Abstract
One of Davies’ significant contributions to the sociology of humor involves the exploration of the relation between jokes and the social order. He particularly argues that jokes seem to work like a “thermometer” conveying truths for the sociopolitical system. In our study, we aim to analyze jokes related to the migration crisis and circulated online since 2014 following Davies’ methodological guidelines. During the past few years, the number of migrants arriving at Greek shores has significantly increased. The prospect of Greece becoming a permanent base for these people has evoked diverse reactions. Migrant jokes seem to be part of Greek majority’s response to the migration ‘threat’ against national sovereignty and linguocultural homogeneity. They (re)produce and perpetuate xenophobia and racism by portraying migrants as ‘dangerous invaders’ in the Greek territory and as ‘culturally inferior’ people. Hence, such jokes align with dominant values and standpoints circulating in the Greek public sphere via underscoring the inequality between the Greek majority and migrants and via naturalizing the latter’s assimilation to majority norms and values.
About the authors
Αrgiris Archakis is Professor of Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics in the Department of Philology at the University of Patras in Greece, where he has been working since 1997. He has carried out research and published extensively on the analysis of various discourse genres, such as youth conversational narratives, classroom discourse, parliamentary discourse, and media discourse as well as on (adult) students’ literacy. He is co-author (with Villy Tsakona) of the book The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Villy Tsakona is Assistant Professor of Social and Educational Approaches to Language at the Department of Early Childhood Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She has published articles on humor research, political and media discourse analysis. She has co-authored The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education with Argiris Archakis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and co-edited The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor in Everyday Encounters with Jan Chovanec (John Benjamins, 2018). Personal webpage: http://www.concept-pl.us/villy.tsakona
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