Konzervatív fordulat a zeneiparban és a digitális zeneipar új vállalkozói

Author(s): Emília Barna / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 23/2018

In this paper I argue that by looking at dominant discourses and narratives surrounding the digital music industry – channels of which include the music industry press, the themes and language of music business conferences, the popular media as well as informal interactions in the music industry – we can observe an ideological turn taking place in the last few years. The emergence of the digital music industry was accompanied by the following optimistic narratives and the corresponding consumer image: the “long tail” (Anderson 2006) and the end of the “tyranny of the hit”; technological triumphalism and democratisation; and the power of individual choice, i.e. a mature and conscious music consumer. In recent years, however, contrary narratives seem to have strengthened: “digital music pollution” and the “tyranny of choice”; record companies as the guarantees of quality; and infantile (and feminised) mass consumers who need the guidance of expert tastemakers. By looking at ideology together with the economy of music, it is possible to conclude that the frequently mentioned plenitude of music available via digital and online platforms simultaneously masks and facilitates industry concentration. Based on the results of qualitative interview research conducted in 2014 on the Amsterdam-based platform 22tracks, I explore the ways in which music curation platforms using playlists are able to challenge this concentration process by acting as a counterforce, while, at the same time, also forming part of it.

Речеви потрети на македонските политици Зоран Заев и Никола Груевски

Author(s): Katerina Pitova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 02/2020

This paper presents a deployed model for describing the linguistic personality through her speech portrait, following the principles of linguistic personology and applying the theoretical framework of the Russian linguist Yuri Karaulov on language material from the recent public appearances of Macedonian politicians Zoran Zaev and Nikola Gruevski.

Metapragmatic stereotypes and humour:

Author(s): Vasia Tsami / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

The present study concentrates on the potential of mass culture texts to impose specific metapragmatic stereotypes (Agha 2007) through humour on the wider audience. Metapragmatic stereotypes constitute speakers’ internalized models of how language should or should not be used; such models guide speakers’ own language use and enable them to make evaluations about their own language behaviour or that of others. In this context, I explore the dominant metapragmatic stereotypes for the interpretation and perception of humorous mass culture texts. To this end, I analyse a humorous Greek TV advertisement of a telecommunications company. Drawing upon Coupland’s (2007) conceptualization of style and the General Theory of Verbal Humour (Attardo 2001), I intend to show that humour reflects, sustains, and reproduces the dominant metapragmatic stereotypes of linguistic homogenisation and monolingualism (Blommaert & Rampton 2011). Then, I explore how the audience perceives the representation of stylistic choices in mass culture texts and, more specifically, in the analysed advertisement. My informants were 96 students of the last two grades of a Greek elementary school. The recipients’ responses show that their metapragmatic stereotypes are aligned with the dominant ones: they approach stylistic choices as strictly-defined systems used in specific social contexts and they expect the alignment of TV fictional characters with linguistic homogeneity. My findings suggest that humour stigmatises specific styles, and that the audience perceive the respective (and reinforced through humour) metapragmatic stereotypes as guidelines for “correct” stylistic use. Furthermore, it seems that through humour, such stereotypes usually go unnoticed in mass culture texts and may even become naturalised, as they are framed in a “trivial” and “non-serious” manner.

Humour in online comments regarding Montenegro’s accession to NATO

Author(s): Milena Dževerdanović-Pejović / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The empirical analysis in this paper deals with establishing humour examples based on script opposition patterns in online comments regarding Montenegro’s accession to NATO. It is established that the opposing scripts prevailing in the comments on political setting in Montenegro are heavily dependent on Montenegro’s turbulent history and dominant collective scripts such as pride and bravery. As online comments are an emerging genre, a reference to the influence of computer-mediated communication was also made, where pragmatic interpretation called for the help of critical discourse analysis. The results show that the script opposition parameters enable not only linguistic but also pragmatic revelations about Montenegrin people and their chief values or scripts. Script opposition examples within commenters’ standpoints are explained with reference to diachronic level and the modern values in Montenegro.

Academic event report

Author(s): Anna Krasowska / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

Book review

Author(s): María Angeles Ruiz-Moneva / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

“I get it, but it’s just not funny”:

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.

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.

School for a Hollow Life or The Pedagogical Poem 2.0

Author(s): Hrvoje Jurić / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2021

In addition to medical and public health issues, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic raised some serious philosophical, (bio)ethical, social, political and legal questions that are essentially not new, although they appear under a new light. Among them is also the issue of education, because the coronavirus pandemic has accentuated the digitalisation and alienation trends in the field of education, urging us to consider not only the problems of education during the pandemic, but also the systemic problems in education, science and knowledge in the era of technoscience and neoliberal economy and politics.

THE ILLOCUTIONARY ACT AND THE POWER OF THE MESSAGE

Author(s): Ștefan Vlăduțescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This study is circumscribed to the pragmatics of communication. The thesis under investigation is whether the message is a practice of power. It is found that between the communicators there is an inevitable and always denied war for control of communication. The fight to impose meanings is fought on all available channels. Predominantly, the conflagration of communication is one of words. The imposed illocutionary acts contribute to the power of the message. The conclusion reached is that the message is a matter of power: any message aims at the accumulation, preservation and / or imposition of power.

More-than-Human Game Design: Playing in the Internet of Things

Author(s): Haider Ali Akmal,Paul Coulton / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

The design of objects requiring human interaction of ten revolves around methods such as Human Centred Design (HCD). Whilst this is beneficial in many cases, contemporary developments of technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), which produce assemblages of interactions, lead to the view that human centred approaches can prove problematic leading to the proposal of adopting more-than-human perspectives. This study discusses the creation of a novel board game designed to explore a more-than-human design view for IoT products and services by addressing problematic issues in relation to user data privacy and security within the IoT which arguably arise from the application of traditional HCD approaches. By embracing Object-Oriented Philosophy, The Internet of Things Board Game creates an ontographic mapping of IoT assemblages and illuminates the tiny ontologies of unique interactions occurring within these digital and physical networked spaces. Here the gameplay acts as metaphorism illustrating independent and interdependent relationships between the various ‘things’ in the network. The study illustrate show critical game design can help develop potential new design approaches as well as enabling users to better understand the complex digital/physical assemblages they create when utilising IoT products and services in their everyday lives.

Difficulty as Aesthetic: An Investigation of the Expressiveness of Challenge in Digital Games

Author(s): Mateo Terrasa-Torres / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Difficulty is the personal experience of a subject facing resistance that prevents them from reaching a goal or desired state. It is an experiential part of everyone’s existence. In digital games, difficulty is strongly linked with designed challenges and obstacles that must be overcome by physical effort, manual skills, coordination, and dexterity. But this widespread perspective is a reductionist categorization of the expressive possibilities of difficulty. Because as experiential, difficulty is aesthetic expression and therefore it is much more than the mere skill challenge. The difficulty experience that emerges from an opposing force between object and subject, between game and player, can be interpretive, poetic, narrative, ethical or atmospheric among other expressive forms. Understanding difficulty from these broad parameters, we pose it as an aesthetic expression, which forges multiple experiences at the intersection between mechanics, fiction, and the player’s performance. This study analyses, drawing from philosophy, postphenomenology, and game studies, some aspects of two contemporary games, The Last of Us Part II and Death Stranding from the view of difficulty as aesthetic experience perspective, considering the significant and discursive tensions beyond purely ludic and mechanical elements.

Editorial: laughter and humour in communication

Author(s): Sergey Troitskiy,Aleksandr Lavrentev,Alyona Ivanova,Liisi Laineste / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The editorial article for the special issue of EJHR “Laughter and Humour in Communication” provides an overview of all the presented articles and highlightsthe general idea of the issue.

The future of print media in the Republic of Serbia in the digital age (media-sociological aspect)

Author(s): Marko M. Nedeljković / Language(s): English,Serbian Issue: 2/2021

The constant decline in circulation, audience and print revenue, the development of a new culture of information, with the concurrent strengthening of online media, have led to the point where the transformation of print media has become inevitable. Therefore, in theoretical and professional discussions, the key question is how to respond to all changes and ensure the survival of print media outlets. In order to investigate this issue, a study based on the empirical method and the procedure of non-experimental research was conducted, which included five daily newspaper newsrooms in Serbia. The results show that new journalistic competencies are still present on a small scale in most newsrooms, that they are characterized by traditional work organization, as well as that they do not sufficiently involve new media professionals. These are also three key elements that hinder the transformation of print media and their adaptation to the digital age.

Computational humour and Christie Davies’ basis for joke comparison

Author(s): Julia Taylor Rayz / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

While historically computational humour paid very little attention to sociology and mostly took into account subparts of linguistics and some psychology, Christie Davies wrote a number of papers that should affect the study of computational humour directly. This paper will look at one paper to illustrate this point, namely Christie’s chapter in the Primer of Humor Research. With the advancements in computational processing and big data analysis/analytics, it is becoming possible to look at a large collection of humorous texts that are available on the web. In particular, older texts, including joke materials, that are being scanned from previously published printed versions. Most of the approaches within computational humour concentrated on comparison of present/existing jokes, without taking into account classes of jokes that are absent in a given setting. While the absence of a class is unlikely to affect classification—something that researchers in computational humour seem to be interested in—it does come into light when features of various classes are compared and conclusions are being made. This paper will describe existing approaches and how they could be enhanced, thanks to Davies’ contributions and the advancements in data processing.

Humorous TV ads and the 3WD:

Author(s): Jennifer Hofmann,Willibald Ruch / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

Individuals differ in their appreciation of jokes and cartoons with respect to the structure of the humorous material (e.g., whether the jokes and cartoons are can be categorised in terms of incongruity-resolution or in terms of nonsense), as well as content (e.g., whether they contain sexual themes or not). While the 3WD (3 jokes dimensions) test allows for the measurement of such differences in a paper-pencil test of verbal jokes and visual cartoons, humour transported by other media, such as TV advertisements, has not been included so far. The current study aimed at assessing the appreciation of jokes and cartoons alongside the appreciation of humorous TV ads that were pre-categorized according to the structure and content factors of the 3WD. Moreover, relationships to personality and willingness to buy were also assessed. A sample of 134 adult participants completed the study. A joint factor analysis of the 3WD scores and humour appreciation in TV ads shows a five-factor structure, with three factors denominating the appreciation of incongruity-resolution humour, nonsense humour and sexual humour, a fourth factor denominating the liking of incongruity resolution humour with sexual themes (in both ads and jokes) and an advertisement specific factor. Thus, the 3WD dimensions can also be verified in humorous ads. Psychoticism and sensation seeking correlated negatively with the perceived funniness of incongruity resolution humour, replicating findings for the 3WD and additionally showing that the relationships are similar with respect to humour appreciation in TV advertisements. Moreover, the appreciation of humour predicted the willingness of the individual to buy the product or use the service. To conclude, the structure of humour appreciation is generalizable across media. Yet, there is also some advertisement specific variance and future studies may address the question of whether the 3WD covers all aspects of humour appreciation across media types. Moreover, knowing the target group of a product (and personality features of this group) may help to tailor the humour of the advertisement to match the “humour taste” of potential customers.

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

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.

Looping out loud:

Author(s): Vittorio Marone / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2016

Launched in 2013, Vine is a popular microblogging service that allows users to record, edit, and share six-second videos that loop ad libitum, until another video is selected. At this time, the communicative, expressive, and semiotic affordances of Vine and similar services have still to be fully explored by users and scholars alike. Through a multimodal analysis approach drawing on New London Group’s (1996) work, this paper investigates how people construct humour on Vine by artfully arranging different modes of expression. The analysis focused on user-enacted humour, as opposed to captured comical scenes or bare samples taken from TV shows or movies. The study hypothesises the social construction of a novel humorous language that draws on extant forms of humour and a variety of modes and techniques derived from audio-visual media and computer-mediated communication, as users inventively exploit the framework provided by the Vine platform. Findings show that users create instant characters to amplify the impact of their solo video recordings, use Vine as a “humorous confessional”, explore the potential of hand-held media by relying on “one hand and face” expressivity (the other hand holding the device for the video “selfie”), and use technology, internet slang, internet acronyms, emoticons/emojis, and hashtags to convey humour and complement the messages of the videos they post on Vine. The goal of this study is an exploratory analysis of humour and its discursive functions in an emergent social medium by considering its affordances, as users find new and creative ways to harness its expressive potential.

Pussy Riot’s humour and the social media:

Author(s): Berenice Pahl / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2016

This paper seeks to demonstrate that both the media impact and political success of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot rest on their use of new media, on the one hand, and on an aesthetic principle of humour, on the other, or, more specifically, on a kind of humour that is both self-reflexive and subversive. Pussy Riot operate through a style of guerrilla communication that re-signifies signs and symbols for their own purpose in a self-ironical, comical manner. I will indicate the contradictions and ambiguities of various interpretive frameworks – which not only create humour but are particularly motivating factors in the (personal) decision to become politically active. The speed with which one can communicate within social networks made it possible that infectious laughter about the absurdity of the events in Moscow was able to spread so rapidly. Reassurance and the community’s solidarity were closely connected to the fun and joy of the individual internet user.

Is it OK to laugh about it yet?

Author(s): Liat Steir-Livny / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2016

The Holocaust was and remains a central trauma in Israel’s collective memory. For many years, the perception was that a humorous approach to the Holocaust might threaten the sanctity of its memory. Official agents of the Holocaust memory continue to believe in this approach, but since the 1990s, a new unofficial path of memory began taking shape in tandem with it. It is an alternative and subversive path that seeks to remember – but differently. In the last decade, YouTube has become a major cultural field including new humorous representations and images of the Holocaust. The article analyses a virtual phenomenon – “Hitler Rants” (or “Hitler Reacts”) parodies in Hebrew. These are internet memes in which surfers take a scene from the German film Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel 2004), showing Hitler ranting at his staff as the end of WWII approaches, and they add parodic subtitles in which Hitler rants about completely different things – current affairs and pesky little details. The incompatibilities between the visuals, the German screaming, and the subtitles turn Hitler into a ludicrous individual. The article objects to the notion that views the parodies as “cheapening” the Holocaust, and rather claims that they underscore humour’s role as a defence mechanism. Israelis, who live in a society in which the Holocaust memory is intensive and creates constant anxiety, seek to lessen reactions of tension and anxiety, even for a few minutes, and they do so through humour.