What do doctors advise patients in jokes and why?
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Władysław Chłopicki
Władysław Chłopicki is a linguist, Senior Lecturer at Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. His academic interests include interdisciplinary humour research in the context of cultural studies, cognitive linguistics, linguistic pragmatics and narratology as well as translation studies. He has authored e.g. the Polish language monograph on humour (
O humorze poważnie ), and co-edited monographs e.g.Polish Humour, Cognition in Language, Culture’s Software: Communication Styles and Humorous Discourse , as well as a special issue ofStyles of Communication journal. Member of editorial boards of international journals, includingHumor , and co-editor ofThe European Journal of Humour Research andTertium Linguistic Journal .
Abstract
Doctor jokes are one of the most popular kind of jokes because they deal with the very sensitive subject of human state of health which draws upon the very basic life-death dichotomy, listed by Raskin in his influential study (Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic mechanisms of humor. Dordrecht: Reidel.) among the dichotomies most common in jokes. At the same time, doctor jokes are culture-specific as they reflect the relations between doctors and patients which are typical of a culture in terms of its power distance relations, especially in institutional encounters. Such differences are emphasized by the linguistic categories, such as official and familiar forms of address or culture-specific lexical items. But the reason certain jokes do not “travel” across language boundary is often not only the language itself, but also the cultural assumptions and relations – this concerns, for instance, the references to drinking or doctors’ ineffectiveness/incompetence in Polish jokes. This study focuses on doctor jokes as a category of jokes popular both in Poland and English-speaking countries, but the broad category of doctor jokes is here restricted to those which express the doctor’s advice: this aims at specifying and comparing the jocular advice scripts, central to the doctor-patient relation in both cultures, setting them against the serious advice script.
About the author
Władysław Chłopicki is a linguist, Senior Lecturer at Institute of English Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. His academic interests include interdisciplinary humour research in the context of cultural studies, cognitive linguistics, linguistic pragmatics and narratology as well as translation studies. He has authored e.g. the Polish language monograph on humour (O humorze poważnie), and co-edited monographs e.g. Polish Humour, Cognition in Language, Culture’s Software: Communication Styles and Humorous Discourse, as well as a special issue of Styles of Communication journal. Member of editorial boards of international journals, including Humor, and co-editor of The European Journal of Humour Research and Tertium Linguistic Journal.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Humor production in long-term romantic relationships: What the lack of moderation by sex reveals about humor’s role in mating
- Humor in civil case mediations: A functional approach
- The use of humor in Spanish and English compliment responses: A cross-cultural analysis
- A behavior genetic analysis of the relationship between humor styles and depression
- Exploring the role of humor in the management of existential anxiety
- Effectiveness and feasibility of a humor training in a routine care setting for people suffering from mental disorders
- What do doctors advise patients in jokes and why?
- A funny matter: Toward a framework for understanding the function of comedy in social change
- Book Review
- Jessica Milner Davis: Satire and Politics: The Interplay of Heritage and Practice
