Appreciation of humor in Hungarian anti-proverbs

Boronkai, Dóra and Litovkina, Anna T. (2007) Appreciation of humor in Hungarian anti-proverbs. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 52 (1). pp. 105-134. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

In this study we analyze the results of a sociolinguistic survey conducted in Hungary in 2005–2006. The main purpose of this study was to employ the methods of correlational and quantitative sociolinguistics to assess how age, sex and education influence appreciation of humor in anti-proverbs (also known as alterations, parodies, transformations, variations, wisecracks). Each participant in the survey received a list consisting of 41 Hungarian anti-proverbs. The task of respondents was to read the antiproverbs and indicate their rate of funniness on a scale of 0 to 10.This paper focuses on three major questions. First, how do sex, age and education influence the overall scores of evaluation of funniness? The second goal was to consider differences in humor evaluation by sex, age and education with respect to some thematic categories treated in the anti-proverbs, including sexuality, obscenity, men, women, and modern technology. Our third aim was to establish the lists of the anti-proverbs which got the highest and lowest scores of funniness from the subjects as a group, as well as from respondents representing different subgroups: those who belonged to different age cohorts, genders, and those with different levels of education. We began our research with seven hypotheses generated by previous humor studies; the results of our study confirmed five of the hypotheses and disconfirmed one; the remaining hypothesis was neither confirmed nor disconfirmed.

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