A Politically Correct Joke: Myth or Reality? (Structural Analysis of a Stand-up Comedy Show)

Abstract

The article describes the results of structural analysis of a stand-up comedy by the famous British comedian Jimmy Karr to show that political correctness has hardly affected humourous discourse. The study is relevant as it contributes to further linguopholosophic, linguocultural and discursive investigations into political correctness that, according to the authors, contradicts the natural tendency of humans to think in binaries. Stressing that the humorous is based on the binary opposition of Self/Other, the authors question the very chance for a successful joke to be poli tically correct. The theoretical part of the article highlights a number of events that at different times contributed to the evolvement and spread of political correctness, considers the model Self/Other in terms of people’s interaction with the world and with regard to its manifestation in humorous discourse. The methods of structural, discourse and content analysis serve to reveal the linguistic means of representing the opposition Self/Other in contemporary humorous discourse and to identify a number of its elements. The results of analysis show that the growing tendency for political correctness has to some extent affected the thematic aspect of the humorous, however, they give ground to hypothesize that human desire for this kind of jokes will gradually reverse the currently increasing tendency.