Perekond poola naljades
Family in Polish jokes

Summary/Abstract: The main aim of the research was to describe the image of family life presented in post-socialist jokelore. Contemporary material (from the late 1990s till the present day) consisting of jokes published in books, booklets, newspapers and on the Internet was collected and analysed for this study, altogether 600 jokes. As there is no special cycle of jokes connected with family life, texts of different series were taken into account in which the words “woman”, “man”, “child” or their synonyms were present. The results showed that there exist a number of stable targets, e.g. aggressive mothers-in-law or adulterous wives. New targets are reluctant to arise: there are no jokes about the paternal leave which was recently introduced and widely discussed in the media, and there are also no jokes about women drinking alcohol, although this problem exists in the society that gives more and more permission to women drinking in public places. We can conclude on the basis of this research that family jokes do not deal with current and topical issues; instead, they have remained mostly traditional with certain recurring cycles being at the core of the Polish cultural heritage.

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