Hi girls:
I am sending quite in retard my contribution of a spanish experience and I am preparing the introduction and sum up of the contributions, i have by now, as soon as I have all I send to you.
Best wishes

Interculturality, Humor and Immigration: university research meets public services and society through humor

Considering the use of humour as an instrument of communication and mediation, that could contribute to the intercultural dialogue. I would like to point up the work of the Carmen Valero Garces team at the Deparment of Modern Philology in the University of Alcala de Henares that have a Humour cathedra, it organizes the I Conference Interculturality, humor and immigration and the exhibition Graphic humors, humor and tolerance and also coordinates the Programme Traduction and interpretation in the Public Services (Valero 2004)[i]. This group is also member of the International Society for Humor Studies. (http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/WWW/MathNat/Ruch/SecretaryPage.html). Holding in Alcalá de Henares in 2008 the last Conference o the ISHS. The words of the famous Spanish humorist Forges that participated in the Interculturality Conference could be also a particular definition of humour:

“Humour in reality, as in the Greek theater, and as the northern oriental humors, is in reality the group of attitudes that the spirit has or the way the heart of the soul has to beat. Because humour can make smile, make laugh, make think, can make to be tender, sing, can make to be excited, can make to be sad, and all of this is humors. And many times we think that it is the referred to the smile what visionaries!” (24)

The objectives of this Conference were two: firstly, to create a forum of discussion and Exchange for the professional and academic community who work with the different areas of interculturality, the translation, the humor and the immigration and secondly to attract the public attention in general who is interested in the multilingual and multicultural reality from a different perspective. During that two days conference there was an opportunity to talk about the humor form different countries and cultures, to exchange “views”, and to laugh with others, to debate about questions related to humor and to analyze communication and the culturally specific of humor.

The 2008 Conference Humor between cultures: with a smile tastes better… III conference about Intercultural communication, translation and interpretation in the Public Services was held the 20th june 2008 in the University of Alcalá de Henares. The conference counts with the participation of the humorist Pepe Garamendy with his show “inmigrandes”[ii]


The idea shared by this research team is that in their daily work with translation and interpretation especially with the public services humor is a need to continue. Considering the perspective of a five years trajectory, 2003-2008, they have perceived that crises is coming, that people frowns, the pessimism grows, but as there has been more time living together, knowing each other better, they have leaned on optimism, humor and a “take it easy” way.

This team uses humor in a productive, positive and creative way, as a part of their research and in their conferences. As they say humor is one more opportunity to debate about the bridges between languages and cultures and how to reduce the language, cultural, ideological and social barriers that prevent integration… with a smile.

[i] Valero Garcés, C. (2004) Interculturalidad. Traducción, humor e inmigración. Alcalá de Henares. Fundación Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. [CD, text]
[ii] “Inmigrandes” its a pun that mixes two words “inmigrantes” immigrants and “grandes” bigs.