“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 have the bowed legs of a failed footballer”: An interpretative phenomenological study of Bulgarian men’s understandings of gender, and masculinity in the UK

Author(s): Peter Pangarov,Billy Lee / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This article used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to examine how individuals living in London and Edinburgh, and originating from Bulgaria, a former meeting point of East and West, understood masculinity and gender. The experience examined was that of being a Bulgarian man in the United Kingdom. The analysis illustrated three themes. They were that Bulgarian men interviewed spoke of doing what they thought was right while adhering to social norms, to conceiving of their bodies as partially an expression of their masculinity, and to the importance that they attached to collective structures. These results indicated some similarities with earlier studies done in the United Kingdom, especially Scotland.

“I like cooking and yoga.” When stereotypical expectancies influence the inferences about men’s suitability for a secretary job

Author(s): Alicia Le Gall,Pascal Morchain / Language(s): English Issue: 38/2016

In 2011, Reinhard and his colleagues showed that a woman’s personal “strengths” and“weaknesses”, linked to gender stereotypes, affect students’ estimations of their suitability for ajob. In the present study, in a very much lighter and minimal design, we hypothesize that a similarresult would be noticed in the case of a male target presented as stereotypically masculine vs.feminine, and postulating to a stereotypically feminine job. In line with Heilman’s lack‑of‑fit model(1983), our results replicate those of Reinhard et al. (2011). Results are discussed in terms ofstereotypic influence of gender in the context of hiring, and show that, as women, men may be, insome circumstances, victims of discrimination in recruitment.

“I will Enter the Suitcase and I will not Make a Sound until we Pass the Border…”

Author(s): Özlem Hocaoğlu,Apak Kerem Altıntop,Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The article elaborates the crossborder experiences and strategies of family divide and unaccompanied childhoods in the context of crossborder migrations and smuggling across Bulgaria-Turkey border between the years of 1990-2001. The authors dig into the longrun impact of smuggling and imposed illegality on the migrant children and the means, manners, strategies and dangers hidden within crossborder cyclical mobility and administrative construction of illegality under the political and economic transitions and turbulence across sending and receiving countries. Left to the forgetfulness of the history unaccompanied child migration experiences between Bulgaria and Turkey contain significant lessons in regard to the role of restrictive and security based visa and migration policies. Our study aims at further investigation and understanding of these experiences via fieldwork containing semistructured interviews with 13 smuggled children and their parents. The article begins with introduction to the political and economic conditions that led to irregularization of child migrations across Bulgaria-Turkey border between 1990-2001. It follows presentation of data collected during the Istanbul University BAP Research Center supported fieldwork and follows elaboration on the memories, experiences and prevailing perceptions of these crossborder experiences by the trafficked children and their parents.The article elaborates the crossborder experiences and strategies of family divide and unaccompanied childhoods in the context of crossborder migrations and smuggling across Bulgaria-Turkey border between the years of 1990-2001. The authors dig into the longrun impact of smuggling and imposed illegality on the migrant children and the means, manners, strategies and dangers hidden within crossborder cyclical mobility and administrative construction of illegality under the political and economic transitions and turbulence across sending and receiving countries. Left to the forgetfulness of the history unaccompanied child migration experiences between Bulgaria and Turkey contain significant lessons in regard to the role of restrictive and security based visa and migration policies. Our study aims at further investigation and under-standing of these experiences via fieldwork containing semi-structured interviews with 13 smuggled children and their parents. The article begins with introduction to the political and economic conditions that led to irregularization of child migrations across Bulgaria-Turkey border between 1990-2001. It follows presentation of data collected during the Istanbul University BAP Research Center supported fieldwork and follows elaboration on the memories, experiences and prevailing perceptions of these crossborder experiences by the trafficked children and their parents.

“I wish I Had More Time” Mentor Teacher Narratives of Reflective Practice: a Case for Online Mentoring

Author(s): Kinga Kaplar-Kodacsy,Helga Dorner / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Processes of mentoring for teaching in primary and secondary schools has been transforming simultaneously with the structural changes in teacher education in Hungary (Act CCIV of 2011 on National Higher Education). Educational policy provisions are being introduced to make the mentor teacher certification mandatory for mentors working with pre-service teachers in schools during their practicum. Europe 2020: A Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth and its communication document Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes (EC, 2012) as well as the national acts and provisions of education in Europe, including Hungary (Kotschy, Sallai, & Szőke-Milinte, 2015), encourage creating new ways for understanding the importance of teachers’ reflective attitude, and these exclusively focus on mentors and mentees in teacher training. Supplements and explanatory documents related to the legislation of education largely deal with the expectations from and duties of a reflective mentor, however, these focal documents still barely engage in conceptual know-how or in-depth components of mentors’ reflective practice.

“I would be against that, if my husband says: ‘You don’t work.’”– Negotiating Work and Motherhood in Post-State Socialism

Author(s): Herwig Reiter / Language(s): English Issue: Spec. 3/2008

For a country like Lithuania the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of the second great transformation of gender relations in the 20th century. While the first one at the beginning of the 1940s brought an end to the then predominating catholic-conservative model, the second one during the 1990s brought an end to the Soviet version of gender discrimination and its ideology of the dual role of women as worker-mothers. This paper confronts some of the institutional change in post-communist gender order and regime with an exemplary look into the actual negotiation of requirements and possibilities in the context of a concrete biographical situation. On the basis of a single case of a young Lithuanian woman after secondary education the paper illustrates the tensions and contradictions that young women growing up in postcommunist societies have to face in their establishment of a biographical perspective between employment, partnership, and motherhood.

“IF THE DOG DIES, I QUIT”: BLAIR WITCH AND THE PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR GAMES

Author(s): Katarzyna Marak / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

This paper highlights the manner in which contemporary psychological horror games rely on repetitive storylinesand plot twists, resulting in predictability of new titles, and the way in which this negatively affects immersionand players’ emotional investment. Through examining the game Blair Witch (2019), developed by the Polish studio Bloober Team, and its inclusion of an animal companion, the article demonstrates how shifting theplayers’ affective identification from the avatar to the companion character can cause players to overlook theshortcomings of the game. At the same time, by juxtaposing Blair Witch with other similar digital game texts,the paper showcases how linearity and reliance on predictable tropes in a game can be masked by the effectiveinclusion of an interesting companion with appropriate mechanics.

“If Things Really Go On as They Are at the Moment, Then I Will Work Illegally. End of Story.” Pandemic Realities in Marginalized Entrepreneurships

Author(s): Markus Tümpel,Pia Cardone / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Micro-enterprises and self-employed individuals have been hit particularly hard by the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but few studies have tackled the issue. This paper is based on four in-depth case studies of self-employed people from different sectors who have been greatly affected by measures taken to control the pandemic. By capturing shifts in the perception of institutional and economic pressures, as well as precarity after the outbreak of COVID-19, we gained profound insight into crisis management among entrepreneurs working in niche or marginalized fields of business. We found parallels in their biographies and attitudes, but their perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic differ. We observed paradoxes and hybrid logic, as well as different ways of coping with the crisis. Having a “plan B” helped in some cases, while all of them benefitted from the solidarity of networks and communities.

“If we’re going out,” dear Vicenta, “we’re going out with some guts!”: Storytelling, Indigeneity, and Felt Experience in Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians

Author(s): Alana ZANARDO MAZUR / Language(s): English Issue: Special/2021

In the memoir Bad Indians, Deborah Miranda retraces intimateand intergenerational accounts of colonial violence on Indigenous homelands, livelihoods, and relational ontologies in California. Miranda underscores how these instances of violence remain silenced in U.S. national historiography. By engaging with Miranda’s multigenre storied-mosaic, in this essay I argue that Bad Indians uncovers narratives of refusal by California Indigenous women that ultimately attest to the ways in which Indigenous storytelling stands as a powerful conduit for anticolonial contestation and resurgence. I draw on Daniel Heath Justice’s theorizations of colonial epistemic violence and Dian Million’s “felt theory” to demonstrate the ways in which Miranda “names” acts of gender-based violence and recenters Indigenous women’s relational ontologies and felt experience (Million). In reframing gossip as trauma survivors’ testimony as truth-telling, as literature, and as theory, Miranda boldly denudes settler colonial violence as a biopolitical mechanism systematically and institutionally organizing settler nation-states. By situating present-day gender-based violence against Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG2S) within a settler historical continuum, Bad Indians interconnects, across temporal-spatial frames, Indigenous women’s truth-telling and Indigenous cosmologies. It grapples with individual and collective experiences of dispossession and reconnection, grief and trauma, adaptation and resistance.

“IRREGULARLY BUT FULL OF HOPE”. High culture and minority nation-building in the Hungarian theatre of Oradea during the 1980s

Author(s): Zsuzsa Plainer / Language(s): English Issue: 2008+09/2009

“It’s in their blood”. The securitization of Roma Westward Migration in Europe

Author(s): Ionuț-Marian Anghel / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

If recent debates have centered around the irregularization and border securitization against non-EU migrants in the EU (Jansen et al., 2015), especially in the context of the “refugee crisis”, less attention is paid to the irregularization of migration of EU citizens, such as Europe’s Roma minorities (van Baar, 2014a; van Baar, 2015). The paper aims to critically interrogate the processes of securitization, irregularization, criminalization and nomadization of recent Roma westward migration in Europe. By discussing the cases of France and Italy’s “securitization packages”, I will show that the “excessive mobility” of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Roma is not the result of their alleged nomadic lifestyle but rather the outcome of policies of expulsion and “voluntary return schemes” put in place by Western governments. These policies reinforce the status of “third-country nationals” for the CEE Roma (although they are citizens of EU member states) and deepens the socio-political exclusion at a time when the European Commission (EC) and member states have put in place social inclusion policies that should have enhanced their European citizenship.

“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.

“Jonah’s gourd” and its early Byzantine interpretations

Author(s): Dmitry Kurdybaylo,Inga Kurdybaylo / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Many modern scholars consider the Old Testament Book of Jonah being written in a boldly parodic manner. The narrative engages many details that sound humorous for a modern reader. However, from the standpoint of late Antique and early Medieval patristic exegesis, it is often unclear whether Byzantine interpreters perceived such passages laughable or at least inappropriate for a prophetic writing. This study presents a few examples of early Byzantine commentaries to the episode with Jonah and a gourd (Jonah 4:6–11). None of the commentaries expresses any explicit amusement caused by the discussed text. However, the style, method, or context of each commentary appears to be passing the traditional bounds of Bible interpretation. The earlier interpreters adhere to the most expected moral reading of Jonah 4, but they use epithets, metaphors, or omissions, which produce the effect of paradox comparable to the biblical wording itself. The later commentaries tend to involve unexpected and even provocative senses. In such interpretations, God can be thought of as being able to play with a human or even to fool and deceive. What seems us humorous in the Bible, Byzantine commentators take primarily as a paradox, which they did not explain or remove but elaborate further paradoxically. The later an interpreter is, the bolder his paradoxical approach appears. The results of the study provide some clues to understanding how the interpretation of humorous, parodic, or ironical passages were developing in the history of Byzantine intellectual culture.

“Još si i lijepa i igraš nogomet?”: rodna (ne)ravnopravnost i nogomet/futsa

Author(s): Sunčica Bartoluci,Mateja Baršić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 32/2020

Sport as a social phenomenon is closely related to society per se. Football is a traditionally considered as men's sport in which women, not only in Croatia, are discriminated on several levels. Gender inequality in Croatian society is also reflected in the position of women in football, and the dominant patterns of patriarchal culture have a great influence on spreading of gender stereotypes and the sexualization of female football players. One of the aims of this research was to gain insight from a women’s perspective into a wide range of socially very sensitive topics, addressing different forms of inequality, discrimination and sexism to which women are exposed in football. We were also interested in how the highest-level female football / futsal players see their own position in Croatian society, the problems they face and how their experiences are related to various socialization agents, family, peers, colleagues, friends, education system, media and political and economic structures in Croatian sport and society. We have conducted nine semi-structured interviews with female players and three with informants. The results of the research indicate some progress and a gradual exit of Croatian women's football from the world of anonymity, as well as some progress from traditional to modern understandings of women's football and futsal in Croatian society.

“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.

“Lethal” Ladies or “Desperate” Housewives: Agnew's General Strain Theory and Violent Crimes Committed by Women

Author(s): Angelina Stanojoska,Julijana Jurtoska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

Violence has always been perceived through the prism of human’s bestiality. It has been explained by the survival instincts, the dark, dominant side of humans, but rarely had it been discussed as a result of strain and frustration. And if we add women at the side of the equation with violent behavior, then we get even a darker, less researched area of criminality. Women as the dominated gender, in most of the criminological researches have been perceived as the victims, not as the offenders. The research subsumes analysis of court decisions (N= 41) in a period of five years, through which we elaborate the most important patterns of violent criminal behaviour among women in the Republic of Macedonia. The court decisions are from the area of the Basic Courts in Bitola (N=11) and Prilep (N=30). Using the information given by the women who committed the crimes, during their process, the authors will try to find out which are the origins of the strain in their lives.

“LİSÂN-I BEŞER LİSÂN-I KUR’ÂN’A TERCÜMÂN OLAMAZ” ADLI MAKALE VE BİR DEĞERLENDİRME

Author(s): Muhammet Ali Tekin / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 1/2017

The article was published in Sebilurreşad Magazine in the early years of the Republic. The issue of translating the Qur'an, which is the Divine Word of God, into Turkish has been discussed in this article and it has been argued whether the divine word cannot be translated into human language or not. The author mentioned different purposes in the translation of the Qur'an and the also invited people to be careful in this regard. The author has pointed out to a process that is carried out by a great revolution project like 'Turkification of Islam and National Islam'. Moreover, the article was transferred from Ottoman letters to Latin letters, as it is, and the evaluation has been added.In the evaluation, it was given briefly and helpful information about the author and the journal published. Then it was mentioned judges that can be obtained from the article. these judgments have been substantiated by the author's expressions. The aim here is; is to find out how the Qur'an's translation issue was addressed about a century ago.

“Living with Illegal Feelings”—Analysis of the Internet Discourse on Negative Emotions towards Children and Motherhood

Author(s): Emilia Garncarek / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The aim of the article is to show the socio-cultural conditions influencing the ways of expressing emotions and feelings by mothers. It presents the results of the analysis of the Internet discourse on negative attitudes towards motherhood and/or a child/children. The text is built on the author’s research on the issue of “regretting motherhood” and is based on a qualitative analysis of the content—blog entries/posts: nieperfekcyjnie.pl [notperfect.pl], matkawygodna.pl [slackermom.pl], mamwatpliwosc.pl [ihaveadoubt.pl], and in the group—Internet forum—Żałuję rodzicielstwa [I regret parenthood]. The theoretical basis were the concepts included in the sociology of symbolic interactionism.

“Look at a Human Being, and Learn to See Him”: On Albert Piette’s “Existantial” Anthropology

Albert Piette, "Theoretical Anthropology, or How to Observe a Human Being"

Author(s): Antoni Głowacki / Language(s): English Issue: 17/2019

“Make love, not war… get married and do both”:

Negative aspects of marriage in anti-proverbs and wellerisms

Author(s): Anna T. Litovkina / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

In the present study I am going to explore negative aspects of marriage and the ways it is viewed and conceptualized in the body of Anglo-American anti-proverbs (i.e., deliberate proverb innovations (also known as alterations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks, mutations, or fractured proverbs) and wellerisms (a form of folklore normally made up of three parts: 1) a statement, 2) a speaker who makes this remark, and 3) a phrase that places the utterance into an unexpected, contrived situation. The meaning of the proverb, proverbial phrase or other statement is usually distorted by being placed into striking juxtaposition with the third part of the wellerisms). Another aim of the study is also to depict those who adhere to the institution of marriage, that is, wives and husbands, and analyse their nature, qualities, attributes and behaviours as revealed through Anglo-American anti-proverbs and wellerisms. My discussion is organized in two parts. The anti-proverbs and wellerisms discussed in the present study were taken primarily from American and British written sources. The texts of anti-proverbs were drawn from hundreds of books and articles on puns, one-liners, toasts, wisecracks, quotations, aphorisms, maxims, quips, epigrams, and graffiti collected in two dictionaries of anti-proverbs compiled by Anna T. Litovkina and Wolfgang Mieder (see Mieder & Litovkina 1999; Litovkina & Mieder 2006). The texts of wellerims are primarily quoted from the dictionary of wellerisms (see Mieder & Kingsbury 1994).