Understanding Humor, Expressions, Profanity, and Cartoons in a Bilingual and Bi-Cultural Context

摘要

This study examines whether different personal attributes could affect our understanding and interpretation of concepts that are foreign to us due to linguistic or cultural reasons. The attributes in question in this research are religion, gender, educational level, and native language of the subjects. A seven-question survey is used to inquire about these features, and based on the answers, a pool of participants is randomly selected. The core of the study consists of a questionnaire based on four sections. The first contains expressions pertaining to the Arab culture, the second has expressions that reflect American culture. The third and the fourth sections comprise respectively profanity and vulgarity expressions and cartoons all familiar to American culture. The sample I select for testing represents the different attributes mentioned above and spreads across three groups: native English speakers, native Arabic speakers, and non-native English or Arabic speakers (like Latinos, Indians and Asians). This research is conducted partly at the University of Toledo with participants who work or study there, and the other part is within the Toledo area, with participants who are friends and acquaintances from the Toledo Arab community. The data I collect is tested statistically to find out if there is any correlation or difference between the properties of my participants with the answers they choose on their questionnaires. Finding whether there is a correlation or not or a difference or not aids in finding out if the participants' attributes had altered their interpretation and understanding of each section. The statistical results showed that most of these attributes had no correlation and showed no difference by the participants' responses. The only two attributes that showed some correlation or difference were educational level and native language. I hope that my findings can be helpful to future research aimed for the betterment of second language acquisition strategies of instruction by showing what attributes should be focused on in making those strategies more effective and practical. My suggestion for future research is to study a much larger sample and look for interactions among variables specific to the sample.