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Why Humor Doesn't Translate 3

Scholars distinguish six categories of humor in the United States and the United Kingdom: pun, understatement, joke, the ludicrous, satire, and irony. The U.S. advertising style included more of the ludicrous and the United Kingdom's more satire. This can be explained by the different scores on the uncertainty avoidance dimension. These scholars examined the content of humorous television advertising from Korea, Germany, Thailand, and the United States and found one type of humor that worked across all compared countries: incongruous. Almost 60% of the humorous ads in all four nations contained incon-gruent contrasts, but there were some cultural differences.

In the collectivistic cultures of Thailand and Korea, humorous appeals involved groups - three or more central characters were included - whereas in the United States and Germany, both individualistic cultures, substantially fewer ads with three or more characters were found. In the large power distance cultures (Thailand and Korea), more humorous ads featured unequal status between main characters than in the two small power distance cultures (Germany and the United States). One study was conducted to compare differences in the liking of humorous television commercials between the Netherlands and Flanders (Flemish Belgium). Because in the Netherlands and Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, the same language is spoken, many advertisers assume that the people have similar cultural traits. But in fact it is Flanders and Wallonia (the French-speaking Belgian region) that share basically the same culture, one that resembles French culture more than Dutch. The culture gap between the Netherlands and Flanders is somewhat smaller than that between the Netherlands and Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium, but it is still very wide. In fact, no two countries with a common border and a common language are so far apart culturally. Holland scores low on power distance, mas­culinity, and uncertainty avoidance. Belgium scores high on the same three dimen­sions. This difference became apparent when Dutch and Flemish television commercials were tested among Flemish and Dutch young men and women via in-depth interviews. The types of humor distinguished were (a) uncomplicated, explicit humor, including jokes, anecdotes, and slapstick; (b) linguistic humor, including puns and word games; and (c) complicated humor, including satire, irony, parody, understatements, and absurdism. Findings were that explicit jokes were liked better in Belgium than in the Netherlands, which can be explained by high uncertainty avoidance. Linguistic humor appeared to be liked less by the Flemish than by the Dutch. In particular, the anecdote type seemed to be culturally sensitive, because it relies on context. A typical slapstick commercial appeared to be liked better by the Belgians than by the Dutch. Slapstick usually is at the cost of one of the parties, which is more fitting in masculine cultures than in feminine cultures. In this particular case, one slapstick commercial involved throwing food, which is a no-go item in Dutch culture. Wasting food is "not done" in the thrifty Dutch culture. Absurdism, parody, and satire, particularly commercials that do not take experts seriously, were not appreciated by the Flemish but were appreciated by the Dutch.

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