Immediacy, humor, power distance, and classroom communication apprehension in Chinese college classrooms

Zhang, Qin

doi:10.1080/01463370500056150

Cited by 81 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…In some countries any use of laughter may be deemed inappropriate for the lecture theatre. Zhang (2005), for example, cites a large body of US research to show that instructors' use of humour reduces students' anxiety, boosts learning, and increases willingness to participate, but also finds in a survey of 176 undergraduates in central China that 'perceived instructor humour orientation' exacerbates students' fear of participating in class. Zhang concludes that humour makes Chinese students feel uncomfortable, because it 'highlights individual attention and deviation from the group'.…”

Section: Table 5: Types Of Laughter Episodes and Their Functions In Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laughter in university lectures

Nesi

2012

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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This paper analyses laughter in spoken academic discourse, with the aim of discovering why lecturers provoke laughter in their lectures. A further purpose of the paper is to identify episodes in British data which may differ from those in other cultural contexts where other lecturing practices prevail, and thus to inform the design of study skills and staff development programmes for multilingual, multicultural, international university environments. Examination of the data indicates that the management of laughter in British lectures is strategic, and has a rhetorical purpose. Six main types of laughter episode are described: 'teasing', 'lecturer error', selfdeprecation', 'black humour', disparagement' and 'word play'. Laughter results from references to shared 'scripts' for student and lecturer behaviour, evaluations of outsiders who do not form part of the lecturer student in-group, and the lecturers' efforts to forge group intimacy. It serves as a means of maintaining social order, building rapport, relieving tension, and modelling academic and professional identities. Comparisons of laughter episodes across cultures, however, suggest that references to conventional British lecturer and student scripts would be out of place in many non-British contexts.

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Section: Table 5: Types Of Laughter Episodes and Their Functions In Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laughter in university lectures

Nesi

2012

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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“…I agree that the evidence I used to support this hypothesis, from Flowerdew, Li, andMiller (1998) andZhang (2005), related only to cases where speakers of the same first language interacted with each other. Since then Alsop (2013) has compared instances of humour (as opposed to laughter) across three subsets of the Engineering Lecture Corpus (ELC), two from L1 settings in the UK and New Zealand, and one from an L2 setting in Malaysia.…”

mentioning

confidence: 63%

A closer look at laughter in academic talk: A response to Carey (2014)

Nesi

2014

Journal of English for Academic Purposes

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“…Humor themes that are aggressive toward or denigrate anyone perceived to be different to the target audience in some way (i.e., outgroup: Leach, Spears, Branscombe, & Doosje, 2003) tend to elicit schadenfreude (joy in the misfortunes of others) and greater perceptions of humor among audiences in individualist cultures (e.g., United States). In contrast, aggressive humor directed at the outgroup draws attention away from the ingroup, prompting feelings of anxiety among collectivist cultures while aggression directed at the ingroup is seen as an attack (e.g., China: Zhang, 2005). Thus, aggressive humor in advertising is likely to be less common or gain more negative responses in collectivist cultures.…”

Section: Content Of Humormentioning

confidence: 80%