Department of Turkish Literature

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Jokes in "Englishman-Frenchman and German" verbal narrative form and ethnic humor
(2005) Uçar, A.
This paper is largely based on the linguistic theories of humor as formulated by Raskin and Attardo, and Davis's interpretation of these theories in relation to the ethnic jokes. The main argument is that, a joke could be regarded as "truly" ethnic, only if it contains an ethnic element which is integral to that joke and cannot easily be removed. As a matter of fact, most jokes can be applied to all ethnic backgrounds and are not "truly" ethnic. As the study of samples of "Englishman-Frenchman and German" jokes told in Turkish have shown that there are not any "truly etnic" element in those jokes and it is easy to find jokes which have the same scripts also told in english for different nationalities. The script opposition of these jokes is not based on truly ethnic elements and they do not contain any ethnic stereotypes or prejudices or they do not require any prior knowledge in regard to these nationalities. Although it can be said that they contain a certain kind of aggression and a certain sense of "superiority", this agression has not been directed to any special ethnic group but rather to the unknown "Other".