<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In this paper, I put forward a comparative/contrastive analysis of ethnic identity on the basis of humorous texts about Romanians and Hungarians living in Romania within the framework of the Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH). The corpus contains fifty jokes taken from websites and social media, books and recordings in which the Romanians are at the centre and the Hungarians are the butt and vice versa. The overall purpose of the study is to illustrate the main topics and stereotypes used in ethnic jokes. In this research, I will show that Romanians and Hungarians joke about similar topics, the most common ones being the “ownership” of Transylvania, rejection of the other, and language distortion but also friendship among Hungarians and Romanians. I also conclude that stereotypes can be attributed to one ethnic group, but there are also shared stereotypes, and some of them can switch from one group to the other depending on the perspective.</p></abstract>

In this paper, I put forward a comparative/contrastive analysis of ethnic identity on the basis of humorous texts about Romanians and Hungarians living in Romania within the framework of the Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH). The corpus contains fifty jokes taken from websites and social media, books and recordings in which the Romanians are at the centre and the Hungarians are the butt and vice versa. The overall purpose of the study is to illustrate the main topics and stereotypes used in ethnic jokes. In this research, I will show that Romanians and Hungarians joke about similar topics, the most common ones being the “ownership” of Transylvania, rejection of the other, and language distortion but also friendship among Hungarians and Romanians. I also conclude that stereotypes can be attributed to one ethnic group, but there are also shared stereotypes, and some of them can switch from one group to the other depending on the perspective.

Constructing Ethnic Identity in Transylvania through Humour

Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Constructing Ethnic Identity in Transylvania through Humour"}

In this paper, I put forward a comparative/contrastive analysis of ethnic identity on the basis of humorous texts about Romanians and Hungarians living in...

Constructing Ethnic Identity in Transylvania through Humour

Publié en ligne: 24 nov. 2020

Pages: 144 - 163

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2020-0018

Mots clés
ethnicity, humour, identity, stereotypes, Transylvania

© 2020 Noémi Tudor, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Constructing Ethnic Identity in Transylvania through Humour

Publié en ligne: 24 nov. 2020

Pages: 144 - 163

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2020-0018

Mots clésethnicity, humour, identity, stereotypes, Transylvania

© 2020 Noémi Tudor, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Mots clés
ethnicity, humour, identity, stereotypes, Transylvania