Humour of the Poles and other Europeans in a television programme "Europę Can Be Liked"

Abstrakt

The article takes up the issue of humour. Text shows that Polish people and representatives of other European countries laugh in various situations at: misunderstandings, linguistic errors deliberate or not, among them of foreigners’, family stories told or heard. Humour itself, in that case, fulfills a ludic, playful function, but first of all its cognitive function is essential in this programme — giving sometimes stereotyping, sometimes individual knowledge about Europeans, their way of thinking and exploring the world or coping with difficult situations. A fairly important role, considering its character and the target of the programme, broadcast in March 2003 (overcoming stereotypes, fears and reluctance of the Poles to join the European Union in 2004) one can perceive in showing Europeans through such an entertaining approach in order to change a negative attitude of the society towards this controversial issue and using oblique persuasion. Humour shows also that the language is a living creature which undergoes different operations, distortions, experiments or modifications and still reveals its richness, interpretative possibilities and applications into different situations.