Wewnątrzregionalne zróżnicowanie rynku pracy w Polsce

Author(s): Tomasz Misiak,Tomasz Tokarski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2012

The authors present a statistical analysis of the feature convergence and divergence processes describing the situation on the labor markets in voivodships. The analysis was conducted based on CSO data on the poviat registered unemployment rates and real gross wages. The paper discusses the theoretical aspects of the processes of σ- and β-convergence and real divergence and presents an analysis of intra-regional differences in registered unemployment rates and real gross wages as well as σ-process of convergence and divergence, and then estimates the parameters of β-convergence and divergence equations of the analyzed features.

Kierunki dojazdów do pracy

Author(s): Przemysław Śleszyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 11/2012

The author recognizes basic patterns of directions and intensity of commuting to employment in Poland. In this regard, the matrix of gminas’ inter-flow data on employees for 2006, provided by the Center for Urban Statistics of the Statistical Office in Poznan. To determine the characteristics and regularity of these differences, categorization of cities and municipalities were used, distinguished on the basis of administrative and functional settlement, including the largest cities in suburban areas. Studies have established the numerical values of displacements between the different categories of municipalities. Furthermore, the analysis of commuting distance, identified i.a. regions of the country with a high number of trips to distant work places. Proposals are formulated for regional policy and further research on commuting.

Działalność Rady Statystyki w I półroczu 2012 r.

Author(s): Antoni Żurawicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 09/2012

Pomoc mieszkaniowa w Niemczech

Author(s): Mirosław Gorczyca / Language(s): Polish Issue: 09/2012

The paper discusses the budgetary support to the people of Germany, designed to housing maintenance. The author describes rules for granting households. The formation of this assistance for 20 years after the unification of the FRG and the GDR is the main theme of the article. Also data are presented from the period of existence of two German states, as well as a comparison with the scale of housing grants in Poland.

Highly sensitive persons, caregiving strategies and humour:

Author(s): Alberto Dionigi,Alon Goldberg / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

The medical clown is a healthcare practitioner whose character is strictly associated with the performer’s own personality. In this study, the relationships between the level of sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), caregiving strategies and humour in Italian and Israeli clowns were examined. Participants were 159 medical clowns (97 Italian and 62 Israeli), ranging from 22 to 74 years of age, who completed a demographic questionnaire, the self-reported Highly Sensitive Person Scale, the Caregiving System Scale and the BenCor. Results showed that a higher SPS was related to higher hyperactivation and deactivation, and that hyperactivation was related to lower benevolent humour and greater corrective humour. Hyperactivation negatively predicts benevolent humour but positively predicts corrective humour, beyond the effect of SPS. Deactivation had no relationship to either benevolent or corrective humour. The results are also discussed in reference to the two culture groups and to previous studies conducted with general populations.

Beyond rhythm and lyrics:

Author(s): Ganiu Abisoye Bamgbose / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

Extant studies on Nigerian hip-hop have approached the genre as an act and as an art from psycholinguistic, social, sociolinguistic and pragmatic dimensions. However, the possibility of evoking humour through the careful deployment of language by Nigerian hip-hop artistes is a phenomenon which has largely escaped the attention of scholars within the ambit of applied linguistics. This research, therefore, investigates how Nigerian hip-hop artistes, beyond the rhythm and lyrics of their songs, poke fun at their listeners. The study employs Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory to analyse the humorous utterances in four purposively selected hip hop songs: Jo o, by Jahbless, Eyan Mayweather by Olamide, Penalty by Small Doctor and Lyrically by Lil Kesh. The choice of artistes was based on consideration for the two popular subgenres of Nigerian hip-hop, which are rap and dance hall, while the choice of tracks was based on consideration for their humorous potential. The humorous utterances are either name-induced or object/phenomenon induced. The study finds that simile, metaphor, hyperbole, punning, teasing, putdown and litotes, complemented with linguistic devices such as polysemy and repetition, are the humour techniques that are deployed to amuse listeners. Humour strategies adopted by Nigerian hip-hop artistes are comparing, contrasting and extending corresponding concepts, distorting collective knowledge of people, social events and situations and manipulating shared cultural representations. Nigerian hip-hop songs are spiced with humorous utterances which can only be deciphered by people who share the socio-cultural world of the artistes. The referring expressions used by the artistes can help enlarge the vocabulary of Nigerian English.

Conceptual blending in English and Serbian question-and-answer jokes:

Author(s): Predrag Niketić / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

This paper analyzes English and Serbian question-and-answer jokes using the cognitive linguistic theoretical framework of conceptual blending, which relies on mental spaces as cognitive packets of information used to interpret the world around us and within us. The analysis is used to illustrate how culture influences humour: specifically, how the Anglo-American culture, the dominant and best-known foreign culture in Serbia, is used as a basis of jokes in English as well as in Serbian. It is shown that the jokes in English can work on a non-English-speaking Serbian recipient culturally, but only if not impeded by linguistic obstacles, such as untranslatable puns. The selected Serbian jokes illustrate intercultural merging, as they use elements from both Anglophone and Serbian pop cultures to create humour that is difficult to transfer back to Anglophone audiences, but now due to linguistic as well as cultural transfer issues. These issues revolve around humour translation, which is made difficult by linguistic aspects, cultural aspects, or both. Conceptual blending and the mental spaces involved provide a useful tool for adapting cultural/linguistic barriers to obtain more or less workable joke translations.

Commentary piece

Author(s): Massih Zekavat / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

Because most theories of humour emphasize its intersubjective and/or semantic nature, they fail to fully appreciate and explain self-directed humour. Through a critical exploration of the implications of different theories of humour and satire, this paper argues that the spectrum of reflexive humour and satire can be categorized according to the figure of the satirist and the target of satire, both of whom can feature individual or collective social selves. Depending on the satirist and the scope of satire, the functions of reflexive humour may range from securing psychological homeostasis to dealing with more impersonal, social and philosophical concerns.

Appropriate and relevant humour in the university classroom:

Author(s): Farhana Bakar / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

When used for the purpose of teaching and learning, humour must be relevant and appropriate to the context. However, what constitutes appropriate and relevant humour is unclear. Past studies have focussed mostly on classifying appropriate and relevant types of humour. Additionally, students’ and teachers’ perceptions of what these constitutes are likely to differ, meaning that the effectiveness of the humour used by teachers may vary depending on the context. With this in mind, it is important to consider teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the appropriateness and relevance of humour. For this paper, five award-winning teachers and 10 students were interviewed regarding their perceptions and experiences of the use of humour in university teaching. Four themes were identified that relate to teachers’ and students’ perceptions regarding the appropriateness of humour: Appropriate humour is relevant humour; Appropriate humour happens at a suitable time and in a suitable manner; Appropriate humour enhances teachers’ credibility; and Inappropriate humour is disrespectful humour. Three themes were identified related to the relevance of humour: Relevant humour is related to the learning content; Relevant humour is related to daily experiences in life; and Irrelevant humour is humour that students do not understand. On the basis of this study, this paper offers pedagogical suggestions for teachers who wish to use humour effectively by taking into consideration what humour is considered appropriate/inappropriate and relevant/irrelevant.

Social media-based visual humour use in tourism marketing:

Author(s): Jing Ge / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

Tourism firms using visual social media marketing are struggling with its implementation, specifically in formulating engagement-based visual message strategies. Yet, creating such appealing posts can lead to positive brand and financial outcomes. Humour has been identified as a potent tool for social media communication, given its capability to develop social interactions. Yet, how humour works on social media is not well understood – specifically its visual form. Treating humour as a symbolic resource, this study adopted a compound content analysis-semiotic analysis to identify visual content and its symbolic meaning embedded in destination marketing organization (DMO)’s social media posts. 200 Sina Weibo posts containing humour images initiated by 5 Chinese provincial DMOs were collected. The results show 6 types of humour content and 6 types of symbolic meaning – none of which are product-related. This study advances the tourism literature and humour theory, and offers tourism firms a holistic view of how to fully leverage social media-based visual humour to achieve consumer reach and engagement.

“America First, the Netherlands Second” on YouTube:

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.

Assessing humour use in accommodation establishments:

Author(s): Marit Piirman,Stephen Pratt,Melanie Smith,Heli Tooman / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

This paper contributes to a relatively under-researched area of humour studies in hospitality by analysing the use of different forms of humour in accommodation establishments. The main purpose of the study was to gain a better understanding of how humour is used in marketing communication and service processes, and the ways in which it contributes to the guest experience. A range of research methods were used including desktop research on how humour is currently used in accommodation settings, a focus group consisting of international participants, and two online surveys with both accommodation providers and accommodation guests. The latter was undertaken in Estonia. The results indicate that multiple forms of humour are used in accommodation establishments to provide information and enhance the guest experience, however, it was also clear that many humorous events happen spontaneously rather than being planned for or ‘staged’. This study also proposes a decision support model to guide accommodation establishments in how humour could be applied more effectively in their marketing communication and service processes.

Developing the humour repertoire concept to guide future tourism-humour research

Author(s): Anja Pabel,Philip L. Pearce / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

The central interest in this study is to develop and position the humour repertoire concept fortourism and leisure research. The term humour repertoire encompasses the totality of aperson’s abilities and skills to both appreciate and produce humour. Such skills include theindividual’s ability to tell/retell humorous (travel) stories, jokes from their life and travels, andthe ability to see travel and leisure situations as amusing. A framework outlining the role ofthe humour repertoire is presented and an online empirical study is reported to addressselected components of the conceptual scheme. The results show a weak association betweenhumour appreciation and production, indicating that researchers examining humour intourism need to be careful in building generic implications from selected work. Attention isthen given to the multiple social and contextual factors beyond the individual level that need tobe considered when assessing humour in diverse tourism contexts. Fresh research directionsare indicated by considering the richness of the repertoire framework and links to cognitiveschema research.

Book review

Author(s): Béatrice Priego-Valverde / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2019

The function of face gestures and head movements in spontaneous humorous communication

Author(s): Marta Buján / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This paper assesses the results of a multimodal analysis of humorous instances found in a collection of 14 interviews from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The interviews have been imported and annotated in ELAN for head movements and face gestures. Only the interviewees’ remarks are studied in order to ensure the analysis of spontaneous speech, avoiding mostly pre-scripted host’s comments and questions. The results demonstrate that there are no gestures consistently and recurrently paired with humour. Therefore, none of the multimodal cues found in the sample can be considered markers of humour. Furthermore, the functions of gestures identified are consistent with the uses reported in previous multimodal studies of humorous and non-humorous communication found in the literature.

Gender stereotypes depicted in online sexist jokes

Author(s): Anastasia Nelladia Cendra,Teresia Dian Triutami,Barli Bram / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This research aimed to explore gender stereotypes depicted in online sexist jokes collectedfrom laughfactory.com. Linguistically speaking, jokes as a subtype of humour have become acommon phenomenon in our everyday lives. Unfortunately, not all jokes can bring positivevibes for everyone. Yet, these forms of jokes are still commonly found, especially on theInternet. Some online sources, including websites of jokes, present a lot of collections of jokesfor fun, but a number of the jokes are categorized as sexist jokes, which might also beregarded as offensive in a certain context. Data were collected from the laughfactory.comwebsite and then were analysed by using the three-dimensional model of Critical DiscourseAnalysis (CDA) and the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). Results showed that themajority of the jokes observed were targeted at women (90%) and a small number wastargeted at men (10%). Women were stereotyped as sexual objects, emotionally expressivebeings, homemakers, being talkative, being stupid or brainless, and belonging to a lower classthan men. Men, on the other hand, were stereotyped as worse than women.

Performing gender through stand-up comedy in Spanish

Author(s): Leonor Ruiz-Gurillo / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The aim of this paper is to examine Eva Hache’s humorous gender-related monologues,broadcast in the show El Club de la Comedia [The Comedy Club] in Spain between 2012 and2013. The corpus comprises 24 stand-up monologues, which have been analysed bothquantitatively and qualitatively. The present paper offers a case study in three different ways.First, an analysis of different humorous sequences makes it possible to distinguish arepresentation of both feminine and masculine identities, as well as a confrontation betweenthe two genders. In fact, Eva Hache’s style supports the feminine identity and facilitates theteasing and mockery of men. Second, a polyphonic study of men as speakers (locutors) andutterers (Ducrot 1996) will serve to differentiate certain features of their identity from adiscursive perspective. Finally, a detailed examination of humorous sequences shows howthese performative sequences can prove useful to maintain hierarchy, to reinforce an in-group,i.e. a women’s group, to solidify men’s group boundaries, and even to subvert gendernormativity (Bing 2004). As it will be demonstrated in our analysis, humorous markers andindicators play an important role in the construction of jab lines and the final punch line ofthese sequences. Furthermore, the results show that there are few strategies aimed atchallenging the status quo in this corpus, although they illustrate an ongoing movementtowards a feminist humour that has been almost non-existent in Spain so far.

Hybrid humour as cultural translation:

Author(s): Merouan Bendi / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

Humour is a phenomenon that is pervasive in the human heritage in all its different ethnic andcultural diversity; however, humorous effects might exceed the mere pleasure or laughter toserve as a strategy of survival. Hybrid humour has an important societal role in breakingpsychological barriers between people as well as in denouncing dominant discourses,criticising realities, and promoting resistance. This paper investigates hybrid humour ascultural translation, particularly Beur verbal humour in France. The first section of this paperexplores the notion of cultural translation. The second part is devoted to investigating thehybridisation of cultures from a postcolonial perspective, and subsequently interpreting thenotion of hybrid humour as a translational act. Finally, I analyse a set of hybrid jokes made bythe Franco-Algerian humourist Fellag.

Incongruous liaisons:

Author(s): Izuu Nwankwọ / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

Nigerian humourists have always told risible jokes within myriad pre-colonial satirical acts.Following on their heels in recent times, stand-up comedy has emerged as one of the mostprevalent art forms in the country, providing entertainment through laughter-eliciting jokes.Accompanying this development also, is an increasing attitude of offence-taking which hasseen post-mortem criticisms and castigation of comedians. Not much scholarly attention hasbeen paid to this menacing backlash against ostensible “inappropriate jokes” and the fact thatstand-up humour is primarily derived from causing offence. What happens is that jokeperformances take place within liminal moments, which allows for audience’s suspension ofoffence and the performer’s unwritten consent to stay within socially accepted bounds of goodhumour. Through performance analysis, this paper sets out to study how four randomlyselected Nigerian comics—I Go Dye, Basket Mouth, Klint da Drunk and AY—deploy selfcensorshipin averting offence within their joke routines. The essay finds that despite thespecificities of stand-up arts, which place peculiar demands on artists’ joking capabilitiesespecially in its dependence on courting audiences’ participation and familiarity, thesecomedians have devised specific means through which they circumvent the stringency ofeliciting mirth through insult. Hence, their jokes and those of others who have learned theirtrade well, often elicits hilarity rather than offence.

An Austrian in Hollywood:

Author(s): Delia Chiaro,Giuseppe De Bonis / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This paper examines the work of Billy Wilder whose rich cinematic production frequentlyinvolves the collision of different languages as well as the clash of dissimilar cultures. As anAustrian living in the USA, the director had the privilege of gaining insight into his adoptedculture from the point of view of an outsider – a bilingual “other” who made 25 films inalmost 40 years of working in Hollywood. His films recurrently depict foreign characters atwhich Wilder pokes fun whether they are English, French, German, Italian, Russian or eventhe Americans of his adopted country. More precisely, the paper offers an overview of themulti-modal portrayals of diverse “foreigners,” with examples taken from a small butsignificant sample of Wilder’s films. The subtitling of dialogue in the secondary language forthe target English-speaking audience and the specific translation solutions are not within thescope of this discussion, instead we focus on the comic collision of two languages and moreimportantly, on the way Wilder implements humour to highlight the absurdity of culturaldifference. In other words, our main goal is to explore two or more languages in contrastwhen they become a humorous trope.