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This examination of the corpus of anecdotes about the Mormon missionary J. Gordon Kimball (1953-1938), is used to point out, first, that there seem to be no substantive grounds for imputing aggressive motives to their tellers or their audiences. In fact, the central character of this corpus of anecdotes was a much beloved figure in his lifetime, and the character is still regarded with affection by many who only know him through the anecdotes The second point is that these jokes might offer compensations, but compensations unrelated to the release of and relief from libidinal forces. They rather can be understood in a way so that they may offer compensations of a different kind—the consolations of a philosophy.
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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).
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The man from the traditional Romanian communities imagined the Evil through the phenomenological prism of Christian morality. Good and Evil, in various forms and aspects, are in constant confrontation. Man, infinitesimal component of the deity, takes an obligatory, (un)consciously, (un)assumed part in this conflict. Most of the time, such confrontations are centered around some noteworthy popular heroes. In these cultural products (fairytales, legends, ballads, etc.), the heroes fight evil, whatever/whoever it may be, in order to restore the moral balance, the harmony disturbed by the manifestation of evil, and, ultimately, the conceptual Good. The Romanian fantastic fairy tale is, in this aspect, perhaps the most fertile epic field of representation, valorization and symbolization of this eternal struggle between Good and Evil, with an obvious formative function. I don`t think there is any fairy tale that doesn’t have, as a synthetically-narrative core, such a conflict. Most often, this subject became the theme of the action and the narrative itself. This study deals with the evil beings which are present in the the fantastic fairy tale epic. For an easy comprehension of the epistemic dimensions given to evil by traditional mentality, both generator and consumer of fantastic fairytale, I have chosen to divide these categories of evil beings according to their area of manifestation. Every category emphasizes both the human appetite for evil, as well as the cathartic discharge given by one`s struggle with such evil tendencies. We have, therefore, anthropophagous, forestry, pandemic, demonic (in the Christian sense) fantastic beings, sometimes with important physical descriptions of them.
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Different phenomena related to humour and laughter, such as humour styles, gelotophobia, gelotophilia and katagelasticism, were investigated in a series of psychological studies in Russia. As far as the samples were rather heterogeneous in regard with age, gender, region of Russia, and included besides big cities also small towns and villages, the data allows to discuss not only psychological, but also a certain cultural perspective. It is concluded that self-defeating humour style plays an important role in the structure of Russian cultural attitude towards humour and laughter. The most adaptive affiliative humour style is highly connected with self-defeating and aggressive styles. Similar pattern was shown for humour and laughter perception: a fear of being laughed at paradoxically provokes active involvement into exchange of jokes. A comparison between the two Russian capitals and regional sample revealed more similarities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg with western data than with the regional Russian sample which is supposed to reflect more of traditional national character.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The purpose of this paper is to propose a psychosociological approach to the configuration of human bonds, on the one hand, and a methodological reflection on the analysis, on the other. The bonds are analyzed in their less explicit side, in order to reveal those emotional and representational elements which tend to express themselves an unclear and obscure way. The empirical research material has been a set of jokes told in different focus groups, with participants located in similar social positions. We analysed the associative chains developed in group dynamics, presenting methodological schemes for each particular analysis. The “latent accounts” arising from the analysis of each discussion group exhibit significant differences which are expressive of link models specific to each social context. Additionally, the phenomenon of the joke is confirmed as a valuable tool for social research.
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Researchers from the GRIALE group (Irony and Humour Research Group) have developed a theoretical method that can be applied to humorous ironic utterances in different textual genres, depending on the degree of the violation of conversational principles in conversation. In addition to this, the General Theory of Verbal Humor (Attardo and Raskin, 1991) will be taken into account in the analysis. Therefore, I will study irony and humour in conversational utterances in real examples of Peninsular Spanish obtained from the COVJA, (Corpus de conversaciones coloquiales [Corpus of Colloquial Conversations]) and CREA, (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual [Reference Corpus of Present-Day Spanish]). The focus of this paper is then the application of the aforementioned theories to humorous ironic statements which arise in conversation. I will also examine the positive or negative effects caused by them, which will additionally verify if irony and humour coexist in the same conversational exchange, and if this has a communicative goal.
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The primary focus of this paper is to apply Discourse Type theory to stand-up comedy. To achieve this, the study postulates two contexts in stand-up joking stories: context of the joke and context in the joke. The context of the joke, which is inflexible, embodies the collective beliefs of stand-up comedians and their audience, while the context in the joke, which is dynamic, is manifested by joking stories and it is made up of the joke utterance, participants in the joke and activity/situation in the joke. In any routine, the context of the joke interacts with the context in the joke and vice versa. For analytical purpose, the study derives data from the routines of male and female Nigerian stand-up comedians. The analysis reveals that stand-up comedians perform discourse types, which are specific communicative acts in the context of the joke, such as greeting/salutation, reporting and informing, which bifurcates into self-praising and self denigrating.
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