Title: Introverted Engineer vs Extroverted

General Information about Item:

• verbal folklore, joke
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Eric Krivitzki
• Date Collected: 5-11-19

Informant Data:

Eric is an Aerospace engineer who have worked in the field for 15 years and decided to get a new challenge in Academia. So he decided to pursue his phd at Dartmouth. As a Phd, he is the instructor for the fluid lab. Before each lab meeting, he asks his students to come with an engineering related joke.

 

Contextual Data:

• Social Context:Engineers are known to be “nerds” which means that they are not very social. This joke is usually told by engineers to ridicule themselves and as am ice breaker.
• Cultural context: In our society, we consider direct eye-contact to be friendly. So someone who does not make eye contact is considered to be awkward. In some cultures, making direct eye contact is considered rude or even a challenge. Avoiding direct eye contact, culturally, is a form of showing humbleness and direct eye-contact may seem even hostile and rude.

Item 

How do you tell the difference between an introverted and extroverted engineer?

An introverted engineer looks at their own feet when they are talking to you, an extroverted engineer looks at your feet when they’re talking to you. There is no such thing as  an extroverted engineer.

Informant’s Comments:

• He says he has to explain himself sometimes when he tells that joke because not everyone usually gets it

Collector’s Comments:

I did not get the joke at first.

Collector’s name: Pierre Desvallons