Abstract
This article examines a specific type of supportive, make-believe, playful humour called here flirting humour, which serves to create a positioning of symmetry and intimacy, while posing a mitigated threat to the face of the addresser and addressee. We focus on two sub-categories of this humour prevalent in online readers’ comments to Facebook posts published by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the March 2020 electoral campaign: (1) humorous confessions of lust and love by women, even marriage proposals; (2) humorous gestures of camaraderie, mostly by men, including informal social invitations and friendly requests for favours – all directed to Netanyahu. We suggest that this humour reflects characteristics identified with the Israeli Sabra individuals (e.g., directness, openness, easy-goingness, mischievousness) and the Israeli society (camaraderie, informality). Furthermore, we argue that flirting humour, which is particularly dominant among Netanyahu’s supporters, is associated with his dual self-positioning: while the symmetrical and intimate scenarios his supporters humorously create reflect Netanyahu’s positioning as “one of the guys”, the humorous framing reflects awareness of his hierarchical superiority, and acceptance of his self-positioning as a great leader. Thus, flirting humour contributes both to the solidification of Netanyahu’s supporters, and the reinforcing of his position among them.
References
Almog, O. (1997). The Sabre – A profile. Am Oved (Hebrew).
Almog, O. (2004). Farewell to ‘Srulik’: Changing values among the Israeli elite. Haifa University & Or Yehuda: Zmora Bitan (Hebrew).
Almog, O. (2015). Israeli bonbonniere. Oz Almog (Hebrew).
Asscher, O. (2010). A model for Hebrew translation of British humour: Amplification and overstatement. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 22(2), 237-263.
Anonymous. (2019, April 8). Netanyahu/New Media/Strong. PC: People & Computers. https://www.pc.co.il/featured/288528 (Hebrew).
Attardo, S. (2008). A primer for the linguistics of humour. In V. Raskin (ed.), The primer of humour research (pp. 101-155). De Gruyter Mouton.
Blais, D. (2001). “Walla chat”: An ethnographic view of an Israeli Internet chat site. Kesher, 30, 77-92.
Boxman-Shabtai, L., & Shifman, L. (2015). When ethnic humour goes digital. New Media & Society, 17(4), 520-539.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Cameron, D., & Kulick, D. (2006). General introduction. In D. Cameron & D. Kulick (Eds.), The language and sexuality reader (pp. 1-12).Routledge.
Dascal, M. (1983). Pragmatics and the philosophy of mind. John Benjamins.
Dascal, M., & Weizman, E. (1987). Contextual exploitation of interpretation clues in text understanding: An integrated model. In J. Verschueren & M. Bertuccelli-Papi (Eds.), The pragmatic perspective (pp. 31-46). John Benjamins.
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the theory of social behaviour, 20(1), 43-63.
Dori–Hacohen, G., & Shavit, N. (2013). The cultural meanings of Israeli Tokbek (talk–back online commenting) and their relevance to the online democratic public sphere. International Journal of Electronic Governance, 6(4), 361-379.
Dynel, M. (2018). Irony, deception and humour: Seeking the truth about covert and overt untruthfulness. De Gruyter.
Friedman, A. (2016). Humour in Israeli music videos: From the 80’s to “Arisa”. Humor Mekuvvan: Research Journal in Humour Studies, 6, 7-27 (Hebrew).
Friedman, S., & Kuipers, G. (2013). The divisive power of humour: Comedy, taste and symbolic boundaries. Cultural Sociology, 7(2), 179-195.
Gal, N. (2019). Ironic humour on social media as participatory boundary work. New Media & Society, 21(3), 729-749.
Glenn, P. (2003). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goldschmidt, R. (2006). Talkbacks in the Israeli public discourse. Israel: Knesset Research and Information Center (Hebrew). https://fs.knesset.gov.il/globaldocs/MMM/13ef26e4-9732-e811-80de-00155d0a0235/2_13ef26e4-9732-e811-80de-00155d0a0235_11_6935.pdf
Hay, J. (2001). The pragmatics of humour support. Humour: International Journal of Humor Research, 14, 55-82.
Hirsch, G. (2017). Humour appreciation in the digital era. Lingua, 197, 123-140.
Hirsch, G. (2020). Humorous and ironic readers’ comments to a politician’s post on Facebook: The case of Miri Regev. Journal of Pragmatics, 164, 40-53.
Johnson, T. J., & Perlmutter, D. D. (2010). Introduction: the Facebook election. Mass Communication and Society, 13(5), 554-559.
Katriel, T. (1986). Talking straight: Dugri speech in Israeli Sabra culture. Cambridge University Press.
Katriel, T. (1999). Keywords: Patterns of culture and communication in Israel. University of Haifa and Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan. (Hebrew).
Kiesling, S. F. (2013). Flirting and ‘normative’ sexualities. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 2(1), 101-121.
Kirma, R. (2022, August 9). “Such a gorgeous hunk”: Netanyahu uploaded a video and burnt hearts. Maariv. https://www.maariv.co.il/news/viral/Article-937673 (Hebrew).
Køhler Mortensen, K. (2017). Flirting in online dating: Giving empirical grounds to flirtatious implicitness. Discourse Studies, 19(5), 581-597.
Kohn, A., & Neiger, M. (2007). To talk and talkback: Analysing the rhetoric of talkbacks in online journalism. In Shwartz Altshuler, T. (Ed.), Online newspapers in Israel (pp. 321–350). Israel Democracy Institute. (Hebrew).
Kotler-Fux, S. (2018). “Hitler-pants” parodies: Folklore in Israel’s virtual sphere. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore, 31, 161-193.
Kopytowska, M. (2013). Blogging as the mediatisation of politics and a new form of social interaction: A case study of “Proximisation Dynamics” in Polish and British political blogs. In P. Cap & U. Okulska (Eds.), Analysing genres in political communication (pp. 379–421). John Benjamins.
Kruikemeier, S. (2014). How political candidates use Twitter and the impact on votes. Computers in Human Behaviour, 34, 131-139.
Kuipers, G. (2011). The politics of humour in the public sphere: Cartoons, power and modernity in the first transnational humour scandal. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(1), 63-80.
La Fave, L., Haddad, J., & Maesen, W. (1976). Superiority, enhanced self-esteem, and perceived incongruity humour theory. In A. J. Chapman & C. H. Foot (Eds.), Humour and laughter: Theory, research, and applications (pp. 63-91). Willey.
Lehti, L. (2011). Blogging politics in various ways: A typology of French politicians’ blogs. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(6), 1610-1627.
Livnat, Z., Shukrun-Nagar, P., & Hirsch, G. (Eds.). (2020). The discourse of indirectness: Cues, Voices and functions. Discourse and Beyond series. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Manning, N., Penfold-Mounce, R., Loader, B. D., Vromen, A., & Xenos, M. (2017). Politicians, celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(2), 127-144.
Marmorstein, M., & Sclafani, J. (2019). The talkback genre: Practice and the cultural construal of online commenting in Israel. Discourse, Context & Media, 31, 100-321.
Morreal, J. (2009). Comic relief: A comprehensive philosophy of humour. Wiley-Blackwell.
Nilsson, B. (2012). Politicians’ blogs: Strategic self-presentations and identities. Identity, 12(3), 247-265.
Norrick, N. R. (1993). Conversational joking: Humour in everyday talk. Indiana University Press.
Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humour. Reidel.
Raskin, J. D., & Attardo, S. (1994). Non-literalness and non-bona-fide in language: An approach to formal and computational treatments of humour. Pragmatics & Cognition, 2(1), 31-69.
Sacks, H. (1984). On doing “being ordinary”. In J. Maxwell Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 413–429). Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 1-23.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2019). “Well, Yair? When will you be prime minister?” Different readings of ordinariness in a politician’s Facebook post as a case in point. In A. Fetzer & E. Weizman (Eds.), The Construction of ordinariness across media genres (pp. 103-129). John Benjamins.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2020). The right to speak and the request to remain silent: who owns politicians’ Facebook pages?. Israel Affairs, 26(1), 26-43.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2020b). “Hero, genius, king, and Messiah”: Ironic echoing in pro-ethos and anti-ethos readers’ comments on Facebook posts. In Z. Livnat, P. Shukrun-Nagar & G. Hirsch (Eds.), The discourse of indirectness (pp. 59-81). Discourse and Beyond series, John Benjamins.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2021). Ironic echoes as a strategy of silencing in online comments to politicians’ Facebook posts. Israel Studies in Language and Society, 14(1), 301-318 (Hebrew).
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2022). “There is no one like you Bibi”: Israelis write to the Prime Minister, Israel Studies in Language and Society, 15, 138-159 (Hebrew).
Shukrun-Nagar, P., & Hirsch, G. (accepted). What kind of laughter? The triple function of “hhh” as a contempt, interpretation, and intention marker. Pragmatics.
Speer, S. A. (2017). Flirting: A designedly ambiguous action?. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(2), 128-150.
Steir-Livny, L. (2016). Is it OK to laugh about it yet?. The European Journal of Humour Research, 4(4), 105-121.
Tsakona, V. (2013). Okras and the metapragmatic stereotypes of humour: Towards an expansion of the GTVH. In Dynel, M. (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humour theory (pp. 25-48). John Benjamins.
Tsakona, V., & Popa, D. E. (2011). Humour in politics and the politics of humour. In V. Tsakona & D. E. Popa (Eds.). Studies in political humour: In between political critique and public entertainment (pp. 1-30). Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture (Vol. 46). John Benjamins Publishing.
Trammell, K. D., Williams, A. P., Postelnicu, M., & Landreville, K. D. (2006). Evolution of online campaigning: Increasing interactivity in candidate web sites and blogs through text and technical features. Mass Communication & Society, 9(1), 21-44.
Vandaele, J. (2002). Introduction. The Translator, 8(2), Translating Humour, 149-172.
Vine, B., Kell, S., Marra, M., & Holmes, J. (2009). Boundary marking humour: Institutional gender and ethnic demarcation. In N. R. Norrick & D. Chiaro (Eds.), Humour in interaction (pp. 125-141). John Benjamins.
Weizman, E. (2001). Addresser, addressee and target: Negotiating roles through ironic criticism. In E. Weigand & M. Dascal (Eds.), Negotiation and power in dialogic interaction (pp. 125-137). John Benjamins.
Weizman, E., & Dascal, M. (1991). On clues and cues: Strategies of text-understanding. Journal of Literary Semantics, 20(1), 18-30.
Weizman, E., & Dori-Hacohen, G. (2017). On-line commenting on opinion editorials: A cross-cultural examination of face work in the Washington Post (USA) and NRG (Israel). Discourse, Context & Media, 19, 39-48.
Zandberg, E. (2015). “Ketchup is the Auschwitz of tomatoes”: Humour and the collective memory of traumatic events. Communication, Culture & Critique, 8(1), 108-123.
Zamir, I. (2020). In digital media as well: what Netanyahu has already forgotten – Gantz still has to learn. Globes. https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001332056 (Hebrew).
Ziv, A. (1984). Personality and sense of humor. Springer.
Ziv, A. (1988). National styles of humor. Greenwood Press.
Czasopisma
The European Journal of Humour Research
Vol 11, No 2 (2023)
Flirting with the Israeli Prime Minister, humorously
Galia Hirsch,Pnina Shukrun-Nagar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2023.11.2.789
ZOBACZ PEŁNY TEKST ARTYKUŁU
Abstract
This article examines a specific type of supportive, make-believe, playful humour called here flirting humour, which serves to create a positioning of symmetry and intimacy, while posing a mitigated threat to the face of the addresser and addressee. We focus on two sub-categories of this humour prevalent in online readers’ comments to Facebook posts published by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the March 2020 electoral campaign: (1) humorous confessions of lust and love by women, even marriage proposals; (2) humorous gestures of camaraderie, mostly by men, including informal social invitations and friendly requests for favours – all directed to Netanyahu. We suggest that this humour reflects characteristics identified with the Israeli Sabra individuals (e.g., directness, openness, easy-goingness, mischievousness) and the Israeli society (camaraderie, informality). Furthermore, we argue that flirting humour, which is particularly dominant among Netanyahu’s supporters, is associated with his dual self-positioning: while the symmetrical and intimate scenarios his supporters humorously create reflect Netanyahu’s positioning as “one of the guys”, the humorous framing reflects awareness of his hierarchical superiority, and acceptance of his self-positioning as a great leader. Thus, flirting humour contributes both to the solidification of Netanyahu’s supporters, and the reinforcing of his position among them.
References
Almog, O. (1997). The Sabre – A profile. Am Oved (Hebrew).
Almog, O. (2004). Farewell to ‘Srulik’: Changing values among the Israeli elite. Haifa University & Or Yehuda: Zmora Bitan (Hebrew).
Almog, O. (2015). Israeli bonbonniere. Oz Almog (Hebrew).
Asscher, O. (2010). A model for Hebrew translation of British humour: Amplification and overstatement. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 22(2), 237-263.
Anonymous. (2019, April 8). Netanyahu/New Media/Strong. PC: People & Computers. https://www.pc.co.il/featured/288528 (Hebrew).
Attardo, S. (2008). A primer for the linguistics of humour. In V. Raskin (ed.), The primer of humour research (pp. 101-155). De Gruyter Mouton.
Blais, D. (2001). “Walla chat”: An ethnographic view of an Israeli Internet chat site. Kesher, 30, 77-92.
Boxman-Shabtai, L., & Shifman, L. (2015). When ethnic humour goes digital. New Media & Society, 17(4), 520-539.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Cameron, D., & Kulick, D. (2006). General introduction. In D. Cameron & D. Kulick (Eds.), The language and sexuality reader (pp. 1-12).Routledge.
Dascal, M. (1983). Pragmatics and the philosophy of mind. John Benjamins.
Dascal, M., & Weizman, E. (1987). Contextual exploitation of interpretation clues in text understanding: An integrated model. In J. Verschueren & M. Bertuccelli-Papi (Eds.), The pragmatic perspective (pp. 31-46). John Benjamins.
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1990). Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the theory of social behaviour, 20(1), 43-63.
Dori–Hacohen, G., & Shavit, N. (2013). The cultural meanings of Israeli Tokbek (talk–back online commenting) and their relevance to the online democratic public sphere. International Journal of Electronic Governance, 6(4), 361-379.
Dynel, M. (2018). Irony, deception and humour: Seeking the truth about covert and overt untruthfulness. De Gruyter.
Friedman, A. (2016). Humour in Israeli music videos: From the 80’s to “Arisa”. Humor Mekuvvan: Research Journal in Humour Studies, 6, 7-27 (Hebrew).
Friedman, S., & Kuipers, G. (2013). The divisive power of humour: Comedy, taste and symbolic boundaries. Cultural Sociology, 7(2), 179-195.
Gal, N. (2019). Ironic humour on social media as participatory boundary work. New Media & Society, 21(3), 729-749.
Glenn, P. (2003). Laughter in interaction. Cambridge University Press.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goldschmidt, R. (2006). Talkbacks in the Israeli public discourse. Israel: Knesset Research and Information Center (Hebrew). https://fs.knesset.gov.il/globaldocs/MMM/13ef26e4-9732-e811-80de-00155d0a0235/2_13ef26e4-9732-e811-80de-00155d0a0235_11_6935.pdf
Hay, J. (2001). The pragmatics of humour support. Humour: International Journal of Humor Research, 14, 55-82.
Hirsch, G. (2017). Humour appreciation in the digital era. Lingua, 197, 123-140.
Hirsch, G. (2020). Humorous and ironic readers’ comments to a politician’s post on Facebook: The case of Miri Regev. Journal of Pragmatics, 164, 40-53.
Johnson, T. J., & Perlmutter, D. D. (2010). Introduction: the Facebook election. Mass Communication and Society, 13(5), 554-559.
Katriel, T. (1986). Talking straight: Dugri speech in Israeli Sabra culture. Cambridge University Press.
Katriel, T. (1999). Keywords: Patterns of culture and communication in Israel. University of Haifa and Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan. (Hebrew).
Kiesling, S. F. (2013). Flirting and ‘normative’ sexualities. Journal of Language and Sexuality, 2(1), 101-121.
Kirma, R. (2022, August 9). “Such a gorgeous hunk”: Netanyahu uploaded a video and burnt hearts. Maariv. https://www.maariv.co.il/news/viral/Article-937673 (Hebrew).
Køhler Mortensen, K. (2017). Flirting in online dating: Giving empirical grounds to flirtatious implicitness. Discourse Studies, 19(5), 581-597.
Kohn, A., & Neiger, M. (2007). To talk and talkback: Analysing the rhetoric of talkbacks in online journalism. In Shwartz Altshuler, T. (Ed.), Online newspapers in Israel (pp. 321–350). Israel Democracy Institute. (Hebrew).
Kotler-Fux, S. (2018). “Hitler-pants” parodies: Folklore in Israel’s virtual sphere. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore, 31, 161-193.
Kopytowska, M. (2013). Blogging as the mediatisation of politics and a new form of social interaction: A case study of “Proximisation Dynamics” in Polish and British political blogs. In P. Cap & U. Okulska (Eds.), Analysing genres in political communication (pp. 379–421). John Benjamins.
Kruikemeier, S. (2014). How political candidates use Twitter and the impact on votes. Computers in Human Behaviour, 34, 131-139.
Kuipers, G. (2011). The politics of humour in the public sphere: Cartoons, power and modernity in the first transnational humour scandal. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(1), 63-80.
La Fave, L., Haddad, J., & Maesen, W. (1976). Superiority, enhanced self-esteem, and perceived incongruity humour theory. In A. J. Chapman & C. H. Foot (Eds.), Humour and laughter: Theory, research, and applications (pp. 63-91). Willey.
Lehti, L. (2011). Blogging politics in various ways: A typology of French politicians’ blogs. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(6), 1610-1627.
Livnat, Z., Shukrun-Nagar, P., & Hirsch, G. (Eds.). (2020). The discourse of indirectness: Cues, Voices and functions. Discourse and Beyond series. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Manning, N., Penfold-Mounce, R., Loader, B. D., Vromen, A., & Xenos, M. (2017). Politicians, celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(2), 127-144.
Marmorstein, M., & Sclafani, J. (2019). The talkback genre: Practice and the cultural construal of online commenting in Israel. Discourse, Context & Media, 31, 100-321.
Morreal, J. (2009). Comic relief: A comprehensive philosophy of humour. Wiley-Blackwell.
Nilsson, B. (2012). Politicians’ blogs: Strategic self-presentations and identities. Identity, 12(3), 247-265.
Norrick, N. R. (1993). Conversational joking: Humour in everyday talk. Indiana University Press.
Raskin, V. (1985). Semantic mechanisms of humour. Reidel.
Raskin, J. D., & Attardo, S. (1994). Non-literalness and non-bona-fide in language: An approach to formal and computational treatments of humour. Pragmatics & Cognition, 2(1), 31-69.
Sacks, H. (1984). On doing “being ordinary”. In J. Maxwell Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 413–429). Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1976). A classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5(1), 1-23.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2019). “Well, Yair? When will you be prime minister?” Different readings of ordinariness in a politician’s Facebook post as a case in point. In A. Fetzer & E. Weizman (Eds.), The Construction of ordinariness across media genres (pp. 103-129). John Benjamins.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2020). The right to speak and the request to remain silent: who owns politicians’ Facebook pages?. Israel Affairs, 26(1), 26-43.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2020b). “Hero, genius, king, and Messiah”: Ironic echoing in pro-ethos and anti-ethos readers’ comments on Facebook posts. In Z. Livnat, P. Shukrun-Nagar & G. Hirsch (Eds.), The discourse of indirectness (pp. 59-81). Discourse and Beyond series, John Benjamins.
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2021). Ironic echoes as a strategy of silencing in online comments to politicians’ Facebook posts. Israel Studies in Language and Society, 14(1), 301-318 (Hebrew).
Shukrun-Nagar, P. (2022). “There is no one like you Bibi”: Israelis write to the Prime Minister, Israel Studies in Language and Society, 15, 138-159 (Hebrew).
Shukrun-Nagar, P., & Hirsch, G. (accepted). What kind of laughter? The triple function of “hhh” as a contempt, interpretation, and intention marker. Pragmatics.
Speer, S. A. (2017). Flirting: A designedly ambiguous action?. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(2), 128-150.
Steir-Livny, L. (2016). Is it OK to laugh about it yet?. The European Journal of Humour Research, 4(4), 105-121.
Tsakona, V. (2013). Okras and the metapragmatic stereotypes of humour: Towards an expansion of the GTVH. In Dynel, M. (Ed.), Developments in linguistic humour theory (pp. 25-48). John Benjamins.
Tsakona, V., & Popa, D. E. (2011). Humour in politics and the politics of humour. In V. Tsakona & D. E. Popa (Eds.). Studies in political humour: In between political critique and public entertainment (pp. 1-30). Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture (Vol. 46). John Benjamins Publishing.
Trammell, K. D., Williams, A. P., Postelnicu, M., & Landreville, K. D. (2006). Evolution of online campaigning: Increasing interactivity in candidate web sites and blogs through text and technical features. Mass Communication & Society, 9(1), 21-44.
Vandaele, J. (2002). Introduction. The Translator, 8(2), Translating Humour, 149-172.
Vine, B., Kell, S., Marra, M., & Holmes, J. (2009). Boundary marking humour: Institutional gender and ethnic demarcation. In N. R. Norrick & D. Chiaro (Eds.), Humour in interaction (pp. 125-141). John Benjamins.
Weizman, E. (2001). Addresser, addressee and target: Negotiating roles through ironic criticism. In E. Weigand & M. Dascal (Eds.), Negotiation and power in dialogic interaction (pp. 125-137). John Benjamins.
Weizman, E., & Dascal, M. (1991). On clues and cues: Strategies of text-understanding. Journal of Literary Semantics, 20(1), 18-30.
Weizman, E., & Dori-Hacohen, G. (2017). On-line commenting on opinion editorials: A cross-cultural examination of face work in the Washington Post (USA) and NRG (Israel). Discourse, Context & Media, 19, 39-48.
Zandberg, E. (2015). “Ketchup is the Auschwitz of tomatoes”: Humour and the collective memory of traumatic events. Communication, Culture & Critique, 8(1), 108-123.
Zamir, I. (2020). In digital media as well: what Netanyahu has already forgotten – Gantz still has to learn. Globes. https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001332056 (Hebrew).
Ziv, A. (1984). Personality and sense of humor. Springer.
Ziv, A. (1988). National styles of humor. Greenwood Press.