Abstract
The way humorous verbal communication is construed in a linguaculture can be analyzed within the framework of cognitive metaphor theory and its more discursive and cultural developments. Cognitive/conceptual metaphors are instrumental for framing humor as a communicative form which goes beyond mere aesthetic experience. This article focuses on the conceptualization of verbal forms of humor in Romanian. The examples are retrieved mainly from internet mediated communication, backed by corpus analysis, and compared to older literary examples (19th–early 20th century). The examples illustrate the stability of various metaphorical scenarios in the Romanian linguaculture. The analysis reveals that several conventional metaphorical scenarios exist in parallel, displaying what are the functions of humor in an emic perspective. In the case of the Romanian examples, the list comprises the disciplinary, aesthetic, and therapeutic functions. The main metaphorical scenarios are subsumed to (physical) aggression, food, and health domains. The scenarios associated with each domain emphasize a certain function: for example, the disciplinary function of humor relates to physical aggression, while the aesthetic function relates to food. However, the conventional scenarios also show combinations between these functions.
About the author
Mihaela-Viorica Constantinescu is an Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters, Department of Linguistics. Her teaching and research interests include pragmatics, stylistics, rhetoric, argumentation, and Romanian as a foreign language. She has published two authored books: Umorul politic românesc în perioada comunistă. Perspective lingvistice [Romanian political humor in the communist period. Linguistic perspectives], 2012; Principatele române între Orient și Occident: dinamica modelelor culturale ale politeții și impoliteții în secolul al XIX-lea [The Romanian Principalities between the Orient and the Occident: The dynamics of nineteenth century cultural models of politeness and impoliteness], 2016, as well as articles and studies in peer reviewed journals and collective volumes. Co-editor for several volumes, including Romanian humour, Tertium, 2020.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor emerita Liliana Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu (University of Bucharest) for her feedback on various drafts of the article and Irina Breana for checking the “Englishness” of the language. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
References
Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore. 2001. Humorous texts: A semantic and pragmatic analysis. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110887969Search in Google Scholar
Billig, Michael. 2005. Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. London, Thousand Oaks & New Delhi: Sage Publications.10.4135/9781446211779Search in Google Scholar
Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.167Search in Google Scholar
Boxer, Diana & Florencia Cortés-Conde. 1997. From bonding to biting: Conversational joking and identity display. Journal of Pragmatics 27(3). 275–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(96)00031-8.Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1978. Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In Esther N. Goody (ed.), Questions and politeness. Strategies in social interaction, 56–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813085Search in Google Scholar
Burgers, Christian, Kiki Y. Renardel de Lavalette & Gerard J. Steen. 2018. Metaphor, hyperbole, and irony: Uses in isolation and in combination in written discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 127. 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.01.009.Search in Google Scholar
Cameron, Lynne & Alice Deignan. 2006. The emergence of metaphor in discourse. Applied Linguistics 27(4). 671–690. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/aml032.Search in Google Scholar
Chabanne, Jean-Charles. 2003 [1997]. Le réseau lexical de l’humour et du comique. La comédie sociale, Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 11–30. hal-00921930v1 (accessed August 2020).Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2009. Metaphor and political communication. In Andreas Musolff & Jörg Zinken (eds.), Metaphor and discourse, 97–115. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230594647_7Search in Google Scholar
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. 1855. Cicero on oratory and orators; with his letters to Quintus and Brutus, translated or edited by John Selby Watson, London: Bohn.Search in Google Scholar
Clément-Tarantino, Séverine. 2017. Saveurs salées entre mots et mets dans la littérature latine de Plaute à Martial. In Christine Hoët-van-Cauwenberghe, Armelle Masse & Gilles Prilaux (eds.), Sel et société, Tome 1: Techniques, usages, langage, 185–198. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presse Universitaire du Septentrion.10.4000/books.septentrion.17933Search in Google Scholar
Constantinescu, Mihaela-Viorica. 2020. The role of paratext in the humoristic press. In Andra Vasilescu, Mihaela-Viorica Constantinescu, Gabriela Stoica & Jonathan Russell White (eds.), Exploring discourse practices in Romanian, 168–204. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
CoRoLa. Corpus computațional de referință pentru limba română contemporană [Reference computational corpus for present-day Romanian. https://corola.racai.ro/ (accessed 27 August 2023).Search in Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25(3). 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3.Search in Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511975752Search in Google Scholar
Della Casa, Giovanni. 1990 [1558]. Galateo overo de’ costumi, edizione critica a cura di Emanuela Scarpa, Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore. English translation Galateo: Or, a treatise on politeness and delicacy of manners, Baltimore: George Hill, 1811.Search in Google Scholar
Dicționarul limbii române . Academia Română [Academic dictionary of Romanian language]. 2010. București: Editura Academiei Române. [DLR]Search in Google Scholar
Dicționar de sinonime [Dictionary of synonyms]. 2002. Mircea and Luiza Seche. Editura Litera Internațional [DS].Search in Google Scholar
Diccionario de la lengua española. [DLE RAE] https://dle.rae.es.Search in Google Scholar
Dynel, Marta. 2009. Creative metaphor is a birthday cake: Metaphor as the source of humour. metaphorik.de 17. 27–48.Search in Google Scholar
Dynel, Marta. 2012. Humour on the House: Interactional construction of metaphor in film discourse. In Jan Chovanec & Isabel Ermida (eds.), Language and humour in the media, 83–106. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1988 [1905]. Le mot d’esprit et sa relation à l’inconscient, Translated from German by Denis Messier. Paris: Gallimard.Search in Google Scholar
Gaffiot, Felix. 2000 [1934]. Dictionnaire latin-français: Le grand Gaffiot. Paris: Hachette.Search in Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond. 2006. Embodiment and cognitive science. New York: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond & Lynne Cameron. 2008. The social-cognitive dynamics of metaphor performance. Cognitive Systems Research 9(1–2). 64–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2007.06.008.Search in Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W.Jr., Patrawat Samermit & Christopher R. Karzmark. 2018. Humor, irony, and the body. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 16(1). 72–96. https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00004.gib.Search in Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew. 2012. Meaning and humour. Cambridge & New York, etc.: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511791536Search in Google Scholar
Grady, Joseph. 1997. Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphors and primary scenes. Berkeley: University of California Unpublished PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2000. Functions of humor in the conversations of men and women. Journal of Pragmatics 32(6). 709–742. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(99)00069-7.Search in Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2001. The pragmatics of humor support. Humor. International Journal of Humor Research 14(1). 55–82. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.14.1.55.Search in Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2000. Metaphor and emotion. New York: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2006. Language, mind and culture: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2016 [2010]. Girding up the loins: A cognitive semantic analysis of humorous expressions. Tertium Linguistic Journal 1 (1&2). 74–90. Reprint from girding up the loins: A cognitive semantic analysis of humorous expressions. In Anna T. Litovkina, Péter Barta & Margit Daczi (eds.), Linguistic shots at humour, 103–120. Krakow: Tertium.10.7592/Tertium2016.1.2.KovecsesSearch in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 2003 [1980]. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226470993.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Martin, Rod A., Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray & Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the humor styles questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37(1). 48–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0092-6566(02)00534-2.Search in Google Scholar
McGraw, A. Peter & Joel Warner. 2014. The humor code: A global search for what makes things funny. New York: Simon & Schuster.Search in Google Scholar
McGraw, A. Peter & Caleb Warren. 2010. Benign violations make immoral behavior funny. Psychological Science 21. 1141–1149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610376073.Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Michael & William Fry. 2009. The effect of mirthful laughter on the human cardiovascular system. Medical Hypotheses 73. 636–639. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2009.02.044.Search in Google Scholar
Morreall, John. 2009. Comic relief: A comprehensive philosophy of humor. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781444307795Search in Google Scholar
Mulkay, Michael. 1988. On humour: Its nature and its place in society. Cambridge: Polity Press.Search in Google Scholar
Müller, Ralph. 2015. A metaphorical perspective on humour. In Geert Brône, Kurt Feyaerts & Tony Veale (eds.), Cognitive linguistics and humor research, 111–128. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110346343-006Search in Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2006. Metaphor scenarios in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 21(1). 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms2101_2.Search in Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2015. Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3(1). 41–56. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.3.1.02mus.Search in Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. 1993. Conversational joking. Humor in everyday talk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. & Alice Spitz. 2008. Humor as a resource for mitigating conflict in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 40(10). 1661–1686. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2007.12.001.Search in Google Scholar
Priego-Valverde, Béatrice, Brigitte Bigi, Salvatore Attardo, Lucy Pickering & Elisa Gironzetti. 2018. Is smiling during humor so obvious? A cross-cultural comparison of smiling behavior in humorous sequences in American English and French interactions. Intercultural Pragmatics 15(4). 563–591. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2018-0020.Search in Google Scholar
Prodanović Stankić, Diana. 2017. Cultural conceptualizations in humorous discourse in English and Serbian. In Farzad Sharifian (ed.), Advances in cultural linguistics, 29–48. Singapore: Springer Nature.10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_2Search in Google Scholar
Samermit, Patrawat & Raymond W. Gibbs. 2016. Humor, the body, and cognitive linguistics. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 3(1). 32–49. https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.3.1.02sam.Search in Google Scholar
Semino, Elena. 2008. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511816802.015Search in Google Scholar
Semino, Elena, Zsófia Demjén & Jane Demmen. 2016. An integrated approach to metaphor and framing in cognition, discourse, and practice, with an application to metaphors for cancer. Applied Linguistics 2016. 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amw028.Search in Google Scholar
Semino, Elena, Zsófia Demjén, Andrew Hardie, Sheila Payne & Rayson Paul. 2018. Metaphor, cancer and the end of life: A corpus-based study. New York & Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.10.4324/9781315629834Search in Google Scholar
Simpson, Paul & Derek Bousfield. 2017. Humor and stylistic. In Salvatore Attardo (ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and humor, 158–173. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315731162-12Search in Google Scholar
TLFi – Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé . ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine. Available at: http://www.atilf.fr/tlfi.Search in Google Scholar
Treccani – Enciclopedia italiana di scienze. lettere ed arti (Enciclopedia Treccani). Available at: www.treccani.it.Search in Google Scholar
Tsakona, Villy. 2017. Humour research and humour reception: Far away, so close. In Władyslaw Chłopicki & Dorota Brzozowska (eds.), Humorous discourse, 179–201. Boston & Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9781501507106-009Search in Google Scholar
Online sources
Boccaccio, Giovani. Decameron, edition by Vittore Branca. Torino: Einaudi. 1992 (Italian version). English translation by J. M. Rigg, London, 1921. https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowText.php?myID=nov0603&lang=eng (accessed 27 August 2023).Search in Google Scholar
Cicero. De oratore, I. https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/oratore1.shtml (accessed 27 August 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://www.tomtix.ro/evenimente/8751-treapta-a-9-a (accessed 08 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
http://www.adplayers.ro/articol/Media-7/10-cai-de-a-face-fata-persoanelor-care-iti-fac-rau-revine-Cum-sa-eviti-oamenii-toxici-si-ce-ascunde-Hai-ca-doar-glumeam-6212.html (accessed 08 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://jurnalul.ro/stiri/politica/berlin-intepaturi-basescu-schroder-48490.html (accessed 13 April 2019).Search in Google Scholar
https://arhiblog.ro/care-succesul-maxim-glumele-internet/ (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://www.andreearaicu.ro/stiri/premiile-emmy-2019-momente-virale/ (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://www.libertatea.ro/stiri/10-glume-nesarate-de-pe-retelele-de-socializare-cum-sa-privesti-realitatea-cu-umor-761836 (accessed 13 April 2019).Search in Google Scholar
https://playtech.ro/stiri/cum-reactioneaza-fuego-la-glumele-pe-seama-lui-fara-glume-nesarate-si-rautati-ieftine-41299 (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
http://hydepark.ro/justitia-a-legitimat-oamenii-patati-din-fotbalul-romanesc-574/ (accessed 13 April 2019).Search in Google Scholar
https://republica.ro/presedintele-klaus-iohannis-a-iesit-in-fata-palatului-cotroceni-pentru-a-le-oferi-ceai-protestatarilor (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://www.libertatea.ro/sport/steaua-villarreal-reghe-se-tine-de-mistouri-o-sa-incercam-sa-nu-castigam-1612317 (accessed 13 April 2019).Search in Google Scholar
https://www.tolo.ro/2007/12/25/va-ofer-o-carte-de-craciun/ (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
http://www.sfatulmedicului.ro/Educatie-pentru-sanatate/de-ce-este-rasul-cel-mai-bun-medicamenti_8936 (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://doc.ro/relatii-si-familie/rasul-medicament (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
https://ziare.com/viata-sanatoasa/sanatate/rasul-cel-mai-bun-medicament-pentru-inima-723370 (accessed 07 May 2023).Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
