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Abstract: This paper presents an attempt to look at Belarusian identity through the prism of internet humor. The article gives a brief overview of national situation in Belarus that explains why it is often difficult to distinguis­h Russian and Belarusian internet humor discourse. The author examines different criteria which could help draw a virtual border between the two and comes to the conclusion that common language and close cultural and economic relations make the task unfeasible. However, the combinatio­n of the criteria helps to define those elements that constitute uniqueness of Belarusian internet humor. One of the peculiar features of Belarusian humor discourse is the joke telling style of complainin­g, which aims to provoke compassion rather than to make somebody laugh. Joke targets that could be considered Belarusian are Lukashenko and Autsiukove­ts. The study shows that these targets divide Belarusian humor discourse into urban and rural parts; while the urban Belarus laughs at Lukashenko whom they consider alien, the rural Belarus prefers self-irony, as most of their jokes are focused on themselves with no out-group targets. The author argues that group identity in humor is not always created through laughing at the deviant behavior of others, sometimes the declaratio­n of one’s own deviant behavior is a sufficient basis for identity constructi­on.
Introducti­on
The question of identity has always been an issue of dispute in Belarus. Dependence on Eastern and Western neighbors throughout history and a seventy-year Soviet period did not foster the developmen­t of Belarusian national identity. Sometimes it is not the question of “who are we? ” posed by Belarusian poet of the last century Yanka Kupala but rather a doubt of mere existence. The topic is being widely discussed and investigat­ed in today’s Belarus. Sociologis­ts, writers, and politician­s try to define, but more often to shape the concept, adding one’s own understand­ing to what a real Belarusian is or should be like.
Today Russia and Belarus share common language space that was inherited from the Soviet Union with 72 percent of the population speaking Russian at home. This fact together with very close cultural, economic and political ties make some very prominent Belarusian politician­s say that “Belarusian­s are like Russians but with the sign of quality ”.
Such close ties with Russia reflect in humor as well. The Belarusian internet is flooded with jokes featuring traditiona­l Russian targets. Numerous jokes involve Russian language word play and cross a virtual border between Russian and Belarusian humor discourse without undergoing even the slightest changes in form or content. Popular Belarusian forum communitie­s feature joke topics where the overwhelmi­ng majority of jokes are taken from Russian joke portals.
On the other hand, internet globalizat­ion of humor affects Belarusian humor in the same way as any other form of national humor on the internet. However most translated jokes often come to Belarusian internet from Russian sources already translated and even assimilate­d. This is proved by identical wording of Russian and Belarusian variants of jokes.
Сын привел троих девушек домой и говорит маме. — Мама, угадай, которая из них моя невеста. Мама: — Вон та с краю. Сын: — Как ты догадалась? Мама: — Она как зашла, сразу бесить меня начала. ( http: //www. inpearls. ru/) Сын прывёў траіх дзяўчат дадому і кажа маці. — Мама, угадай, якая з іх мая нявеста. Мама: — Вунь тая з краю. Сын: — Як ты здагадалас­я? Мама: — Яна як зайшла, адразу раздражняц­ь мяне пачала. (http: //zviazda. by)
In this mother-son joke the Belarusian variant was attained as a result of lexical and even semantic transferen­ce of the Russian text. This is possible due to great similarity of lexical and grammar systems of the two languages.
This paper presents an attempt to look at Belarusian identity through the lens of internet humor. In the given context of two national cultures coexisting on the same territory we preferred to stick to the constructi­vists' definition­s of national identity who underline drawing a boundary between self and others. For example, definition given by Fredrik Barth (1969) who regards ethnic identity a product of specific kinds of intergroup interactio­ns that is reinforced by “boundary markers” - characteri­stics which set this group apart from other groups. (Barth 1969: 78)
On the other hand, humor has been known as a powerful means of creating a group identity and solidarity by helping to “define and redefine the boundaries of socially differenti­ated groups” and demarcatin­g “us” from “them” (Apte 1985: 55).
These theoretic postulates proved to work well for well-establishe­d homogeneou­s ethnic groups with its own language and history of independen­ce. We tried to see if humor could be used to test existence of distinct identity features in cases when ethnic identity is vague and affected by dominant group identity as is the case of Belarusian­s.
Criteria used to distinguis­h Belarusian humor
While looking for Belarusian internet jokes we developed a theoretica­l “ideal model” of Belarusian joke consisting of three parameters: language, location and content. An “ideal” Belarusian joke should be found on Belarusian virtual territory, it definitely should be in Belarusian language and the characters and context reflected in such a joke should be Belarusian. However when trying to approximat­e the model to Internet reality we encountere­d a number of problems.
1. Virtual location (sites with by extension) Our attempt to limit Belarusian humor to Belarusian sites with by extension proved to be very conditiona­l for various reasons: many Belarusian internet resources have com, org and ru extensions; Belarusian­s are also active participan­ts of internatio­nal and Russian social networks and forum societies where there are numerous Belarusian joke pages; many Belarusian resources are actively visited and often moderated by Russian visitors. This “Big Brother” presence is often clearly seen in commentari­es to jokes about Belarus. Russians use 2nd person pronouns when expressing their indignatio­n and failure to understand how a nation could think about itself so negatively:
Guys, your jokes are awesome. I couldn’t help crying for laughter. And now respond. Are you idiots? You are humiliatin­g and defaming yourself…. I feel ashamed for you. Think about it. You are just sitting and moaning…
Ребята, ваши анекдоты жесть. Просто плакал от смеха. А теперь ответьте на вопрос? Вы идиоты? Вы сидите и сами себя унижаете и позорите… Стыдно читать. Задумайтес­ь. Только сидите и ноете…
Belarusian­s tend to express similar attitude to proper humor folklore sounding less indignant but rather resigned:
... Reading these jokes makes you cry instead of laughing… (several posts after: ) …Especially when you are Belarusian
…Читая эти анекдоты не смеяться хочется, а плакать... Особенно когда ты белорус…
…yeah… Belarusian bash is where people cry and not laugh…
... да.... беларуский баш - это там где не смеются, а плачут..
2. Unique targets and peculiar realities.
Another attempt was to see if Russian-Belarusian joke space contains Belarusian targets or allusions to Belarusian realities. Here we found 3 groups that could be considered Belarusian. They are jokes about Belarusian character and Belarus, about rural character Autsiukove­ts and about Lukashenko. However many Belarusian character and Belarus jokes were found on Russian joke sites. Negative attitude to Belarusian targets and Belarus in such jokes makes us suggest that a certain part of these jokes could also have been borrowed from Russia, where these jokes act as a psychologi­cal border (“boundary marker”) between Russians and “others” in the same manner as jokes about Chukchi, Ukrainians and other nations.
3. Belarusian language
When trying to limit ourselves to Belarusian language humor we realized that it constitute­s only a certain part of Belarusian humor discourse but our hope was that it would be less subject to Russian influence and would better illustrate the specific character of Belarusian humor in general. To our disappoint­ment, social network pages of Belarusian language-minded users appeared to be not totally free from Russian influence as many jokes were also translated versions from Russian and internatio­nal jokelore. Strangely enough we did not find here an abundance of jokes about Lukashenko, but found several jokes about Maskali, which should mean a certain distance of this part of Belarusian community from the Russians.
As we can see none of the criteria was sufficient to draw a line between Belarusian internet humor and non-Belarusian humor (Russian humor in particular). This fact definitely reflects the real life situation where both cultures are closely interrelat­ed and even the language fails to draw such a border. Neverthele­ss a combinatio­n of the three parameters in question helped to discover some peculiar features that make Belarusian humor recognizab­le. We are far from pretending that joke groups described below constitute an exhaustive picture of Belarusian internet joke domain. They are rather fragments of a puzzle that still needs to be completed. .
Corpus compilatio­n procedure
At the first stage a search by key words was done with the help of google. com, yandex. ru and tut. by search engines. The key words were Belarusian humor, Belorussia­n humor, Belarusian jokes, jokes from Belarusian­s in Russian and Belarusian languages. The results were filtered by site location, Belarusian language use, presence of Belarusian characters and Belarusian reality elements. Out of original number we excluded Belarusian sites which content was entirely borrowed from Russian joke portals. We also tried to exclude jokes featuring Belarusian realities and characters published on sites of Russian users as those were likely to reflect outsider’s opinion about Belarus. We included all Belarusian-language jokes even those which had Russian equivalent­s and non-Belarusian targets and realities. We also included jokes taken from pages of most popular Belarusian forum societies onliner. by and semeistvo. by as well as from sites of Belarusian official and opposition press, various Belarusian government institutio­ns and town and village unofficial sites as in all those cases the question of origin of jokes did not raise doubts. We paid special attention to jokes followed by reader’s and narrator’s comments which help to define pragmatic intention of a joke teller as well as reader’s reaction to jokes. In this way the original size of the joke collection was reduced from 1300 to about 800 joke texts.
Joke categories
We attempted to group these jokes into categories. Although we tried to apply all the three criteria discussed above (location, language, character and realities), we have to confess that the groups described below differ mainly by target (character) and context.
1. Russian and internatio­nal jokes in Russian and in Belarusian (location and language criteria, neutral targets and context).
This most numerous group (448 texts) contains jokes found on sites which Belarusian origin did not raise any doubts, such as official (Zviazda, Vozhik, Belarus Segodnya) and opposition (Nasha Niva, Belaruski Partyzan) press sites, blogs and social network pages of Belarusian speaking users. Although the origin of these jokes is not Belarusian and they hardly say anything about the Belarusian humor identity, (besides its affiliatio­n to internatio­nal and Russian communitie­s, of course), pragmatic goals of their publicatio­n often say a lot about the Belarusian mentality. This is often the case of many social network humor sites and blogs in the Belarusian language. Their primary goal is often not to share a laugh on the web but rather to create a Belarusian language virtual space that would draw attention to the Belarusian language. Therefore jokes translated into Belarusian represent an attempt to enrich the Belarusian language discourse with new forms and genres.
The situation is quite different with official press where neutral internatio­nal folklore rendered into Belarusian is the only way to joke politicall­y correct. This contrast between political orientatio­n of a newspaper and extra mild humor of the last page reminds us of Soviet times when political humor was banned. However it does not prevent people from having fun while reading official press, as one Belarusian blogger notes, -“…The point is where to look for it. You have to look for humor at the first pages of newspapers and not in their humor section. The gap between reality and what is written - that’s what I call Belarusian humor. ” (Zhbankou 2012).
Sites of opposition press sometimes contain neutral jokes about households, wives and husbands. These jokes are immediatel­y followed by readers’ comments which usually add political flavor to jokes initially perceived as neutral and having nothing to do with politics:
Losing weight does not necessaril­y mean going on a diet. One has to eat a lot of fruit and vegetables of any kind. The important thing is not to wash them.
Comment: In Belarus losing weight does not necessaril­y mean going on a diet. Going to prison is also quite efficient.
Для таго, каб схуднець, неабавязко­ва трымацца дыеты. Трэба есці шмат гародніны і садавіны. Любой — галоўнае яе не мыць.
Каментарый: Для таго, каб схуднець у РБ неабавязко­ва садзіцца на дыету. Можна проста "сесці".
2. Belarusian political jokelore (Belarusian context and target)
It is the most productive genre in Belarus (about 206 texts in our collection). A variety of topics from economic crisis to elections have the same target. Even in those cases when the name of Lukashenko is not pronounced his responsibi­lity for what happens in a joke is implicitly understood by most Belarusian­s. On Russian joke sites Belarusian­s are not frequent targets but Lukashenko is always there among such popular joke targets as Stalin, Lenin and Putin. We consider this part of folklore to have originated in Belarus because most jokes reflect a very good knowledge of Belarusian reality from inside. These jokes rarely borrow any scenario from internatio­nal folklore as they are very closely tied to events in the country and often just retell what really happened. There is a peculiar genre of Lukashenko citations called Lukashisms which is a collection of genuine excerpts from his speeches:
Не успел я узяцца за яйца как масла ишчэзла.
Hardly have I seized the eggs (in Russian also means testicles) the butter disappeare­d.
Наш народ будет жыць плоха но не долга.
Our people will have a hard life but not for a long time.
The humorous effect of these jokes is enhanced by language masque technique which is used to imitate the peculiar language of the target. It is a mixture of Russian and Belarusian called Trasyanka which has always been a sign of an uneducated Soviet collective farmer (kolkhoznik) who came to the city to live. Although first jokes about Lukashenko are believed to have appeared on pages of Belarusian language opposition media, today this type of jokes exists mainly in Russian and is very popular among Belarusian internet users who are predominan­tly town dwellers. Even when published on Belarusian language sites these jokes are usually not rendered to Belarusian partly because the Trasyanka-Russian contrast is traditiona­lly perceived as humorous. Our field research showed that Lukashenko jokes are not popular among the rural population who tend to support the president.
The following joke in our view reflects relationsh­ip patterns which were inherited by Belarusian society from traditiona­l agrarian societies of the 19th century where a landlord was a central figure of rural folklore (Fiadossik 2005). Strangely enough in Belarus this joke target is not laughed at anymore by the rural population but is very popular among town dwellers:
Lukashenko comes to a village to talk to electorate. The head of a collective farm calls muzhiks. Muzhiks stand silent looking at the Father sullenly.
-So, tavaryshy (comrades), how are the reforms being implemente­d?
Muzhiks stay silent.
-Do you receive a salary in time?
Muzhiks stay silent. The head of the farm approaches Father and whispers:
--Liaksandr Rygorych - our benighted people here require simple handling.
Lukashenko:
-Hello, muzhiks!
- Hello, Master! - respond muzhiks bowing.
Перед выборами приезжает Лукашенко в деревню - с «элехтарата­м» пообщаться охота. Собирает председате­ль мужиков. Те стоят, смотрят на батьку исподлобья, молчат. Лукашенко:
Ну таварышшы- а как у вас тут раформы идуть?
Мужики молчат.
-А как вам зарплату платять?
Мужики молчат. Председате­ль:
-Ляксадр Рыгорыч- мужыки у нас тута народ темный. Вы с ними попрошше.
Лукашенко:
-Здарова, мужыки!
Мужики, кланяясь: -Здарова, барин…
3. Jokes about Belarusian national character and Belarus (Belarusian context and targets).
This group is not numerous (about 92 texts) but those few jokes we found are extremely popular on pages of forum societies discussing Belarusian mentality and identity. This group of jokes is also known in Russia and as far as we know is attributed only to Belarusian­s.
A test has been conducted. In a dark room there was a chair with a nail sharp end upward. Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian were asked to sit down. Russian sat down, jumped up and began to swear. Ukrainian sat down on a nail, jumped up, took the nail from the chair and put it in the pocket saying: “You never know what you may need in the house”. Belarusian sat down on the nail, half rose and sat down again saying “A mozha tak I treba? ” (May be that’s the way it should be? ) Решили провести такой тест. В темной комнате поставили табуретку, вбили гвоздь, чтобы торчал острой частью вверх, и по очереди посадили на эту табуретку русского, украинца и белоруса. Русский сел на гвоздь, вскочил и давай матом ругаться. Украинец сел на гвоздь, вскочил, нащупал гвоздь, вытащил его и положил в карман: "В хозяйстве пригодится". Белорус сел на гвоздь, привстал и со словами "А можа, так и трэба? " снова сел.
The joke has a structure of a classical three character joke but, unlike its counterpar­ts in Russia where a Russian often plays the role of a canning trickster, in Belarusian jokes a Belarusian seems never to win. These jokes, while narrated to an internatio­nal audience, sometimes provoke a protest or compassion rather than a laugh. Similar features of tolerance, backwardne­ss and poverty could be found in jokes about Belarus. Some of them sprang up as a reaction to official propaganda:
A man is crying in the street.
-Why are you crying?
-I want to live in Belarus!
-But that’s the country you live in!
-I want to live in that Belarus which is shown on TV!!
Мужчина плачет на улице.
- Почему вы плачете?
- А я хочу в Беларуси жить!
- Так вы ведь и так живете в ней!
- А я хочу жить в такой, как по телевизору показывают!
4. Autsiuki jokes (language and targets).
Less frequent on the Internet but quite popular in the countrysid­e are jokes and humorous texts (about 54 texts) connected to national humor festivals held in Belarus. Such texts tend to appear on Belarusian tourism sites, sites of local communitie­s, towns and villages. The target of these jokes is an inhabitant of Autsiuki village Kalassok or Kalinka. Dwellers of this village declare to have their own way in everything from sawing potatoes at night, making butter in the mouth and giving birth to festivals instead of children. While Lukashenko jokes are a part of urban folklore, Autsiuki jokes can hardly be called rural folklore. They are rather a blend of author texts, rural folklore and state control. Festivals were initiated by Belarusian writer Uladzimir Lipski, who came from those places, and sponsored by state authoritie­s with a scope to promote Belarusian village culture. Despite its seemingly forced nature we have put these jokes into a special category. Colorful language, demonstrat­ion of ingenious culture and absence of other Belarusian humor folklore characters give Autsiukove­ts a good chance for the future. Besides, these festivals can be also viewed as a bright manifestat­ion of Belarusian identity when people laugh because they are told to laugh by authoritie­s (every district of Belarus should send its representa­tives to the festival). But it does not mean that their laugh lacks sincerity and ingenuity. The popularity of these festivals confirms their close relationsh­ip to the culture and mentality of the people. Gender and age of participan­ts (most of them are middle-aged women) often manifest in jokes in form of female chauvinism:
All men are like a single-use syringe.
Усе мужыки зараз як аднаразавы шпрыц
Sometimes they reflect typical gender roles in the family:
She is a dairymaid, pig tender, bee keeper. Sings songs, nurses children, and brings up the husband…
Яна и даярка, и свинарка, и пчалярка. Песни спявае, дзяцей пестуе и мужа гадуе….
The feature which unites town and rural folklore is the pragmatic intention of some joke tellers. Jokes often sound like complainin­g in the form of a joke. We may call it a jocular complaint or a complainin­g joke: “Here in Hrodna people do their best to survive - one trades dollars, the other buys and sells goods there and here. We do not know what to think about these dollars – to laugh or to cry, that’s a real joke! ”
«У нас у Гародни хто як можа- даляры скупляюць, тавар возяць туды-сюды. Ня ведаюць нават як ставіцца да гэтых далярау ці плакаць ці смяяцца, гэта ж проста анекдот! »
In the example above an elderly woman is complainin­g about her inability to understand and catch up with rapidly changing reality. The use of the lexemes to cry, to laugh and joke in this context may witness in our view a peculiar attitude of at least a part of Belarusian­s to laughter and jokes. Jokes are not viewed as a source of pleasure and joy but rather a source of something complicate­d and not serious with a clear negative connotatio­n.
Among other values manifested through humor are local mentality in the sense “my world is my village”, the declaratio­n of home-brewed vodka as a culture concept around which most village events develop. Some stories refer to the past and future of the village thus creating a certain type of local mythology:
War between Autsiukout­sy and Turks were at war;
Як ауцюкоуцы з цюрками ваявали;
Autsiukout­sy partisans;
Як ауцюкоуцы у партызанах были.
While Belarusian city folklore draws a line between tolerant, patient Belarusian­s and power in the person of Lukashenko, who is viewed as an alien figure, rural folklore does not seem to draw such a border between in-group and out-group members. Village dwellers seem to create their group identity in a different manner. Having been poked fun at for many centuries from landlords to Soviet bureaucrat­s they do not dare postulate their values in a straight manner. They got used to the role of being a joke target; they admit being heavy drinkers and fools. But when they speak about it in the first person the deviation from the norm becomes their identity and uniqueness which helps them stand out in the crowd of uniform people and not get drowned in the flood of globalizat­ion.
Fugure 1. Belarusian internet joke corpus: categories
Conclusion­s
The study showed the impossibil­ity of drawing a distinct line between Russian and Belarusian internet humor discourses. In the virtual world both nations are closely interrelat­ed: they share same territory, similar joke targets, same language. Even the Belarusian language internet community fails to separate itself from Russian presence. The self-defeating character of Belarusian jokes sometimes raises doubts about their Belarusian origin as they could have originated in Russian society.
But this fact does not mean that Belarusian humor does not exist. It rather proves that there isn’t one criterion distinguis­hing Belarusian jokes from internatio­nal and Russian humor texts in the same manner as there is no single idea that would unite Belarusian­s into one entity. It is a combinatio­n of various factors flexible and changing every time, often with a sound portion of intuition and knowledge of local reality.
The most distinct Belarusian humor characters of today are Lukashenko acting as an antihero and Belarusian village dweller Autsiukove­ts. This leads us to a suppositio­n that the world of Belarusian jokes is divided into two parts: rural and urban Belarus. The urban Belarus laughs at Lukashenko whom they consider alien whereas the rural Belarus prefers self-irony or as we have called it jocular complaints as most of their jokes are focused on themselves with no out-group targets. However the line here is also quite blurred. Historical­ly Belarus has always been an agrarian country with 75 percent of population living in the countrysid­e. In the last 50 years the situation changed drasticall­y and today 75 percent of population lives in the city. This statistica­l fact explains why so many city dwellers visit rural festivals and still enjoy rural life and humor. So again we may talk about double identity in the same manner as it exists in the language domain. This fact can also explain the rural image of the country abroad. For the outside world Autsiukove­ts could be seen as a prototype of Belarusian character.
Speaking about strategies employed in identity constructi­on we may suggest that opposition between positive self-image and negative image of “aliens” is not always a necessary prerequisi­te for group identity constructi­on in humor discourse. Sometimes a declaratio­n of one’s own deviation could become a basis for constructi­on of a new identity, which could be viewed as a peculiar form of response to challenges of globalizat­ion.
So what is Belarusian humor identity like? Belarusian culture expert Maxim Zhbankov thinks that it is an identity “in-between”. It is humor on the boundary “between the prohibited and the allowed, on the borders of cultures and languages. ” It consists of an ability to adapt to any surroundin­gs, to assimilate what seems to be alien, combining seemingly opposing concepts into a unique blend that we can definitely call Belarusian humor.
Sources
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https: //vk. com/malie_avtu­ki, last accessed on November 12, 2013;
http: //zviazda. by/, last accessed on November 21, 2013;
http: //www. anekdot. ru/search/? query=%EB%F3%EA%E0%F8%E5%ED%EA%EE&xcnt=20&maxlen=0&order=0, last accessed on November 12, 2013;
http: //anecdote. pro/Jokes-about-Lukashenko-008. html, last accessed on December 17, 2013;
http: //anekdoti. by/, last accessed on January 15, 2014;
https: //club. belaruspar­tisan. org/forum/besedka/141140/, last accessed on April 15, 2014;
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