Not directly related to the article but just to the topic: one of the biggest things for me to get used to when I moved from the UK to France earlier this year is the lack of sarcasm used/understood by French people. There's a couple of French people I know who get my sense of humour, for everyone else I have to conciously knock off what I think of as the UK part of my joking and keep it to "international-friendly humour" only.