Title: The comic of the heroes – a case study of the role of humour in reflecting national identity
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2017, vol. 43, iss. 1, pp. [53]-68
Extent
[53]-68
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2017-1-3
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/137085
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The paper deals with the role of humour in relation to myth-making in a small nation. Analysing an essay by a modern Slovak historian, the text documents how the collective awareness of the national insignificance of a community in search of its identity can be subject to subtle comic treatment. With the help of the methodology of conceptual blending theory, I show how incongruity as the main source of humorous effect is triggered by the linguistic structures including grammatical functions and semantic roles (agent/patient) as well as the narrative structure. I argue that humour can help the community to cope with its awareness of marginality, which is articulated through the community's preoccupation with stressing its historical roots and cultural achievements to prove its European/global significance. Humour thus contributes towards the articulation and refinement of the community's self-perception of its national identity by critically reflecting and questioning on some of the collective myths that circulate within the community.
References
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[29] Lipták, Ľubomír (1999) Storočie dlhšie ako sto rokov. Bratislava: Kalligram.
[2] Dynel, Marta (2009) Humorous Garden-Paths. A Pragmatic-Cognitive Study. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
[3] Evans, Vyvyan, Green, Melanie (2011) Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[4] Fauconnier, Gilles (1997) Mappings in Thought and Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[5] Fauconnier, Gilles, Turner, Mark (1999) 'Metonymy and conceptual integration'. In: Panther, Klaus-Uwe and Gunter Radden (eds.) Metonymy in Language and Thought. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 77–90.
[6] Fauconnier, Gilles, Turner, Mark (2000) 'Compression and global insight'. Cognitive Linguistics 11 (3–4): 283–304.
[7] Fauconnier, Gilles, Turner, Mark (2002) The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.
[8] Fillmore, Charles J., Atkins, Beryl T. (1992) 'Toward a frame-based lexicon: The semantics of RISK and its neighbours'. In: Lehrer, Adrienne and Eva Kittay (eds.) Frames, Fields and Contrasts I, Hilldale/H.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 75–102.
[9] Firbas, Jan (1992) Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[10] Freud, Sigmund (2005) Vtip a jeho vztah k nevědomí. Praha: Psychoanalytické nakladatelství.
[11] Johnson, Mark (1997) Moral Imagination. Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
[12] Kamenec, Ivan (1998) Tragédia politika, kňaza a človeka (Dr. Jozef Tiso 1887-1947). Bratislava: Archa.
[13] Kohák, Erazim (2012) 'Hledání české filosofie'. In: Kohák, Erazim (ed.) Hledání české filosofie. Praha: Filosofia, 13–34.
[14] Lakoff, George (2006) 'The neuroscience of form in art'. In: Turner, Mark (ed.) The Artful Mind. Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 153–170.
[15] Levine, Jacob (1977) 'Humour as a form of therapy: Introduction to symposium'. In: Chapman, Antony J. and Hugh C. Foot (eds.) It's a funny thing, humour. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 127–138.
[16] Lipták, Ľubomír (1999a) Storočie dlhšie ako sto rokov. Bratislava: Kalligram.
[17] Lipták, Ľubomír (1999b) 'Monuments of Political Changes and Political Changes of Monuments'. (Translated by S. Miklošová) In: Kollár, Miroslav (ed.) Scepticism and Hope. Bratislava: Kalligram, 110–153.
[18] Martin, Rod A. (1998) 'Approaches to the Sense of Humour: a historical review'. In: Ruch, Willibald (ed.) The Sense of Humour. Explorations of a Personality Characteristic. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 15–62.
[19] Martin, Rod A. (2007) The Psychology of Humour – An Integrative Approach. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Academic Press.
[20] Melegh, Attila (2006) On the East/West Slope. Globalization, Nationalism, Racism and Discourses on Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest, CEU Press.
[21] Peterson, Christopher, Seligman Martin E.P. (2004) Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
[22] Raskin, Victor (1979) 'Semantic Mechanisms of Humour'. Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 325–335.
[23] Ruch, Willibald. (1998) 'Sense of Humour: A New Look at an Old Concept'. In: Ruch, Willibald (ed.) The Sense of Humour. Explorations of a Personality Characteristic. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 3–14.
[24] Sloboda, Rudolf (2010) Záznamy. Bratislava: Fragment.
[25] Talmy, Leonard (2003) Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Volume II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. London: MIT Press.
[26] Veatch, Thomas C. (1998) 'A theory of Humor'. Humor 11(2): 161–215
[27] Zeki, Semir (2006) 'The neurology of ambiguity'. In: Turner, Mark (ed.) The Artful Mind. Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 243–270.
[28] Lipták, Ľubomír (1999) 'Monuments of Political Changes and Political Changes of Monuments'. (Translated by S. Miklošová) In: Kollár, M. (ed.) Scepticism and Hope. Bratislava: Kalligram.
[29] Lipták, Ľubomír (1999) Storočie dlhšie ako sto rokov. Bratislava: Kalligram.