Learn by laughing: Italian film comedy as a didactic tool for the development of humor competence in Italian L2

In the context of second language (L2) education, it’s increasingly accepted that through humor it’s possible to create a relaxed atmosphere which positively impacts on the whole learning process. To make a successful employment of humor in the L2 classroom, however, it’s crucial for students to be capable of truly understand, appreciate, and produce funny and humoristic speeches. We are dealing with a multidimensional and complex ability, namely Humor Competence, that does not require only linguistic and communicative proficiency, but also a larger set of skills connected to socio-cultural, pragmatic, and proxemic dimensions. Especially in the context of Italian Language Education, little attention has yet been given to the humor teaching practice and there is still a severe lack of methodological indications and guidelines. In this framework, after discussing the place of humor competence in L2 curricula, this paper aims to fill the gaps of teaching guidelines with a practical didactic activity for Italian language learners. Taking advantage of all the features of Italian film comedy, which faithfully represents the rich variety of linguistic, paralinguistic, and cultural dimensions, the intent is to make learners practice on a double task: the recognition and the employment of hyperbole as a strategy to generate the comic effect, and in parallel, the reflection upon different sociocultural and dialectal aspects of Italian language, both necessary for an appropriate humorous response by the learner.