Multimodally expressed humour shaping Scottishness in tourist postcards

Abstract

This paper investigates multimodally expressed humour (MEH) in illustrated comic tourist postcards targeting Scottish weather, culture, tourism and people. After positioning postcards as a tourism text genre, it discusses the notions of stereotypes and of humour. Since modal shift activates a script shift in the cards, the key semantic process of humour de/codification, the paper suggests a specific method of analysis. The General Theory of Verbal Humor by Attardo and Raskin [Script theory revis(it)ed: Joke similarity and joke representation model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 4(3–4), 293–347 (1991); Non-literalness and non-bona-fide in language: Approaches to formal and computational treatments of humor and irony. Cognition and Pragmatics, 2(1), 31–69 (1994)] is integrated with tools for the analysis of visual texts [Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge] and of cross-modal interaction [Barthes, R. ( [1964] 1977 Barthes, R. [1964] 1977. “Rhetoric of the image”. In Image, music, text, Edited by: Barthes, R. 32–51. London: Fontana Press. [Google Scholar] ). Rhetoric of the image. In Image, music, text (pp. 32–51). London: Fontana Press; Barthes, R. (1967). Elements of semiology. New York, NY: Hill and Wang]. The paper is concerned with the communication dynamics enacted by stereotype-based MEH texts. MEH captures the readers' attention, engenders a suspension of disbelief and a pleasant psychological attitude, assists concentration, outlines the reading path, places emphasis and thus leaves a lasting mnestic trace. Rather than aggressive humour, MEH intertwines stereotyping and self-stereotyping, mockery and self-mockery to encode modes of perception of and response to the destination. The analysed postcards fulfil a promotional function, enhancing both the status of the destination and of the sender. Meanwhile, they allow us to develop self- and cultural awareness, since they overtly address stereotyped forms of identity and culture configuration.