Efekt humorystyczny w dowcipach werbalnych z perspektywy lingwistyki kognitywnej. Rozważania teoretyczne i analiza empiryczna
Authors: Barral Temes Dinara 
Published: January 2024

Humor accompanies the entire history of civilization development. The process of humor reception is at the center of interest of antique philosophers, medieval thinkers, Renaissance humanists, and modern researchers. This work presents cognitive mechanisms of how the humorous effect is created based on the selected jokes originating from Polish-, German-, Russian- and English-language online sources and the analysis of differences and similarities in the ways of their comprehension and reception by Polish, German and Russian students. The first chapter presents the current state of research on the phenomenon of humor from the perspectives of such areas as philosophy, psychology, sociology, pedagogy, and linguistics, particularly taking into account the cognitive and linguistic work. It also characterizes the existing research procedures, methodologies, and tendencies, such as gender studies, the impact of gender-related stereotypes, black humor reception, or &lsquo;one-liner&rsquo; jokes. Whereas the research discussed in the available literature on the subject focuses on the data from one or more languages, the research which is the subject matter of this work is based on the data collected from native speakers of one of the three languages (Polish, German or Russian), therefore representatives of three nationalities. Hierarchy of life values, stereotypes, and autostereotypes existing in the national community may affect the process of reception of jokes by the representatives of Poland, Germany, and Russia. Therefore, the second chapter presents the axiological hierarchy characterizing life priorities of Poles, Germans, and Russians based on the statistical data from these three countries. This chapter demonstrates stereotypes and autostereotypes of Poles, Germans and Russians, which might affect the very process of reception of hilarious materials by representatives of the given nationality. The third chapter presents the main assumptions and theories of cognitive linguistics which are a methodological foundation for the analysis of the joke reception processes undertaken in this research work. The starting point for the analysis was the principles of cognitive grammar explaining the processes of understanding the meanings based on the conceptualization processes and matrices of cognitive domains (Langacker 1987, 1991), theory of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and its extension, the theory of conceptual integration resulting from the amalgamation process (Fauconnier 1985, Fauconnier and Turner 1998, 2002), as well as the general theory of verbal humor based on script opposition (Raskin 1985, Attardo and Raskin 1991, Raskin and Attardo 1994). The problem of the creation of the hilarious effect in jokes explained on the basis of the above-mentioned theoretical principles is discussed in chapter 4. This chapter also contains 20 diagrams illustrating the blending process in each single joke.An essential part of the work is chapter 5, which presents the results of an empirical study. A total number of 90 persons (30 Poles, 30 Germans, and 30 Russians) participated in the study. The research material is the set of 20 jokes originating from Polish-, German-, Russian- and English-language online sources; the same as discussed earlier, in chapter 4, considering the mechanisms of humorous effect creation. Based on the data acquired in the questionnaire, regarding the level of comprehension, acceptance, and appeal of jokes on the basis of indications made by the persons subjected to the study on reference scales and their verbal comments attached by them to the granted assessments, analyzed were the methods of understanding and reception of particular jokes in the individual and group dimension and with reference to all the study participants. Given the wide variety of numeric and verbal evaluations, it proved necessary to categorize the comments in the context of numeric assessment, which provided an interesting illustration of methods of jokes interpretation. It also allowed establishing the hierarchy of jokes with regard to the degree of assessment made by particular groups of respondents, with reference to each of 4 sub-groups of investigated jokes and the global hierarchy of jokes. The analysis also took into consideration factors such as gender, foreign language skills, as well as the roles of stereotypes, autostereotypes, and values accepted by the particular nationalities. The study revealed that the decision regarding the assessment of the joke, regardless of the group of respondents (Polish-, German- and Russian-language) is mainly related to the closeness of comic situations presented in the jokes to the realities of lives of the examined group, in this case, philology students. There was not a clear correlation between the assessment of jokes and preferred and non-preferred joke topics provided by the respondents, as well as the kind of jokes, such as &lsquo;black humor&rsquo; jokes. The main factor crucial for the evaluation of the given joke proved to be its content, structure, and punch line it contains.Summing up, whether the reaction to the jokes is positive or negative is related to such factors as understanding the verbal content (knowledge of vocabulary, proper names, awareness of described phenomena, expertise, and experience, as well the source of the joke), the closeness of the content to the everyday realities and life values of the recipient, and the presence of stereotypes or autostereotypes not accepted in the national community.