Review article
https://doi.org/10.17234/Croatica.42.23
Croatian Jokes About Bosnians
Ivan Marković
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Jokes about stupidity are the most common, most widespread and most long-lasting kind of jokes apart from sexual jokes (Davies 1998). They delineate the otherwise ambiguous boundaries of joke-tellersʼ society and pin the stupidity or some other undesirable human quality on a particular ethnic group (Davies 1990). The geographical, social, cultural, religious and linguistic characteristics of the target groups of such jokes can be clearly established (cf. Davies 1982; 1990; 1998). They are ambiguous, not entirely “strange” nor entirely “ours”. This was indicated by H. Bergson and S. Freud 100 years ago, and elaborated in the works of Ch. Davies. In the paper it is shown that Bosnians and especially Bosniaks, i.e. Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina, are the ideal candidates for Croatian jokes about stupidity – they occupy the periphery of the Croatian ethnic territory, speak the same language with some distinctive traits, their religion is different, often they migrate to Croatian cities and have manual or blue-collar jobs.
Keywords
joke; joke-teller; target; butt of the joke; stupidity; Croats; Bosnians; Bosniaks; Muslims
Hrčak ID:
206769
URI
Publication date:
30.10.2018.
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