Polish political humour. An outline of the phenomenon (original) (raw)

CONTEMPORARY POLISH POLITICAL RHETORIC. RETÓRICA POLÍTICA POLACA CONTEMPORÁNEA

The article discusses three dimensions of political rhetoric in Poland. The language used by politicians is the first one. Social and historic factors which conditioned contemporary styles of political communication result in the fact that political rhetoric in Poland is typical of countries which experienced authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. The second dimension of political rhetoric is found in media discourse. Mediatization of politics, technological changes in the media created a new rhetorical situation, new strategies of the persuasion used by politicians and journalists. The third dimension of political rhetoric is found in the rhetorical research concerning the ways of expression of both politicians and journalists. The article discusses major tendencies in research: propaganda language analysis, research on the new media, visual persuasion as well as use of rhetoric as a tool of civic education.

Political Humor in Linguistic Humor Research: Its Social Function from a Theoretical Perspective

This research paper is intended as a theoretical review on political humor within the domain of linguistic humor research. The research investigates humor in terms of its definition and the main theories that underlie its origin with regard to the relationship between these theories and the function of humor in communication. In addition, of particular interest in this review research is the function of political humor in terms of its function in maintaining and/or changing the order of social life in different socio-political contexts. With emphasis on political jokes, this research also draws the attention to the possibility for political jokes to change their social function from disciplinary humor to rebellious humor based on the change of the socio-political and cultural context in which they occurred and circulated.

Contingent dynamics of political humour

European Journal of Humour Research, 2021

https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/635/543 This article introduces the themes of the special issue. It offers a provisional working conception of “political humour.” It then notes some of the tendencies and challenges for scholarship on political humour, namely, that political humour interacts contingently and conditionally with intentions, contexts, and audiences. The individual articles of the special issue are briefly summarized, and some concluding lessons drawn.

Election campaign tools in Hungarian humour magazines in the second half of the 19th century

In my research paper I examine the first two election campaigns in Hungary following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867). In particular, I analyse the ways the campaigns employed tools of humour in popular press products of the time, such as caricatures and texts in humour magazines (Ludas Matyi ['Mattie the Goose-Boy'], Az Üstökös ['The Comet'], Borsszem Jankó ['Johnny Peppercorn']), which were considered effective political weapons by contemporaries. After a history-oriented introduction devoted to illustrating the much-debated content of the Compromise, the election system and the historical significance of the analysed papers, I categorize caricatures and the humorous or satirical texts related to the election of parliamentarians along the lines of the following aspects: (1) attacks against specific people, (2) standing up against the principles and political symbols of the opponent, (3) listing well-known, everyday antitheses , (4) standing up against the press of the opponent, (5) judgment of the role of the Jewish, (6) war metaphors, (7) critique of the campaign methods of the opponent. My goal is to reveal what tools were used to ridicule political opponents, how parties were described to (potential) voters, how the parties tried to promote voting and convince people of their points of view. The analysed texts clearly depict the division of the Hungarian society (either supporting or rejecting the Compromise), and also document that the political tones became coarser and coarser, even in this humorous genre. During campaigns, the topic of elections took over the humour magazines, which serves as evidence for the intensity of public interest.

Three characters in Polish jokes

ESTONIA AND POLAND: Creativity and tradition in cultural communication, 2013

The aim of this paper is to show how tripartite jokes have developed from ethnic jokes into jokes about professions. The attempt to answer the question about the universal and culture specific character of those jokes will be crucial. The introduction will present the relationships of the current topic with the number three as a folkloric universal. Stereotypical situations prompting the representatives of different nations to behave in a manner characteristic for them are then described, followed by the analysis of the entwining of ethnic, political, sexual, "logical" and other dimensions of humour in tripartite jokes.

Sophisticated humor against COVID-19: the Polish case

Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 2021

The analysis undertaken in the article focuses on a group of memes selected from the database which drew on culture-specific references. Specifically, they embrace the memories of socialist times and call on references to comic films and easily recognized characters in order to bring out the rediscovered absurdity of the current COVID-19 situation. This material seems ideal to revisit Raskin's early notion of sophistication, which was broadly argued to derive from intertextuality as well complexity of references that function as sources of humor. In all the examples discussed we can observe the intertextual and metatextual elements, multiple levels and shifts in points of view and attitudes as well as the mutual relations of verbal to visual within the meme cycles. In order to identify specific mechanisms of sophisticated humor, we attempt to identify the visual or verbal triggers of overlap of the two worlds in question, and discuss comic mechanisms of sophistication, including attributions of desire, belief and intention (purpose) to characters or the narrator as commentators on events or situations.

Why All Dictators Have Moustaches: Political Jokes in Contemporary Belarus. Humor. Volume 28, Issue 1 (Feb 2015). P. 71-91

Based on the repertoire of Belarusian oral political jokes collected between 2011 and 2013, this article compares contemporary Belarusian humor to the earlier Socialist and contemporary non-Belarusian jokes. During this study, I discovered that Belarusian oral jokes mostly have versions created through various schemes of adaptation in other countries and about other figures (not necessarily political). The continuity goes far beyond the exchange of jokes between dictatorships (as it may initially seem after the comparison of Belarusian and Socialist jokes). I also discovered that Belarusian oral jokes are mostly authoritarian – ridiculing the regime and the president, unlike post-totalitarian ones targeting ideology. Finally, drawing from the emic perspective which coins many more forms and themes as the markers of political jokes than the scholars usually do, I show how expansive the notion of political humor may be.

Laughing at political opponents

The European Journal of Humour Research

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the discursive dimension of the standoff between supporters of 6th Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and those of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. This dimension is implemented in Internet memes as one of the forms of political satire. Memes can be defined by their goals, frame of reference and means. The discursive practices used in memes aiming at the symbolic defamation of a political opponent and his electoral base are considered, taking into account the target, the focus, and the presentation of political satire about the protagonists Zelensky and Poroshenko. The corresponding parameters (goal-target, frame of reference-focus, means-presentation) constitute the analytical framework for the examination of the interrelations between political participation, political humour, political satire, and political discourse in this paper.