cheers.
Better the last smile than the first laughter.
A merry heart is a good medicine.
The day is lost on which you did not laugh.
Better lose a joke than a friend. One joy scatters a hundred griefs.
Correct your manners with laughter.
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. A merry heart goes all the way. Laughter makes good blood.
He who laughs at crooked men should need walk very straight.
He who says what he likes may hear what he doesn’t like.

Story Making

Make up a short story to illustrate one of the

proverbs above.

2.2.5

Reading

Study the text by Stephen Leacock, and learn the

words in bold.

The deep background that lies behind and beyond what we call humour is revealed only to the few who, by instinct or by effort, have given thought to it. The world’s humour, in its best and greatest sense, is perhaps the highest product of our civilization. One thinks here not of the mere spasmodic effects of the comic artist or the blackface expert of the vaudeville show, but of the really great humour which, once or twice in a generation at best, illuminates and elevates our literature. It is no longer dependent upon the mere trick and quibble of words, or the odd and meaningless incongruities in things that strike us as ‘funny’. Its basis lies in the deeper contrasts offered by life itself; the strange incongruity between our aspiration and our achievement, the eager and fretful anxieties of to-day that fade into nothingness to-morrow, the burning pain and the sharp sorrow that are softened in the gentle retrospect of time, till as we look back upon the course that has been traversed we pass in view the panorama of our lives, as people in old age may recall, with mingled tears and smiles, the angry quarrels of their childhood.

All that I dare claim is that I have as much sense of humour as other people. And, oddly enough, I notice that everybody else makes the same claim. Any man will admit, if need be, that his sight is not good, or that he cannot swim, or shoots badly with a rifle, but to touch upon his sense of humour is to give him a mortal affront.

‘No’, said a friend of mine the other day, ‘I never go to Grand Opera’, and then he added with an air of pride – ‘You see, I have absolutely no ear for music’.

‘You don’t say so!’ I exclaimed.

‘None!’ he went on. ‘I can’t tell one tune from another. I don’t know ‘Home Sweet Home’ from ‘God, Save the King’. I can’t tell whether a man is tuning a violin or playing a sonata’.

He seemed to get prouder and prouder over each item of his own deficiency. He ended by saying that he had a dog at his house that had a far better ear for music than he had. As soon as his wife or any visitor started to play the piano the dog always began to howl – plaintively, he said, as if it were hurt. He himself never did this.

When he had finished I made what I thought a harmless comment. ‘I suppose’, I said, ‘that you find your sense of humour deficient in the same way: the two generally go together’.

My friend was livid with rage in a moment.

‘Sense of humour!’ he said. ‘My sense of humour! Me without a sense of humour! Why I suppose I’ve a keener sense of humour than any man, or any two men, in this city!’

He left me still quivering with indignation.

Personally, however, I do not mind making the admission that there are certain forms of so-called humour I am quite unable to appreciate. Chief among these is that ancient thing called the Practical Joke.

‘You never knew McGann, did you?’ a friend of mine asked me the other day. When I said ‘No. I had never known McGann’, he shook his head with a sigh, and said:

‘Ah, you should have known McGann. He had the greatest sense of humour of any man I ever knew – always full of jokes. I remember one night at the boarding house where we were, he stretched a string across the passageway and then rang the dinner bell. One of the boarders fell. One of the boarder broke his leg. We nearly died laughing’.

‘Dear me!’ I said. ‘What a humorist! Did he often do things like that?’

‘Oh, yes, he was full of them all the time. He used to put tar in the tomato soup, and bees wax and tin-tacks on the chairs. He was full of ideas’.

McGann, I understand, is dead. I am not sorry for it. Indeed I think that for most of us the time has gone by when we can see fun of putting tacks on chairs, or thistles in beds, or live snakes in people’s boots.

To me it has always seemed that the very essence of good humour is that it must be without harm and without malice. I admit that there is in all of us a certain vein of old original demoniacal humour or joy in the misfortune of another which sticks to us like our original sin.

One can indeed make the sweeping assertion that the telling of stories as a mode of amusing others, ought to be kept within strict limits. Few people realize how extremely difficult it is to tell a story so as to reproduce the real fun of it – to ‘get it over’ as actors say. The mere ‘facts’ of a story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or incongruity in the denouement of it that no narrator however clumsy can altogether fumble it.

Take, for example, this well-known instance – a story which, in one form or another, everybody has learnt.

‘George Grossmith, the famous comedian, was once badly run down and went to consult a doctor. It happened that the doctor, though, like everybody else, had often seen Grossmith on the stage, had never seen him without his make-up and did not know him by sight. He examined his patient, looked at his tongue, felt his pulse and tapped his lungs. Then he shook his head.

‘There is nothing wrong with you, sir’, he said, ‘except that you’re run down from overwork and worry. You need rest and amusement. Take a night off and go and see George Grossmith at the Savoy’.

‘Thank you’, said the patient. ‘I am George Grossmith’.

Definition

Match the words and their definitions:

1. boarder	a. an act or sound of breathing in and out
2. denouement	b. the explanation at the end of a story or play
3. indignation	c. feeling of anger and surprise because you feel insulted or unfairly treated
4. origin	d. the situation, place or physical matter from which something begins
5. quibble	e. a small nail with a sharp point and flat top
6. retrospect	f. a small complaint or criticism about something very unimportant
7. sigh	g. someone who pays to live in another person’s house with some or all meals provided
8. thistle	h. thinking back to a time in the past
9. (tin-)tack	i. a wild plant with prickly leaves and furry flowers

Meaning

Explain the difference between:

1. incongruity - inconsistency

2. spasmodic - spastic

3. comic – comedian

4. deficiency – defiance

5. aspiration – aspersion - asperity

6. affront - afflict

7. essence - essentials

8. assertion - assessment

Translation

Translate the following into Russian:

He was suddenly struck by the incongruity of drinking champagne out of plastic glasses.
There were some inconsistencies in his story, and he fumbled for words to finish it.
I have just one quibble – there is a spelling mistake here.
In essence, you are saying that everyone’s teenage years seem happier in retrospect than they really were.
Emily sighed for her lost youth.
The cast and crew mingled as everyone started to relax.
I knew that something else lay behind his sudden interest in variety shows.
If he has to sit in one place for more than ten minutes, he becomes fidgety and fretful.
There is no point in having brilliant ideas unless you can get them over.
By an amazing twist of fortune, we met again in Madrid five years later.
Frankie was a bit of a clown – always deliberately clumsy and up to mischief.
She found him standing very still, looking into nothingness.
There is a rich vein of humour running through her stories.

Discussion

Answer the following questions.

Do you agree with the author’s interpretation of what ‘great humour’ is? What kind of humour do you consider great?
Do most people understand good humour?
What is your attitude towards tricks and practical jokes?
Are there any forms of humour you don’t appreciate?
What does the author call the ‘old original demoniacal humour’?
Would you like to make friends with Mr McGann? With George Grossmith?
Does good humour go together with malice and contempt?
They say, tears and laughter go hand in hand. Do you agree?
Is good humour rare in literature? Is ‘serious’ literature devoid of humour?
Does life itself sometimes create funny situations? Can you give examples?
Are great comedians most talented actors? What popular comedians do you admire? Why?

2.2.6

Activate

Explain wherein lies the humorous effect of the joke.

1. – I could marry anyone I please.

- So, why don’t you?

- I haven’t pleased anybody yet.

2. – Waiter, what do you call this?

- It’s bean soup, sir.

- I don’t care what it’s been. What is it now?

3. – Really. – Mr Horton said to his new typist. – I don’t think you have the slightest idea what punctuation means.

- Oh, indeed, I have, - she replied. – I’m here every morning at five minutes to nine.

4. – Where were you born?

- America.

- Which part?

- All of me, of course.

5. A bird in the hand is bad table manners.

6. Keep this bus tidy! Throw your tickets

out of the windows!

B Read the ‘Traveller’s tales’ and provide some of your own.

1. In a Hong Kong supermarket: ‘For your convenience, we recommend courteous, efficient self-service’.

2. On the menu of a Swiss restaurant: ‘Our wines leave you nothing to hope for’.

3. In a Bangkok dry cleaner’s: ‘Drop your trousers here for the best results’.

4. Outside a Paris dress shop: ‘Dresses for street walking’.

5. Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand: ‘Would you like to ride on your own ass?’

6. In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: ‘We take your bags and send them in all directions’.

7. In Bucharest hotel lobby: ‘The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable’.

Check Yourself

Correct mistakes in the following sentences:

The excited movie drew large crowds of children every Sunday.
Either Martin or John will give their performance next.
The teacher made all these improvements themselves.
Though coming late, the dinner was waiting for him on the table.
Running home through the snow, her nose got extremely cold.
The sooner you do it, the best.
The fish was taken out of the icebox and handed to Mary stiff as a board.
Is there any cause why you shouldn’t come?
I set his poor sense of humour on unhappy childhood.
I was greatly enjoyed by the comedian.
She wore a dress that the stripes made her look like a stick of Christmas candy.
Don’t act like you have never seen him.
None of us had any money besides Jane.
Is that you who has done the cake?

2.2.7

Interaction

Using ideas from this unit, make up dialogues

presenting your views on the quality humour.

2.2.8

Opinion

Are the famous Murphy’s laws just a joke, or do they

contain a grain of truth in them? Think of four or five

more ‘laws’ to add to the list below.

Murphy’s Law and Other Laws of Nature

* If something can go wrong, then it will go wrong. (‘Murphy’s Law’)

* Nothing is as easy as it looks.

* If you start to do something, you always find that there is something else which has to be done first.

* If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.

* Most things get worse all the time.

* Anything that begins well ends badly.

* Anything that begins badly ends worse.

* If it looks easy, it’s difficult. If it looks difficult, it’s impossible.

* As soon as you talk about something: if it’s good, it goes away, if it’s bad, it happens.

* However many socks you have, three of them are always the same colour.

* Everywhere is uphill on a bicycle.

* Cars prefer to break down on Sundays.

* Officials make work for each other.

* Nothing is impossible for people who don’t have to do it themselves.

* Everything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.

* When something breaks down, there are always two things wrong. You will only find one of them.

* The lift is always on another floor.

* Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives.

* Having baths makes telephones ring.

2.2.9

Speaking

Sam Goldwin was famous not only for the Hollywood

films he produced but also for the amazing things

he said. Translate the following. Can you recall any

other funny expressions of famous people?

Goldwynisms

1. A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

2. I’ll give you a definite maybe.

3. We’re overpaying him, but he’s worth it.

4. Include me out.

5. Don’t talk to me when I’m interrupting.

6. I read part of it all the way through.

7. What I want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

8. I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.

9. I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong.

10. Anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.

11. In two words: im-possible.

12. A bachelor’s life is no life for a single man.

13. We’d do anything for each other. We’d even cut each other’s throats for each other.

14. If I drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive!

15. Color television! I won’t believe it until I see it in black and white.

16. Our comedies are not to be laughed at.

17. When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.

2.2.10

Writing

Express your opinion on the importance of humour in

your life and in the society.