Functions of a joke in political discourse (based on Vladimir Putin’s public speeches)

Abstract

The current article studies functions of a joke in political discourse. We focus on the identification of the most common practices of the joke use in the public speeches of Vladimir Putin, the current President of the Russian Federation, and his individual manner of creating expressivity in the context of public speeches. The leading method of our research is the descriptive method, which allowed us to summarize our findings. Furthermore, we used contextual and component types of analyzing the language material, which was continuously sampled. Thus, we have established that Vladimir Putin uses various thematic jokes (historical, ethnic and traditional) quite often in his speeches, which help create an informal atmosphere. It is often that he gives a brief explanation after each joke to summarize the idea. It is important to note that the Russian president primarily uses referential (situational) jokes targeted not only at Russian speakers, but also at international listeners. As a result of the conducted study, we have come to the conclusion that speakers use jokes ina political discourse not only due to their main functions of exerting impact and drawing attention, but also due to their ability to act as an evidence base during an argument; at the same time, they highlight the obviousness of existing concepts.