A geração do humor no conto "No Kaddish for Weinstein" de Woody Allen : scripts semânticos e construção identitária

Abstract

This dissertation is about humor mechanisms generation present in the short story “No Kaddish for Weinstein” (ALLEN, 1975). It is possible to identify in the narrative the frequent presence of ethnic humor, more specifically the Jewish-American humor. However, it is believed that this is not the only type of humor the author uses, considering also that humor can emerge from many different mechanisms and situations. For this reason, there is the necessity of not only identifying the characteristic humor of Woody Allen, but also the necessity of analyzing the narrative type built by the author in his short stories. Besides all that, it is necessary to verify the relevance of cultural background in humor generation, as well as in identity relations within characters and narrators. The research questions derive from the presupposition that the humor created by Allen is singular, they are: (a) what are the domains, strata and parameters that typify Allen’s narrative?, (b) what are the humor mechanisms that the author uses in his short stories?, (c) what linguistic, cultural, identity and cognitive elements are essential in the Allenian humor? Other questions rise from these interrogations: why humor and Judaism are connected? What is the relation between them? The general objective of this research is to examine the humor present in Allen’s short stories and its relation with sociocognitive and identity elements of Jewish culture. The specific objectives are (a) to analyze the narrative structure in Allen’s short stories, (b) to identify the characteristics of the type of humor in Allen’s “No Kaddish for Weinstein”, (c) analyze what linguistic elements make humor rise in Allen’s referred short story, (d) make relations between linguistic and sociocultural elements in Allen’s short story and (e) make relations between the elements that constitute allenian humor. Among the many short stories pre-analyzed from different collection books produced by Woody Allen, “No Kaddish for Weinstein” was chosen for being a narrative that encompasses the characteristics that are present, in higher or lower degree, in all his short stories as a whole. Although the narrative themes vary, the short story “No Kaddish for Weinstein" can be considered prototypical. By prototypical it is understood the property of encompassing, in a condensed manner, the general requisites of the narrative style of the author. The results demonstrate that the author makes use of a great variety of humor mechanisms, among them: rupture of the reader’s expectation, punch lines e opposite scripts. In relation to the identity issues of Jewish-American culture, the references to selfhatred and habits are more relevant. It is evident, the construction of a narrative that demands from the reader the evocation of encyclopedic knowledge (frames). Without the recognition of these frames it is not possible to recognize the potential humor of the short story. All the results are related with the narratologic structure type of the short story, according to the framework of the Cognitive Approach to the Analysis of Narrative by Talmy (2000). This is mainly because it permits designing a reader’s profile that shares the knowledges concerning the Jewish-american and New Yorker culture, moreover references about history.