COVID-19 Pandemic in German Humor

Abstract

Verbal means of reflecting the situation of the coronavirus pandemic through the prism of German humor are considered. The relevance of the study is due to the interest of modern language science in the study of discourses as a kind of markers of linguistic consciousness and speech behavior. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that German humorous texts about the pandemic have not yet become the subject of a special scientific study. The purpose of the study is to describe and interpret the motives, reactions, assessments that represent the main areas of life that have changed during the pandemic. It is shown that the pandemic appears in jokes as a discursive space that predetermines and models a jokingly ironic assessment of the current situation: forced self-isolation served as a pretext for an ironic rethinking of marital, parent-child relationships, a public negative assessment of distance education is given, the state of some members of the society is comprehended as a mental illness. The representation of reality is constructed not without the influence of ethno-cultural factors and stereotypes: the German is comprehended and evaluated within the framework of the “own — different — alien” modus. The study can be continued as part of an interlingual description of humor during the coronavirus pandemic in order to study the linguocognitive, linguocultural aspects of language activity.