A multimodal analysis of conventional humorous structures on sensitive topics within rural communities in Romania

Author(s): Violeta Rus / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

When it comes to humour, performing humorous structures means not only producing amusement, but also implies the ability of perceiving the comical, ludicrous or absurd in human life. In this paper, I consider humour as a way in which people in the rural community express themselves freely, without boundaries or constraints. Therefore, the interest of the present article is to identify and analyse sensitive humorous topics in Romanian rural communities. In conducting the study, the following steps were taken: I videotaped people from the Upper Valley of the river Mureș (selected with sociolinguistic criteria such as gender, age, occupation), I transcribed the audio-video records and I divided the data into thematic categories: jokes, traditional shouts and funeral songs or dirges with humorous structures. Starting from these methodological steps, I attempt to perform a multimodal analysis, which consists of analysing both the text and the audio-video record. In the first part of my research, the analysis of the text focuses on specific structures of conventional humour performed in jokes, traditional shouts and dirges by the main theories of humour: superiority, release and incongruity theories of humour. In analysing the audio-video stimuli, I dwell upon identifying the degree of influence of the psycho-sociolinguistic parameters (gender, occupation and context) on the performance of humour, concentrating on markers of humour such as intonation and visual cues. After analysing the humorous sensitive topics in Romanian rural communities through a multimodal perspective, my conclusion is that speakers combine linguistic and non-linguistic elements in order to make a text humorous.

Laughing across borders:

Author(s): Liisi Laineste,Piret Voolaid / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2016

Internet humour flourishes on social network sites, special humour-dedicated sites and on web pages focusing on edutainment or infotainment. Its increasing pervasiveness has to do with the positive functions that humour is nowadays believed to carry – its bonding, affiliative and generally beneficial qualities. Internet humour, like other forms of cultural communication in this medium, passes along from person to person, and may scale (quickly or gradually, depending on the comic potential and other, sometimes rather elusive characteristics) into a shared social phenomenon, giving an insight into the preferences and ideas of the people who actively create and use it. The present research is primarily carried by the question of how the carriers of Internet humour, that is, memes and virals, travel across borders, to a smaller or greater degree being modified and adapted to a particular language and culture in the process. The intertextuality emerging as a result of adapting humorous texts is a perfect example of the inner workings of contemporary globalising cultural communication. Having analysed a corpus of 100 top-rated memes and virals from humour-dedicated web sites popular among Estonian users, we discuss how humour creates intertextual references that rely partly on the cultural memory of that particular (i.e. Estonian-language) community, and partly on global (primarily English- and Russian-language) cultural influences, thus producing hybrid cultural texts. The more interpretations are accessible for the audience (cf. polysemy Shabtai-Boxman & Shifman 2014), the more popular the text becomes, whereas the range of interpretations depends on the openness of the cultural item to further modification.

Gender bender agenda:

Author(s): Adrian Hale / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2016

This paper asserts that we accept or reject humorous texts discursively on the basis of what we perceive as authorial agendas. This “authorial agenda spotting” is activated by discursive “triggers”, which identify, filter, reject, endorse, or otherwise subjectively interpret the discourse of a textual author. This study was prompted by observing the negative reception of a humorous text by a predominantly Muslim postgraduate student cohort who signalled cultural identity and social cohesion by rejecting a text which subverted gender performance according to their discursive expectations. The study sought to compare this triggered effect with the reception of the same text by a distinctly pre-disposed audience comprised of same-sex-attracted bloggers. This reception in turn was contrasted with the reception of the text by mainstream media reviewers. The text itself seems to spark these discursive triggers in all three audiences. It is taken from “The Dame Edna Treatment” (2007), a TV-media entertainment programme, which features the celebrity guests k. d. lang and Ivana Trump being “interviewed” by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries in character as “Dame Edna”.

Digital politics on Facebook during the Arab Spring in Morocco:

Author(s): Mohamed Mifdal / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2016

When the Arab Spring began, a growing number of Moroccan Facebookers flaunted their dissent in the face of the regime and used subversive satire to question its legitimacy or push for more freedoms. However, this expression in the form of satire waned after the situation became settled and the satirists had to adjust their satire to the new political reality. This article explores the adaptive strategies of satire in a repressive context during settled and unsettled periods. By scrutinizing satiric posts on Facebook for over four years, I argue that satire, as critique and resistance, adjusts itself to the context, either by taking advantage of increased political space and freedoms or by resorting to indirection, self-censorship or tactical play with power. In both instances, the satiric performance is bound to stay within consensual cultural and political norms even when it is most subversive as these norms profoundly shape its creation and public reception.

Commentary piece

Author(s): Mark Weeks / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2016

Very little has been published on the subject of solitary laughter. Yet it appears quite possible that it is experienced by a large majority of people. A pilot study I have recently undertaken involving participants of numerous nationalities, as well as searches through literature and across the Internet, suggest that solitary laughter, while not as common as social instances of laughing, is a widespread human behaviour. It is even accorded special value by some. Seeking to encourage further research into the subject, this article discusses research and examines the forces that have militated against a more thorough research engagement with solitary laughter. It argues that a primary factor may be a pervasive assumption among influential scholars that laughter is an essentially social phenomenon and that laughing in solitude may be explained away as “vicarious” or “pseudo” socialising. Doubt is cast here upon that assumption. It is argued that while the reductionism at work in the extremely broad application of a social hypothesis may be theoretically attractive, it belies the diverse, evolving operations of both laughter and humour; this may be unnecessarily, if unwittingly, restricting the field of enquiry. Solitary laughter is a significant, complex behaviour and worthy of attention in its own right.

Gelotophobia in practice and the implications of ignoring it

Author(s): Tracey Platt,Rene T. Proyer,Jennifer Hofmann,W. Larry Ventis / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

Over 85 empirical articles investigating the fear of being laughed at have been published. Still, the question “why bother with another inter-individual differences variable?” arises. This quantitative paper based on 240 people, aims to show why gelotophobia has been widely neglected in therapeutic settings and why therapists may not have come across gelotophobes in their practice. Second, examples of extreme case studies involving gelotophobe’s perspective on treatment, exploring the practice and challenges arising in treatments will be given. Finally, an argument why there is a need for the inclusion of gelotophobia awareness for schools and for bullying interventions is proposed. Conclusions are drawn suggesting the importance of inclusion of this phenomenon.

Construction of gender identities via satire:

Author(s): Massih Zekavat,Farideh Pourgiv / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

Many studies underscore the societal aspects of satire, yet its role in the construction of social subjects’ identities has been mostly ignored. Since satire has been ubiquitous in various cultures and epochs, and identity is also among the primary contemporary concerns in our globalised and multicultural world, the study of the role of satire in the construction of social subjects’ identities can prove to be significantly rewarding. Accordingly, this article aims to investigate how satire can contribute to the construction of gender identity in social subjects. It is proposed that opposition/otherness/difference is the common denominator between satire and gender identity. First, different theories of humour are surveyed to show that opposition is integral to satire. Then, it is conveyed that otherness and opposition are similarly essential in the construction of gender identity in both men and women. As opposition can be a common denominator on the axis of sex, satire can be among the determinants of gender identity construction. In the end, Juvenal’s Satire VI is explicated to further illustrate the theoretical argumentation. It is concluded that the opposition essential to satire can coalesce with the integral otherness in gender identity, hence to contribute to its construction.

Book review

Author(s): Szymon Wach,Piotr P. Chruszczewski / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

Humour as resistance:

Author(s): Aju Basil James / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2014

This paper studies the evolution of political humour in media in the United States after 9/11. Previous research has identified patterns in the evolution of jokes on the Internet but a study of patterns of humour in mainstream media remain scarce. This paper looks at late night television shows and cartoon strips in post-9/11 United States, and tries to plot a pattern in their evolution. Television programs such as The Daily Show or cartoon strips such as The Boondocks and Get Your War On have become major sources of political news, especially for the younger section of the population. These media constitute and react to the business of political news in the United States. This paper attempts to explore what political consciousness is constructed through humour in these media. Any pattern that may emerge out of this study is also reflective of humour’s engagement with politics, especially in a time in which irony was declared to be dead. A comparison of humour on these different fora throws some light on how the United States reacted to 9/11 through humour as well as what material, political or psychological forces drive humour on different kinds of media.

Television humour and preferred meanings in the Catalan identity debate

Author(s): Luisa Martínez-García / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2014

This article analyses a sports-related satirical-parody television series as a generator of preferred meanings that may be associated with an ideological context of a stateless nation such as Catalonia, where the symbolic aspect is fundamental to the imaginary-building process. In this case, the research focuses on identifying whether representations of difference exist in the humorous content of the television series and, if they do, how they are represented and whether they propose imaginary boundaries. Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis in a satirical-parody television series about sports-related news, this study shows that humour generates symbolic boundaries between two spaces. While one of the spaces is in close proximity to the context in which the series is produced and broadcast –Catalonia–, the other encompasses the rest of Spain. In the same direction, humorous audiovisual text contains preferred and also dominant meanings, and these are expressed by how characters valuate other characters, situations, contexts, etc. The nature of the valuations proposes meanings that express the idea of a positive “us” and a negative “them”. Television humour acts as a cultural agent that proposes preferred meanings to the subject, and such meanings become part of the subject’s identity process

Humour and enjoyment reducers in cinema and theatre comedy

Author(s): Arie Sover / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2014

In this research, I am trying to define a new concept which I shall call Enjoyment Reducer, referring to verbal or visual content, incorporated into comic situations, which may offend or disturb the viewer’s enjoyment. There are comic situations that are only partially enjoyable and, at times, even cause embarrassment to the point of adversely affecting our enjoyment. These types of comic situations include what I term Enjoyment Reducers since they operate contrary to the function for which the comic situations were intended, which is to cause the viewer enjoyment. It should be noted that practically every comic situation includes Enjoyment Reducers because they are based on incongruities which disrupt our normal order or values. The fact that we laugh at humorous situations means that their enjoyable effect is stronger than the Enjoyment Reducers’ effect. Additionally, Enjoyment Reducers are both culture-dependent and contingent upon the viewer’s personality traits. Therefore, what one person perceives as an Enjoyment Reducer might be understood differently by another. The research findings reveal various types of Enjoyment Reducers that relate to human values, prohibitions and taboos. In addition, I will refer to another concept that is quite known, Enjoyment Enhancers, which might shed light on the main focus of the present research, which is Enjoyment Reducers. This research focuses mainly on comedy film, although the results are also relevant to theatre and all types of comic shows.

Book review

Author(s): Efharis Mascha / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2014

Logic and reasoning in jokes

Author(s): Graeme Ritchie / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

It has often been remarked that jokes involve some form of distorted logic, but the details ofthis joke logic have not been fully explored. We offer a contribution to the methodology of thisexploration by clarifying some abstract theoretical distinctions. Firstly, we separate twocrucially different notions of “reasoning” which are relevant to joke comprehension: internallogic and audience inference. Internal logic is a system of logical rules, in the traditionalsense, which define relationships within the fictional world of the joke, particularly therelation of consequence. Audience inference is a dynamic process which the recipient of ajoke undertakes in order to make sense of it. Previous writings on the topic of logic in jokesseem to conflate these two very different concepts. Another distinction which is sometimesoverlooked is between internal logic and other joke techniques with different functions, suchas strategies for presenting information. We also consider whether the logic of jokes requiresa qualitatively different inference mechanism from that of conventional logic, concluding thatthere is not yet any evidence to suggest this. Finally, we reflect on how we might go on toaddress the open question of what is possible as pseudo-logic within a joke.

Exploring Canarian humour in the first locally produced sitcom in RTVC

Author(s): Maria-Isabel Gonzalez-Cruz / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

Between December 2011 and May 2012, the public television channel (RTVC) in the Canary Islands (Spain) aired, in prime time, the first locally produced situation comedy. Titled La Revoltosa (henceforth LR), it was the most ambitious production in the channel’s more than 14 years of existence. This series was said to display a humorous interpretation of Canarian society. Indeed, according to the executive producer, the characters reflected ordinary Canarian families. One of the attractions of the series was the inclusion of popular Canarian comedian Manolo Vieira as the main protagonist. In this paper, I briefly outline the strategies typically used by this important figure of Canarian humour before I discuss two episodes of LR to explore the resources they employ to provoke humour. Particularly, I study the role played by language, and analyse how characters and situations are portrayed, thus examining universal humour in contrast to regional or ethnic humour. This comparison between the humour strategies used by Manolo Vieira and the ones employed in LR will enable us to determine to what extent this sitcom favours the Canarian (ethnic) humour traditionally represented by Vieira or rather resorts to more general (universal) humour strategies and stereotypes.

Components and determinants of the shift between the own persona and the clown persona:

Author(s): Alberto Dionigi,Willibald Ruch,Tracey Platt / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2013

Working in health settings as a clown requires the ability to differentiate between the own persona and the clown persona and to stay in the role, despite a variety of challenging situations. This passage requires a cognitive shift that can be interfered with, or facilitated, by several variables. This study aims at operationalising the components involved in the shift and relating them to psychological characteristics and other relevant aspects of the training necessary to become a clinic clown. A preliminary 34-item version of the Clown Shift Questionnaire (CSQ) was developed and administered to a sample of 130 Italian clinic clowns. Relevant information such as sociodemographic characteristics, various aspects related to the training received such as length, issues taught, internship carried out, psychological knowledge, and competences in clowning were collected. Four dimensions in the shifting process were identified: reflective awareness, positive beliefs, interference, and anxiety. These dimensions represent a profile of individual differences that may be used to predict the success of the clown intervention. Reflective awareness positively correlates with the aspects related to the training and the years of clown activity, while positive beliefs is a dimension not related to training. Anxiety is higher among females and younger people and correlates negatively with training aspects and years of activity. Interferences are more frequent among those who received higher psychological knowledge and lead to less satisfaction. Further implications for using the concepts of CSQ in research and in the work of clowns in health settings are discussed.

Relevance Theory and political advertising.

Author(s): María Jesús Pinar Sanz / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

This paper aims to apply Sperber & Wilson’s Relevance Theory (1986; 1995; 1987) and the two stage incongruity-resolution theory of humour (Attardo 1994) to explain how humorous interpretations are produced in a corpus of political billboards published by the Labour Party in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 British election campaigns. The intersemiosis (O’Halloran 2008) between the verbal and the visual will be taken into account in order to decode the meanings transmitted. It will be suggested that the viewers’ access to background beliefs and assumptions in order to form a context against which new incoming information can be processed is also essential in order to decode meaning. The extraction of strongly or weakly implicated information is a good source of humorous effects. It will also be suggested that the interpretation depends on the viewer’s ideology, as “relevance is always relevance to an individual” (Sperber & Wilson 1986: 142).

Can ethnic humour appreciation be influenced by political reasons?

Author(s): Carmelo Moreno del Río / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

The aim of this paper is to compare the appreciation of humor that a sample of citizens in Spain has expressed about two different types of ethnic humor produced by two successful television programs from two autonomous communities in Spain: the Basque Country and Catalonia. Both regions are well-known in the Spanish society for their specific cultural and political features, which are seen as different from the rest of the country. To some extent, their particular character is fixed in the Spanish collective imaginary by some particular stereotypes, represented in stupidity and canniness jokes, following the model investigated by Christie Davies. In contrast to these jokes, the present study focuses on the ethnic humor circulated in these two regions, a kind of humor that is based on their specific identity and where it is possible to combine elements of self-deprecating humor and elements of aggressive humor towards Spain. More specifically, this work tries to test if the political background that these two regions represent in Spain –societies that dares the cohesion of the Spanish identity, even fighting for nationalist recognitions of political rights- could influence or not in the appreciation that the Spanish citizens as a whole have of this ethnic humor that Basques and Catalans produce.

The Singapore Mass Rapid Transport:

Author(s): Khin Wee Chen / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

Political cartoons can function as a means of monitoring the level of press freedom, of government’s tolerance of free speech, and their resistance to challenges posed by opposition. It may also be argued that in this digital age the aforesaid barometric utility can extend to other satirical visual forms like memes and videos. Singapore has a long reputation for its strict media control, iron-grip on the mainstream media, and zero-tolerance for any form of spontaneous public protest. However, the arrival of the digital information age effectively eroded the government’s hegemony over the public sphere, resulting in a revitalisation of democracy and the empowerment of a traditionally docile and acquiescent citizenry with regards to politics. As with most socio-political struggles in the past, political humour can be seen playing once again an important role in the expression of dissent and criticism of the establishment in the island-state. However, unlike in the past when such political humour was the domain of a small group of professional artists and writers, the new media with its immense capabilities like powerful search engines, social networks, YouTube, Twitter and various computer applications like Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, has for the first time provided tools for ordinary people who hitherto may have lived in fear of voicing their dissatisfaction all their lives, but are now empowered to create their individual and personalised expressions of protest through the use of Internet memes and other techniques, sometimes within hours of a piece of news breaking. This paper presents a case study that demonstrates how political humour “of the people, by the people” helped fuel a public outcry against the incompetence and negligence of a Singapore public transport provider that had resulted in a series of major breakdown that brought great embarrassment to a country known for its ability to “make things work”. The public’s demand for accountability has led to the unprecedented resignation of the Chief Executive Officer.

Canned jokes in Russian public political discourse

Author(s): KSENIA M. SHILIKHINA / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

The paper addresses a well-documented genre of Russian canned jokes from a socio-pragmatic perspective. The goal of the paper is twofold: firstly, it aims at examining a relatively new phenomenon of telling jokes in public political discourse. Secondly, it argues that jokes – a typical example of a non-bona fide genre – can nevertheless be used to convey bona fide messages. As a specific sphere of communication public political discourse incorporates official interaction of professional politicians as well as publicly expressed attitudes of ordinary people. Because jokes capture our experience and reflect ongoing social processes, modern Russian political discourse in many of its forms eagerly employs the genre. But, whenever a joke is used in the official political communication, we face the discrepancy between the premise of the bona fide mode of political discourse and non-seriousness of jokes. On the surface telling jokes in political discourse might seem to be a temporal switch from the bona fide to the non-bona fide mode of communication. However, the content of canned jokes told by politicians reveals deep social implications: for instance, Vladimir Putin’s frequent references to Soviet realia are signs of superiority and control over the situation. Jokes told by Putin’s opponents, on the one hand, reveal disappointment; on the other, they are part of the struggle for power. Telling jokes in public political discourse shows that the borderline between two modes of communication – bona fide and non-bona fide – is fuzzy since jokes transmit serious messages for the participants of political communication.

Parliamentary punning:

Author(s): Villy Tsakona / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2013

The present study focuses on the sociopragmatic functions of punning which appears to be the most frequent form of humour Greek politicians produce in parliament. The analysis takes into consideration the institutional particularities of this setting: in parliamentary systems such as the Greek one, competition and disagreement among political parties are more intense than in presidential systems, where party coalitions and collaboration are more frequent. More specifically, I will try to answer the following questions: Are puns the only kind of humour appearing in this setting? Why do Greek parliamentarians resort to punning? How does the use of punning relate to the institutional roles Greek parliamentarians are expected to fulfill, as well as to the institutional particularities of the Greek parliament? The data examined comes from the official parliamentary proceedings, in particular from a no-confidence debate which took place in 2007. The analysis suggests that puns are used as a means of showing off verbal skills: parliamentarians try to project themselves as eloquent orators who are capable of outscoring their adversaries in a highly competitive environment. What is more, via puns parliamentarians criticise and attempt to ideologically delegitimise political decisions and practices. Puns are less often used to bring together parliamentarians and highlight their shared experiences and roles. It therefore seems that punning helps parliamentarians to accomplish their institutional tasks, criticism being (one of) the most significant of them all.