'The very same mechanisms that make humor powerful can also be weaponized by anti-democratic forces'
Interview with DELIAH team member Nina Cingerová
In the coming months, we will feature interviews with all the team members of DELIAH, to give you some more insight into who we are, why we research humour and what we think is funny.
This time we head to Slovakia to talk with Nina Cingerová, associate professor in Slavonic languages and literatures at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava.
Could you briefly tell us who you are, where you are from and what you do?
I’m from Slovakia and, except for a few short breaks, I’ve lived my whole life in the capital, Bratislava. I’m a philologist by background – I studied German and Russian language and culture, and later earned a PhD and habilitation in Slavic studies. After my master’s, I spent a few years working at a Slovak daily newspaper in the international news section, focusing mostly on Eastern Europe. I only came back to academia for my PhD seven years later. Now I teach at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University, Slovakia’s oldest university. I give lectures on comparative morphology and syntax, and run seminars on critical media analysis and translation projects. My research interests are similar.
In general, I am intrigued by how language (in the broadest sense) shapes the way we perceive the world around us and, in turn, how – based on articulated classifications and evaluations, or on such an elusive and ambivalent practice as silence – we act within this world. The idea that words and stories carry immense weight in relation to the world we live in is something I also try to pass on to students, as I consider it fundamental.
I am intrigued by how language (in the broadest sense) shapes the way we perceive the world around us.
What’s something that you find funny?
It depends on what we mean by “funny” – whether we are talking about the structure of an utterance or about the lived experience of laughter. Something can be funny according to all the rules, and yet not make me laugh; still, I can really enjoy the sophisticated mechanism of the utterance and the way this “funny” is deeply dependent on social context, it doesn’t exist in some ahistorical vacuum. And I don’t just mean the socially accepted or unaccepted targets of humorous speech, but also the way the utterance “works,” how it is (re)interpreted. As a philologist, this dimension of verbal humor as a complex pragmatic phenomenon is probably what interests me most.
In this regard, I like to return to a joke included in Ján L. Kalina’s cult joke collection, first published in the more relaxed “golden” 1960s in Czechoslovakia. It goes roughly like this: A man visits a zoo for the first time in his life, where he also sees, for the very first time, a giraffe. He spends the whole day staring at it in disbelief, and finally declares: Such an animal does not exist.
In the mid-20th century, people could understood this as a joke targeting a distrustful and stubborn person. After all, if I perceive something with my senses, it exists (the rational norm). Yet the man in the story, despite perceiving this animal – an enormous animal, no less – all day, concludes the exact opposite: an animal with such a long neck simply cannot exist. Today, however, we are (I at least) most likely to read the “giraffe” as a stand-in (pars pro toto) for any empirical fact. The joke functions as a metaphor for a society in which rejecting scientific findings has become the norm.
In this sense, it reveals and diagnoses the nature of that society. The absurdity is no longer artificially “manufactured” in the joke; it is something already present in our world, which the joke merely reflects. And even the image of the “man” that comes to (my) mind when we tell the joke today is very different from what it might have been decades ago. Back then, it was probably a typical “tour participant” (which was a thing in former Czechoslovakia) on a trip organized by a workplace party committee or a farming collective – an, maybe, endearing ordinary man with a kind of rustic, slightly dogmatic mindset. Today, it’s far more likely we picture a conspiracy theorist.
Verbal language gives a message longer functionality, offering greater interpretive flexibility than visual language (I can imagine several different “translations” of this message into the language of drawing). I like that.
As for the lived experience of laughter, I don’t have a favorite joke, but I do have favorite situations. I most enjoy laughing in the company of close ones – friends, family. Above all, I love inside jokes (big fan), where a single word can evoke an entire story, and you can laugh together at something that doesn’t even need to be all spoken aloud.
Humor helps us endure; it keeps us sane when the world seems to go mad.
How did you become involved in the field of humour research?
I came to the topic of humor a few years ago through a joint Slavic studies project, where together with colleagues specializing in different Slavic linguistic and cultural contexts we explored humor in relation to ethical questions. With Irina Dulebová, who is also a member of the Deliah team, we examined discussions on social media about various humorous utterances, focusing on the boundaries of humor –how they were communicated and how they were “set.” For me, it was the first research experience working with this kind of linguistic and cultural material.
What do you think the role is of humour in society, and specifically in relation to democracy?
My early childhood was in socialist Czechoslovakia, where telling jokes about communist society and its establishment functioned as a way of orienting oneself, of recognizing who was “one of us” and who was “other.” Jokes represented a peculiar discourse of truth. For a long time, this led me to see humor as something inherently positive – always a force for democracy, and even mobilization. Today, I am more cautious. Humor can certainly build community and open space for criticism, but it does not automatically create a more inclusive or participatory society.
It’s one thing to “pat ourselves on the back” with parody, to mock politicians, to let off steam within the safety of our own bubble, among like-minded people, which, in addition, carries the risk that, for those outside that bubble, such parody may be perceived less as an invitation to dialogue about the society and more as a display of superiority. It is quite another thing to reveal paradoxes, to make them visible, to call attention to them and to spark discussion, to stimulate others to truly see, and to act. That is a much more challenging task.
I also have in mind: the very same mechanisms that make humor powerful can also be weaponized by anti-democratic forces. For such actors, humor becomes a way to evade responsibility while promoting ideas that run counter to democratic principles. And even totalitarian regimes did not fear jokes as such; what they feared was humor whose parameters they could not control.
The situation in Slovakia today is such that the actions of those holding power are often easiest to read through humorous genres. Unfortunately. The most recent case: an orthopedist – well known as a voice of the disinformation scene – was appointed to investigate the “state’s handling of the pandemic”. Instead of at least addressing the procedures suggested by the name of his position, he began presenting his conclusions about the “genetic” effects of mRNA vaccines and the supposed disruption of Slovakia’s gene pool. Many of his analyses became memes (for example, a comparison of vaccinated people to genetically modified corn). As the saying goes: it would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Sometimes, there’s no real need to mock representatives of those in power – they do a fine job of it themselves. All it takes is to “show” their practices, which many humor producers we follow in our DELIAH research indeed do.
What I want to highlight is that beyond reflecting on the joke itself, it is for us crucial – when considering the social function of humor – to distinguish humor as a tool of emancipation and critique. In this respect, the conditions under which humor is produced and received are essential: who is sending the message, with what intention and expected effect, in what context, and to whom it is addressed.
Humor helps us endure; it keeps us sane when the world seems to go mad. It will not save democracy. What it can do, however, is expose paradoxes, reveal contradictions in political and social practices, and disrupt hierarchies. In this way, I think, humor can contribute to democratic processes – by opening discussion, reaching those who might otherwise look away, and sometimes succeeding where traditional forms of communication fail.
What’s characteristic about the humour in your country?
Humor in Slovakia is quite diverse; it would be difficult to point to one specifically “Slovak” type of humor unique only to this cultural space. On the one hand, there is humor that is vulgar, simple, even crude; on the other hand, there is also a tradition of urban, intellectual, and highly sophisticated humor.
Similar to other countries, jokes often draw on regional stereotypes for example, targeting the so-called Záhoráci (inhabitants of the Záhorie region in Western Slovakia, literally “behind the mountains”) or the Východniari (people from Eastern Slovakia, literally “the Easterners”). Dialects from these regions often provide the source of humor. These jokes function not only as expressions of external stereotyping, but also as forms of self-stereotyping and self-irony.
Long before the rise of stand-up comedy, Slovakia already had the figure of the folk storyteller, who entertained people in a recognizable regional dialect. Jokes targeting the “other” are also often directed at ethnic groups. Historically, frequent targets have included Jews, Hungarians, and Roma. Belonging to one of these groups is often also signaled through specific anthroponyms (for example, Dežo or Gejza for men, Erža or Araňa for women).
A key historical experience that shaped political humor was the period of the communist totalitarian regime, during which humor functioned as a coping mechanism and a discourse of truth. All these layers of humor coexist in Slovakia and contribute to its diversity. The question of which types of humor are more popular, and which targets are considered acceptable, is a separate issue – and one we will also be examining as part of our project.
What do you hope to achieve with your research connected to DELIAH?
In the broadest terms, our goal is to better understand how the mechanisms of humor work when it spreads within large online communities on social media – spaces that in Slovakia also feed into political discourse – and what kinds of reactions it can trigger. We are interested in the structure of these utterances and in what types of humor are able to spark discussion/action; how the topic of conversation shifts during these discussions and what stimulates these shifts; and how the pragmatics of such utterances changes. We are looking at the potential of different kinds of humorous discourse to support democracy and civic participation.