Title: Introverted engineer vs Extroverted engineer

General Information about Item:

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

Informant Data:

Professor 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 student, he is the instructor for the fluid lab. Before each lab meeting, he asks his students to come with an engineering related joke. So he’s a great repertoire for jokes

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: : Engineers are known to be “nerds” which means that they are not very social. This jokes is often use by engineers as a way to self ridicule themselves and nice Ice breaker.
• Cultural context:  This jokes only works in the West. 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:

Sometimes people don’t get the joke instantaneously so he has to explain it to them.

Collector’s Comments:

I didn’t get the joke at first until he gave me a brief explanation.