Using Wordplay to Create Humor in Estonian, Hungarian and Belarusian COVID-19 Memes

Objective: the paper proposes the methodological use of memes as a shortcut to explore consumer culture. Memes as cultural texts can reveal collective circulating ideologies that may not be accessed through regular interviews. Context: memes are cultural texts that convey easy-to-understand messages, gaining strength within social networks. Cultural texts playfully present the social context and beliefs of societies. We analyzed circulating memes during the COVID-19 pandemic about elderly consumers in Brazil to outline a methodological protocol. Method: we analyzed memes adopting the discourse model to conduct qualitative research of memes as a shortcut to cultural discourses. We collected memes during March and May 2020 using social media networks. They were classified following thematic analysis. Result: the proposal is a methodological procedure for analyzing memes as a cultural text. The process starts with the outline of a data collection protocol, followed by data analysis guidelines, illustrated by the context of elderly consumers. Conclusion: the analysis of memes as cultural texts contributed to understanding of consumer behavior through current cultural content, revealing contrasting ideologies that emerge from consumers, as covert value-systems, circulating alongside institutional mass-mediated ideologies.

This study investigates the use of humorous memes in times of mourning from a contrastive English-Spanish perspective. The study of the discourse of death and grief is receiving increasing attention mainly due to the changes brought about by the migration of mourning practices to the internet. Previous research has revealed that mourning personal losses or those of public figures is not exempt from including negative evaluations of the deceased or the circumstances surrounding them. Despite the identification of ideological discourses around death, to our knowledge, no attention has been paid to the use of humour in times of mourning, especially from a contrastive perspective. The present study aims to begin to fill this gap through the analysis of humorous memes published following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. We pose a distinction between two uses of humour in times of mourning, laughing while mourning and laughing at mourning, and argue that humorous memes in our study fall within the second category. Two corpora of humorous memes in Spanish (n = 60) and English (n = 67) were compiled and analysed using a mixed methods approach within a pragmatics perspective. The contrastive analysis identified (i) the underlying ideologies in terms of intentions and attitudes, (ii) the expectations of mutuality of information, (iii) the humorous strategies devised, (iv) and the elements characteristic of the discourse of mourning. Findings show that online posters were not actually in mourning, and that they combined the discourses of mourning, humour, and criticism with different intentions within and across the two languages under scrutiny. Our study suggests changes in mourning etiquette in the public sphere and concludes that laughing at mourning was the type of humour in times of mourning that prevailed in our data.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the distinct effects of aggressive and constructive humor on perceptions of Machiavellianism, relationship quality and willingness-to-switch (WTS).Design/methodology/approachThe empirical analysis includes a first replication study with 138 business-to-business buyers and a second study with 175 business-to-business buyers that aims to test the theoretical model. The Process macro is used to test the study’s hypotheses.FindingsResults indicate that aggressive and constructive humor types have distinct effects on relationship quality and subsequent buyers’ WTS. Specifically, and contrary to constructive humor, aggressive humor from sellers increases buyers’ perceptions of Machiavellianism, which reveals detrimental to relationship quality and subsequently increases buyers’ WTS.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the results about the effects of humor on relationship quality were obtained from actual buyers and consistent across the two studies, they were obtained from two cross-sectional designs, which limits the causality of the effects being observed.Practical implicationsSellers may benefit from getting deep understanding of how usage humor may impact their relationship with buyers. In particular, this research makes clear for sellers that as long as the type of humor that they use when dealing with a buyer is constructive, no negative outcome might emerge. However, if the humor is aggressive, then the stereotype of Machiavellianism might emerge, leading to lower relationship quality and an increase in WTS from the buyer.Originality/valueWhile research on humor as a communication technique for sellers has increased lately, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this research is the first to examine the effects of the distinct types of aggressive and constructive humor and to provide empirical evidence for the different effects of these two types of humor. This research also contributes to the literature on stereotypes associated with sellers, by presenting insights into how the negative stereotype of Machiavellianism is prompted by the use of aggressive humor.

Digital humor expressed through memes plays a vital role in facilitating social interaction in online environments. This paper reports on age and gender-related differences in multimodal digital meme humor from users aged 14 to 93. Its aim is to investigate how visual and textual elements, psychological humor types and digital humor types vary among smartphone users of different age and gender groups. The multimodal corpus was compiled from memes that were shared by 250 BA English and senior citizen students at a German university and their relatives and friends. The memes were annotated with the Covid-19 topic (e.g. lockdown, mask requirement, vaccination) and the sources of visual origin (e.g. cartoon characters, animals, politicians). Also, a previously non-multimodal psychological humor framework (Martin, Rod A., Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray & Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37(1) 48–75) was applied to the memes. To determine the linguistic multimodal digital humor types, Vásquez, C. 2019. Language, creativity and humour online. London). Terminology was employed for annotation. The statistical analysis reveals only slight gender differences concerning all variables. Significant differences were found concerning both multimodal humor frameworks, language usage, canvas and humor themes across all age groups. The interconnectedness of the codes is captured in a qualitative analysis of select memes to underscore the semiotic dynamics of multimodal humor.

This paper aims at showing how both classic political cartoons and memes are used by Romanian satirists to point out the social and political shortcomings within the Romanian society. This type of humour is equally used by satirists, along with satirical texts, to criticize politicians’ lack of responsibility, but also the lack of activism of their readers. This analysis of both classic cartoons and memes in three Romanian satirical news websites (timesnewroman.ro, academiacatavencu.ro and catavencii.ro) will be made following the six humour knowledge resources (Attardo 2001). This way, I will be able to show how humour gets created differently in political cartoons and memes, even though their final purpose is the same: criticize and make people laugh. I will be discussing about their differences in terms of their construction, the decontextualization and recontextualization process, the incongruity-resolution and nonsense humour and the use of texts, to maximize images’ message, in balloons, captions or titles.

This research analyzes the communication process of humorous memes in the most vibrant online phenomenon, Facebook. Through quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 1,000 memes shared on a Facebook page, this research tests the effect of various styles and types of humour on the virality of memes. Self-defeating is the most effective style of humour although it is not the most frequently used. By applying the typology used in the context of broadcast and print media, this study shows that although sarcasm and silliness are the two most prevalent types of humour used in Internet memes, no obvious differences can be observed in the effects of seven types of humour—comparison, personification, exaggeration, pun, sarcasm, silliness and surprise—on virality. Nevertheless, the authors develop the framework for humorous memes in social media communications by combining established communication models with the concepts and theories of humour and virality. The findings of this research may benefit practitioners who are involved in humour communications on social media. The framework and insights on the styles and types of humour in social media memes may also be helpful for researchers aiming to further explore the relevant topics.

Functional Anatomy of Humor: Positive Affect and Chronic Mental Illness

For sellers, the efficacy of humor to create trusty relationships and achieve performance with buyers remains unknown. Specifically, the question of if – and when – sellers should use humor still deserves examination. To answer this question, this research builds on the four phases that characterize long-term relationships (exploration, buildup, maturity, and decline) to argue that humor might be inefficient when used in the exploration phase. Two studies conducted among buyers ( n = 322) then reveal that although constructive humor has overall positive effects on the performance of the sellers through a mediating effect of trust, this effect is not observed during the exploration phase. The other type of humor – offensive humor – has a negative effect regardless of the phase in which it is used. Taken together, these results first indicate that sellers may gain from using humor only if the relationship with their buyers is not at the exploration phase since this particular phase is the only one when a negative effect of humor on trust and subsequent performance is observed. Furthermore, these results indicate that offensive should be avoided in all the relationship phases.

PurposeThe idea of using positive humor as a managerial tool is gaining traction in both academia and organizations. The purpose of this paper is to test whether supervisors' use of positive humor in organizations in different perceived cultures (hierarchical, clan, market and adhocracy) influences employees' in-role and extra role performance.Design/methodology/approachThe sample includes 317 clinical and non-clinical employees in public hospitals in Palermo, Italy. Hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling.FindingsResults indicate that supervisor positive humor has a direct relationship with employee in-role and extra-role performance. Also, supervisor positive humor has a moderating impact on the relationship between organizational culture and in-role and extra-role performance. Moderating effect of supervisor humor have a greater impact on extra-role performance towards individuals or organizational citizenship behavior toward individuals (OCBI).Research limitations/implicationsThe first limitation is that this study examines only positive or adaptive kinds of leader humor; negative or maladaptive humor is not included. A further limitation is the role of social (national) organizational culture in our construct. It is claimed that, specific components of national organizational culture are more significant compared with others and that some national organizational cultures are more vital to performance in one part of the organization compared to others (Nazarian et al., 2017). Hofstede's original four dimensions of national culture: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity/femininity could be analyzed separately to investigate the role of each variable on the study’s construct.Practical implicationsAs Romero and Cruthirds (2006) mentioned, organizations can establish “humor-training seminars” to make the supervisor and team members aware of the benefits of humor in the workplace. For instance, subjects such as appropriate types of humor, gender and ethical differences in appreciating the humor, and matching the humor style with the specific organizational outcome can be discussed. To understand and apply appropriate organizational culture in public organizations, it is beneficial to know which types of culture encourage employee in-role/extra-role performance. This study compared the consequences of the specific dominant culture in relation to the objective of the organization. However, one solution does not fit all. Sometimes managers inevitably follow trends in their industries without noticing other variables (Mason, 2007).Social implicationsAs Romero and Cruthirds (2006) mentioned, organizations can establish “humor-training seminars” to make the supervisor and team members aware of the benefits of humor in the workplace. For instance, subjects such as appropriate types of humor, gender and ethical differences in appreciating the humor, and matching the humor style with the specific organizational outcome can be discussed.Originality/valueThis paper provides evidence to suggest that supervisor humor results in greater employee in-role and extra-role performance.

This article suggests a new framework for the analysis of humor's communication effects, a model that accounts for differences in humor type, message type, and humor-message interaction. Specifically, it describes three humor processes and the five humor types that result from combining them. Next, by crossing humor types and message types, it develops a taxonomy of humorous message forms. This Humorous Message Taxonomy provides a conceptual, experimental, and managerial framework for analyzing humor's communication effects. The Humorous Message Taxonomy is used to compare a sample of humorous television commercials to those message types used in prior humor appeals research. Apparently the humorous message types that have been most frequently researched differ considerably from those that are normally aired on television. The two final sections recommend a program for the study of humor effects and offer guidelines for operationalizing and manipulating humor in subsequent research.

This essay situates the academic enquiry into the ‘popular’ idea of the nation within the shifting disciplinary contours of English in India. Using the iconic Bharatbala music video ‘Vande Mataram’ (1998) as a case study, it demonstrates how methods of analysis derived from literary studies may be used to engage with the mediated nature of contemporary culture; the classroom experience of ‘reading’ together a popular cultural text reflects as well as instantiates the expansion of ‘English’ at the level of both content and form. The collaborative pedagogic exercise of decoding the ‘signs’ that constitute the audio-visual text through familiar literary terms such as imagery, symbolism, setting and character reveals how the cultural discourse of nationalism – in terms of its historical legacy as well as its current political resonance – can be ‘read’ contextually using disciplinary methods of ‘English’. I argue that the ‘literary’ can no longer be defined only in terms of the nature of the text one brings into the classroom – it is a mode of analysis that can be extended to examining cultural texts in other media formats too, especially if the enterprise of ‘doing’ English in a formal, academic set-up is to be anything more than a reiteration of the value of Anglo-American canonical literature. If the English canon has traditionally been a means of teaching students how to ask fundamental questions about cultural representation, the same aim is now achieved also through the use of texts from other, more familiar and local contexts and media.

This paper reconsiders J.M. Coetzee’s self-reflexive return, in Youth (2002), to his own ephebic preoccupation with metropolitan forms of poetic modernism. Coetzee’s decision to refer to two instances of his own poetic juvenilia in Youth raises pertinent questions about the relationship between his sustained investment in metropolitan forms of modernist production on the one hand, and a little remarked upon, peculiarly South African, poetic and political archive on the other. By reading Youth in relation to this archive, I hope to retrieve and to rehabilitate potentially significant, yet frequently overlooked, local literary contexts informing Coetzee’s longstanding preoccupation with metropolitan forms of modernism. In this way, Youth is reframed as a text that speaks directly to Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker’s interest in ‘the intimate connections’ –and, indeed, disconnections – ‘between cultural texts and geographical location’ that has informed recent interest in the global, rather than narrowly metropolitan, scale of modernist production. Beyond this, I argue that Coetzee's manipulation of his own poetic archive is designed to align his work with – or to relocate it within – specifically metropolitan versions of modernism. This is not to suggest that any divestment on Coetzee's part from local forms of poetic production. Rather, I suggest that Youth works in tandem with Coetzee's poetic archive to disturb the idea that metropolitan forms of modernist style and praxis are discontinuous from or alien to post-colonial literary imaginaries. Reading Youth in relation to its archival sources, in other words, illuminates the specifically local contexts informing Coetzee's preoccupation with metropolitan forms of literary modernism.

Due to its geographic position and historical circumstances, Croatia is a country of deep regional differences. In this paper I try to remind the reader, on the one hand, of the inevitability of the regional perspective in approaching certain periods and, on the other hand, to find the answer to why regionalism can appear as an unpleasant methodology (and a fact?). I will refer to the terms related to regional narrative: geopoetics, regiopoetics, locality, glocality, homeland, boundaries, and so on, as well as the interrelationship of regional discourse with a discourse of memory and identity. The new regionalism (seems to me ‒ insufficiently present in Croatian literary research) as a part of cultural geography and cultural-anthropological research in cultural texts, explores the record of spatial experience and representation of space (region), as well as traces of action in the opposite direction: how a text of literature/culture influences the local context.

Starting from the premise that internet memes are units carrying cultural information and the fact that they are usually ideological as well as intertextual in nature, the paper provides an analysis of a corpus of memes featuring General Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, the Chair of the National Crisis Management Staff during the first wave of COVID-19.The memes were circulated in social media, mostly Facebook, between 13 March and 30 May, 2020.In order to analyze the general ideas that users in Bulgaria saw as humorous in the presentation of the new crisis and to find the underlying ideology and the intertextual references employed to that end, the paper resorts to Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) as well as CDA, the former being preferred when analysis of verbal and non-verbal means of expression is required, while the latter is used in matters that touch on ideology and the way it is related to a particular social reality.Some of the main conclusions reached are that the image of General Mutafchiyski is presented through various intertextual references to events, artists (both Bulgarian and international), fairy tales, movies, even aliens, for the sake of providing a general idea of his position in the fight against COVID-19.Despite the humorous effect, the image of the general is predominantly positive and shows the respect of the authors behind the memes circulating in social media at the time.

This study investigates the sociological impact and linguistic characteristics of Pakistani and Indian memes, focusing on their occurrence on social media sites, and explores how these digital expressions influence cultural stories and public opinions. Employing content analysis, a diverse collection of memes were analyzed to identify themes, linguistic elements, and cultural references attached to the memes under study. Besides, the study seeks to uncover the distinctions between memes in Pakistan and India, their appeal to viewers, and their impact on and representation of social norms, political opinions, and cultural heritage. The study focuses on comprehending the language, humor, and visual elements used to effectively convey messages from memes in different countries. The research embraces cultural essence and offers a thorough examination of how memes influence public opinion and cultural narratives in Pakistan and India. The finding reveals that memes have evolved as powerful tools for social interaction, self-expression, and cultural commentary in digital networks. Study highlights the importance of memes in modern discourse and emphasizes to understand the symbolic meaning of memes for deeper knowledge in their sociological and dialectal aspects.