Multi-ethnic jokes in the Russian language

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study variations and continuities in the targets of multi-ethnic jokes in the Russian language through time in three consecutive periods: Soviet era, post-socialist years and the present time. Multiethnic jokes are a subtype of ethnic canned jokes that feature two or more ethnonyms in one text, three being the most usual number of nationalities featured in the text and having, therefore, a tripartite structure. The different nationalities are placed in a special situation that usually entails some kind of competition between them. Our specific goals in this article are: 1) to analyse the position of the nationalities mentioned in the tripartite textual structure of the joke and their function within the text of the joke and to study structural variations through time; 2) to determine the ethnic scripts that are frequently ascribed to these targets and their changes from Soviet to present times; 3) to identify the nationalities that appear in multi-ethnic jokes in Russian and to detect changes in this cast of characters, if any, through the three chronological periods previously stated. The analysis of a corpus of 359 multi-ethnic jokes in the Russian language reveals that multi-ethnic jokes in Russian undergo few changes through times. Although they feature different nationalities in one text, multi-ethnic jokes in the Russian language are an example of reflexive ethnic humour, since they target Russians themselves.

Keywords

• ethnic humour
• multi-ethnic jokes
• Russia