Suchergebnisse

Reviews 3 books on political theory by Hayden White: Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, Baltimore, 1973; Topics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticsm, Baltimore, 1978; and The Contest of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore, 1987. (Abstract amended)

The aim of this paper is to describe how Catalan humor works in the context of political TV satire, where everyday references mutate in order to show hidden meanings and parallel purposes. Using mainly pragmatic and discourse analysis as tools, we will try to decipher conversational exchanges that create hilarity and promote political critique. Tokens of linguistic (or verbal) humor as well as referential (or situational) humor will be analyzed, trying to show the range of their social and political implications. Our major tenet is that political satire operates as a two-sided process: on one side, it promotes communication within a specific social network, on the other, it affords criticism and self-criticism to emerge, which serve also as a useful evaluation of everyday public themes.