Narrating Personal Experience and Stereotypes: Discursive Functions of Russian Anekdots

Kashkin, Viacheslav B.; Shilikhina, Ksenia

doi:10.1080/19409419.2009.10756754

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Daily events and struggles are often compared to anekdots, as a speaker might say, “you know, it’s just like in that joke …,” and then compare his or her actions with an anecdotal situation. In doing so, the narrative reflects the speaker’s identity and marks his or her belonging to a particular discursive community (Kashkin and Shilkhina 2009, 257–58).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All anekdots, including those about ethnic, national, or gendered others, were considered to be ''anti-Soviet'' and could be punished under Soviet law during the early years of the USSR (Shmeleva and Shmelev 2002, 294). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, telling anekdots became less dangerous and they transformed into a widely popular mass genre, particularly because of their anti-Soviet sentiment (Dementyev 2009) and how they spoke truth to lived experiences (Kashkin and Shilikhina 2009). Despite their popularity, anekdots were never told in public.…”

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Multiple Masculinities

Smirnova

2016

Men and Masculinities

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This article explores expressions of Russian masculinity in the Russian anekdot-a short humorous (and at times politically subversive) narrative that was highly popular during the late-Soviet era. Although anekdots challenged the legitimacy of Soviet power and highlighted inconsistences between propaganda and reality, they utilize and therefore reinforce categories and concepts of the very social system they contest. In conducting a paired content and discourse analysis of 1,290 Soviet-era Russian anekdots, this article demonstrates how this genre both (1) reveals a crisis in Soviet-era Russian masculinity and (2) contributes to a hierarchy of cultural citizenship established through the definition of particular racial, national, and gendered groups as ''other.'' In doing so, the focus is not only on the objects of the jokes, individuals or groups that are scrutinized and ridiculed, but also on the subjects of the joke and the joke tellers themselves. This project demonstrates how Russian men are distinguished from Russian women as well as ethnic and national others through discourses of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

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Multiple Masculinities

Smirnova

2016

Men and Masculinities

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“…Though today Russian canned jokes function mostly as an urban genre of jokelore, folklorists claim that their roots go back to the traditional ludic culture (Sheygal-Plachek 2009). As short narratives, canned jokes reconstruct our experience of interacting with various social groups and dealing with typical situations (Kashkin & Shilikhina 2009). In everyday conversations, we tell jokes about obscure people as well as about celebrities.…”

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Canned jokes in Russian public political discourse

Shilikhina

2013

EJHR

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The paper addresses a well-documented genre of Russian canned jokes from a sociopragmatic perspective. The goal of the paper is twofold: firstly, it aims at examining a relatively new phenomenon of telling jokes in public political discourse. Secondly, it argues that jokesa typical example of a non-bona fide genrecan nevertheless be used to convey bona fide messages. As a specific sphere of communication public political discourse incorporates official interaction of professional politicians as well as publicly expressed attitudes of ordinary people. Because jokes capture our experience and reflect ongoing social processes, modern Russian political discourse in many of its forms eagerly employs the genre. But, whenever a joke is used in the official political communication, we face the discrepancy between the premise of the bona fide mode of political discourse and non-seriousness of jokes. On the surface telling jokes in political discourse might seem to be a temporal switch from the bona fide to the non-bona fide mode of communication. However, the content of canned jokes told by politicians reveals deep social implications: for instance, Vladimir Putin's frequent references to Soviet realia are signs of superiority and control over the situation. Jokes told by Putin's opponents, on the one hand, reveal disappointment; on the other, they are part of the struggle for power. Telling jokes in public political discourse shows that the borderline between two modes of communicationbona fide and non-bona fideis fuzzy since jokes transmit serious messages for the participants of political communication.Keywords: canned jokes, public discourse, political discourse, bona fide mode of communication, non-bona fide mode of communication. Canned jokes as a genre of non-bona fide communicationThe urge to tell jokes seems to be deeply implanted in humans. To most people jokes are funny stories told with the purpose of entertainment; to humour researchers they are tokens of the genre that captures basic stereotypes of our social behavior: important social practices and relations regularly become the targets of jokes. According to Ritchie (2012: 34), jokes have

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Crisis Management and Communication Research in Russia

Samoilenko¹

2016

The Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research

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Narrating Personal Experience and Stereotypes: Discursive Functions of Russian Anekdots

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

Multiple Masculinities

Multiple Masculinities

Canned jokes in Russian public political discourse

Crisis Management and Communication Research in Russia

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