Эмоциональная реакция аудитории как способ оценки комического и ценностного статусов различных явлений

Abstract

The article examines various emotional reactions of the audience of English-language stand-up comedies both to values and anti-values that are actualized in the text, and to comic statements of a speaker. The purpose of the study is to identify the main emotional reactions of the audience while watching stand-up comedies, classifying these reactions and determining their compatibility. The corpus of the study comprises recordings and scripts of 50 English-language stand-up specials. The study is based on auditory fixation of audience reactions while watching stand-up comedies to comic and non-comic statements. Such emotional reactions of the audience as laughter, applause, emotional approval, and emotional disapproval have been identified and analyzed. Taking into account the degree of laughter intensity, the structural arrangement of comic fragments and their significance, three types of laughter are distinguished: warming-up, main, and follow-up. Applause is found to be the reaction to actualizing values while the corresponding value is either realized during joke creation or is actualized in the corresponding statement. In addition, it has been determined that an emotional approval may only accompany applause. The disapproval of the audience is associated with the actualization of a certain anti-value. It has also been found that an emotional disapproval of some viewers in most cases is accompanied by the laughter of other viewers. Moreover, in certain cases such laughter may be accompanied by applause. The difference in perceiving such jokes is explained by two main factors: 1) different attitudes of viewers towards the corresponding phenomenon; 2) different focus of the audience.