<p>I studied Linguistics and PoliSci at Columbia (class of oh-ten), and I’m seeking advice about the world of graduate study in linguistics-related field: how best to study humor, and jokes, as the most profound key to a culture’s treasures. Since graduation, I’ve been living partly in the Middle East, or else traveling back and forth as a freelance journalist mostly after stories of people and progress in conflict regions and, just a little, as an actor/comedian.</p>
<p>Mostly, I’m so interested in how “funniness” reflects different cognitive set-ups how cultural gaps can be better understood by analyzing a language’s most untranslatable pieces. </p>
<p>I’d love any direction towards relevant studies, and particular programs, if anything stands out, where this kind of study could take wing. Of course, there is a whole lot of fear in the professional marketplace nowadays, and so I’m afraid of just following any relevant specialist to whatever institution (and there aren’t many); otherwise, I’d maybe try to find an excellent dept (of whatever) at a fine university. But which? And does that make any sense?</p>
<p>It sounds like you have a good preparation for entering into an English department. And you can more than likely direct your research in the direction of humor in literature! You would need to do the research on which schools would be most appropriate for this directions of research.</p>
<p>Well, clearly humor is an interdisciplinary field.
For the study of humor across cultures, maybe you should consider a grad program in folklore, e. g., Indiana [Folklore</a> and Ethnomusicology | Indiana University Bloomington](<a href=“Indiana University Bloomington”>Indiana University Bloomington)
A folklore program could provide training in field research methods (perhaps similar to what you might have been exposed to in linguistics, though). It also could be combined with other fields more easily than, say, social psychology. </p>
<p>Since much modern humor is found in mass media, advertising, the internet, etc. maybe some focus on media studies, cross cultural communication might be relevant. So, a grad program in communication might be relevant, too.</p>
<p>If you want to study “how cultural gaps can be better understood by analyzing a language’s most untranslatable pieces.” then you might need to study in a language department. Since you’ve been traveling in the Middle East, does this suggest an interest in the humor of countries in that region? Are you already proficient in one or more languages of the region? Could you combine language studies with a field such as anthropology or folklore? (Also, might it be worthwhile to check out the possibilities at an Israeli university?)</p>
<p>Linguistics and political science is not really good preparation for entering an English department. You have to have preparation in English literature, and most English lit programs are fiercely competitive. You’re also not prepared for language departments or folklore departments. You’d have to take classes in these and possibly get an MA in the fields; and in the languages, you’d have to achieve fluency in the language you wanted to study first AND take literature classes.</p>
<p>To me, it sounds like you’re not just interested in humor across cultures more generally (which can be studied from a variety of angles) but how cultural differences in humor/what’s consideed funny originate in different cognitive structures across human beings - i.e., that the part for humor in a Japanese person’s brain may be slightly different than the part for humor in an American peron’s brain, which explains why the Japanese may find things differently funny than an American person.</p>
<p>That sounds like cognitive science, which is a hybrid field of computer science, cognitive psychology, linguistics and other things. If you’re specifically interested in the gaps in language and how that relates to cognition, then linguistics is a good choice. Alternatively, you might be interested in a cognitive psychology program that does research into language and the brain.</p>
<p>I think the first step is to make sure this isn’t an interest that can be satisfied by reading relevant literature in the field (which can be solved with a library card and/or alumni membership to Columbia’s excellent libraries) but that you have a burning passion to do research in this field for the next 5-6 years plus into the future as an academic. If that’s true, you may want to do some basic Google searches to find good programs in those fields, and then search to see if you can find anyone working on related stuff (either humor more specifically, or working on linguistic/cognitive conventions that only operate in one or a few cultures and don’t easily translate to others).</p>
<p>And in academia, you do want to follow relevant specialists into a particular institution. That’s the way it works - in your particular field, UW-Madison or Michigan State may hold more weight than Harvard or Penn. It so happens, though, that strong universities tend to attract the better scholars and stronger departments overall (although “strong universities” include top publics as well as privates). So keep an open mind.</p>