The Extroverted Engineer

Title: The Extroverted Engineer Joke

Image result for people looking at shoes

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre: Verbal Folklore: Joke
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data:

  • Fletcher Lent is a Junior (Class of 2019) at Dartmouth College who is completing a Bachelors of Arts in Computer Science. He has had an interest in computer science since taking an introductory course in high school. Fletcher enjoys working on coding projects for his computer sciences classes and occasionally has his own mini projects. I interviewed Fletcher in the library on 10/4/17.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context/Cultural Context: This joke is based on society’s perception of a typical engineer’s social capabilities. Engineers are commonly perceived as serious individuals who have strong technical skills yet lack social skills as a result. Staring at your own shoes when having a conversation is indicative of shyness.
  • If the joke is told by a non-engineer then its purpose is to make fun of engineers and their social abilities. Another point of view is if this joke is told by an engineer then it is humor found in self-deprecation.

Item:

  • Unlike many jokes pertaining to engineers this joke has no technical aspect to it. The item is based entirely on the social/cultural context of the joke. Although the engineer is supposed to be extroverted he still stares at shoes when talking.
  • The joke follows the classic form of a “how can you tell an __________?” where the blank can be filled with any sort of subject then the following line is a descriptor of the subject usually rooted in some sort of associated stereotype.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Joke:

How can you tell an extroverted engineer?

He looks are your shoes rather than his own when talking to you.

Informant’s Comments:

  • Fletcher said that he heard this joke in his CS1 course.
  • He explained that this joke has to do with engineers generally being described as more introverted/shy individuals. Although, he did not agree with the stereotype based on the engineers that he knew.
  • He admitted to making fun of engineers because he thought computer scientists are “better” than them.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This joke is entirely based on the stereotypes that follow engineers. The “funny” part of the joke is the fact that although the engineer is extroverted they are still looking down at the shoes of whoever they are talking to as opposed to making direct eye contact.
  • This is a very dry self-deprecating sort of humor commonly found in STEM. An interesting observation for this joke is that it can be applied to the different people that occupy STEM majors by simply changing the subject from engineer to computer scientist, mathematician, biologist, etc.

Collector’s Name: Marwan Zelmat

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore, Joke

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