Linguistic mechanisms of creating a humorous effect in the poetry of H. Erhard

Abstract

The article examines the mechanisms for creating comic effects in the texts of the famous poet, writer and post-war artist Heinz Erhard (1909–1979). The relevance of the study is determined, on the one hand, by the level of popularity of this author’s poems and texts that has not decreased for more than sixty years, and on the other hand, by the lack of linguistic or literary analysis of his works, which contradicts this fact. The purpose of the study is to describe the linguistic mechanisms of the appearance of the comic. The most common technique for creating a comic is described – changing the style. An analysis of more than 1,000 examples of creating a comic effect using a continuous sampling method showed that in 27 % of cases we are talking about a stylistic shift, a sharp change in stylistic coloring or text. The “reader’s work” to recognize the comic includes recognition of the functional style, sometimes declared by the author with one lexeme, recognition of a certain historical or artistic era, which is characterized by the prevalence of certain stylistic decisions. The speech variability of such authorial decisions can be philosophically interpreted as a limitation of ideological pathos towards certain historical and cultural phenomena in the German-speaking space, with the possibility of their recognition and acceptance.

Keywords

• style
• stylistic analysis
• language structures
• humor
• irony
• style change