Diglossia as an Agent of Humor in the Writings of Elena Akrita

Abstract

Diglossia, the existence of two language varieties within the same language community, can be used for humorous effect under certain conditions. Although linguistic approaches to humor are not widely available or formalized, it is possible to use a number of key concepts such as scripts, incongruity , and surprise , in relation to such sociolinguistic concepts as high and low varieties of language, in an attempt to explain why texts are funny. The work of Elena Akrita, a member of the new generation of Greek humorists, provides numerous instances of texts that are based on what I will call diglossic humor . Should one wish to poke fun at a once-revered language variety, that variety must have been "vilified" and thereby have lost its status. This is indeed the case with katharévusa, as Akrita's humor shows.

A Cognitive Approach to Literary Humour Devices: Translating Raymond Chandler

“…Unfortunately, there is very little humour research based on Greek data, so a discussion of the contents of the relevant repertoire is obviously premature. 22 I can only mention Canakis (1994), who provides evidence for the importance for humour creation of register clashes involving older forms of the language (i.e. Katharevousa forms clashing with Koine Modern Greek) and Georgakopoulou (2000), who shows the importance of sociolect choices in comic Greek movies (as already discussed).…”

Metapragmatic stereotypes and humour: interpreting and perceiving linguistic homogeneity in mass culture texts

“…Stylistic humour has attracted the attention of Greek sociolinguists who investigate the phenomenon in mass culture texts, such as newspaper humour columns (Canakis 1994), internet memes (Piata 2019), film comedies (Georgakopoulou 2000), humorous short stories (Tsakona 2004), TV comedies (Stamou 2011) and children's books (Stamou 2012b). However, all these studies concentrate on creators' metapragmatic stereotypes, and not on the metapragmatic stereotypes guiding the audience's perception of these texts.…”

Translating Aristophanes’ humour for the Modern Greek stage: The Acharnians at the National Theatre of Greece (1961–2005) and the State Theatre of Northern Greece (1991–2010)

“…It was officially abolished in 1976. Greek humour often rests on register exploitation (Antonopoulou 2002(Antonopoulou , 2004bCanakis 1994;Tsakona 2004: 189-200) and particularly the use of katharevousa in ordinary, and, consequently, in inappropriate situations. Such a use results in incongruity realized as incompatibility between language and context.…”