Cooking with Humour: A Study of Belarusian Humorous Folklore about Family Cooking Traditions

Abstract

This paper is a study of Belarusian humorous folklore revolving around cooking. It examines two different types of folklore text: jokes collected on the internet, and humorous anecdotes in family lore about cooking, the latter collected through fieldwork. By comparing the two kinds of humour, the paper investigates to what extent the values and attitudes manifest in my interviews mirror those found in internet jokes. The research shows that while there can be some parallels between the two types of humour, their forms, topics, and functions differ greatly and reflect separate aspects of Belarusian foodlore.

“The Path of the Comedian is Always Going to be a Lonely One”: Comedians’ Mediation Between Family Humour and Public Performance

“…The affect of the family environment can be seen on the level of humour appreciation (Wilson et al 1977) and accounts for the existence of family humour styles (Everts 2003). As I have argued elsewhere (Fiadotava 2018;2020a;2020c), family humour is always tightly connected to the personal experiences of family members, and its performances add new layers to the relationship between the performer and their audience. Family units share many features with other informal groups (for example, groups of friends) when it comes to humorous communication.…”

“…In private settings, much of the humour derives from the personal (shared) experience of joke tellers and their audience (Flamson and Barrett 2008: 264), to the point that it may not be comprehensible to outsiders (Oring 1984). In such settings, the joke target often coincides with the audience; even in the case of more impersonal humorous genres, such as canned jokes, the content may be adapted to fit the context of a particular small group (see for example Fiadotava 2018). In contrast, public humorous communication does not, in most instances, provide this opportunity for personal adaption, although the content of public humour also targets and therefore reflects a particular audience (cf.…”

Sharing humour digitally in family communication

“…Nevertheless, sharing humour within a family may still involve self-censorship, albeit of another kind. Many generic forms of folklore (for example, canned jokes) that circulate within the family are not regarded as impersonal, but are rather adapted to the situation of a particular family and are perceived as potentially referring to family members themselves (for a discussion on this dynamic in cooking jokes, see Fiadotava 2018). Moreover, the oral performance of some of the jokes (and the reaction to them) in family conversations may depend on the interlocutors' mood, health and other temporary factors that are difficult to take into consideration when one is not engaged in face-to-face contact with those with whom they share a joke.…”