AN ESSAY
IN LINGUISTIC THEORIES OF HUMOUR
By: Marta Georgieva, 4rd grade, BL+EL, № 41678
Veliko Turnovo
Introduction
Jokes are part of our everyday life. We tell them/ listen to them/ or read them in our desire for achieving laughter. Graeme Richie states that “by joke we mean a relatively short text, which for a given cultural group, is recognizable as having, as its primary purpose, the production of an amused reaction in its reader/hearer, and which is typically repeatable in wide range of context”(Richie 2004: 15). There are various kinds of jokes. However, most of the jokes refer to minority groups, social stereotypes, cultural beliefs and taboos. This paper deals with the blonde stereotype and more specifically with analysis of jokes, which exist on the bases of this stereotype. I collected my corpus of jokes from several web sites - http://www.humorsphere.com/, http://www.coolblondejokes.com/ , http://www.funnyjokesbook.com/ and http://www.comedy-zone.net/. Each one of these jokes expresses the most common quality, which is associated with blonde women - stupidity. This is achieved in different ways (by using question/answer jokes or by making comparison between blondes and brunettes), but the result is always the same – mocking at the intelligence of blonde girls and women.
The Blonde stereotype
The blonde stereotype has two aspects: historical on the one hand, and contemporary on the other. Historically, blonde-haired women were considered to be more attractive and more desirable than brunettes or redheads. In the beginning of the 20th century things changed. The blonde color of the hair started to be perceived as an indicator for lack of intelligence. This change in the stereotype is mostly connected with Anita Loos`s novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which is later turned into a Broadway musical and has a film version also. The change of the blonde stereotype caused the creation of jokes about...