A Question of Humour: You A.S.O Beautiful

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Taiwanese humour is rather limited in scope: Humour is not prevalent in Chinese because the language does not really provide the means to express irony. Yet, Taiwanese people are open to humour as long as it does not exclusively entail their mother tongue, i.e. whenever it refers to the relationship between Chinese and English or to English alone. The latter is true for the case of the shoe company A.S.O whose name stands for the proprietor's initials. This company features advertisements like the following one, which are big-size posters put onto house walls:

Even more than the beautiful ladies does the slogan hit the beholder's eye: "You A.S.O Beautiful", which, of course, means "You Are So beautiful". Isn't this funny? Isn't this creative? Above all as the slogan was not created in an English-speaking environment! This is what potential customers really keep in mind - a successful message, so to speak.

We see, then, that in some cases, Taiwanese people are humorous. They are, however, more open-minded to their own humour than to that imposed by Westerners. What Westerners can learn from this is the following behavioral mode: Whenever Taiwanese peoply try to be humorous, Westerners should just follow them. Westerners should, however, not try to impose their humour upon Taiwanese people because more often than not, this humour will not be understood. If this simple behavioral pattern is respected, communication between Taiwanese people and Westerners will work very nicely.

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