标题: 考研英语 你的幽默必须和听众有关 [打印本页] 作者: z625476 时间: 2012-8-9 21:41 标题: 考研英语 你的幽默必须和听众有关 If you intend usinghumor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify sharedexperiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience andshould help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand theirsituation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom youare addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a groupof managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries;alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment ontheir disorganized bosses.
Here is an example,which I heard at a nurses' convention, of a story which works well because theaudience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and isbeing shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens,sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until,waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a manin a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stompsover to a table by himself. “Who is that?” the new arrival asked St. Peter.“Oh, that's God,” came the reply, “but sometimes he thinks he's a doctor.”
If you are part of thegroup which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know theexperiences and problems which are common to all of you and it'll beappropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food orthe chairman's notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn'tattempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparagingremarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground ifyou stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system.
If you feel awkwardbeing humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural, include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuffremarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it's thedelivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember thata raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making alight-hearted remark.
Look for the humor. Itoften comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote “If at first you don'tsucceed, give up” or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggerationand understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentenceswhich you can turn about and inject with humor.