The use of meta language in the humor

Abstract

In the studies on humor, humor is generally regarded as an art form that reveals the funny side of life in different genres and styles. It can be said that the purpose of this activity is to make the recipient laugh and even criticize. While criticizing, the aim is also to eliminate the deficiencies, mistakes, and defects made in the communication and interaction process in which the messages are directly or indirectly transmitted. What makes humor important and different apart from its effects is the way it is applied, such as the style used, the rhetorical elements, etc. This is because what sounds "funny" for one may not be "funny" for another, so what seems "hilarious" to one may not be "hilarious" to another. Depending on the individual and even on the societies involved, this situation varies not only concerning the function of being hilarious but also concerning many other functions. Here lies actually the difficulty in creating humor. When individual differences, as well as the differences in the imagination of national and international receivers, are taken into account, it is a very tedious process to capture a common sense of humor, namely gathering people under the same roof by making them to get the same joke. Therefore, this study analyses not only (as usual) the choice of genre, style, and shape but especially their function in a multicultural, that is, multilingual environment. Obviously, it is necessary to add the dimension of a "metalanguage" in addition to the concepts of style and genre and to the rhetorical elements employed. In order to exemplify the function of "metalanguage" and "meta communication" as a tool to bring different cultures together, the perspective of humor has been used in this study. As a type of humor, the language used in the stand-up shows by Bülent Ceylan, who grew up in a bilingual environment, is Turkish; at the same time, he makes jokes Germans can understand easily; he can address not only native speakers but also memebers of other societies as the target group. This study analyses examples from Ceylan's humor. Ceylan uses humor as a communicative tool on the level of a metalanguage, thus bringing together the members of societies with two different, maybe even more, senses of humor under a common "humor" roof.