Cultural divide or unifying factor?

This essay sets out to explore a positive aspect of bilingual cross-cultural couples in long term relationships, namely the occurrence of what is considered a harmonious factor: humour. The results of a purpose-built questionnaire completed by 59 couples sheds light on a series of socio and psycholinguistic aspects of their daily relationship including language choice and attitudes in the domain of the couples’ ludic interaction, such as when they joke with each other verbally and their use of humorous talk. This essay reports the findings of the processed data that emerged from the questionnaires as well as qualitative data deriving from a series of semi-structured interviews. I love you, I love you , I love you, that’s all I want to say, until I find a way, I will say the only words I know that you’ll understand, my Michelle. (Lennon-McCartney)