Investigating the Students’ Difficulties in the Reading Comprehension of Humorous Expressions

Abstract

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