Adam Gopnik, in his series of essays on living in France (for the New Yorker, and later collected in "From Paris to the Moon"), makes a distinction between unde

Adam Gopnik, in his series of essays on living in France (for the New Yorker, and later collected in "From Paris to the Moon"), makes a distinction between understanding when people are serious, when people are joking, and when people are joking-but-not-joking. His example of the last: doctors would ask when his wife got pregnant. Technically it was a joke (they didn't really need to know), but at the same time it was not a joke (they really wanted to know).