SEYYEDEH FAHIMEH PARSAIYAN
Abstract
In recent years, production and dissemination of jokes related to tragic and non-tragic events have turned into a social phenomenon. The reasons for the production, the nature, contents, functions, and repercussions of such a discourse definitely need in-depth sociological and anthropological analysis ...
Read More
In recent years, production and dissemination of jokes related to tragic and non-tragic events have turned into a social phenomenon. The reasons for the production, the nature, contents, functions, and repercussions of such a discourse definitely need in-depth sociological and anthropological analysis and scrutiny; among others. Focusing on a recent catastrophe, the present study aims at analyzing jokes related to April 2019 widespread flash flooding in Iran. The corpus consisted of 100 jokes collected from social networking sites. Through adopting qualitative thematic analysis, the jokes’ contents were coded and then categorized. The findings reveal that the flooding resulted in production of jokes with political-critical, religious, gendered, and neutral themes. In other words, a large number of jokes were not neutral and based on the Iranians’ lived experiences and backgrounds contained socio-political and ideological meanings. Keywords: Disaster jokes, Flash flooding, Social networking sites, Qualitative thematic analysis, Political-critical jokes, Religious jokes, Gendered jokes, Neutral jokes.
