Masaryk University Brno FacultyofEducation Department of English Language and Literature Contemporary British Humour Bachelor thesis Brno 2007 Supervisor: Written by: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, PhD. Kateřina Matrasová Declaration: I declare that I have written this bachelor thesis myself and used only the sources listed in the enclosed bibliography. I agree with this bachelor thesis being deposited in the Library of the Faculty of Education at the Masaryk University and with its being made available for academic purposes. ................................................ Kateřina Matrasová 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank to Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, PhD. I am grateful for her guidance and professional advice on writing the thesis. 3 Contensts Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………...5 PartOne……………………………………………………………………………………….7 1.Humour …………………………………………………………………………………….7 2.Laughter …………………………………………………………………………………..11 3.Comedy,VerbalHumourandGenres…………………………………………………….14 4.VerbalHumouronTelevisionandRadio……………………...........................................15 5.Britishness……………………………………………………...........................................17 PartTwo……………………………………………………………………………………..22 6.ContemporaryBritishComedians……………………………...........................................22 7.1.SachaCohenandhisalteregos …………………………………………………………22 7.2.AliG…………………………………………………………………………………….23 7.3.Bruno……………………………………………………………………………………25 7.4.Borat …………………………………………………………………………………….27 8.ChristopherMorrisandhiscomedyworks……………………………………………….30 8.1.BrassEye………………………………………………………………………………..31 8.2.TheITCrowds:“Haveyoutriedturningit onandoffagain?”………………………...33 8.3.Jam–visual comedyart………………………………………………………………...34 8.4.Radiowork……………………………………………………………………………...34 PartThree ……………………………………………………………………………………36 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..41 Appendices …………………………………………………………………………………..42 Appendix1…………………………………………………………………………………..43 Appendix2…………………………………………………………………………………..47 Appendix3…………………………………………………………………………………..50 Appendix4…………………………………………………………………………………..56 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………58 Resume………………………………………………………………………………………61 4 Introduction: The secret to humour is surprise. ~Aristotle~ Humour andcomedyhas a huge varietyinform andhas always beenpopular genre among different cultures.Historically,there were manyforms suchas short stories andnovels,forms alsoincludednarrative poems andplays. Comediaerudita and comediadell’arte ,comedyof manners, pantomime are just a narrow examples of huge diversity in form. From variety shows tosketches,from cartoons to sitcoms andfrom double-acts tostandup routines,the rangeofformsitcanembrace is perhapsgreater thananyothergenre (Neal,10). Inaccordance tothe previous statement comedyis,has beenandwill be a popular genre in Britainduetoitstradition. This thesis is dedicated to the contemporary British humour and contemporary British comedians whoare saidtobe controversial.The aim is tointroduce twoBritishcomedians andtheir work. Further,I will attempt toanalyze Britishsocietyfrom various perspectives andtrytostate some thoughts ondefinitions of humour from different angles.Finally,inmy thesis I explain a personal attitude towards British humour and society with respect to personal experienceandIwillstatea pointofviewofEnglishlanguagestudent. Mythesis is divided intothree parts.Inthe first part I tryto state definitions onhumour form psychological, philosophical, social and linguistic point of view. In the first part the term ‘Britishness’will beexplainedaswellasdescriptionofBritishsocietywill beexamined. Inthe secondpart of my thesis I will try to analyze the comic works of contemporaryBritish comedians,namelySacha BaronCohenandChris Morris. I will lookonthe techniques and pointout theepisodes thatareinterestingfortheircontent. The thirdandthe last part of this thesis is dedicatedtopersonal view onhow Britishhumour canbe seenbythe Czechs.This will be representedbymypersonal opinionbasedonpersonal experience withBritish society.I will studyits impact oncharacters,how dowe differ and 5 what we have incommon.The thirdpart is conceivedas a personal opinioninrelationtoan Englishlanguagestudent. The thesis is complementedwitha CD that shows episodes of the IT Crowdseries,Borat, BrunoandAliGcharactersandthe BrassEyeepisodes. 6 Part One: Asenseofhumoursignifiesemotionalmaturity. ~Grotjahn~ Examples andvarious attempts of definitions of humour andlaughter from different points of view will be giveninthis part of the thesis. Assumingthat humour canbe divided into several sections accordingtothe point of view we canthinkof humour inrespect of language and linguistic disciplines,physiognomyandits descriptionandalsowe canconceive humour from social, psychological andphilosophical aspects andtheir definitions.Inthis chapter I shall deal with each aspect. Humour is said to be a complex phenomenon. There is no general theoryof humour or evenanagreeddefinition.AccordingtoAlexander’s bookof Aspects of Verbal Humour inEnglish humour is widelyattestedandintuitivelygraspedaspect of social communication (Alexander 3). Humour is a form of sensus communis , common sense, declares Simon Crichley in his book On Humour . Crichley continues that jokes are the expressionof socialitythat implicit from reasonableness.The essential point inhis statement isthathumourisshared(Critchley79). There are occasions where the ‘sharedknowledge’ is not present. Part of the issue maybe sociocultural, historical and regional details. Nonetheless, sometimes the impossibility of translatinghumorous sketches,puns or anecdotes canbuilda barrier betweenappreciatingthe verbal humour of the other culture. The reason for this can be put downtodifferent value- system(Alexander176). 1. Humour The influence of humour insocial interactions is pivotal.Humour easies difficult situations. Humour also expresses our desire to be playful no matter in what social status we find ourselves.Alsobyhumourwecanexpressour admirationor critique. Humour is analyzed as an emotion which is based on the language. Humour is basicallya verbal activity, especially because it is fundamentally what we mean by “thought.” The language is the most important agent whenpassingonhumorous messages.Words,wordplay 7 andoddwordcombinations evoke the obvious result of humour –the laughter.Laughter is not the only resultingeffect as we will discover.Manyjokes are based onthe fact that there aretwopossibleinterpretationsofthesamegroupofsounds.Tobe morespecificaccordingto linguistics we must bear in mindthe terms suchas homophones.This term refers towords that are pronounced the same but are spelt differently. This fact leads us to ambiguity and confusionin the spokenlanguage whichis often consideredas a joke or as somethingwhich makes us laugh.For example there are three variations of a wordthat soundthe same – for , meaningthe preposition, four ,meaningthe numeral or fore ,adverbial or adjective,meaning the front part of something. Mail is pronounced the same as the word male .More example pairs can be introduced, such as gays – gaze , pair – pare – pear or gorilla – guerrilla (www.bifroest.demon.co.uk). AlsoinspokenEnglishthe ambiguityis causedbythe waythe words are stressed or by their intonation. I will demonstrate this on an example Voltaire’s sentence: ‘It’s not my hand you should kiss.’ Stressingthe words ‘ my hand’ or ‘my hand ’ dramatically changes the meaning(Ross 9f).If we concentrate onthe first variationthe result is that somebody else’s hand should be kissed - not the hand of the speaker. The second variationrefers toother part of the bodythenhandthat shouldbe kissed. Graphology refers to the wayinwhichthe language is representedvisuallyandsome humorous messages are better tounderstandwhenseenrather thanheard.These actions canhappenrandomlywhenwords are not spelt correctly or purposely when re-arranging words. Also acronyms, the words formedfrom initial letters of other words provides,humorous moments.E.g.‘What we need to use is courtesy, respect and patience – CRAP’ ( Brittas Empire ). The word ‘crap’ is an informal expression that can be also pejorative and it has a wide range of meanings: from nonsense to excrement.Therefore as we cansee the primarysense carries positive message butthe resultingworddoescarrydeliberatelythe opposite information. Orthography as a writtenmedium of verbal humour canprovide humorous changes.Letters maybe omitted,added,transportedor substituted from the original.Arguably,since the print began,these kinds of mistakes or misprints must have beenthe source of unintendedhumour. It mayseem that verbal humour andorthography are hugelyfrom two different worlds but the opposite isthetruth.(Alexander21). Morphology refers tothe waythat individual words are formedandalsorefers toits smallest units anddeals withprefixes andsuffixes.‘What’s a babypigcalled? A piglet.Sowhat’s a babytoycalled?Toilet’ (Ross14f).Thesuffix–letformsdiminutiveexpressions butitisused 8 here tocreate funnywordassociation. This example serves the deliberate confusionof the linguistic rules.Syntaxrefers tothe waythat meaningis createdbythe structure of words ina sentence.Therefore the awareness of language structure andclose understandingof language rules is important. We can apply various linguistic rules to deliberately create a funny situationor a joke.Inother words it is a conscious confusionthat creates humorous messages. On the contrary, we need to consider, that foreigners due to the lack of language rules knowledge cancreate unintended jokes.For illustrationtwoexample