Laughter guaranteed : a research programma for the analysis of humour in propaganda (original) (raw)

those topics, and it was co-taught by a specialist in history, a specialist in literature, and a specialist in the study of language use. The first crew consisted of Henk Reitsma from History, Rod, and myself, and our topic was propaganda. It is one of the most exciting courses that I have ever taught. The formula still is a success, as it is one of the most popular courses in the faculty, and I think it is a model for the way we could arrange our interdisciplinary programmes in the near future. My contribution to the course consisted of a discussion of a range of linguistic phenomena in propaganda: issues like humour, metaphor, and argumentation. The general question that I tried to answer was: is it possible to distinguish propagandistic communication from non-propagandistic communication using a standard linguistic methodology? More specifically, is the language of propaganda different from the language of other classes of discourse, for instance because of its humour? My final example comes from a Dutch periodical 'De Gil', which appeared from March until October 1944. It had an interesting disguise: it was published as an anti-German magazine, promoting such un-German aspects of modern life as jazz music, but in reality it was issued by the Hauptabteilung für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. A typical 'De Gil' article tries to confuse the readers about the invasion, about the strength of the Germans, and the intentions of the illegal press. An example is the following (the beginning of the 11th issue August 2, 1944). Our division of labour gave Rod the task to define what we mean by propaganda, and to distinguish propaganda from non