Abstract:

Foreign language teaching and learning is a challenge for both teachers and learners. Mastering the target language is a long process and it involves the development of both receptive and productive skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. Despite the communicative language competence and the intercultural communication competence, foreign language (L2) learners need to develop a range of pragmatic skills in order to successfully participate in a variety of speech acts. Considering the fact that humour is a universal human trait that expresses the social norms, attitudes and views of the world of a specific language community, the study of joking as a speech act sheds light on the types of strategies used by native and foreign language speakers of the same language. This paper is an attempt to outline the range of competences which are needed to adequately understand and react to a verbal joke in a foreign language. In order to do so it will examine the theoretical frameworks used to explore speech acts to identify a set of strategies that are essential in decoding verbal jokes in the target language. The Common European Framework of References for Languages will be used as a basis for outlining the proper place for “humour competences” in L2 acquisition. It is hoped that the results will trigger future debate on the issue and would help L2 practitioners to find the proper place of “humour competence” in the L2 curriculum.

Keywords:

Verbal jokes, humour, competences and skills, foreign language learning, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.