Author Archives: Pierre Desvallons

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Title: The doctor vs the engineer

General Information about Item:

  • verbal folklore, joke/Riddle
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Eric Krivitzki
  • 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, 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 love this joke and always laughs at it however, doctors usually takes offense even though the jokes depicts worse because of the amount of people they can harm at once.
  • Cultural context: Doctors suffer pressure that engineers don’t. The life of patients depend on the doctor in the moment. When the patient dies, the doctor usually takes it personally because he couldn’t save a life that he felt responsible for.  For engineers, the idea that someone could die is abstract because it will be in the future. Even if it happens, engineers usually work in teams so they don’t usually feel responsible for the deaths.

Item 

what’s the difference between an engineer and a doctor?

A doctor kills one person at a time.

Informant’s Comments:

  • it’s one of his favorite jokes even tho he says: “it’s not appropriate”

Collector’s Comments:

As a potential/future engineer, I like the joke.

Collector’s name: Pierre Desvallons

Introverted engineer vs Extroverted engineer

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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.

Resistance is futile

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Title: Resistance is futile

General Information about Item:

  • Material folklore, joke
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Markus Testrof
  • Date Collected: 5-19-19

Informant Data:

Professor Terstorf was born in Germany and studied physics in Germany and got a phd in physics. However, when he came to Dartmouth in the 90’s he became a researcher for Thayer. But now he is an engineering professor

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: The shirt has the image of an electrical resistor that is only connected to itself. In engineering, this is a short circuit which means it has no function.  That is why the resistance is futile.
  • Cultural context: The quote: “resistance is futile”  comes from the popular movie Star Trek. Since then, this quote has really been part of culture and it’s often said to friends as a joke.

Item 

see image

Informant’s Comments:

  • He likes to call people out every time they say that they understand the joke. He always asked them “what’s so funny about it the shirt? ” Non-engineers (even some engineers) usually say they like the Star trek reference. Then, he tells them how the resistor is useless because it’s connected to itself. This is for him what makes it funny

Collector’s Comments:

  • I had some doubts as to if the shirt is part of folklore since someone is making money selling the shirt. However, after some thinking and research, I found a lot of quotes(proverbs for example) that were folklore that were put on shirts. I realized that the shirt itself might not be folklore but that doesn’t mean that what’s on it is not folklore. In other words, the maker of the shirt can’t really stop other people form making the shirt with this symbol on it. Therefore he has no rights to the symbol.

Collector’s Name: Pierre Desvallons

Resistance is futile

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Title: Resistance is futile

General Information about Item:

  • Material folklore, joke
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Markus Testrof
  • Date Collected: 5-19-19

Informant Data:

Professor Terstorf was born in Germany and studied physics in Germany and got a phd. However, when he came to Dartmouth he became a researcher for Thayer. But now he is teaching some engineering classes.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: The shirt has the image of an electrical resistor that is only connected to itself. In engineering, this is a short circuit which means it has no function.  That is why the resistance is futile.
  • Cultural context: The quote: “resistance is futile”  comes from the popular movie Star Trek. Since then, this quote has really been part of culture and it’s often said to friends as a joke.

Item 

see image

Informant’s Comments:

  • He likes to call people out every time they say that they understand the joke. He always asked them what;’s so funny about it the shirt? Non-engineers (even some engineers) usually say they like the Star trek reference. Then he tells them how the resistor is useless because it’s connected to itself.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I had some doubts as to if the shirt is part of folklore since someone is making money selling the shirt. However, after some thinking and research, I found a lot of quotes that were folklore that were put on shirts. I realized that the shirt itself might not be folklore but that doesn’t mean that what’s on it is not folklore. In other words, the maker of the shirt can’t really stop other people form making the shirt with this symbol on it. Therefore he has no right to the symbol.