‘Are we laughing at the same?’ : A contrastive analysis of Covid-related memes in Czech, Chinese and Spanish

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14210%2F23%3A00130047" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14210/23:00130047 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/720" target="_blank" >https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/720</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2023.11.1.720" target="_blank" >10.7592/EJHR.2023.11.1.720</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

‘Are we laughing at the same?’ : A contrastive analysis of Covid-related memes in Czech, Chinese and Spanish

Original language description

Humour is often employed as a coping mechanism, with therapeutic effects on those producing and receiving it (Christopher 2015; Samson &amp; Gross 2012). This buffering effect of humour might explain why, at the time of an international pandemic like Covid-19, human beings, independently of their cultural origin, have resorted to humour as a means of alleviating uncertainty and fear, and of enhancing feelings of connection and bonding with others. The proliferation of Covid-related humour has also led to a wide range of studies, with special attention to memes. However, contrastive studies are more limited, especially those comparing very different languages and cultural realities such as the Chinese, the Czech and the Spanish ones. This paper aims to redress this imbalance by analysing a corpus of 300 Covid-memes (100 memes per language). More specifically, we intend to answer the following questions: (i) what dimension(s) of humour are predominant in each language? (ii) what actors do the memes in the three countries target? and (iii) to what extent can these preferences relate to cultural differences/similarities? Applying a mixed-method approach, results show that there seems to be a global preference for affiliative humour while aggressive (and self-deprecating) humour appears to be more culturally bound, with a higher frequency in the Czech and Spanish datasets in contrast to the Chinese one. Likewise, the Czech and Spanish dataset share a significantly higher number of common frames, which might be pointing to a more European, Western type of humour in comparison to the Chinese approach (Jiang et al. 2019).

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_SC - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60203 - Linguistics

Project

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Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

European Journal of Humour Research

ISSN

2307-700X

e-ISSN

2307-700X

Volume of the periodical

11

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

PL - POLAND

Number of pages

25

Pages from-to

143-167

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85152299196