Socio-Semiotic Specificity of the Orthodox Joke and Its Impact on Religious Identity

Abstract

Recently, the genre of Orthodox joke has become especially popular in the Russian Internet virtual space, in social networks that unite people of the Orthodox faith. This genre is at the intersection of philosophical and mythological discourses, basing on discursive research. It combines the features of a biblical parable and a fable. The rational component is a strong feature in the Orthodox joke, which brings it closer to the genres of philosophical treatises, although the anecdote as a more emotional and psychological orientation characterizes a genre. The combination of rational and emotionally expressive semantics forms a special pragmatics of the Orthodox joke, which makes it attractive among young and middle-aged Orthodox educated men. The purpose of the study is to identify the socio-semiotic specifics of the Orthodox joke as a genre that strengthens the modern form of urban rationalized normative-confessional religious identity. In the course of the discursive study of Christian humor, the authors carried out the structural, discursive, conceptual analyzes of the texts of the Orthodox joke. Also, they made in-depth and expert interviews, surveys of Orthodox believers, pilgrims and religious tourists in the traditional centers of the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, the research revealed a pragmatic potential of the Orthodox anecdote, and it determined the comic verbalized in the joke based on the analysis of the morphological structure of the genre.