Safe Territory? The Humorous Narratives of Bilingual Women

Abstract

Humor in a second language (L2) can present an intimidating linguistic and cultural challenge for L2 speakers, yet it is a crucial means by which friendships are developed. In this article, I report on the humorous narratives constructed by 4 bilingual women in interaction with native English speakers. Unlike previous studies, which have pointed to women's tendencies to tell stories of their own foibles, these women told few first-person narratives, and these often positioned the speaker in a positive manner. The majority of these women's narratives contained third-party protagonists and frequently demonstrated that party's foolishness. The results show an overall pattern of positive self-portrayal of by the narrator. Telling overtly or implicitly self-aggrandizing stories was a way for these women to create solidarity among themselves and deal with the marginalization that many L2 speakers experience by virtue of their nonnative speaker status.

Notes

For details regarding the identification and definitions of the types of humor not included in this analysis, see Bell, 2002.

I calculated intercoder reliability using Cramér's V.