‘She is like a Yakshini':

character construction via aggressive humour in Chinese sitcom discourse

Author(s): Ying Cao,Chong Han,Xiangdong Liu,Adrian Hale / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2021

This paper looks at the importance of aggressive humour in the discursive construction of a ‘Yakshini’ character in a popular Chinese sitcom, Ipartment. The exaggerated, aggressive nature of such a stereotypical character undermines traditional cultural norms of Chinese femininity. Such characterisation of a heroine through aggressive humour in a popular sitcom reflects the fact that empowering women has become (or is becoming) more acceptable in contemporary China.

‘The new but lonely voice against the authoritarianism’:

humor and irony in Turkish political discourse after the Taksim Gezi Park Protests

Author(s): Gunes Aksan / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

This study investigates the diffusion of a new political language based on humour and irony into Turkish politics. The Taksim Gezi Park Protests, in addition to introducing a new subject to Turkish politics, led to a new language that places humour at the centre. The Government’s neoliberal and authoritarian policies and tight control over traditional media shaped the resistance to be humoristic and indirect. People used alternative media to voice their dissent, mainly in the form of social media messages in addition to street performances, graffiti, videos and murals. This new wave of humour, which I prefer to call the “public square humour” emphasised creativity, improvisation and pluralism via the usage of traditional conversational humour mechanisms of the Turkish folk narratives. I investigate the effect of this new wave of humour on the professional politicians over the course of following years after the protests in an increasingly authoritarian political climate. I analyse the Twitter messages of four major party leaders and politicians who are active in Twitter, both qualitatively and quantitatively. With the methods of the discourse analysis I identify the political parties that embrace the new language of the political opposition. Finally, I conclude that Demirtas embraces the public square humour better and makes use of it to underline the transformation of HDP (People’s Democratic Party) from a defendant of ethnic politics to the representative of the new voice of Turkish political opposition.

“America First, the Netherlands Second” on YouTube:

“spoofing” destination marketing with political satire

Author(s): Maja Turnšek,Petr Janeček / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

This study attempts to provide initial tentative insights into the audience reception of intertwining political satire and destination marketing imagery by analysing the “America First, the Netherlands Second” video and a student sample audience response. In 2017, a series of YouTube videos named “America First” went viral. The video that started the viral phenomenon was “America First, the Netherlands Second”, responding in a satirical manner to the “America First” message of the inaugural speech of U.S. president Donald J. Trump. They achieved extreme popularity both in number of views and number of new memetic videos with similar satirical messages. These videos were a form of political expression and at first sight did not seem to have much in common with communication in tourism. However, the videos included typical destination marketing imagery, intertwined with satirical representations, thus representing a humorous “spoof” on destination marketing. The study analyses participants’ memory recall, eye-tracking movements and focus group responses in order to provide initial conclusions on how audiences respond to the intertwining of satirical political expression and destination marketing imagery.

“Girding up the Loins”: A Cognitive Sematic Analysis of Humorous Expressions

Author(s): Zoltán Kövecses / Language(s): English / Issue: 1&2/2016

A large number of humorous linguistic expressions in English (and also in other languages)are characterized by such cognitive processes as metonymy, metaphor, and conceptualintegration, or blending. However, these figurative devices are neither sufficient nor necessaryfor humorous effects. Following other researchers, I suggest that in order to account forhumorous expressions we need the notion of conceptual incongruity, or incompatibility insideor between frames of knowledge. In the paper I will take stock of some of the commonlyoccurring types of incongruity, or incompatibility, in my data of humorous expressions. I willaccount for the existence of a large number of metonymy-, metaphor-, and blending-basedhumorous expressions by proposing that these figurative devices create or facilitate thecreation of incongruities. The analyses of a number of humorous expressions will make itpossible to suggest a rough and sketchy cognitive linguistic account of the humorous effect ofthese expressions.

“I get it, but it’s just not funny”:

Why humour fails, after all is said and done

Author(s): Adrian Hale / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Failed humour can be explained by communicative gaps, at either the semantic or pragmatic levels, but sometimes, after all is ‘said and done’, people resist humour for purely discursive reasons. Some may recognise the divisive nature of a humorous text, and experience conflicting feelings. Others may welcome humour purely because of its appeal to ideology, while the text itself may not be considered as being very funny. Then there are people who ‘go along with the joke’ purely to avoid losing face. Political humour is a site of great power, where the stakes are high. For example, Donald Trump rejected Baldwin’s SNL parody, finding his ‘alter ego’ “unwatchable” and “not funny”. Other politicians, and members of the public, however, choose to respond to political humour in diverse ways. The reception of humour, therefore, is more complex than it appears. We might resist humour because of a deficiency in linguistic competence, but we might also resist humour because of literacy competence. This paper will theorise that there exists a ‘default setting’ in a person’s discourse, such that when encountering an instance of humour, we all employ a Discursive Defence Mechanism (DDM), and that there are ‘triggers’ which provoke this DDM.

“I see,” said Tom icily:

Tom Swifties at the beginning of the 21st century

Author(s): Anna T. Litovkina / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2014

This paper gives a definition and historical background of the Tom Swifty , addresses different types of punning employed in Tom Swifties, and discusses topics emerging in them. It also treats the occurrence of proverbs, proverbial phrases, idioms, and aphorisms in Tom Swifties. What is typical for Tom Swifty? It might be consid ered the twentieth century development of the form of folklore called wellerism. Tom Swifty is a wellerism conventionally based on the punning relationship between the way an adverb describes a speaker and simultaneously refers to the meaning of the speake r’s statement. The speaker is traditionally Tom, his statement is usually placed at the beginning of the Tom Swifty, and the adverb at the end of it, e.g. “I see,” said Tom icily (icily vs. I see).

“Jerome at the BBC”:

Subversion, caricature, and humanity in Three Men in a Boat

Author(s): Dalbir S. Sehmby / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2014

Through characters who openly express distress over imagined pains, “Jerome at the BBC” treats BBC’s Three Men in a Boat as a playful critique of heroic masculinity, or what the paper defines as confident cognisant agency. Air ing in 1975, BBC’s ad aptation is released after the media ascension of James Bond and in the heyday of tough Hollywood heroes, bold figures who refuse to complain about, let alone give in, to physical pain unlike Jerome’s men. Jerome’s original and its BBC adaptation are lay ered comical texts. By channelling Jerome’s critique of the colonial, seafaring male into contemporary notions of the Hollywood hero type, this paper examines the BBC film’s boisterous lack of masculine agency, the quiet parody of action sequences, and the gingerly movement towards a conclusion that does not bang, but whimpers. Moreover, the paper asserts that the humour also functions on a less grand level, by being an effective caricature of human behaviour a healthy dose of cultural self mockery. Furth ermore, through revealing moments, by the telefilm’s end, the characters do not simply remain caricatures to be laughed at, but become identifiable and relatable human beings.

“Laf wan kill me die” (I almost died laughing):

An analysis of Akpos jokes and the readers’ responses

Author(s): Ibukun Filani / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

Studies on humour have acknowledged that responses to jokes are important aspects of a joking exchange; however, investigation of joke recipients’ responses has received little attention from humour scholars. Moreover, the linguistic investigations of jokes have been limited to native speakers’ contexts, leaving ESL contexts out. Therefore, this study examines readers’ responses to a genre of jokes in Nigerian online spheres, Akpos jokes, with a view to characterising their forms and functions. Akpos jokes are humorous narratives created around an imaginary character called Akpos. Jokes are randomly collected from a blog and readers’ responses were derived from a Facebook page in which Akpos jokes are published. Using computer paralanguage and language mixing in writing the jokes and the responses, the jokes and the reactions to them mirror the online and the Nigerian ESL contexts in which they are situated. Readers use their responses to indicate affiliation, disaffiliation with the joke, or to introduce something that has nothing to do with the subject of the joke or humour. Readers also use their responses to argue for and/or against the humorousness the jokes.

ЧИСЛІВНИК ЯК ПАРАМЕТР ВИЗНАЧЕННЯ ПСИХОТИПУ ПИСЬМЕННИКА

Author(s): Inna Pavlova / Language(s): Ukrainian / Issue: 5/2017

The article focuses on the analysis of the stylistic features, the specific expressiveness, the specific features of the pragmatic value of the numerals as one of the means which determines the psychological type of a writer. The poets of the sixties M. Vinhranovsky and B. Oliynyk are the language personalities, belonging to different psychological types — extroverts and introverts. The prognostic conclusion as for the poetic psychological type is based on the analysis of the specific features of the numerals functioning in the poetry by M. Vinhranovsky and B. Oliynyk. У

Членуване на съществителни нарицателни имена от мъжки род с пълен и с кратък член. Практическо-прагматичен подход

Author(s): Galya Hristozova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 5/2017

Analyzed are some important rules of suffixing common masculine nouns ending in consonants with definite and indefinite articles. Identified are some typical mistakes. The approach to the problem is practical and pragmatic. Suggested are various ways of checking mistakes without unnecessary theorizing. The aim is to develop mechanisms for practical actions that will facilitate the suffixing of nouns with definite and indefinite articles.

Шведский язык официально-делового общения в Новое и Новейшее время

Author(s): Irina Vitalievna Matytsina / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 5/2020

Processes typical of the Swedish business language during the modern era were described. The study is of high importance, because this functional style of the Swedish language has been insufficiently investigated despite the regulation and normalization processes in it are of obvious interest to specialists in the Germanic languages. The main research method is synchronic analysis enabling examination and description the material in terms of the existing norms. A wide range of examples were provided to illustrate that in the modern era the language of law gradually gets closer to the language of notifications, rules, orders, regulations, etc., i.e., to documents that are usually implied when talking about officialese (the official and business style). It was concluded that the modern period was marked by not only the distinction between these two stylistic types of text, but also by the fact that they both acquired features common to Swedish non-fiction texts (sakprosan). In the 19th century, these processes were not very evident and, despite some minor innovations, the Swedish business language still contained a number of archaic features revealed in the so-called “substantival sickness” (substantivsjukan). A fundamental change took place in the 20th century and is associated with the spelling reform of 1906, as well as significant changes in such elements of the Swedish business language as syntax, morphology, and vocabulary that emerged mostly in the second half of the 20th century. The results obtained are of great importance for studying the Swedish stylistics, as well as for understanding the essence and roles of language policy in the process of normalizing and codifying the literary language.

ШТА СПАЈА А ШТА РАЗДВАЈА КОГНИТИВНОЛИНГВИСТИЧКИ И КОГНИТИВНОПРАГМАТИЧКИ ПРИСТУП МЕТАФОРИ?

Author(s): Katarina Rasulić,Marija Mišković-Luković / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 72/2020

This paper provides a comprehensive comparative reassessment of the state-of-art in the theory and practice of the two prominent contemporary approaches to metaphor – cognitive-linguistic conceptual metaphor theory and cognitive-pragmatic relevance theory – given their professed aim at formulating an explanatorily adequate cognitive theory of metaphor. So far, to our knowledge, there are but a handful of publications that have seriously dealt with this comparative issue (Tendahl and Gibbs 2008, Tendahl 2009, Stöver 2010, Gibbs and Tendahl 2011, Wilson 2011); illuminating as they are, they are, nonetheless, biased in that they remain deeply rooted in their respective theoretical backgrounds. Working within the two observed theoretic approaches to metaphor, our primary aim was to show that the differences may be more apparent than real. To this purpose, we present a synthetic and critical overview of both approaches, alongside with a comparative analysis of illustrative data from the contemporary Serbian language. Our combined approach, cognitively induced, relies on the elaborate conceptual apparatus of cognitive linguistics teamed with an interpretive understanding of metaphor within the cognitive-pragmatic framework, highlighting the lines of interface and the converging evidence towards a better understanding of metaphor as a cognitive–communicative mechanism.

Эвалюативный потенциал немецких слов столетия как культурно- специфическое явление

Author(s): Olga Kaškina / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 2/2002

Straipsnis skirtas vokiečių kalbos potencialo nagrinėjimui šimtmečio bėgyje. Tai žodžiai, kurie funkcionuoja skirtinguose vertinimo diskurso lygiuose kai yra taikoma pažintinė-diskursinė analizė, kuri nustato mokomų žodžių pažintinės ir vertinimo charakteristikos tarpusavio ryšį bei šimtmečio bėgyje vartotų žodžių vertinimo potencialo aktualizavimo būdus leksikos lygmenyje ir pragmatinės reikšmės realizavimo ypatumus sintaksės lygmenyje. Gauti rezultatai gali būti panaudoti antrinės kalbinės asmenybės formavimo procese mokant vokiečių kaip užsienio kalbos.

ЭКСПЛИКАЦИЯ И ИМПЛИКАЦИЯ ОЦЕНКИ В МИКРОБЛОГЕ TWITTER (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ СООБЩЕНИЙ УЧАСТНИКОВ ПРОТЕСТНОГО ДВИЖЕНИЯ «ЧАЕПИТИЕ»)

Author(s): Elena Vlaeriyevna Gabrielova / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 5/2015

The paper presents the results of the investigation carried out to define the language means of implicit and explicit estimation used by participants of the Tea Party protest movement, which emerged in 2009 in the United States. According to the content analysis of Twitter messages performed with the help of the Atlas.ti software program, the main trends in the topics and linguistic devices implemented by users while expressing their opinions are defined. The data analysis shows that requests for assistance, criticism against the US president, and support of the protest movement are, as a rule, expressed explicitly. Participants often state their opinions implicitly through the use of irony, phraseological units, implicit estimation, question structures, and quotations.

Электронные тексты в рефлексии повседневного письменного общения

на материале словацкого языка

Author(s): Ján Gallo / Language(s): Slovak,Russian / Issue: 41-42/2020

The article deals with the issue of electronic texts in the context of everyday written comunication as well as the modern usage of these texts in the communication process. In the introduction the general view on electronic texts with enumeration of their types are presented. In the first part, the attention is focused on the traditional approach to electronic texts confirming the author’s position by illustrative examples. In the next part, there discussed the problem of style in the electronic texts. In the third part, there are presented some descriptions of electronic texts genres, such as an e-mail, SMS text message, chat and blog exemplified. In conclusion there is a summary of investigated problems and some drift of events to the future.

ЭСТЕТИЧЕСКОЕ ЗНАЧЕНИЕ ИМЁН ПРИЛАГАТЕЛЬНЫХ В ЯЗЫКЕ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОЙ ПРОЗЫ А.С. СЕРАФИМОВИЧА

Author(s): Kamily Eduardovna Sadrieva / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 5/2015

The paper analyzes the aesthetic meaning of adjectives in A.S. Serafimovich’s prose. The most typical groups of adjectives are singled out based on their semantic and functional features, which are analyzed considering the main idea and problems of the prose works, as well as the author’s view of the world. Special attention is paid to the syntagmatic relations between adjectives and dependent nouns. The influence of a particular linguistic context on the semantic and emotional contents of adjectives is investigated. The semantic relations between parts of complex words are discussed. Occasionalisms used by A.S. Serafimovich are distinguished.

Этноориентированная особенность лексики: немецко-русские соответствия

Author(s): Elena Nevmerzhitskaya / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 3/2016

By the example of national and linguistical specificity of German vocabulary the author characterizes ethnocultural component of a word meaning, which is (like Russian one) nationally marked.

Язык и власть: «новый новояз» постсоветского периода

Author(s): Nam Hye Hyun / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 2/2017

Newspeak as a language of political manipulation is an indispensable attribute not only of the Soviet political language (novojaz) but also of the language of politics as such. And in a certain sense, any normal language can contain some elements of newspeak because the regulatory function is peculiar to a language. This paper is dedicated to the continuity of Soviet and post-Soviet political discourse, in particular, the reproduction of rhetorical devices of Soviet novojaz in modern Russian political discourse.

Язык старообрядческой публицистики XIX века: попытка характеристики явления

Author(s): Helena Pociechina / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 162/2018

The article is the first attempt at characterizing journalistic Old Believers’ texts from the 19th century from the linguistic perspective. The research focused on the works of Konstantin Golubov published in the years 1864–1866 in the journal ‘Istina’. The academic problem consists here in the fact that the Russian language of modern Old Believers’ texts is not generally extensively analyzed. Additionally, because of the specificity of these texts, this language cannot be analyzed in line with modern stylistic criteria. At first glance, it seems obvious that they were written in an informal variety of Russian. What is more, it is necessary to refer to Old Church Slavonic elements which determine the specificity of these texts, as well as analyzing borrowings from the literary Russian language.

ЯЗЫКОВАЯ ИГРА КАК СРЕДСТВО КОМИЧЕСКОГО В СОВРЕМЕННОМ МЕДИАДИСКУРСЕ

Author(s): Ekaterina Vladimirovna Vyrovtseva,Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Shcheglova / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 1/2021

The phenomenon of language game as a way to create a journalistic image – humorous, ironic, satirical –is considered a pressing issue as one the most popular and actively developing traditions in modern Russian media. The aesthetics of postmodernism aroused interest in irony – an effective way of assessing events, phenomena or facts of reality, and expressing the author’s position. In the situation of language inflation, multifunctional texts designed for co-creation based on language game are becoming increasingly attractive. Researchers define the “irony virus” as a characteristic feature of modern media texts, and the irony paradigm is constantly expanding: from mild humor to annihilating sarcasm and grotesque. Studying the works of authoritative and popular authors enables us to identify the features and patterns of the media language development. The article for the first time attempts to identify and systematize the functional types of language game as a way to create a comic effect. The authors analyze the works of famous journalists to identify language game techniques that are most actively used to create a humorous, ironic, satirical image: paronymy, pun, paradoxical metaphor, phraseological unit transformation, and stylistic contrast. The conclusions are drawn that language game as a deliberate violation of the norm manifests itself at different levels of the text –grammatical, lexical and semantic, syntactic, and stylistic ones, and that in headlines language game performs various functions, depending on the typological features of the publication and the author’s intentions. It’s obvious that publicists’ appeal to laughter as a simple and sharp form of criticism makes it possible to realize various communicative intentions:humor, satire, exposure, insult, and others.