The European Journal of Humour Research

Book review

Massih Zekavat — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Piotr Kałowski — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Alberto Dionigi — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Marianna Keisalo — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Stanca Măda — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Olivera Tesnohlidkova — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Guillem Castañar Rubio — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Book review

Władysław Chłopicki — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Book review

Jokes in Italian as a foreign language: comprehension, funniness, and sharing

Alejandra Platas-García, Verónica Reyes-Meza, J.-Martín Castro-Manzano — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This paper analyses whether the comprehension of a joke in Italian as a foreign language is influenced by personal or task elements, whether comprehension influences the perception of funniness, and whether perceived funniness affects intention to share the jokes. A quantitative cross-sectional study was performed. Participants were all native Spanish speakers from Mexico who also read Italian as a foreign language. There were 61 participants, aged 19-64 years (M_age = 26.3; SD = 9.4), comprising 42 females and 19 males. Comprehension was measured using a multiple-choice test. Funniness was measured by a perception scale and sharing was measured by determining intention to share. The objectives were fourfold: to identify whether factors related to the test-taker (gender, occupation, and age) influenced comprehension; to investigate whether factors related to the test task (level of language, reading support, and prior knowledge) influenced comprehension; to explore if comprehension influenced the perception of funniness; and to determine whether funniness influenced the intention to share. To statistically evaluate these question, four generalized linear models were constructed (one corresponding to each objective). The results indicated that: (i) the test-taker’s occupation affects comprehension (p = 0.0499); (ii) the interaction of all of the test-task factors influences comprehension (p = 0.03087); (iii) comprehension affects funniness (p <0.001); and (iv) perceived funniness influences sharing (p <0.001). Finally, a discussion of these results is presented.

An exploration of phonological jokes in Maryam Apaokagi's selected comedy skits

Ronke Eunice Okhuosi — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The majority of studies on Nigerian comedy are discourse- and pragmatics-related, despite the impact of phonology on humour creation as seminal studies have shown. These seminal studies describe phonological jokes to mean ambiguous utterances whose humour lies in their multiple phonological interpretations. However, comedy skits from Nigeria show that there are more dimensions to phonological jokes. Therefore, this study investigated the phonological jokes in comedy skits from Maryam Apaokagi, using Chomsky and Halle’s Distinctive Features and McGraw and Warren’s Benign Violation Theory. Twenty skits were purposively selected from the artist’s YouTube channel. Four strategies were identified in the data: minimal pairs, phonological restructuring, phonological ambiguity, and phonological extension. Four instances each of minimal pairs and phonological restructuring were identified; the former replaced phonemes in words, thus, changing their meanings, while the latter re-arranged phoneme sets and syllables to achieve new structures. There were two instances of phonological ambiguity where strings of sounds had multiple meanings; homophony was engaged to achieve rhythm and humour. Phonological extension had twenty-eight instances; it occurred when one character produced a syllable, and another extended it by providing a longer but partially similar word. Four types of phonological extensions were identified, and these were extension into regular words, popular names, concepts and other languages. The jokes portrayed socio-cultural and economic situations in Nigeria like poverty, promiscuity, high living costs, and burglary. Apaokagi used comedy to teach patience and tolerance. The comprehension of these jokes thrived on shared background knowledge between the artist and the audience.

Caricaturing the enemy

Konstantinos Travlos, Doruk Akyüz, Ceren Mert Travlos — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

A century ago, the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922 (Turkish War of Liberation/Asia Minor Campaign) was reaching its culmination point. The war was also fought in the pages of the Press. In this study, we look at the characteristics of the caricatures marshalled in the war effort by three publications. The Greek newspaper Skrip, and the Turkish satirical magazines Karagöz and Güleryüz. We find that most expectations based on semiotics and the concept of interstate rivalry are borne out. Depictions of the ‘Other’ are generally negative. That said we also find that Skrip dedicated the majority of its caricatures to targeting the internal ‘Other’, the Venizelist faction during the National Schism, in contrast to the more focused targeting of the Greek ‘Other’ by the Turkish publications. This finding indicates the dominance of domestic conflicts over the external conflict even during the inflation point of the Greek-Turkish Interstate Rivalry of 1866-1925.

Making fun of power

Orest Semotiuk, Viktoriya Shevchenko — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The paper deals with Ukrainian President’s Zelensky image in political cartoons and memes. They are forms of political humour and can be examined in an interdisciplinary manner. The first part describes theoretical aspects, functions, and elements of political humour and political satire, main features and types of cartoons and memes. In the second part, the corpus of 198 political cartoons and 1121 memes from March 2019 to December 2020 is analysed with computer-aided content analysis and multimodal discourse analysis. The analysis units are social context, formed by the domestic and foreign political events in Ukraine in the research period, joke techniques and communication levels in the cartoons and memes. These units are examined chronologically and thematically. The research is based on the hypothesis about the interdependence of social context and subversive/supportive humour in the construction of Zelensky’s image.

The cute and the fluffy

Liisi Laineste, Anastasiya Fiadotava, Eva Šipöczová, Guillem Castañar Rubio — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

When serious official political statements are not enough to get people’s votes, politicians often turn to attention-grabbing and emotion-triggering self-presentation. They give the public access to their “normal, everyday” lives through personalisation and use other tools of “new” politics to create a favourable image of themselves. They can also show the unexpected, backstage aspects of their lives, such as their interactions with their pets. The paper analyses four case studies from different countries (Belarus, Estonia, Slovakia and Spain) in which politicians’ references to their pets became a prominent topic in internet communication and provoked numerous humorous reactions in the form of memes. By looking at various degrees of politicians’ personalisation strategies, we show that “new” and “old” politics should be regarded as the poles of a continuum rather than a binary opposition. We also discuss the content, form and stance of the humorous internet memes posted in reaction to the appearance of politicians’ pets in the news. Our research indicates that such memes function to provoke a discussion and, as a result, form a polyvocal commentary on events; the politicians, however, must take risks accompanying unconventional, revealing political communication and hope that “there's no such thing as bad publicity”.

Stereotyping and vilifying the other behind the mask of humour – when a chicken smells of fear

Rashid Yahiaoui — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Audiovisual texts are social semiotic constructions that arbitrate reality according to a set of discursive patterns and established beliefs. Therefore, it is natural for translators to re-create and manipulate audiovisual texts to overcome challenges pertaining to religion, culture, and politics, which are the three intrinsic determinants of positioning in any translation project. Leaning on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a methodological approach, this paper aims to investigate how stereotypes and disparagement humour about Arabs and Muslims are dealt with in translating a segment from Family Guy into Arabic. The focus of the paper is on examining ideology-related shifts, and how and to what degree the students manipulated or mitigated religio-cultural barriers, as well as on assessing the role of visuals in the decision-making process. The students’ translations denote the inextricable intertwining of their authoritative voices and the act of translation, that is, some students consciously attempted to expose the writers’ intentions, while others subverted the text as a protective and resistive measure against the anti-Islamic, racist, sexual humour of the show.

Examining the rhetorical strategies employed in the humorous discourse of Chinese talk shows

Tianli Zhou, Nor Shahila Mansor, Lay Hoon Ang, Sharon Sharmini, Xuan Tang — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Researchers have pointed out that rhetorical strategies have a significant impact on producing humour in Chinese talk shows, while few of them have investigated the factors that affect the rhetorical choice in humorous discourse in that context. This study aims to identify the rhetorical strategies used in humorous discourse and investigate the factors that impact on the rhetorical strategies chosen by the hosts or comedians to produce humour. Thus, the current study selected 24 monologue samples from a popular programme called Rock & Roast and conducted a discourse analysis on them. Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical theory is adopted to uncover the factors that influence rhetorical choice in the humorous discourse of Chinese talk shows. The findings reveal that the realisation of rhetorical strategies in the humorous discourse of talk shows is rich, including rhetorical devices, foreign language (English), and internet buzzwords, among other things. The main factors influencing the rhetorical strategies chosen in the humorous discourse in Chinese talk shows are the ‘ratio’ of ‘agent and agency,' which are talk show comedians and the Chinese language. This study contributes to helping the audience gain a better understanding of rhetorical humour in Chinese talk shows and provides a new perspective for humorous discourse analysis.

Could humour make advertisements worse?

Vytautas Dikčius, Karina Adomavičiūtė, Ieva Venskuvienė — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of sexist advertisements on the perception of advertisements’ violation, ridiculousness and consumers’ intention to purchase a product by considering different cases of interaction between the type of advertisement (sexism without humour and sexism with humour), the direction of sexism and the respondents’ gender. The study uses a two-by-two factorial design experiment to investigate data obtained by means of a questionnaire (183 responses). Data analysis revealed that the involvement of humour in sexist advertising has a negative impact on the perception of the advertisement and consumers’ intention to purchase. Furthermore, the direction of sexism (against women vs men) appears significant when it is paired with humour. The results of the study fill a research gap regarding the impact of the interaction between the type of advertising, the direction of sexism, and the respondents’ gender on the perception of specific advertisements and intention to purchase the advertised product.

How students perceive the teacher’s use of humour and how it enhances learning in the classroom

Farhana Bakar, Vijay Kumar — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Recently, scholarship on humour in teaching and learning has focused on the use of instructional humour. Past studies have reported that instructional humour is best used as a pedagogical tool for teaching and learning purposes. Nevertheless, how students perceive instructional humour and how humour enhances learning in the classroom is still not clear. This exploratory study aims to gain further understanding of students’ interpretation of teachers’ use of humour in relation to teaching and learning in a higher education context. In particular, it aims to explore the perspectives of students as to how the use of humour in the classroom enhances their learning. Data were collected from one-to-one in-depth interviews with 10 undergraduate students who were learning with award-winning teachers at a research-intensive university in New Zealand. Students explained a variety of ways in which humour enabled their process of learning. These included helping them to concentrate, remember and understand learning content by connecting humour to content. Additionally, a sense of rapport and positive attitude towards learning and the teacher were indicated as contributing to the learning environment. Our findings indicate that students considered instructional humour a tool that enhanced their learning cognitively and emotionally.

Conceptions and practices of Iberian mathematics teachers about humour

Floriano Viseu, Luís Menezes, Susana Amante, Pablo Flores — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This study focuses on the conceptions and practices of Iberian (Portuguese and Spanish) mathematics teachers regarding instructional humour. Specifically, the study aims to answer the following questions: (1) How do Iberian mathematics teachers view humour and how do they appreciate a sense of humour? (2) What educational value do Iberian mathematics teachers ascribe to humour in the teaching and learning process of this subject? (3) How do Iberian mathematics teachers use humour in mathematics teaching? and (4) What differences, regarding humour and its use in the educational context, are found among Iberian mathematics teachers, as determined by their professional experience? A mixed methodology was adopted for this study, with a greater quantitative emphasis, combining quantitative analysis with descriptive and inferential statistics. Iberian mathematics teachers (N=1087) from all educational levels participated in the study. The data was collected through an online questionnaire, organised according to three dimensions of analysis: (1) Humour and sense of humour; (2) Educational value of humour in the teaching and learning of mathematics; and (3) Use of humour in the teaching of mathematics.

The results reveal that Iberian teachers who teach mathematics recognise the meaning of humour, feel they have a sense of humour and appreciate it in others, find reasons to use it in mathematics teaching and have seen it being used or use it in their classes to create a good learning environment and make students think. The results show differences over the teachers’ careers, especially in their use of humour and the purpose they make of it. However, the magnitude of the effect suggests the need to consider other variables in addition to the teachers’ professional experience, such as the level of training, the type of training and the cultural context in which the school is located.

Scrapbook for the 10th anniversary of the European Journal of Humour Research

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Scrapbook for the 10^th anniversary of the European Journal of Humour Research