Master English with Jokes That Actually Work

Hello and welcome to the next lesson. Today, we're going to be talking about comprehending humor, and I hope that you find some humor in what we talk about today. We're going to do a little bit of a recap, just like we did with the last lesson. I'm going to remind you of some points that I gave you in the reading section for comprehending written humor. A lot of those apply and they carry over to listening because these are receptive skills. Reading and listening are times where your brain is receiving information. So many of the elements carry over. However, there are certain things that you can do when speaking humor than you can do with it when you're writing humor. So we're going to flush some of those things out and we're going to practice. So you're going to have a humor recap, humor, elements, reminder, and then we're going to talk about spoken humor points to listen for. I'm going to give you a humor elements identification quiz, which is really fun because you just get to watch some funny things. We're going to go over the types of irony review, and then I'm going to give you some examples of those as well. And it will be your turn to break down some specific videos. So let's jump in. Humor is incredibly effective at keeping listeners listening. It develops characters and listeners attention to them. It makes characters in plots memorable. It makes the theme more personable, makes everything much more human like. It also emphasizes feelings and ideas. So part of being more human is that there are more feelings and ideas, right? So humor helps us to see this. Humor also paints a picture in the listener's mind. So if you want to take someone somewhere, humor is a great way to do that. Humor can also surprise listeners, which makes an event far more memorable and interesting. The elements of humor. We talked about these very same things in the reading section. So I'm just going to touch on them very lightly here. Self-deprecation, targeting oneself to amuse others. This is a favorite of comedians. So definitely watch out for this. Whenever you see a comedian doing standup comedy, hyperbole is making something way bigger than it actually is for entertaining listeners. Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole. This is humorously belittling something, making it so small compared to something. So it's like the house is on fire. It's like, oh, it's a little little brush fire. It'll go out pretty easily. No problem. OK, you're supposed to find some humor in that because situationally, it seems a bit odd. Incongruity is remarking on something other than the point to be silly. So maybe your sister is graduating. She's graduated top of her class. She has this amazing speech to deliver. And you're remarking on the trees around the lawn, how beautiful those are. That would be incongruity. A little bit funny. Irony is explaining one's meaning by using opposite language for humor. So you have the three types of irony that we talked about before. We'll touch on those again here later. Satire is using humor, irony, ridicule or exaggeration to criticize someone's idiocracy or vices, especially in politics, social issues and hot topics. So when you are looking at satire, it's usually very witty, very high humor. Sometimes they bring it down and is very muddy and messy and just not very entertaining at all. But usually it's very witty or lots of high humor, word plays and such. A pun is a joke based on wordplay using the same word with different meanings or two different words that sound similar. You can go back up to the reading section to get a little bit more of a full example of a pun and an example to watch. An anecdote is a short, amusing story about a real or fake person. Spoken humor points to listen for. You should always listen for these in a piece that it seems like it's going to come across with more humor than not. Intonation. Again, this is how one uses their voice, the rise and fall where they put their pauses, all of this. Do they dramatize their voice? Are they speaking more like a movie announcer voice? Are they going much higher and much nicer? Or are they going very low and dark and brooding? Is it overly high or is it overly low? How much extra work are they putting into that intonation? Because honestly, one of the easiest ways to catch sarcasm is how much how much extra they're using their voice. Semantics refers to the choice in words one uses to convey meaning. So what choice in words, phrases and grammar do they make to make their point? And usually this is done humorously. So in order to generate humor, are they deriving humor from the situations everyone knows or is it relatively unusual to most visual cues? What are they doing with their body to add humor? What are their facial expressions and body language? What gestures are they making, which are just hilarious? There's also usually a background to look at if you're watching a video or you are there watching how somebody uses humor in person. Oftentimes, whatever is around you is also used or noted in that piece. So go ahead and watch this video here. This is a comedian. I want you to look at what elements of humor he uses in this segment. And how does the speaker use a memory to make others laugh? Because others don't share the same memory. So how is he telling it in a way that people will remember it? It's like I said, I have Tourette's syndrome. It's why my head flops around. I blink real fast. It's weird. It always looks like I'm trying to tell you a secret. This twitch gets me in trouble. My roommate came home from work. I was like, oh, our neighbor died. He said, did you kill him? I was like, nah. Yo, this is a true story. When I was 10 years old, my parents sent me to Tourette's camp. Yeah, that's where the joke should end. It's a real place. And I didn't realize it till this moment. But I found out that when other people twitch, it makes me twitch more. So on the first day, they put us in a circle with 100 kids. The kid next to me did a shoulder roll and my Tourette's saw that and took that as a challenge. And I threw him a head flop. The girl next to him did a full body twitch, and everybody saw that and all hell broke loose. Kids were rolling on the ground. I was in the corner like, why'd they send us here? Our parents were on top of a hill like, oh, they're break dancing. We find this guy really funny. He uses self-deprecation. He's making fun of his own disability, which is Tourette's syndrome. He uses this memory of going to to a Tourette's camp. And how that's so funny is because Tourette's, there's this just random thing where if somebody sees somebody with Tourette's, see someone else start to have an episode with a Tourette's, it causes them to want to twitch more. And so if you get 100 kids together, what's going to happen? 100 kids with Tourette's, what's going to happen? So this is something he's just he leaves it to your imagination. What really happens in the situation? But it is kind of a funny setup in one's mind, right? Go ahead and watch this scene from the very different type of humor here. We have a setting. We have something to work in and we have characters and the way they're acting is not normal. And so what is funny about it situationally? We see hyperbole. We see irony and we see satire. OK, we're making fun of the office space and how people normally treat safety, personal safety meetings that are mandatory in a workplace. Well, this guy gets frustrated that everybody else is so bored with it. So he just overreacts, which is not something you should do. Not only do we have dramatic irony and that we know what no one else knows. We know it's a prank. They don't know it's a prank. But we also see situational irony. Adults should not be acting like that. And yet here they are acting like that. In the office. The hyperbole is it's just the reaction is just way over the top, right? Not only is it over the top for this guy to be so frustrated about people not listening to him, that he decided to prank them seriously to prove a point, but the way they're acting is just ridiculous. So again, this is what's so funny about it situationally is taking revenge on the office staff for not paying attention. And that's just so unrealistic and stupid. But then people's reactions were really ridiculous. So that's what makes this so funny. The types of irony are verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony. So verbal irony is when words don't match his or her intent. This is sarcasm, basically. So if you say something that you don't really mean, like, I'm so happy to see you. OK, the way that I use my voice shows you that I'm not actually happy to see you, even though I really am. I really would be honored to meet you. But verbal irony in that case would be is if I really wasn't, I would give away my real meaning, my real intent with my voice. Dramatic irony is when someone knows when the audience knows something the characters don't. So in the case of the office, we knew that it was a prank because we saw Dwight setting up the prank, but the characters don't know it. They're not supposed to know when the expected outcome doesn't happen. We have situational irony. So we would think that people would act like adults and do things right in the case of a fire and they see smoke. But no, they just freak out instead. So situational irony. They did not act the way we we expected them to. All right. Go ahead and listen to this song called Mr. Mom. Need you here in the song. This is a bit of situational irony, right? Because dads don't normally in our culture, at least dads don't normally stay home and be Mr. Mom, if you will. That's not a normal thing. What about this one here? I'm going to miss her. Hi, I'm Dan Patrick. The Brad Paisley Bass Invitational set to get underway in Nashville. And when it comes to the host himself, you can't stop him. You can only hope to contain him. We'll provide updates throughout the day here at SportsCenter. Paisley, Parker. Well, I love her, but I love the fish. I spend all day out on this lake. And hell is all I catch. But today she met me at the door. Said I would have to choose if I hit that fishing hole today. She'd be packing all her things and she'd be gone by noon. Well, I'm going to miss her when I get home. Right now, I'm on this lake shore. Sitting in the sun, I'm sure it'll hit me. When I walk through that door tonight, yeah, I'm going to miss her. Oh, looky there. I've got a bite. This just in, Brad's got a bite. OK, here you have a country song. His wife is just sick of him spending so much time fishing. So she steps in front of him one day and says, like, basically gives him an ultimatum. You're either going to choose fishing or you're going to choose me. So then he just keeps he just goes on fishing. He says, well, I'm going to miss her. So here we have situational irony, because it's kind of surprising that between his wife and fishing, he chooses fishing. All right. Go ahead and watch this clip about President Obama in the speech. In our fast changing world, traditions like the White House Correspondents Dinner are important. I mean, really? What is this dinner? Bush, do you really want to do this? Because despite our differences, we count on the press to shed light on the most important issues of the day. And we can count on Fox News to terrify all white people with his nonsense. Sharia laws are ridiculous. We won't always see eye to eye. Oh, and CNN, thank you so much for the wall to wall Ebola coverage. But two whole weeks, we were one step away from the walking dead. And then you all got up and moved on to the next day. That was awesome. Oh, and by the way, just if you didn't notice, you don't have Ebola. But I still appreciate the work that you do. Don't remember when I had a big old hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and then I plucked it. Remember that? Which Obama's Katrina was that one? Was it was that 19 or was it 20? Because I can't remember. Protecting our democracy is more important than ever. For example, the Supreme Court ruled that the donor who gave Ted Cruz six million dollars was just exercising free speech. Yeah, it's the kind of speech like this. I just wasted six million dollars. And it's not just Republicans. Hillary will have to raise you sums of money, too. Oh, yeah, she's going to get that money. She'll get all the money. Khaleesi is coming to Westeros. Watch out. The nonstop focus on billionaire donors creates real problems for our democracy. And that's why we run it for a third time. No, we're not. We're not. Who the hell said that? But we do need to stay focused on some big challenges like climate change. Hey, listen, y'all, if you haven't noticed, California is bone dry. It looked like a trailer for the new Mad Max movie up in there. Y'all think that Bradley Cooper came here because he wants to talk to Chuck Todd? He needed a glass of water. The science is clear. Nine out of the 10 hottest years ever came in the last decade. Now, I'm not a scientist, but I do know how to count to 10. Rising seas, more violent storms. You got mosquitoes, sweaty people on the train, stinking it up. It's just nasty. I mean, look at it. Look at what's happening right now. Every serious scientist says we need to act. The Pentagon says it's a national security risk. Miami floods on a sunny day, and instead of doing anything about it, we've got elected officials throwing snowballs in the Senate. OK, I think I got it, bro. It is crazy. What about our kids? What kind of stupid, short sighted, irresponsible vote? Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, hey. What? OK, no, hey. What? Oh, oh, all due respect, sir. You don't need an anger translator. You need counseling. You know, I'm out of here, man. I'm trying to get into all this. Go. All right. So what kind of irony do we see here? We definitely get a bit of verbal irony and we get situational irony. It's hilarious that something like this is happening at a formal dinner or a formal speech. But again, we see sarcasm. So the president says says something. And the idea is he's saying it sarcastically, but he's covering it really well to be very formal. But his anger translator says what he really means. So I'm really glad this happened. All right. Here is one more video. I want you to identify the type of irony you see in this video. This guy stole my packets from a porch and he's about to open it in his house. What he doesn't know is that this is the third generation of a new and improved custom built bait package that's recording him on four different phones and just released a pound of the world's finest glitter, along with some other nasty surprises. But to understand how we got here, we first have to go back in time a bit. Because that's when this couple stole a package from my porch. And even with the video footage, the police wouldn't do anything. So I vowed to use my engineering skills to go full home alone on these punks, not just to avenge my package, but as a tribute to the two million packages that are stolen across America every year. And because packages are taken most in December for the third year now, it's sort of become a Christmastime tradition for me to do my very small part to encourage future would be porch pirates to choose a different profession in just the most fabulous way possible. So before we see how this year's version fares in the wild, I'm going to first walk you through all the upgrades my buddy Sean and I have been incorporating into this box over the past year. For starters, we updated the outer casing, this time going for more of a cyber truck aesthetic. You can sort of see the evolution from year to year right here. As part of this, we created an intentional handle here in the hopes that the package thief will grab it, not realizing we took a page directly from the Kevin McAllister home security plan by putting extra sticky glue on the underside. This is the exact same stuff using those rodent traps. And as you can see here, it's incredibly strong. You'll also notice these two protruding rods. Those are the most critical improvement from last year. But more on that in a second. Under the hood, we made quite a few changes as well. The fundamentals are still the same, where you have a battery powered Arduino based microcontroller on a custom printed circuit board that gives instructions to these four phones, which allows us to record the thief no matter which side they open it from. OK, so even though this video is not intended for humor, it adds a lot of humor in it, specifically dramatic irony, because we know that this is a trap for those package thieves, but they don't know. That's what is so humorous about the glitter bomb. That's why one would want to continue watching this video is to see all the reactions that happen. Here are some tips for learning American humor as you move forward in your language learning journey. Watch American media, listen to the music, listen to the radio shows, listen to podcasts and specifically choose to take in information that is humorous to Americans. So watch comedians. Now, you can find tons of stand up comedy shows on YouTube. Look for satire. Look, watch late night TV, Jimmy Falun show or the Jimmy Kimmel show or Trevor Noah. Look for parodies and watch parodies. Movie and TV comedies go specifically to a comedy section. Reality TV shows. We're supposed to find these humorous because it's very hyperbolic. It's very over the top. YouTube videos. You can look up all kinds of funny things on YouTube, but you need to find the things that we laugh at and take them in and look for the humor in them. And you will soon be able to understand why we think they are funny. The more you learn about our culture and the more you consume our humorous content, the more you will be able to see the humor in it and join in. Next, we're going to talk about listening strategies that will help take you all the way up through C2 into fluency. So I will see you in the next one.