Twofold character of a joke (on Russian, German, and English jokes)

The aim of the study is to identify common features or differences in the structural characteristics of a small folklore genre of «joke» using animals in the text of the joke in the Russian, German and English linguocultures based on B. Raskin’s theory on the ambivalence of the scenarios. The article studies the jokes which represent a humorous dialogic discourse. The author defines discourse and humorous dialogic discourse, reveals its characteristic features, touches upon the compositional and structural characteristics of a joke and describes the process of creating a comic effect in a joke. Only jokes containing «animal-to-man» or «animal-to-animal» dialogues have been selected for this study. Jokes representing dialogues in three languages are collected by the continuous sampling method. The text of a joke is considered in terms of its structural and compositional features. The author analyzes the jokes in terms of two or more scenarios intertwining. Linguistic research is conducted primarily on written jokes. At the center of the study is the culmination of the joke, a pointe. To confirm the theory of binary scenarios only jokes related to animals have been selected, since the animal participation in the dialogue indicates the unreality of what is happening as one of the scenarios. It was found that the central scripting oppositions that make up the culmination line are more specific and simply placed on completely unimportant elements. The scientific novelty of the article is presented in summarizing and systematizing the main manifestations of the ambivalence law of scenarios in a joke.