Joyful Wit on Screen: Uncovering Playful Humour in Cecilia for Spanish Heritage Language Learning

Abstract

Humberto Solás’s 1982 film Cecilia has largely been read through racial politics, colonial critique and melodramatic adaptation. Much less attention has been paid to the verbal wit, situational irony and conversational play that run through the work. The present study looks at exactly that overlooked dimension, asking what this playful humour can offer Spanish heritagelanguage (HL) education. The inquiry draws on the HumourIntegrated Language Learning (HILL) framework ^[1], three classical humour theories: incongruity, superiority and relief ^[2] , and recent empirical work on teaching verbal irony to HL learners^[3]. A qualitative discourse analysis of key dialogue sequences brings out four kinds of joyful, non-malicious wit: ironic roleplay and pragmatic manipulation, selfdeprecating mockery, double entendre and wordplay, and incongruous juxtapositions that unsettle social scripts. What emerges is that the film’s humour does not simply provide comic relief. It creates a finely textured site for observing linguistic creativity, for negotiating power imbalances, and for performing identities under colonial conditions. The paper proposes a theoretically grounded teaching framework that turns such cinematic humour into classroom practice, arguing that it can lower affective barriers, sharpen pragmatic awareness and spur metalinguistic reflection. Ultimately, Cecilia gives heritage learners a chance to connect with the wit and resilience embedded in Spanish, a side of cultural heritage too often eclipsed by canonical narratives of suffering. Concrete suggestions are offered, including ironydetection tasks, pragmatic comparison exercises and creativeresponse activities.