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Towards a comprehensive theory of culturally constructed humour

Author(s): Sajjad Kianbakht / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

In the present research, we discuss Humour Studies within Linguistics, focusing mainly on linguistic theories of humour including the Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH; Raskin 1985), and the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH; Attardo 1994, 2017b). The study demonstrates different types of cultural conceptualisations (Sharifian 2017a, 2017b) that the interlocutors draw upon, such as cultural categories, cultural metaphors, and cultural schemas to create humour, and we argue that the General Theory of Verbal Humour does not account for culturally-constructed verbal humour. Hence, we argue that it is necessary to fill this gap in the most prevailing theory of verbal humour, the General Theory of Verbal Humour, by demonstrating how cultural conceptualisations must be considered in identifying and analysing instantiations of humour, in moving towards a comprehensive theory of culturally constructed humour.

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Concept “humour” in the linguistic consciousness of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine

Author(s): Iuliia Kobzieva,Iia Gordiienko-Mytrofanova,Maryna Udovenko,Serhii Sauta / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The purpose of this study was to define and to describe the semantic components of the stimulus word humour in the linguistic consciousness of young Russian-speaking people from Eastern Ukraine. The main method of the research was a psycholinguistic experiment. The sample comprised 400 young people (aged 20-31), males and females being equally represented. The experiment proved that the concept humour in the linguistic consciousness of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine is represented by four core semantic clusters: “laughter,” “joke,” “merry-making/joy” and “show.” Analysis of female and male associative fields shows that the semantic core of the word humour does not depend on the respondents’ gender identification. The results of frequency and cluster analysis have implied a number of the following conclusions. Firstly, humour and laughter form an inseparable unity of stimulus and reaction in the linguistic consciousness of respondents, although the psychological paradigm considers humour and laughter as two independent phenomena. Secondly, the cognitive component of humour was only reflected in the peripheral cluster “mind” of respondents’ associations. Thirdly, young Russian-speaking people from Ukraine do not have an ideal image of humour represented by a certain comedy show or relevant to any specific comedians. The generalised visualisation of humour is represented by reactions of the extreme periphery. Finally, comparative analysis of the verbalised concept humour in the linguistic consciousness of Russian-speaking population of Ukraine and people who live in Russia did not reveal any national-specific features in the perception of stimulus humour.

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Detachment of empathy:

Author(s): Ron Aharoni / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This is a sequel to a previous paper (Aharoni 2018), in which I suggested that the game of humour is played not between two meanings of the same carrier, but between meaning and its carrier: the two are detached from each other by some means. In the present paper I want to substantiate this thesis by some evidence, the main one being referred to in the title of the paper. It is that two well-known theories of humour, both presently neglected to a large extent, are based on this mechanism. In both the carrier of meaning is not words, but actions. In fact, one of the main messages of the paper is that often the carrier of meaning in jokes, and in humour in general, are actions. I will try to show that both Bergson’s “automatic behaviour” theory and the superiority (or derision) theory are based on detachment of empathy, namely of identification. Since, as I will try to show, empathy and identification are man’s (and even animals’) main tool in deciphering meanings of actions, this results in detaching actions from their meanings.

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Conceptual integration theory and British humour:

Author(s): Joanna Jabłońska-Hood / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

Conceptual integration theory (henceforth CIT), also known as conceptual blending, was devised by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) as a model for meaning construction and interpretation. It is based on the notion of a mental space, which originated in Fauconnier's early research (1998). Mental spaces are structures that constitute information pertaining to a particular concept (Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 40). Interestingly, mental spaces can be linked together and blended so as to produce a novel quality. In this manner, conceptual integration serves as a theoretical model that throws light on creativity in language use. In my paper, I will apply CIT to British humour in order to use its multiway blending together with its dynamic, online running of the blended contents for the purpose of comedy elucidation. It is crucial to observe that British humour is a complex phenomenon which pertains to many different levels of interpretation, i.e. a linguistic, cultural or discursive. CIT possesses a well-suited cognitive apparatus which can encompass the complexity of British humour with all its layers. The primary goal of the article is to analyse a selected scene from a sitcom entitled Miranda in order to show the validity of the theory in respect of humour studies. In particular, I will undertake to demonstrate that CIT, with a special emphasis on its principles such as compression and the emergent structure of the blend can deal with many processes that accumulate within British humour and result in laughter. Simultaneously, I will try to demonstrate that frame-shifting, as proposed by Coulson (2015: pp. 167-190), can be of help to CIT in explaining humour.

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Breaking frame and frame-shifting in Bassem Youssef’s satirical TV show al-Bernāmeg

Author(s): Mohamed Mifdal / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This paper reviews how humor is made in terms of three theoretical models. First, it draws onthe contribution of the structural semantics to the understanding of the text of the joke,especially the related notion of isotopy and the linear organization of the text of the joke.Second, this paper discusses humor in light of the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH),and the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). Third, this paper draws also on twopragmatic and discursive approaches, namely Grice’s cooperative principle, and Simpson’smodel of satire as a discourse. This paper argues that semantic incongruities and theirresolutions, as well as the violations of the cooperation principle can be best apprehended inlight of the frames theory as developed in social sciences by Erving Goffman and frameshiftingtheory as it has been developed by Seana Coulson. The aim of this paper is to revealthe mechanism used to produce humor and laughter in one of the most popular satirical showsin the Arab world, Bassem Youssef’s al-Bernāmeg. The focus is not only on what humor/satiredoes (ridicule, mockery, attack of targets, overstepping of boundaries…), but also on how itdoes it (violation of codes, breaking frames, frame-shifting, conceptual blending) and whythese discursive strategies are used (implications in light of historical and cultural context).This paper also argues that the generation of humor can be based broadly on breaking frames,which is inclusive of incongruity (both verbal and contextual), but studied in a multimodalcontent where incongruity is based on breaking and shattering frames that are constructed inverbal and visual forms. Humor generation is conducted through a continuous chain-likeprocess of building, shattering, and rebuilding frames. It also deals with the frame-shiftingand conceptual blending mechanisms at the level of interpretation and the construction of themeaning of humor. The aim is to account for the creative and flexible use of language forsatiric purposes and thus to enhance the ability of traditional frame-based systems, includingscript-opposition theory to account for such flexibility in light of context and with reference tobackground.

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Does religion shape people’s sense of humour?

Author(s): Karl-Heinz Ott,Bernard Schweizer / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

Using an empirical approach, this study addresses the question whether followers of different religious beliefs (Christians, Muslims, and Hindus), as well as Atheists and Agnostics manifest different senses of humour when rating a variety of jokes. The study further investigates whether one’s religious background influences the threshold of what is considered offensive. And finally, it seeks to answer whether jokes targeting religions other than one’s own are always perceived as funnier. Analysing the results of a public survey (N=783) containing a blend of religious and non-religious jokes (including irreverent ones), we found that Hindus demonstrate overall the highest humour appreciation among all the groups, while Christians were the least amused by the jokes presented on the survey. Muslims had overall robust humour responses, despite reporting the highest incidence of being offended. Atheists were the least likely to be offended, and they generally enjoyed irreverent jokes. All groups agreed that if a joke was seen as offensive, its funniness was reduced.

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Why are you amused:

Author(s): Qiaoyun Chen,Guiying Jiang / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This paper looks at multimodal humour through the lens of prototype theory in the framework of conventional incongruity theory of humour, aiming for a unified linguistic and semiotic approach to humour. From this perspective, humour can be achieved through the following three aspects of linguistic and non-linguistic categories: 1) prototypicality versus nonprototypicality of category members; 2) the family resemblance shared by category members; 3) vague inter-categorical boundary. The cognitive mechanisms behind this type of multimodal humour and its comprehension are discussed. The intermodal relationships involved are examined and categorised into two major types: complementary and noncomplementary ones.

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Wspólny schemat jako motywacja polskich odpowiedników angielskiego przyimka for

Author(s): Katarzyna Rudkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2018

Equipping a linguist with effective analytical tools for contrastive analyses, cognitive methodologies provide access to subtle details of schematic representations in the languages compared, facilitating a deeper insight into the structures of languages at the conceptualization level. This paper presents the cognitive value of the contrastive analyses conducted in the vein of R. Langackerʼs Cognitive Grammar and with reference to the image schema theory, and their contribution to a more multifaceted description of the English preposition for and some of its Polish equivalents. Cognitive analyses allow for identifying the path image schema as the most abstract schema that structures the semantic content of for, and the transformations of which sanction the choice of particular Polish prepositions as its equivalents.

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The power of metonymy in humour:

Author(s): Sabina Tabacaru,Kurt Feyaerts / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

This paper is grounded in Cognitive Linguistics (CL), which sees metonymy as a conceptual phenomenon, in which one conceptual entity (the source) provides mental access to another entity (the target) within the same conceptual domain (Radden & Kövecses 1999), as opposed to metaphor, which is seen as a mapping between different domains (Lakoff 1987). Our view on metonymy slightly deviates from the mainstream CL-approach, as we reinterpret the criterion of the single domain as an epiphenomenon of the conceptually defined contiguous relationship (Feyaerts 1999), which we take to be metonymy’s categorical feature. In this contribution, we analyse the structural role of metonymy in humorous interactional sequences as they occur in the American television-series House M.D. and The Big Bang Theory. As our examples qualify as staged communicative acts, the interpretation of which involves processing meanings on different layers, we use Clark’s (1996) layering model to account for the humorous uses of metonymies and to show that metonymic connections lie at the heart of pragmatic inferencing. In line with – and at the same time extending – earlier work (Feyaerts & Brône 2005) on the potential of metonymic chaining to generate humorous and expressive meanings, this study demonstrates how a metonymic relationship may extend across different layers of meaning – the ‘serious’ discourse base space and a ‘non-serious’ pretence space – to generate a humorous meaning, based on the common ground between the speakers and the audience.

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Каузалне конструкције С + генитив у руском у поређењу са српским у контексту језичке слике света

Author(s): Biljana Marić,Dragana M. Kerkez / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 23/2021

In this paper, we examine causal nominal constructions with the preposition S and the genitive in the Russian language in comparison with Serbian from the syntactic and semantic aspect. Comparing the given construction with a similar OT + genitive, we come to conclusions regarding the specific meaning of the examined construction. The given meaning can be called specific from the aspect of the Serbian causal system. The paper also points to other syntactic studies on the Russian language that draw attention to the specificity of the so-called „small syntax“ constructions.

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La traducción pedagógica como vehículo entre lenguas tipológicamente diferentes

Author(s): Sandra Guerrero García / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 19/2020

Despite the fact that Talmy proposed a classification of languages according to their lexicalization patterns and the fact that a considerable amount of time has passed, there are still no didactic tools that facilitate the language students’ acquisition of necessary mechanisms for descriptions of movements in second languages. Starting from previous researches of diverse authors where the difficulty and the absence of knowledge on the part of the student at the time of codifying the movement is verified, this work highlights the activities that use pedagogical translation as a facilitating vehicle for the learning of movement of English-speaking students of Spanish, with the purpose of avoiding the repetition of errors and being applicable to any language.

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Przekład i (bez)krytyczna analiza dyskursu

Author(s): Elżbieta Tabakowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

Celem artykułu jest potwierdzenie tezy, że postulat transdyscyplinarności, wysuwany w rozważaniach dotyczących współczesnego przekładoznawstwa, znajduje uzasadnienie w zbieżności podstawowych założeń językoznawstwa kognitywnego, krytycznej analizy dyskursu i wiedzy o przekładzie. „Zwrot kulturowy” w przekładoznawstwie, odnotowany w tym samym czasie, co „zwrot kognitywny” w nauce o języku, oznacza możliwość wkroczenia obu dyscyplin na teren praktycznie zarezerwowany dla badań nad krytyczną analizą dyskursu. Przełamanie niechęci lub braku zainteresowania dla sąsiednich dyscyplin prowadzi do rozszerzenia wspólnej płaszczyzny działania. Tezę ilustruje studium przypadku: przykład tłumaczenia tekstu, o którego językowym kształcie decyduje szeroki kontekst społeczny i kulturowy. // The paper argues that the postulate of transdisciplinarity, put forward by today’s TS scholars, is justified by the convergence of basic principles and assumptions which underlie Cognitive Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Translation Studies. The “cultural turn” in TS occurred at the same time as the “cognitive turn” in linguistics; both make it possible for CL and TS to cross the boundary and enter the area traditionally occupied by CAD. Overcoming the feeling of mutual reluctance or lack of interest in the research carried out within neighbouring disciplines would make it possible to broaden the plane shared by the scholars. As an illustration, a case study is discussed, providing a text whose linguistic shape in translation is influenced by a broad social and cultural context.

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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.

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STUDENT METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS IN L2 WRITING: COMPETENCE VS. PERFORMANCE

Author(s): Branka L. Milenković / Language(s): English Issue: 72/2020

Writing in a second language certainly embodies constraints that are not met in L1 writing due to numerous decisions L2 learners make while producing a text. Many researches have shown that L2 writing is largely based on decision-making with relation to form and search for appropriate words which make the writing process even more complex and time-consuming. Therefore, communicating with the readers through the use of metadiscourse poses an addi- tional obstacle in L2 writing. This paper is concerned with the use of metadiscourse markers in L2 student writing at the Department of English language, at the University of Kragujevac in Serbia. In essay writing research we frequently observe quantitative analysis of specific lan- guage items, however, in this research, we attempt to juxtapose the quantifiable metadiscourse items in student writing with their thinking processes and decision-making while composing. Thus, the research correlates three insights, one being the students’ liability to deep writing, which relies on their metacognitive awareness in writing, established through the modified questionnaire of the Inventory of Processes in College Composition (Lavelle and Zuercher 2001) and based on previous research (Milenkovic & Lojanica 2015). Students’ responses are then correlated with the analysis of 33 student essays on behalf of the use of metadiscourse mark- ers based on A model of metadiscourse in academic texts established by Hyland and Tse (2004). Finally, the students’ metacognitive awareness in writing is analyzed through an introspective questionnaire with the aim to yield qualitative responses in relation to their cognitive ability to reflect upon their writing. The results of the study confirm the common belief that using metadiscourse features is a constraint in L2 writing. Evidently there is a disproportion between the metadiscourse items students use in writing with relation to what they believe that they use and students have displayed more metacognitive awareness in relation to interactive resources as opposing to the interactional resources in academic writing. Implications of the results may establish a basis for a modified teaching practice in second language writing instruction with the aim to enhance students’ communicative competence in writing.

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МЕТАФОРЕ СА ЦИЉНИМ ДОМЕНОМ ИДЕЈА У СРПСКОМ ЈЕЗИКУ

Author(s): Tamara Janevska / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 73/2020

By taking a cognitive-linguistic approach to metaphor, in this paper we deal with the abstract concept IDEA and the way it is understood and experienced in contemporary Serbian language. The research is aimed at determining some of the possible source domains that allow us to conceptualize the aforementioned concept. The corpus consists of sentences, found in Serbian daily papers Politika and Blic, which illustrate the identified metaphors. The analysis shows that this target domain can be understood in terms of various different source domains. We have decided to confine our attention to seven conceptual metaphors that allow us to comprehend different aspects of the concept IDEA. Namely, the results of the research show that ideas can be structured by the following metaphors: IDEAS ARE LIVING BEINGS, IDEAS ARE TOYS, IDEAS ARE FOOD, IDEAS ARE FORCE, IDEAS ARE RESOURCES, IDEAS ARE VALUABLE COMMODITIES and IDEAS ARE WEAPONS. We shall begin by identifying the linguistic expressions so as to explain the underlying similarities between the domains present in the metaphors stated above.

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Traduire la peur: une étude contrastive

Author(s): Effrosyni Lamprou,Freiderikos Valetopoulos / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

In this paper, we examine the question of the verbalization of fear and its translation from Modern Greek into French. The target texts of our analysis are of two types: translations of experienced translators and translations of Cypriot learners. We study data from the analysis of our translation corpus and we question the conceptualisation of the emotion of fear.

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Diverse nature of literacy: The sociocultural perspective

Author(s): Izabela Dąbrowska / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

Considering the pace of the contemporary changes in the world, largely due to global trends and rapid development of media technology, it is commonly accepted that literacy cannot connote reading and writing any more as it did until several years ago. Much broader conceptualisations of what literary practices stand for are needed as people actually use literacy in diverse contexts and for different purposes. These are offered by sociocultural theories and approaches, which, despite being dissimilar with one another, do not undermine the traditional views on literacy and its practices but forward new complex and inclusive ways of understanding the phenomenon.

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Preface

Author(s): Rumyana Todorova,Irina Nikolova Ivanova,Desislava Cheshmedzhieva-Stoycheva / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

The third issue of volume 9 of Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT titled “Discourses of Change: Linguistics, Literature, Translation, and FLT” features six authors whose research analyses different aspects of linguistics, literature, cultural linguistics, translation studies, and FLT.

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Laughter interjections in Xhosa

Author(s): Alexander Andrason / Language(s): English Issue: 55/2021

The present paper analyzes the system of laughter-based interjections (L-INTJs) in Xhosa. By drawing on corpus and fieldwork evidence, the author concludes the following: the systems of L-INTJs consists of five types of constructions built around the segments ha, he, ho, hi, and yha, the satellites te and ti, as well as a number of replicative templates. The pattern hVhVhV with a short vowel is the most productive. Other replicative patterns, patterns involving (extra‑)long vowels, and the pattern tVhV are less productive. Overall, L-INTJs are the canonical members of the interjective category. The presence and range of uses of L-INTJs result from the interjectionalization of laughter-based onomatopoeias or the onomatopoeization of non-laughter-related interjections.

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Ядерные компоненты концептосферы ‘Medicine’ в современном английском языке

Author(s): Anastasia Alexandrovna Golubykh / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2021

The conceptual framework ‘medicine’ within the English lexicographic, scientific, educational, and mass-media discourse was considered in this paper. The research was motivated by current medical innovations accompanied by word-coining contributing to the renewal of nuclear concepts and their semantic content within the conceptual framework ‘medicine’. The nuclear concepts of the abovementioned conceptual framework focusing upon semantic, synonymic, and hyper-hyponymic features of medical nouns in English were studied and systematized. For this purpose, the methods of data collection, description, and classification of the empirical materials with elements of semantic and conceptual analysis were used. The key aspects of the modern conceptual framework ‘medicine’ were identified. It was discovered that the conceptual framework ‘medicine’ in the modern English lexicographic, scientific, educational, and mass-media types of discourse is basically actualized through the following nuclear concepts: ‘diseases’, ‘diagnostics and treatment methods’, and ‘drugs’. Interestingly, the nuclear concepts in all types of the English professional discourse enrich and develop the conceptual framework ‘medicine’ with medical terms related to the corresponding professional markers, synonyms, hyponyms, and hyperonyms. The results obtained provide both a valid background for better explanation, translation, and application of medical vocabulary in terms of modern lexicographic, scientific, educational, and mass-media communication strategies.

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