ABSTRACT
As we saw in Chapters 4 and 5, humor, games, and other playfully creative linguistic activities have many cognitive, social, and affective benefits in classroom contexts. From lowering students’ anxiety levels, to building rapport, to managing face threats, humor and play can provide a much-needed palliative to the demands of interacting in a “strange” language at school. Freed from the narrow set of identity options and social situations frequently offered in serious educational settings, students may find themselves taking communicative risks and expanding their repertoires in novel ways. Used intentionally and with an eye to theoretical developments and empirical findings, humor and language play can provide teachers with new ways of teaching that foreground aspects of language that may not be evident in other pedagogical approaches.
