The British sense of humor has a reputation for being among the funniest and most unique types of humor there is. So to find out more about what role culture plays in our sense of humor as well as about the key elements in British humor that make it stand out, Bored Panda reached out to professor Sophie Scott, the British neuroscientist and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at University College London.
Prof. Scott told us that culture and its people play an enormous role in one's sense of humor. “That’s because there are very few things that cross time and place and that are funny to all humans. If you look at things that are funny for all human beings, you tend to find most commonly found things across cultures that are not particular to a culture,” prof. Scott explained and added that these things include “slapstick, or taboo things to do with toilets and farting [laughs].”
According to the professor, that's because you don’t need much cultural understanding to understand it. “You don’t need language to understand jokes based on toilet humor or slapstick and there are fewer barriers to accessing the meaning of the joke,” prof. Scott argues.
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of that is where cultural humor stands. Prof. Scott argues that it depends on a person being able to understand what things mean in that culture. “Any one culture will have specific humor to that culture which would seem quite hard from anyone from the outside to understand.”
“Some scientists translated Australian jokes into French and French jokes into English and presented them to Australians and what they found was that people didn't find the jokes funny. It’s not just the words, its that cultural meaning whether you find it or not find it funny,” prof. Scott explained.
When asked what makes British humor unique, prof. Scott said that it’s hard to say because there are no scientific studies done on it.
“I suspect that anything that’s important to the culture will be something that will influence the comedy and the humor in that culture and all the sorts of things that jokes are made about.” Prof. Scott explained that British culture still has a pretty distinct class system and she believes that influences their sense of humor and things they laugh at.
Another thing specific to British humor is a tradition of the underdog kind of humor: “like Tony Hancock and Ricky Gervais and The Office, which I think are speaking to that kind of class-based interest that our culture has.”
According to prof. Scott, a sarcasm you often encounter in British humor can be understood as a stance that you are taking for humorous purposes. “You could take a number of different approaches, like an aggressive stance, a playful stance, or a sarcastic stance, which is this cynical position,” she explained.
A sarcastic stance is when you find humor by not being too enthusiastic about things, prof. Scott argues. But she believes that’s unlikely to be specific to British people. “Finnish people seem to have quite a similar sense of humor to British people in some respects. Monty Python was famously considered to be very funny by people in Finland,” the professor concluded.
