Socio-professional advertising humor at the on-line English language lessons during the war

Abstract

This article addresses the question about the appropriateness of including humorous materials in the English-language courses within the educational programs of students specializing in journalism, advertising and editorial work. It presents a stylistic, cognitive and pragmatic analysis of a sample of Englishlanguage jokes about advertising and its variants. An analysis of the forms of 115 jokes sourced from four English-language websites shows that the most frequent forms of jokes about advertising are question/answer formats (60.8%), one-liner jokes (39.2%). A detailed study of 20 advertising-related jokes highlights the most frequent use of stylistic devices such as puns, fake enthusiasm, paraprosdokian, pastiche, bathos and irony. Other techniques include personified and zoomorphic metaphors, nonstandard similes, false argumentation (enthymeme), antithesis, are involved. From a cognitive perspective, the jokes leverage mechanisms like the von Restorff pattern, distinct contrast and easel patterns. Pragmatically, these jokes serve multiple purposes: they help students to relieve psychological stress, encourage creative and critical thinking, entertain in spite of war realities, introduce students to English-speaking advertising practices and vocabulary, foster an appreciation of humor and irony. Besides, they motivate students to be successful and confident, while shaping stereotypical images of Englishspeaking advertising professionals. The integration of English-language humorous advertising texts in English language learning programs proves beneficial. Such practice improves the professional vocabulary of students, equips them with cognitive, stylistic and literary techniques for tailoring their own advertising products. Moreover, such jokes contribute to the development of intercultural and cultural competences, important for future advertising specialists.