Speech means of creating a comic effect in the novel. Language means and ways of creating a comic effect

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...3

1 Theoretical justifications for the study of the comic as an aesthetic category…………………………………………………………………………..5

1.1 The general nature of the comic effect…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

1.2 Stylistic ways of expressing comic effect…………..11

1.2.1 Humor……………………………………………………………………11

1.2.2 Irony…………………………………………………………………..12

1.2.3 Satire…………………………………………………………………...13

2 Comic in modern English works…………..…………….15

2.1 Story Level………………………………………………………......16

2.2 Character Level………………………………………………………..19

2.3 Supply level…………………………………………………….22

2.4 Phrase level………………………………………………….24

Conclusion………………………………………………………………..............25

List of sources used…………………………………………...26

Appendix A Ways of using comic effect by English-speaking authors of the 20th century ……………………………………………….29

Appendix B Techniques for using comic English-speaking authors of the 20th century …………………………………………………………………….30

Introduction

The comic has always been one of the subjects of stylistic research. But over time, the mentality and understanding of the comic effect changes. Its forms and means, as well as the styles of the authors, change. Certain techniques and ways of expressing the comic are used, due to which the style and language become unique and unrepeatable. Nevertheless, one can find the most common features of the expression of comic effect by the authors of one century. Therefore, this work will analyze some literary sources and identify the main ways and means of expressing the comic effect used by modern authors in English stories.

Objective is to analyze the comic as a category expressed by linguistic means in modern English literature.

The goal was specified in the following tasks :

Consider and clarify the concept of comedy as a stylistic category,

Highlight the different levels of the text in which the comic effect is manifested,

Analyze the techniques and means of comic effect at various levels of the text.

Object of study constitutes comic effect as a stylistic category.

Subject of study are the ways and techniques of expressing the comic effect in a literary text.

material for research served as storiesH. Munro "The Story-Teller", H. Munro "The Mouse", Owen Johnson "The Great Pancake Record", James Thurber "Doc Marlowe", Muriel Spark "You Should Have Seen The Mess".

Course work consists of two parts: theoretical and research. In the introduction, the purpose and objectives of the study, the subject and object of study are indicated. The theoretical part deals with the comic effect, its ways and means of expression. The research part analyzes English works of the twentieth century. The appendix contains diagrams.

1 Theoretical justifications for the study of the comic as an aesthetic category

“Feeling is one of the forms of human consciousness, one of the forms of reflection of reality, expressing the subjective attitude of a person to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of his human needs, to the correspondence or non-correspondence of something to his ideas.” Not all human needs are innate. Some of them are formed in the process of education and reflect not only the connection of man with nature, but also his connection with human society. "Aesthetic feelings" are the cause of the emergence of aesthetic categories. For example, in his book On the Sense of Humor and Wit, A. N. Luk gives a list of human feelings, in which, in addition to higher social feelings, he also includes a list of "aesthetic feelings":

a) feeling elevated

b) Feeling beautiful

c) Feeling tragic

d) Sense of the comic.

These "aesthetic feelings" make up four aesthetic categories: the category of the sublime, the category of the beautiful, the category of the tragic and the category of the comic, which will be considered in this work.

1.1 General nature of comic effect

According to the definition given in the dictionary by I. T. Frolov, “comic is a category of aesthetics that expresses in the form of ridicule the historically determined (full or partial) inconsistency of a given social phenomenon, the activities and behavior of people, their customs and customs with the objective course of things and the aesthetic ideal progressive social forces. Course work will be built on the basis of this definition of the comic, as it fully reflects the essence of the comic. The comic effect in its origin, essence and aesthetic function is social in nature. Its origins are rooted in the objective contradictions of social life.

The comic can manifest itself in different ways: in the discrepancy between the new and the old, content and form, goals and means, actions and circumstances, the real essence of a person and his opinion about himself. A form of the comic is, for example, an attempt by the ugly, the historically doomed, the inhuman, to hypocritically portray itself as beautiful, progressive, and humane. In this case, the comic causes angry laughter and a satirical, negative attitude. The senseless thirst for accumulation for the sake of accumulation is comical, since it is in conflict with the ideal of a comprehensively developed person.

The comic has various forms: satire, humor, etc. The concept of "comic" comes from the Greek "koikus" - "cheerful", "funny" and from "komos" - a cheerful gang of mummers at the rural festival of Dionysus in Ancient Greece and passed into the Russian language with the meaning "funny". Starting with Aristotle, there is a huge amount of literature about the comic, its essence and origins; the difficulty of its exhaustive explanation is due, firstly, to its extraordinary dynamism, playfulness, and secondly, to its universality (everything in the world can be considered both seriously and comically).

The general nature of the funny is easier to understand by referring through the etymology of the word to the playful, festively cheerful (often with the participation of mummers) amateur folk laughter, known from ancient times, which is characteristic of all peoples. This is laughter from the joyful carelessness of excess strength and freedom of the spirit, as opposed to the oppressive worries and needs of previous and upcoming everyday life, and at the same time reviving laughter (in the middle of the century it was called “risus paschalis” - “Easter laughter” after long deprivations and prohibitions of Great Lent ).

In terms of communicative content, the comic is universal and at the same time dual, because it can simultaneously combine praise and reproach, praise and reproach. On the one hand, the comic is subjective in nature, and the choice of the comic object is determined by a set of value and behavioral stereotypes that make up the mentality of an individual and a nation at a certain stage of historical development. On the other hand, it is interesting that the discovery of the comic depends on collective intentionality. Thus, in order to achieve the effect of laughter, it is necessary that the participants in communication be “on the same communication wave”, in other words, that there should be at least empathy between them, due to certain points of contact, which can be the unity of the worldview on everyday, social , professional levels. This position is confirmed by the works of M. Eipta (Mahadev Apte), a culturologist and anthropologist, who notes: “Laughter arises when communicants feel comfortable with each other, when they are open and at ease. And the stronger the bonds that bind a given communicative group, the more pronounced the effect” (How Stuff Works 2000: 18).

The anthropological significance of the funny is great, it is associated with both individual and group mentality. So, I.V. Goethe believed that in nothing the character of people is revealed so much as in what they find funny. This truth is equally applicable both to individuals and to entire societies and epochs (what seems funny to one cultural and historical environment, starting with customs, rituals, forms of entertainment, etc., causes laughter in another, and vice versa ( Chernyshevsky 1949)).

In connection with the study of the theory of the comic in general aesthetic terms, one should mention A. Makaryan's book "On Satire", in which the author, despite its title, talks more about the "comic". Indeed, the first part of the monograph is called "Comic in Literature", the second - "Comic". In the second part, the author, who set himself the task of "exploring the main artistic means of satirical creativity", considers such phenomena as "comic of words", "figurative comic", "logism and alogism", "comic of position", "comic of characters", " comic of circumstances”, “comic of action”. The author discusses two types of comic words: witty and comic word. However, wit is the subject of an entirely different field of study. As for comic words, according to Makaryan, they are associated with ignorance, cultural backwardness, nervousness, etc. Trying to define groups of comic words, he writes: "Departure from the generally accepted use of the word: dialectisms, professionalisms, archaisms, neologisms, barbarisms, violation of semantic and grammatical connections - all this often gives the word a comic meaning." However, in specific cases, the author experiences difficulties in distinguishing between the means and methods of the comic. So, the author considers the main sources of verbal comedy to be the disorder of thoughts and their logical design, scarcity of thought, ornateness, pretentiousness of speech, disruption of the connection between remarks, comic increase or decrease in intonation, loss of the thread of thought during a conversation, words expressing contradictory concepts, repetitions, comedy. sounds and puns.

The comic effect of ordinary commonly used words is associated primarily with the possibilities of their metaphorization and ambiguity. The comedy is enhanced by individual words when they are connected differently, they acquire additional comic coloring in a comic environment, with misunderstandings that arise in the course of dialogues and mutual remarks of characters. Of course, the comic possibilities of words are also manifested in the language of the author in the course of the story, but the language of the characters has more opportunities to achieve artistic goals.

The comic embraces satire and humor, which are equal forms of the comic.

In philological and aesthetic literature, techniques and means of the comic are often confused and identified.

The means of the comic, along with linguistic ones, also cover other means that cause laughter. The linguistic means of the comic are phonetic, lexical, phraseological and grammatical (morphological and syntactic) means.

The techniques of the comic are generated differently and are formed, first of all, by linguistic means.

Comic art is able to reveal the comic potential not only of common, emotional words, but also of terms, terminological words and combinations. An important condition for the acquisition of comic coloring by lexical units is the comic environment, the unexpected connection of a word in a text with other words and expressions.
In prose, the possibilities of words in creating comic effect, apart from ironic intonation, are as follows:

a) the historical formation of the meaning of a certain part of lexical units in a comic quality;

b) unexpected polysemy, homonymy and synonymy of lexical units;

c) a change in the stylistic conditions for the use of words belonging to different spheres.

Phraseological units serve to express the comic in three cases:

a) accompanied by an ironic intonation;

b) historically formed in the language in a comic capacity;

c) with a successful combination with other words and expressions.

A significant role in the art of the comic is played by witticisms that are expressive and cause laughter.

The comic effect plays an important role in relation to culture as a whole. Modern sociological research shows that, on the one hand, it can act as an instrument for the destruction of traditions, on the other hand, it can preserve and support the existing system, which can be considered as a destructive and constructive function of the comic.

1.2 Stylistic ways of expressing comic effect

There are such types of comic effect as humor, satire, grotesque, irony, caricature, parody, etc. Such a selection of species comes from a mixture of forms and techniques of the comic. Grotesque, caricature, parody are included in the technique of hyperbole and in the aggregate constitute a method of deformation of phenomena, characters, and also serve both satire and humor to the same extent.

“Humor (English humour - moral mood, from Latin humour - liquid: according to the ancient doctrine of the ratio of four bodily fluids, which determines four temperaments, or character), a special kind of comic effect ; the relation of consciousness to the object, to individual phenomena and to the world as a whole, combining an outwardly comic interpretation with an inner seriousness. According to the etymology of the word, humor is obviously “wilful”, “subjective”, personally conditioned, marked by the imprint of the “strange” mentality of the “humorist” himself. In contrast to the actual comic interpretation, humor, reflecting, tunes in to a more thoughtful, serious attitude towards the subject of laughter, to comprehend its truth, despite funny oddities - in this humor is the opposite of ridiculing, destructive types of laughter.

On the whole, humor strives for a complex assessment, like life itself, free from the one-sidedness of generally accepted stereotypes. “At a deeper (serious) level, humor reveals the sublime behind the insignificant, the wisdom behind the insane, the true nature of things behind the wayward, and the sad behind the ridiculous.” Jean Paul, the first theoretician of humor, likens it to a bird that flies up to the sky with its tail up, never losing sight of the earth - an image that materializes both aspects of humor.

"Depending on the emotional tone and cultural level, humor can be good-natured, cruel, friendly, rude, sad, touching, and the like." The “fluid” nature of humor reveals a “proteic” (Jean Paul) ability to take any form that meets the mood of any era, its historical “temper”, and is also expressed in the ability to combine with any other types of laughter: transitional varieties of ironic, witty, satirical, funny.

1.2.2 Irony

Irony is translated from the Greek "eironeia", literally - "pretense".

In various fields of knowledge, the comic effect is defined in different ways.

In stylistics - “an allegory expressing mockery or slyness, when a word or statement acquires in the context of speech a meaning that is opposite to the literal meaning or denies it, casting doubt on it.”

Irony is reproach and contradiction under the guise of approval and consent; a property is deliberately attributed to a phenomenon, which is not in it, but which should have been expected. Irony is usually referred to as paths, less often as stylistic figures. A hint of pretense, the “key” to irony is usually contained not in the expression itself, but in the context or intonation, and sometimes only in the situation of the utterance. Irony is one of the most important stylistic means of humor, satire, and the grotesque. When ironic mockery becomes evil, caustic mockery, it is called sarcasm.

By virtue of its intellectual conditioning and critical orientation, irony approaches satire; at the same time, a line is drawn between them, and irony is seen as a transitional form between satire and humor. According to this provision, the object of irony is mainly ignorance, while satire has a destructive character, creates intolerance towards the object of laughter, social injustice. "Irony is a means of imperturbable cold criticism".

1.2.3 Satire

Satire (lat. satira, from earlier satura - satura , literally - “mixture, all sorts of things”), a kind of comic; merciless, destroying rethinking of the object of the image (and criticism), which is resolved by laughter, frank or latent, "reduced"; a specific way of artistic reproduction of reality, revealing it as something perverted, incongruous, internally untenable (substantive aspect) through comical, accusatory and ridiculing images (formal aspect).

Unlike direct denunciation, artistic satire is, as it were, two-plot: the comic development of events in the foreground is predetermined by some dramatic or tragic collisions in the "subtext", in the sphere of the implied. Satire itself is characterized by the negative coloring of both plots - visible and hidden, while humor perceives them in positive tones, irony is a combination of an external positive plot and an internal negative one.

“Satire is an essential means of social struggle; the actual perception of satire in this capacity is a variable, depending on historical, national and social circumstances. But the more popular and universal the ideal, in the name of which the satirist creates a denying laughter, the more "tenacious" satire, the higher its ability to revive. The aesthetic "super task" of satire is to excite and revive the memory of the beautiful (goodness, truth, beauty), offended by meanness, stupidity, vice.

Satire retained the features of lyricism, but lost its genre definition and turned into a kind of literary genre that determines the specifics of many genres: fables, epigrams, burlesque, pamphlet, feuilleton , satirical novel. In the last half century, satire has invaded science fiction (O. Huxley, A. Asimov, K. Vonnegut, and others).

2 Analyzing stories and highlighting levels of comic effect

On the examples of the stories studied in the course work, it can be seen that the comic effect was widely used by the authors of the twentieth century at various levels. Therefore, the functioning of the methods and techniques for expressing the comic effect at various textual levels will be considered:

story level,

character level,

Offer level,

Phrase level.

Authors often use various means and techniques to create comic effect at the plot level. The predominant means are irony and satire, and the methods are metaphors, repetitions, introductory constructions and neoplasms.

The example of Owen Johnson's story "The Great Pancake Record" shows that even the title speaks of the frivolity of this "sports" record. It talks about how the boys from the college were glorified. Each of them had some hobbies for sports, but one day a new one came to them, who did not go in for any kind of sport. Johnny Smeed only liked to eat and sleep. When the students ran out of money for food, they agreed with the shop owner that if Johnny ate more than 39 pancakes, he would feed them for free. The record was to eat more than anyone in the history of the college.

Forty-nine pancakes! Then, and only then, did they realize what had happened. They cheered Smeed, they sang his praises, they cheered again.

"Hungry Smeed's broken the record!"".

The use of irony in this case underlines the "significance" of this record for the college.

Throughout the text, it is noticeable that newcomers were judged on their athletic achievements and physique, but when they learned that Johnny Smeed had never played sports, they immediately began to regard him as unworthy of their attention:

"A dead loss! ”, “Good for nothing…”.

"- You'll try for the college team?

In this case, the author wants to emphasize the superiority of students over beginners. In addition to using various means of the comic, the author often uses such comic techniques as repetition, metaphors and introductory constructions. For example:

"Six it is," said Hickey, adding a second figure. "Six and six are twelve."

The second six vanished as quickly as the first.

"Why, that boy is starving," said Conover opening his eyes.

"Sure, he is," said Hickey. "Not hasn" t had but thing for ten days."

"Six more," cried Macnooder.

"Six it is," said Nickey. "Six and twelve is eighteen".

The repetition of the number "six" emphasizes the experience and makes the story more emotional.

"You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching".

This phrase does not seem funny if you do not know the plot of the story. Only after reading, it will become clear what exactly is meant by "carefulteaching". The use of irony, in this case, emphasizes that the children's aunt has in mind good fairy tales and does not pay attention to the behavior and character of her nephews. Children do not know how to behave in a public place, and it is important for their aunt that they are not told inappropriate stories that they enjoyed listening to.

“We walked home together. I admired his bloody nose. He said that my eye was like a poached egg, only black.”

At first glance, this phrase sounds even sadder than funny. But this conversation takes place between the boys who just got into a fight with each other. The use of exaggeration ("admired" - a word completely inappropriate for the style of the story as a whole, and too elevated for this situation and everyday dialogue between two children) and metaphor ("poachedegg" - the eye of one of the boys is compared to a poached egg, which is usually boiled without shells and it has a heterogeneous and puree-like appearance; apparently, the boy’s eye resembled this particular egg) help to understand their mood and already friendly feelings, and, in addition, to see their pride in themselves.

Equally interesting is a story written by Dorothy West called "TheRicher, ThePoorer", which describes the life of two sisters. The author deliberately emphasizes their lifestyle and their miserly attitude towards money:

"She never touched a penny of her money, though her child's mouth watered for ice cream and candy."

Here the author means that one of the sisters is such a greedy person that she does not want to satisfy even her strongest desires (she will not touch a penny, despite the fact that she is “drooling” from the sight of ice cream and sweets).

This story also uses the technique of neoformation:

"A job in hand was worth two in the future."

In this case, the author transforms the well-known proverb "Abirdinhandisworthtwointhebush" in such a way as to show greed and the desire to earn as much money as possible. The comical situation is that, while earning money, they did not spend it, but collected it in order to live beautifully and richly in the future, but, having lived to old age, they realized their stupidity.

Very often, writers achieve character-level comic effect through metaphor and exaggeration. At the character level, the main way to express the comic is satire, and the most commonly used techniques are paradox and metaphor.

The role of the comic at the character level in the work of James Thurber "Doc Marlowe" is very well visible.

“Doc Marlowe was a medicine-show man. He had been a lot of other things, too: a circus man, the proprietor of a concession at Coney Island, a saloonkeeper; but in his fifties he had traveled around with a tent-show troupe made up of a Mexican named Chickalilli, who threw knives, and a man called Professor Jones, who played the banjo."

It is rather difficult to imagine a healer who is engaged in circus activities and owns a pub. But throughout the story we see how highly valued his potions are. In addition, for comic effect, the author describes his beggarly existence:

"He was wery low in funds".

It can be assumed that the circus performer and the healer do not have money, but it is hard to imagine that the owner of the pub does not have them. Moreover, describing the healer and the owner of the pub in one person, the author wants to emphasize the comical situation in which the inhabitants of this settlement found themselves. They did not have qualified doctors, so they were forced to seek help from a healer who did not have an impeccable reputation.

The DorothyWest story "The Richer, The Poorer" describes Lottie very well. She dreamed of growing up quickly and earning a lot of money, because as a child she had very few toys, she loved to ride a bicycle, which she had to borrow from friends for a while. Having matured, she got a job as a nanny, and when she faced the choice of working or studying, she went to work without hesitation. She never spent the money she earned, although her child asked for sweets. Having saved all her life, it was only in her old age that she realized how worthless her life was.

SuddenlyLottiewassixty.

With this sentence, the author emphasizes how busy Lottie was in earning money. Having set herself the goal of accumulating as much money as possible, she missed her childhood and youth, and only in her old age she realized that her life had already passed and she had no time for anything, because she was “suddenly” 60 years old.

"Her way of life was mean and miserly".

This sentence perfectly reflects her whole life. The author ironically emphasizes how "stingy" and "useless" Lottie's life was.

“He was thin and small, with a long, pointed nose and a wide mouth…

Smeed understood that the future was decided and that he would go to the grave as "Hungry" Smeed".

“He was “a dead loss”, good for nothing but to sleep a lot and to eat like a glutton with a hunger that could never be satisfied.”

The author describes a boy who felt that the most important years of his life were college life. He wanted to leave a memory of himself for future students, but did not know how to achieve this, because apart from the "talent to eat" he could not distinguish himself in anything else.

The comic effect is also achieved by the fact that the author gives nicknames to all the characters ("Hickey", "OldTurkey", "Spider", "RedDog", "Butcher").

In MurielSpark's YouShouldHaveSeenTheMess, the author achieves comic effect at the character level by describing the boy's attitude towards disorder:

"One day, I was sent over to the Grammar School with a note for one of the teachers, and you should have seen the mess!" I am so glad that I did not go to the Grammar School, because of its mess…

After that I went the Grammar School more and more. I liked it and I did like the mess.”

Using satire and many comic techniques, modern English-speaking authors create comic images, making their works more lively and funny.

At the sentence level, the comic effect is very common among English-speaking authors of the 20th century. To express it, the authors use all the ways and means of conveying the comic effect in approximately equal proportions.

In Owen Johnson's short story "The Great Pancake Record" the author often uses irony:

"Afinefootballteamwe'll have".

This is an ironic exclamation, because at the beginning of the story the author writes about a boy who weighed only about 48 kilograms and never played football or baseball:

“He was “a dead loss”, good for nothing but…”.

You can well translate the following phrase as "Well, still":

"Yes, you are."

The author uses satire to show the superiority of students over beginners. This phrase was uttered in order to show that participation in the game in their team should be a great honor for all newcomers.

H. Munro's story "TheStory-Teller" uses introductory constructions and paradoxes.

“At any rate I kept them quiet for 10 minutes, which was more than you were able to do.”

“Thirty-two is a long way to go,” said Conover, looking apprehensively at the little David, “fourteen pancakes is an awful lot.”

David is the biblical hero who defeated Goliath, and Johnny Smeed simply broke the "record" of his predecessors.

After analyzing some stories of modern English-speaking authors, we can conclude that this level is used most rarely.

At the level of phrases, the prevailing devices are stereotypical phrases and introductory constructions. Authors often use humor. Satire at this level was used extremely rarely in the 20th century.

O. Johnson's short story "The GreatPancake Record" often contains comic phrases:

"Go down to the grave".

This phrase refers to the boy's nickname. The author uses an exaggeration because he wants to show that this nickname will not haunt him until his death, but for Johnny Smeed these are the most important years, as he thinks, and therefore he uses this phrase.

H. Munro's "The Mouse" describes the behavior of a teenager who has a mouse in his pants. He could not scream, as it happened on the train, a woman was sleeping in the same compartment with him, and he did not want to wake her up, and therefore he behaved very strangely. When the woman woke up, he explained to her the reason for this behavior. She asked if his pants were tight or wide, and when he replied that they were tight, she uttered the following phrase: "Strange ideas of comfort." The author uses a metaphor in this case, as it is doubtful that mice have any idea of ​​comfort at all.

Conclusion

In this course work, the comic effect was considered as an aesthetic category, theories of creating a comic, its means and techniques were also studied. In the research part, an analysis was made of the ways and techniques of expressing the comic effect on the examples of modern English-speaking authors.

The study showed that in their works, English-speaking authors of the twentieth century achieve the creation of a comic effect using various ways and techniques of expression.

After analyzing the ways and means of expressing the comic effect at various textual levels, we can conclude that irony and humor are used approximately equally, although satire is the predominant way of expressing the comic. The least used techniques are convergences, allusions and parodies. The greatest preference is given to repetitions, neoplasms and introductory constructions.

Thus, we can sum up - the comic effect as a stylistic category manifests itself at various levels of the text and is the determining factor in text formation in humorous works.

List of sources used

1Aznaurova, E. S. The stylistic aspect of nomination by the word as a unit of speech / E. S. Aznaurova // Language nomination (types of names). - M .: Publishing house of Enlightenment, 1977. - S.86-129.

2Aristotle. On the Art of Poetry / Aristotle. - M., 1957. - 129 p.

3Arnold, I.V. Stylistics of modern English / IV Arnold. - L .: Education, 1973. - 304 p.

4Akhmanova, O. S."Vertical context" as a philological problem / O. S. Akhmanova, I. V. Gyubbenet// - Questions of linguistics. - 1977. - No. 6. - S. 44-60.

5Bergson A. Collected works. V. 5 / A. Bergson. - St. Petersburg, 1914. - 684 p.

6Boldyreva, L. M. Stylistic potency of phraseological units in the field of humor, irony and satire / L. M. Boldyreva // Questions of the lexicology of Germanic languages. - M., 1979. - Issue. 139. - S. 48-62.

7Boreev, Yu. B. About the comic / Yu. B. Boreev. – M.: Izd-vo Iskusstvo, 1957. – 232 p.

8Boreev, Yu. B. Comic / Yu. B. Boreev. - M., Art, 1970. - 239 p.

9Boreev, Yu. B. Comic and artistic means of its reflection / Yu. B. Boreev. –– M., 1958, p. 298-353.

10Bronsky, I. Yu. On the use of phraseological units of the English language to create a comic effect / I. Yu. Bronsky // Questions of philology and history of teaching foreign languages. - Stavropol, 1976. - S. 39-56.

11Verbitskaya, M. V. Literary parody as an object of philological research / M. V. Verbitskaya. – Tbilisi: publishing house of the Tbilisi University. - 1987. - 166 p.

12Galperin, I. R. Stylistics of the English language / I. R. Galperin. - M .: Higher. school, 1977. - 332 p.

13Hegel. Aesthetics. T. 2. / Hegel. - M., 1969. - 845 p.

14Guralnik, W. A. Laughter is a weapon of the strong / U. A. Guralnik. - M., 1961. - 48 p.

15Gubbenet, I. V. On the problem of understanding the literary and artistic text (on English material) / I. V. Gyubbenet. - M .: publishing house Mosk. un-ta., 1981. - 110 p.

16Dzemidok, B. N. About the comic / B. N. Dzemidok. - Kyiv, 1967. - 284p.

17Dmitrovsky, M. I. Weapon of laughter / M. I. Dmitrovsky. - Alma-Ata, 1968. - 144 p.

18Ershov, L. F. Satire and modernity / L. F. Ershov. - M., Sovremennik, 1978. - 271 p.

19Ivin, A. A. The art of thinking correctly / A. A. Ivin. – M.: Enlightenment, 1990. – 240 p.

20Imanaliev, K. K. On the skill of satire / K. K. Imanaliev // Sat. articles. Issue 1. - Frunze, 1960. - 130 p.

21Kiseleva, R. A. Stylistic functions of author's neologisms in modern English comic and satirical prose / R. A. Kiseleva // Uchenye zapiski Leningrad. ped. Institute of foreign lang.: Questions of theory English. and Russian languages. - Vologda, 1970. - T. 471. - S. 43-53.

22Krasikova, O. V. Introductory elements of a sentence as a stylistic and syntactic device in the works of Jerome K. Jerome / O. V. Krasikova // Specificity and evolution of functional styles. - Perm, 1979. - S. 136-144.

23Lazarus, M. O. Parables and legends / M. O. Lazarus. - M., 1953. - 63 p.

24Luk, A. N. On the sense of humor and wit / A.N. Luk. – M.: Izd-vo Iskusstvo, 1968. – 192 p.

25Makaryan, A. N. About satire / A. N. Makaryan; per. from Armenian. - M., Publishing house of the Soviet writer, 1967. - 381 p.

26Mikhlina, M. P. On some language techniques for creating a comic effect / M. P. Mikhlina // Uchenye zapiski ped. in-ta. - Dushanbe, - 1962. - V.31. - Issue. 14. - P. 3-14.

27Morozov, A. A. Parody as a literary genre / A. A. Morozov // Russian Literature. - 1960. - No. 1. - P.48-78.

28Nikolaev, D. P. Laughter is a weapon of satire / D. P. Nikolaev. - M., Art, 1962. -224 p.

29Ozmitel, E. K. On satire and humor / E. K. Ozmitel. - L., 1973. - 191 p.

30Potebnya, A. A. From notes on the theory of literature / A. A. Potebnya. - Kharkov, 1905. - 583 p.

31Pokhodnya, S. I. Linguistic types and means of implementing irony / S. I. Pokhodnya. - Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1989. - 128 p.

32Propp, V. Ya. Problems of comedy and laughter / V. Ya. Propp. - St. Petersburg, 1997. - 284 p.

33Skrebnev, Yu. M. Stylistic functions of introductory elements in modern English. lang. : autoref. dis. / Yu. M. Skrebnev. - L., 1968, 32 p.

34Tremasova, G. G. Language means of expressing satirical meaning (English and American fiction, and journalism of the twentieth century): author. dis. / G. G. Tremasova. - M., 1979. - 126 p.

35Frolov, I. T. Philosophical Dictionary / I. T. Frolov. - 4th ed. - M.: Politizdat Publishing House, 1981. - 445 p.

36Chernyshevsky, N. G. Sublime and comic. Full coll. op. T.2. / N. G. Chernyshevsky. - M., 1949. - 584 p.

37 Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. – London, 1978

Annex A

(reference)

Ways of using comic effect by English-speaking authors of the twentieth century

Annex B

(reference)

Techniques for using the comic by English-speaking authors of the 20th century

You choose what you need and cut

Chapter 1.1. The concept and essence of the comic in literature

At the beginning of my work, I tried to find out what is the essence of the comic in literature.

In Dahl's dictionary we read: “Comic is funny, amusing, amusing in an event or in the ratios of people; humor, wit."

At the heart of the comic there is always some discrepancy, a violation of the correct proportions. This mismatch may be

At the linguistic level (alogisms, absurdities, reservations, imitation of a speech defect, accent, out of place sounding foreign or different style, for example, "learned" speech);

At the level of the plot situation (misunderstanding, one character is mistaken for another, misrecognition, erroneous actions);

At the level of character (the contradiction between self-esteem and the impression made, between word and deed, between desired and actual, etc.).

Comic (from the Greek Komikos - cheerful, funny) - an aesthetic category denoting laughter directed at a specific, specific object. In the history of aesthetic thought, it was defined through the opposition, contrast of the ugly and the beautiful (Aristotle), the insignificant and the sublime (I. Kant), the imaginary and the truly significant (Hegel), etc. The comic is one of the most complex and diverse categories of aesthetics. By "comic" is meant both natural events, objects and the relationships that arise between them, as well as a certain type of creativity, the essence of which is to create a comic effect.

The most common signal of the comic and at the same time its result is laughter. But this is still not enough to single out the phenomena and experiences of the comic from a number of other phenomena. Not all laughter is a sign of the comic, and not always the comic is manifested through laughter.

Chapter 1.2. From the history of the study of "comic" in literature

The concept of "comic" and "funny" in the literature are considered differently. So, for G. Hegel and V.G. Belinsky, the comic is only a special case of the funny, its highest form.

The Soviet esthetician Y. Borev, the author of a number of works devoted to the comic, relying on the concepts of Hegel and Belinsky, believes that the comic is "the beautiful sister of the funny ... it is laughter, socially colored, socially significant." But such a formulation can hardly be considered exhaustive, since not all phenomena that cause the knowledge of the comic fit within its framework.

Therefore, B. Dzemidok, the theoretician of the comic, introduces the concept of "elementary forms of the comic", occupying some intermediate place between the proper comic and the ridiculous.

Avner Zis believes that the comic is always funny, and the funny is not always comic.

A. Zis writes: “The comic is always funny. But the funny is comical only when in it, as in any aesthetic phenomenon, the meaning, the internal nature of this or that phenomenon, which is evaluated from the standpoint of a certain aesthetic ideal, is expressed through the external form. Combining the funny with the comic reduces, in our opinion, the artistic value of the work.

Unlike Borev and Zisya, for whom the comic is always funny, M. Kagan believes that the comic is not always funny. Satire, for example, which is one of the most important forms of the comic, is not always funny. “It does not cause laughter, but indignation, contempt, anger.” Thus, there are different views on the relationship between the concepts of funny and comic. Differentiation of these concepts is hardly expedient. Undoubtedly, the existence of socially significant phenomena of the comic is “higher” and “nobler” than its other forms, but there are not enough good reasons to consider this form of the comic the only one, while reducing its other forms to the ridiculous. This will exacerbate the already existing chaos in the terminology of the comic.

Chapter 1. 3. The main functions of the comic in literature

The comic performs certain functions in literature, the main of which are the following:

cognitive;

Entertaining;

Therapeutic.

The comic serves as a means to the knowledge of the world and the assimilation of ideas about it. The greatest cognitive value is attributed, according to tradition, to humor, which represents the world in its real colors, refusing both the deformation of phenomena and attempts to reorganize the world. “The position of a humorist is the position of a thinker, immersed in thought over human nature and over the course of events. The humorist sees and does not hide from the reader the contrasts and disproportions of reality.

It should be noted that the cognitive essence of the comic deepens our knowledge of the world and people, teaches us to distinguish the content of a phenomenon from its form, and warns against hasty assessments.

The essence of the entertainment function is the ability to cause laughter, cheer up.

The therapeutic function is that the comic can serve as a consolation for one's own failures and disappointments. A joke on oneself and self-irony can be a form of self-defense, not so much from external factors, but from oneself, despondency, pessimism, doubts about one's own strengths and capabilities.

In the humorous works of A.A. Chekhov, comicality is achieved with the help of linguistic means. Namely, these are portrait descriptions of heroes, proper names and colloquial vocabulary used in stories.

One main technique of the comic is undoubtedly "the discrepancy between appearance and reality", the demonstration of "the discrepancy between a person's high opinion of his moral, social, intellectual significance and his actual value." A no less ridiculous technique of humor is a mixture of heterogeneous and clearly incompatible features. Among the most important ways of creating the comic is the transfer of a phenomenon into a sphere unusual for it; Another no less common way is to transfer an object from the class in which it is enshrined in social sign usage to another class. The concentration of "unnecessary" comic details also produces a comic impression.

The source of the comic in Chekhov's works is the preoccupation of individuals with their own, individual interest, mode of behavior, train of thought, the absolutization of each of their own and the resulting inconsistencies and collisions. ("Drama", "Lost", "Entrepreneur under the sofa").

humor in stories reveals the inferiority of life, emphasizing, exaggerating, hyperbolizing it, making it tangible, concrete in the works. Humorous element in A.P. Chekhov and O. Henry is one of the most attractive aspects of their work. The humor of O. Henry is rooted in the tradition of the comic story that existed among the first settlers of America. In O. Henry, humor is often associated with comic situations that underlie many plots. They help the writer to debunk certain negative phenomena of reality. Resorting to parody and paradox, O. Henry reveals the unnatural essence of such phenomena and their incompatibility with the normal practice of human behavior. O. Henry's humor is unusually rich in nuances, impetuous, whimsical, he keeps the author's speech under current, as it were, and does not allow the narrative to go along a predicted channel. It is impossible to separate irony and humor from O. Henry's narration - this is his “element, the natural environment of his talent. Far from always the situation of short stories is humorous; and yet no matter what emotional keys the author presses, the invariably ironic turn of his mind gives a very special shade to everything that happens.

A.P. Chekhov is one of the greatest humorists in Russia. "The wit of deep feeling" - this is Chekhov's definition, which the author himself liked, accurately reveals the depth of genuine humor in the poetics of the novel. Humor in his works begins to play a new role: it either enhances, sets off the tragic, or, conversely, “softens” the tragedy with a wise, bright smile. The writers' humor is a view of the world, a vision of life, inseparable from irony, a tragic smile. Great is the charm of writers in the humor with which they usually describe events. This is rarely a bilious mockery: as a rule, their laughter is good-natured. Serious thoughts sometimes hide behind this laughter. Even when the authors' ridicule is serious, they keep the masks of the funny ones.

Humor in the stories of A.P. Chekhov.

In principle, anyone can joke well. But only one can be called a master of humor who knows how to use it in different forms and apply different techniques, because this allows you to be more flexible, adapt to any situation, competently insert a “red” word, getting right “to the point” and no one touching. Probably, it is for this reason that already in Ancient Greece the comic was born as a philosophical category that denotes aesthetically and socially significant and culturally designed funny. Then the problem of the comic was considered in detail by the philosopher Aristotle, and later by A. Schopenhauer, A. Bergson, Z. Freud, V. G. Belinsky, M. M. Bakhtin, V. Ya. Propp, Yu. B. Boryaev, A. A. Sychev, A.V. Dmitriev and other researchers.

The grotesque, sarcasm, irony, humor, satire and other types can be attributed to the area of ​​the comic. In addition, it can manifest itself in many genres and types of art, such as feuilletons, comedies, sketches, buffoonery, caricatures, ditties, etc. The comic is also expressed in puns, jokes, anecdotes. It often arises by itself in all sorts of errors, typos, misprints, reservations and misunderstandings.

Next, we will look at the main types of comic that are most common in life and art, and also give examples for each type, and then we will talk about the most popular comic techniques that are easy to use in everyday life, and give exercises to practice them.

• Joke
• Joke
• Irony
• Oxymoron
• Parody
• Satire
• Graphic arts
• Wit
• Sarcasm

About everything in order.

Joke

A joke is a short text or phrase of humorous content. It can take various forms, such as stories, questions or answers. Almost always, a joke has an ending (climax) that ends the story and makes it funny.

Joke

An anecdote is a small funny story with an unexpected ending. A play on words, meanings of terms and concepts, some associations can act as an anecdote. In some cases, to understand a joke, you need to have certain knowledge, for example, geographical, historical, literary, social, etc. , because jokes can relate to any area of ​​human life. It is also worth noting that the authors of anecdotes almost always remain unknown, and the narrators never claim authorship.

EXAMPLE:

The lion is walking in the forest. Meets a giraffe:
- Hey long neck! Who is the bravest in the forest?
- You lion!
The lion smiled contentedly and moved on.
Sees a zebra
- Hey, striped! Who is the most beautiful in the forest?
“Of course you are, lion!”
The lion, proud, went on.
Sees an elephant:
- Hey, long-nosed! Who is the smartest in the forest?
The elephant takes the lion with its trunk, throws it over its back and throws it into the swamp. The lion climbs out, shakes off the mud and says:
“Well, why be so nervous? I could have just said "I don't know".

Irony is the use of words in a negative sense, contrary to the literal, as a result of which outwardly positive statements acquire a negative connotation. Also, irony is often called mockery or even mockery. The meaning of irony is that missing features are attributed to an object or situation in order to emphasize this absence. Irony will allow you to give a negative or comic character to something or someone. In addition, anti-irony and self-irony are distinguished. In self-irony, a person laughs at himself, and in anti-irony, a negative message suggests the opposite, i.e. positive connotation.

EXAMPLE (Irony): "Come here, literate" (in relation to an illiterate person)

EXAMPLE (Self-irony): "Well, here I showed myself in all its glory" (about inappropriate behavior in a tricky situation)

EXAMPLE (Anti-irony): “But we, fools, are unaware” (it is understood that “we” understand everything anyway)

Oxymoron

An oxymoron is also called "smart stupidity", i.e. a combination of incompatible (opposite in meaning) words. Often used in art to create a stylistic effect.

EXAMPLES: A living corpse, false truth, joyful sadness, burning cold, etc.

Parody

A parody is an imitation of something known to create a funny effect. You can parody the behavior of famous people, the play of actors, the performance of musicians, habits, speech, facial expressions, gestures, etc. In art, parodies of music, painting, and literary works are common.

EXAMPLE: Arkady Raikin "Poet of the sixties "(a parody of R. Rozhdestvensky)

Satire

Satire is a kind of comic pathos, a harsh denunciation and ridicule of negative phenomena in life, social and human vices. Sometimes satire is not funny. Humor is used in satire so that the satirical work is not perceived as direct criticism or preaching of shortcomings. There are several varieties of satire: oral, theatrical, literary and graphic.

EXAMPLE (verbal satire): concert "The whole truth about Russian dope » Mikhail Zadornov

EXAMPLE (theatrical satire): play "Every day is not Sunday "Based on the play by A. N. Ostrovsky (Satyricon Theater named after Arkady Raikin)

EXAMPLE (literary satire): the novel "The Master and Margarita" by M. Bulgakov, the story "The Nose" by N. Gogol, the novel "Lord Golovlev" by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the story "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by M. Twain, the story-parable "Animal courtyard” by D. Orwell, etc.

EXAMPLE (graphic satire): Soviet magazine "Crocodile »

Sarcasm

Sarcasm is called caustic, vicious and stinging ridicule, bilious remarks, malicious irony over something vicious and vile. As a rule, sarcasm (like satire) makes fun of human vices and serious atrocities, especially those committed by officials, politicians and dignitaries.

EXAMPLE: "Here you are fat, you should lose weight" (in relation to a skinny girl who is on a diet)

EXAMPLE: "Do not ask what you can do for your homeland - you will be reminded of it anyway" (military wisdom)

EXAMPLE: " Our foreman connected space with time. He ordered to dig from the fence until lunchtime "(army wisdom)

EXAMPLE: “Demonstrators beaten by police against police violence” (article title)

Graphic arts

Graphics is a special form of the comic that differs from its written and oral expression. The most common types of comic graphics are comics, cartoons and caricatures. Competent comic graphics, in particular political ones, are aimed at increasing social self-awareness and civic responsibility, identifying political likes and dislikes.

EXAMPLE (comic):

EXAMPLE (cartoon):

EXAMPLE (caricature):

And, summing up the conversation about the types of comic, a few words about wit and humor.

Wit

Wit is called any work of the comic - the very act of creating humor, anecdote, jokes, satire, etc. There can be no comic without wit. We will talk about wit in detail in the next lesson, but for now we will only note that it allows a person to joke so that the essence is expressed in just one phrase, and in such a way that there is nothing to add. Wit is distinguished by the presence of a joke, but the absence of contempt, as well as brevity. But one cannot achieve “sharpness” by brevity alone; it is achieved through the use of unexpected thought.

EXAMPLE: “I made a decision to take care of myself. I quit smoking and drinking, went on a diet, refused heavy food. And in two weeks I lost 14 days"(a phrase by the American actor Oscar Levant).

Humor

Humor can be understood in two senses. The first is the very understanding of the comic, i.e. the ability to recognize and demonstrate the funny. And the second is soft condescending, written or oral criticism. Humor suggests the presence of gaiety and harmless mockery, it is not associated with malice and malice, such as sarcasm or satire. The mask of the funny in humor hides a serious attitude towards the object of laughter, which is not limited to just one funny thing. True humorists perceive humor as a grace of the mind that is good; reflection of the creative abilities of the intellect. True humor is characterized by a sense of beauty, the ability to see the unusual in the ordinary, high taste, a sense of proportion, observation and creativity.

Proceeding from this, the sense of humor should be perceived as the ability to understand humor and perceive the funny; as an emotional, intellectual, aesthetic and moral feeling. Because of its rarity, a subtle sense of humor is always worth its weight in gold, but it can and should be developed and nurtured.

The types of comic we have considered are quite enough to understand how wide and multifaceted this topic is. But in any case, this information is purely theoretical, because any form of funny is built on the use of a number of special techniques, and this is practice. Therefore, the next point of our lesson will be the techniques of the comic.

Basic tricks of the comic

The basic techniques of the comic are necessary in order to create the so-called images of phenomena that give rise to the funny. The following are some of the most common techniques used in comic art:

We offer you a brief description of each of them (in each of the large groups there are private receptions).

Change and deformation of phenomena

The change and deformation of phenomena is:

• Exaggeration - a technique that affects and increases the features of behavior, appearance, character, situation
• Parody - imitation of the original object, exaggerating its characteristic features, sometimes to the point of absolute absurdity
• Grotesque is a technique for generalizing and sharpening life relationships through a bizarre and contrasting combination of real and fantastic, plausible and illogical, funny, caricature
• Travesty - vulgarization and humiliation of phenomena that are considered worthy, worthy of respect
• Caricaturing is a simplification that distorts the essence by emphasizing minor and minor points and neglecting essential features.

Unusual effects and juxtapositions

Unusual effects and comparisons include mainly surprise with the aim of creating a comic:

• Plot moves and turns that are not foreseen by the listener, reader or viewer, and that occur contrary to his assumptions and expectations
• Unforeseen comparisons or convergences of mutually exclusive or simply different phenomena that go beyond ordinary comparisons (for example, similarities between people and animals or people and objects)
• Comparisons demonstrating unexpected similarities and coincidences of generally accepted views and everyday situations with views and situations that are absurd and ridiculous
• Demonstration of contrast by comparing types of people that are opposite to each other (most often in terms of views, habits, temperament, character traits, etc.)
• Wits based on a comparison of incommensurable or distant phenomena

Disproportion in connections and relationships between phenomena

The disproportion in connections and relationships between phenomena in most cases is expressed in anachronisms (attributing people, objects, phenomena or events to another time) from the field of way of thinking, language, customs, principles or views.

An imaginary unification of heterogeneous phenomena

The imaginary unification of heterogeneous phenomena is understood as:

• Grotesque, based on multiple transitions from one area to another, and applying contradictions, combining different styles and creative methods
• Simulation of situations where the behavior of the characters is contrary to the circumstances
• Discrepancies between behavior and appearance, character or any other psychophysiological manifestation of individuality
• Inconsistencies in appearance and nature, illusion and reality, theory and practice, reality and fantasy, conceit and true value
• Ironic statements in which the hidden meaning is the negation of the literal meaning
• Sarcasm as indignant mockery is a reflection of a high degree of indignation, characterized by gloominess and causticity
• Inconsistencies between the usual purposes of objects and unusual options for their use
• Unnatural, ridiculous, unexpected or surprising repetitions of phenomena, situations, phrases, actions

Creating phenomena that deviate from the norm

Creating phenomena that deviate from the norm includes:

• Violation of rational, efficient, productive and efficient norms
• Performing useless and unnecessary work (choosing means that are inappropriate for the task, complicating simple tasks, violating logic, erroneous associations and inferences, etc.)
• Chaotic statements and logical confusion (logical incoherence, unforeseen turns and insertions, unusual use of words)
• Absurdist dialogues in which there is no connection between the participants' remarks
• Logical inversions, where the qualities of objects and situations are shifted
• Statements that seem ridiculous at first glance

The list can go on, but we will limit ourselves to this. If you have a desire to get acquainted with a more voluminous and systematized description of comic techniques, you can refer to the relevant sources, a small list of which we will give at the end of the lesson.

Now we offer you some good exercises and recommendations with which you can learn how to apply some of the techniques of the comic in your everyday life.

Exercises and recommendations for developing the skills of using comic techniques

There are no special conditions for these exercises. All of them can be performed by you at will and in any sequence. But to achieve the maximum result, we recommend that you practice daily in your free or special time allotted for this.

"Funny story"

Make up a story about yourself and tell it to someone. This will allow you:

• Check how well developed your sense of humor is
• Find out if you know how to joke on purpose
• Understand what your mistakes were in creating the story and narration
• Laugh at yourself with another person

"Associations"

Take any word and pick up five associations to it as quickly as possible. It is desirable that the associations be interesting, unusual and unexpected.

"Anti-associations"

"Ambiguity"

When talking about something, think about how many meanings each word you use has. It is recommended to remember both habitual usages and figurative and slang meanings.

"One Letter Words"

Take one letter of the alphabet and make a long meaningful sentence with the beginning of all the words on it. The exercise allows you to replenish vocabulary and make thinking more flexible.

"Unusual Definition"

Take any common word and come up with an unusual definition for it that does not match the meaning. You can come up with definitions based on similarity or consonance with other words.

"New words"

Take some prefix or ending, for example, "super-", "-ness" or "anti-", and come up with a new concept. Then give this concept a dictionary definition and make some meaningful sentences with it.

"What to do with the item?"

Take any perfectly ordinary object (box, pencil, thread, etc.) and come up with 20 ways to use it.

"Resemblance Search"

Choose any two objects that have nothing in common (a bird and a stool, a glass and a telephone, etc.). Task: find 10-15 similarities between them.

"Identification"

Turn on a comedy TV show. While watching, identify tricks and jokes used by comedians (comparison, anecdote, sarcasm, double meaning, etc.).

"Journalist"

Imagine yourself as a journalist. Take any magazine or open photos on the Internet, and come up with funny captions for 10-15 of them. It is best if the descriptions reflect the topic, but diverge from the real picture.

"Replacing with synonyms"

Take any word and replace it with synonyms with a comical message (for example, "the driver is the luminary of the steering wheel and pedals", "cat food is Vaska's zhrachka", etc.).

"Wordplay"

Take a word with several meanings and build a sentence so that in the second part the whole meaning changes (for example: "Stirlitz fired blindly. The blind woman fell," etc.).

"False Expectations"

Make up a sentence so that in the first part the expectation is formed, and in the second it is destroyed.

"Internal contradiction"

Pick up a few expressions containing internal contradictions ("sunglasses", "blue wagon", "money machine", etc.), and make some jokes based on them.

"Consonance"

Pick up words that have other words inside, but already different in meaning, and make up a few jokes with them (for example, “gentlemen of fortune - gentlemen at the COTTAGE”, “pomelo - and POMELO and NAMELO”, etc.)

"Learning Words and Sentences"

Find a word or set expression (“authorities”, “bird's milk”, “human rights”, etc.), and think carefully about the meaning. If there is an interesting point, build a joke on it.

We also want to repeat once again that you need to practice as much and as often as possible - this will allow you to learn how to apply comic techniques competently and quickly. Given that it depends to a large extent on thinking, attention, creativity, the ability to find associations, think logically and draw conclusions, we, among other things, advise you to pay attention to ours and go through it.

And as an excellent addition, as we promised, we give you a list of useful literature, from where you can get a lot of interesting and important information about many subtleties of humor and comic:

• Y. Borev "Comic"
• Y. Borev "On the comic"
• V. Vinogradov “Stylistics. Theory of poetic speech. Poetics"
• B. Dzemidok "On the comic"
• G. Kazimov “Theory of the comic. Problems of language means and techniques"
• A. Luk "About a sense of humor and wit"
• E. Safonova "Forms, means and methods of creating the comic in literature"

In the fourth lesson, as already mentioned, we will talk in more detail about wit and how to develop it, as well as present some excellent related exercises. After completing the lesson, you will have all the means to make anyone laugh, even if before that you were a complete bore.

Test your knowledge

If you want to test your knowledge on the topic of this lesson, you can take a short test consisting of several questions. Only 1 option can be correct for each question. After you select one of the options, the system automatically moves on to the next question. The points you receive are affected by the correctness of your answers and the time spent on passing. Please note that the questions are different each time, and the options are shuffled.

In recent decades, much attention has been paid to the communication of people with each other. Psychologists give a lot of advice to help overcome difficulties in communication; articles on this topic appear on the pages of modern magazines. Some researchers single out easy communication as the main characteristic of the ability to conduct a dialogue. An anecdote is one of the elements of such communication.

E. E. Surova in the article “So-so-absurdity” says that “an anecdote is a kind of revitalizing factor. It fills a pause, relieves tension and fatigue, “discharges” the situation. In her work, the researcher names the criteria under which the anecdote "took place":

1. An anecdote must be appropriate.

2. The anecdote must include the problems of everyday life.

3. The joke must be "naive", that is, the experience of one particular person is compared comically with the experience of his opponent.

Until very recently, a school anecdote as a genre variety of oral folk art was not an object of study in philology, although studies of language and speech methods of forming a humorous text are very popular. Special works are devoted to the stylistic device of paradox (G. Ya. Semen, B. T. Taneev) and the linguistic aspects of the phenomenon of irony (O. P. Ermakova, S. A. Zolotareva, V. E. Zharov). The anecdote as a genre attracts the research attention of L. I. Grishaeva, A. D. Goloborodko, A. R. Gabdullina, V. N. Druzhinin and I. A. Savchenko, K. V. Dushenko, O. A. Chirkova, V. M. Ivanova, A. D. Shmelev and EL. Shmeleva and others.

However, there are no works specifically devoted to the analysis of the creation of a comic effect in a school joke. All of the above determines the relevance of this work.

Before turning to the genre of anecdote, it is necessary to clarify the relationship between humor and comedy as aesthetic categories. Humor correlates with one of the most complex categories of aesthetics - with the category of the comic, which covers a large group of heterogeneous phenomena, diverse in form and content.

Humor arouses such great interest in itself due to its inclusion in the context of culture. The pleasure of humor, which in naive word usage means “a mildly mocking attitude towards something and the depiction of something in a funny, comical way,” has a psychological nature and, at the same time, eludes psychological explanations.

Humor has often been written about as a means of getting rid of a whole range of essential but sometimes burdensome human manifestations; it was understood as a means to escape from the oppression of the mind, they saw in it an alternative to compassion, a means to overcome reverence and fear, they saw in it the antithesis of shame. According to 3. Freud, wit helps to overcome the barriers built by logic and morality. In our work we will turn to the comic as a whole.

Let us turn to the history of the emergence of the genre of anecdote. During the twentieth century. in foreign studies, a different understanding of the term anecdote was presented. The Dictionary of Literary Terms says that an anecdote is a short, often moralizing story about famous people and serves to represent the hero of the anecdote as a representative of a certain social group or era. The anecdote was understood in approximately the same way in Russia at the end of the 18th - 19th centuries.

An anecdote in the modern Russian sense of the word also corresponds to the English joke, or the German Witz. It should be noted that in the Russian tradition a joke is distinguished as a speech genre and an anecdote as a folklore genre (for foreign studies, such a division is less typical). The Encyclopedia of Simple Forms defines the difference between joke and anecdote as follows: anecdote is associated with a historical hero or precedent, joke is characterized by a fictional situation.

The synonymous terms blason populaire and ethnic slurs denote both the ethnic stereotypes that exist in a given cultural group, which are well known to all members of this cultural group, and the texts in which these stereotypes are played up (for example, Poles in the view of Americans are dirty, stupid, unscrupulous, and jokes are told about dirty, stupid Poles).

The term Shaggy Dog Story refers to a certain kind of anecdotes, close to the Russian type of absurd anecdote, which originally arose from a series of stories about animals (mainly dogs) - Shaggy dog ​​story: 1) literal translation - “a story about poodles”, 2) “an anecdote with an unexpected ending , often absurd."

According to the frequency of reference by researchers to specific material, the first place is shared by “Jewish jokes” and Russian “anti-Soviet” ones. A huge number of works are also devoted to the interpretation of jokes about representatives of different nationalities. The attention of researchers is also attracted by new cycles of anecdotes that have arisen on the basis of films, cartoons, television programs, etc.

The history of the study of anecdote in the 20th century began with the publication in 1905 of Freud's work Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious. His theses became the starting point for many interpretations of the anecdote. Freud's theory explains the existence and spread of anecdotes by the fact that they express a hidden meaning that the Super-Ego, which is an internal censor, does not allow a person to express directly. The laughter response makes it easier for the person to express this hidden meaning. Therefore, an anecdote can act as a compensator, which allows you to protect yourself from negative emotions coming from outside.

So, we will use the term "joke" in the following meaning:

An anecdote is a very short story with funny, funny content and an unexpected poignant ending.

A school joke is a genre variety of a joke that has the following distinctive features:

The place of action is the school;

Actors: teachers, parents, students, director - that is, participants in the educational process.

Chapter 2

There are different means of creating a comic effect in a school joke. Conventionally, we divided them into two groups: non-linguistic (18%) and linguistic (82%). Among the linguistic means of creating a comic effect in a school joke, one can single out phonetic, lexical, word-building, morphological and syntactic ones. We characterize each subgroup.

2. 1. Phonetic means of creating a comic effect

The anecdotes of this group are characterized by the fact that humor is created through the play of sounds. For example:

English lesson in a village school. Teacher:

Ivanov - how will "door" be in English?

In this case, the Russian word is written in English letters, the student could not give a translation of the word.

In another anecdote, the action takes place in a Georgian school:

A control copying of the dictation is planned in the Georgian school. - Remember the children: white pup, fork, torelka - it is written without a soft sign; sol, beans, mezzanine - spelled with a soft sign!

In this case, the humor is that the teacher's accent and the correct spelling of the words are opposite.

Thus, the first group included anecdotes related to the collision of different languages ​​in the minds of a teacher and a student.

This group included 11 jokes, which is 7% of the total number of analyzed jokes.

2. 2. Lexical means of creating a comic effect

This group is the largest. It included 85 jokes (57%). Humor is created through the game: a) with the direct and figurative meaning of the word. For example:

1. My friend Mudrik is a very bright personality! He has blue eyes, red lips, red hair and a green sweater.

2. An amazing thing is an exam. He surprises some with questions, others with answers.

b) textual synonyms. For example:

Biology is in ninth grade. The teacher explains the structure of the monkey. Vovochka is playing around and does not listen. She calms him down and says: “Vovochka, look more closely at me, otherwise you won’t have any idea about monkeys” c) antonyms. For example:

1. A good half of Russian teachers write comments in a diary, and the evil half also calls their parents to school.

2. - What do you know about cultivated plants?

Cultivated plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, while uncultivated plants use it impudently.

d) phraseological units. For example:

The teacher explains the division to the children. She wrote “2:2” on the board and asks:

Kids, who knows what that means?

Draw! - Zhenya jumps from the first desk.

2. 3. Word-building means of creating a comic effect

Despite the fact that this group included only 3 (2%) anecdotes, we singled it out separately. In this group, the student and the teacher analyze the composition of the word in different ways:

Dad, are there musical tanks?

No, where did you get it?

The teacher said that in America cowboys ride muztanks.

Well, if only in America their cowboys, how can I tell you, son. In general, they are strange

2. 4. Morphological means of creating a comic effect

This group includes jokes, the bulk of which is based on playing out: a) numerals:

1. In the school cafeteria.

I'm three second.

Do you want the square root of minus two?

2. - The one who goes first to the board, I will put a point more.

I'm coming! Give me three! b) pronouns:

Name two pronouns.

Who am I? c) degrees of comparison of adjectives:

Russian language lesson in Odessa school.

Today we are studying the degrees of comparison of adjectives. To be clear, I will immediately give examples. We take the word "good". The comparative degree is "best", the superlative degree is "very good", and the degree that cannot be compared with anything is "May I live like this!" Got it? Then take, Monya, the word "bad" and do the same with it!

Wonderful! Come on superlatives.

Very bad.

Fabulous! Well, and the last degree?

May you live like this!

The number of jokes in this group is 11 (7%).

2. 5. Syntactic means of creating a comic effect

This group includes jokes with missing words, which creates misunderstandings:

I am fluent in Russian, English, French and in other lessons too.

This group also includes phrases with subject-object relations:

For some reason, the phrase "The teacher flunked the student in the exam" sounds completely ordinary, but "The student flunked the teacher after the exam" causes a strong reaction.

Sometimes a comic effect is created by special text, for example, depicting a teacher speaking in a lesson:

The history teacher talks about the Battle of Thermopylae. A few days before the battle, the Persian king sent an ambassador to the Greeks with a demand. stop talking, Petrov, they tell you!. with the requirement to put. books, Shakhov, should lie on the table, and not open on it. demanding to lay down their arms. The proud response of the Greeks was as follows. you, Karpov, move to the left so that I can see what kind of stupidity Korzhevsky is doing. yes, the answer was: come and get it. When it was announced to the Greeks that the number of Persians was so great that the sun was darkened from them, then the leader of the Greeks, Leonidas, said. Really, Kasatkin, if you indulge, I'll put you up against the wall. Leonidas said: so much the better, we will fight, traitor by name. Sokolov, let's get a rope here, this is not the place to play! Yes, Ephial showed the Persians the way through the mountains, and then screams of horror were heard among the Greeks. who the hell is that throwing burnt papers?

The number of jokes in this group is 14 (9%).

Conclusion

So, we analyzed one of the genre varieties of an anecdote for creating a comic effect - a school joke and came to the following conclusions:

1. Brought the term "joke".

2. Characterized the genre of the joke - a school joke.

3. We divided the means of creating a comic effect into two groups: non-linguistic (18%) and linguistic (82%).

4. Among the linguistic means of creating a comic effect in a school joke, phonetic, lexical, word-formation, morphological and syntactic ones were singled out.