Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 1; January 2000

Laughlab was launched in September 2001 and by mid December 100,000 people from 70 countries had visited the site and submitted 10,000 jokes. Visitors to the site are invited to rate the jokes on a "laughometer" and of the 100,000 visitors 47,000 gave their top rating to this joke:

Imagine Homes and Dr Watson camping in the wilds. They pitch their tent and go to sleep. Holmes wakes up in the middle of the night:

" Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce."

" The universe is a vast and incredible place. I am struck with wonder."

" Yes," comments Holmes," remarkable,…… and who stole our tent? "

One of the worst rated jokes was:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side!

The Laughlab website explains some of serious aims of this joke research project:

1. To explore jokes and brain activity
" Past research has revealed important insights into brain functioning. For example, take the joke:

Two fish in a tank
One turns to the other and asks " do you know how to drive this?"

The punchline creates a feeling of surprise because it doesn't seem to make any sense. A few seconds later most people realise the ambiguity of the word 'tank', suddenly see the situation from a new perspective and find it funny.
All this involves many different types of brain activity- including linguistic processing, perception of incongruity and creativity in resolving the ambiguity.
Reaserch shows that this involves many different parts of the brain. However, recent research has shown that people with damage to the frontal cortex are unable to "get jokes".

2. Do men and women have the same sense of humour?

3. Nationality and Humour .

4. The timing of jokes
" In six months time we will take the top jokes and record them as audio files. We will then digitally edit these files to vary the timing with which the punchline is delivered. Visitors to the site will then decide which rendering is funniest."

The Laughlab experiment is being conducted by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfold, UK.

A foreign tourist is travelling across Scotland on a train. Through the window he sees a black sheep.

" I didn't know that Scottish sheep are black."

" A few of them are but mostly they're white" says an old man sitting opposite the toursit.

The mathematician in the corner coughed : " What you know for sure, Sir, is that one sheep in one field in Scotland is half black."

The bloke dies in his black suit.
" I want you to lay him out in a light blue suit," explains his wife to the undertaker ," never mind the cost, get the best quality light blue suit you can, no point in spoiling the ship for a ha'penny worth of tar."

After the funeral, she pops by the undertaker's:

" How much do I owe you for the suit?"

" No charge, Madam, ………..we had to pick up a corpse in a light blue suit from this other lady.!"

The woman knocked on her daughter-in-law's door. The door opened and there was her daughter-in-law, stark naked.

" I'm waiting for my husband to come home from work"

" But…..I mean……"

" This is my love dress, he loves me to wear this dress- he'll be back any minute now".

As the older woman walked home she thought what a good idea her daughter-in-law had had. She got home, took a shower, put on her best perfume and waited starkers by the front door.

" What are you doing? asked her husband as he opened the door.

" This is my love dress, Darling."

" Needs ironing" he grunted.

( told by Richard Martin, Germany)

A politician, a Hindhu and a Muslim were travelling together in Amazonia. It was nightfall when they got to this small cottage. The owner told them there was only room for two of them to spend the night in the house. The third would have to sleep in an outbuilding. The Muslim said he would sleep outside.

Five minutes later there is a loud knock on the door of the cottage:

" Sorry", says the Muslim, " but there's no way I can sleep next to a pig".

The Hindhu offers to take his place.

Five minutes later there is another knock at the door

" Sorry, " says the Hindhu, " but there is no way I can take up the space that the cow needs to lie down and sleep in."

The politician has no choice: off he goes to the outbuilding.

Five minutes later there is a loud banging on the door.
The other two open the door and they see the cow mooing sadly and the pig grunting furiously!