Résumé:
This research attempts to investigate the comprehension difficulties that third
year English students at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia university-Jijel encounter
when reading humorous expressions. The research hypotheses assume that the
students’ comprehension difficulties of reading humorous expressions are due to
their sociolinguistic and cross- cultural incompetence on the one hand and to their
limited vocabulary range on the other hand. The data was collected by means of a
test randomly distributed to 50 English third year students. The test encompasses
10 humorous expressions that fall under different types of humor. After the
analysis of the data obtained from the test, we found out that the students face
comprehension difficulties of cultural components embedded within the
expressions. Also it is important to note that many students failed to grasp the true
meaning of many words used in those humorous expressions. Accordingly, many
students were unable to perceive humor that is related to specific sociolinguistic
and cultural settings
