How Humor Helps Bilingual Couples

By François Grosjean, Ph.D., Psychology Today

British novelist George Eliot once wrote, “A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections”. This is all the more so when the people involved, in our case bilingual couples, have different language and cultural backgrounds. An yet, humor and, more precisely, jokes, puns, banter, understatement and forms of irony, to name but a few, are an integral part of a relationship within couples. It is well known that humorous talk of this kind is a bonding agent; it creates intimacy, and it helps deal with stress.

In an interesting chapter, Professor Delia Chiaro of the University of Bologna, a British and Italian bilingual and bicultural, reports on a survey she undertook of some 59 bilingual and bicultural couples and their use of humorous talk together. Each member of the couple had been born and raised in a country different from his/her partner’s. And on average, the couple had been together for an average of ten years.

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