THE ‘AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC’ COGNITIVE PATTERN IN THE WAR-TIME UKRAINIAN HUMOROUS DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article analyses the functioning of the war-time Ukrainian Humorous discourse in general and the ‘Availability Heuristic’cognitive pattern, as a variant of the ‘Heuristic analogy’ cognitive pattern in particular.’ The purpose of the research is to determine the role of this cognitive pattern in the creation of the comic effect in the war-time verbal humor in Ukraine. The paper presents the results of the stylistic and cognitive analyses of twelve Ukrainian wartime jokes where the ‘Availability heuristic’ cognitive pattern was manifested. On the one hand, the study determined that the researched war-time Ukrainian humorous discourse has the features of the main humor theories, including the psychological tension relief and the superiority theories, the incongruity and the reframing theories. Besides, the conducted research exposes the fact that this cognitive pattern plays an essential role in selecting stylistic humor mechanisms, while processing the in-coming information and shaping the cognitive frameworks of humor perception and creation. According to this research, the ‘Availability Heuristic’cognitive pattern manifests through such main stylistic figures as paraprosdokian, irony and pastiche in its narrow meaning. It could be accompanied by the ‘Distinct contrast’ cognitive pattern, the ‘Superiority or Illusionary Superiority’ cognitive pattern and the cognitive ‘Easel pattern,’ responsible for the dominance of visual pictures and images. The researched Ukrainian jokes are interwoven with the situational context of the dramatic events within a temporality of the speedy streaming news of the Russian-Ukrainian war.