Author(s): Andreea Nicoleta Soare / Language(s): Romanian
Issue: 2/2022
Humour is a habitual phenomenon in the life of Romanians, either if it is at conversational level, or present in the communication mediated by the Internet. Seen by some researchers as a defence mechanism against difficult moments (Meyer, 1997, Plester, 2009, Stanca, Gomoescu, 2020), humour can be observed in conversation, both in the street, but also in schools, hospitals, governmental institutions, or even on the means of transport. The present study aims at analysing the strategies of humour in the conversations on the means of transport in Bucharest (RATB/STSB), collected by people who travelled on the streets of the Capital, by bus, trolleybus, or tram and who observed the conversations or funny stories and later on, transmitted, on a Facebook page dedicated to this purpose.
The jokes can be separated into categories, according to the most common themes: confrontation between generations, conflict between travellers and public transport controllers and passengers. I will use in the analysis of the humoristic conversations, concepts of the opposite scenarios, target and situation, knowledge resources – developed by Victor Raskin and Salvatorre Attardo – for a better understanding of the humoristic production. Among the strategies of humour observed in these texts we can mention hyper understanding, exaggerated comparisons, allusion and absurd, on a macro-textual level, and word play, on a micro-textual level.
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