| Abstract [eng] |
The given MA thesis approaches humour as one of the most complex and highly sophisticated instruments employed to convey wit and make the cinema audience laugh. Since most communities treat it as a form of entertainment, it may be found in various spheres of life, including the audiovisual products: TV shows, films and other media. The occurrences of a funny stimulus are followed by laughter on the part of the audience, but not necessarily enjoyed by the characters in the film. Humour can be expressed verbally, non-verbally and paraverbally. Thus, in conjunction with humour studies, the given research focuses on the concepts of intertextuality and multimodality. To understand how the cinematic expressions of humour are conveyed in the romantic comedies “Forget Paris” (1995) by Billy Crystal and “French Kiss” (1995) by Lawrence Kasdan, the author aims at analysing the occurrences of verbal and non-verbal humour, and the difficulties of their rendition into Lithuanian through voice-over translation. For this purpose, the typology of 15 types of verbal humour proposed by Arthur Berger (2017) was used, along with the concept of multimodality proposed by Theodor van Leeuwen (2015) and the theory of the semiotic codes of film extended by Yves Gambier (2023) and the seven types of intertextuality offered by Robert Miola (2004), which helped to distinguish the cases of verbal and non-verbal humour encountered in the analysed films. The carried out qualitative analysis has revealed that both romantic comedies are rich in their intertextual, multimodal and stereotype-based audiovisual humorous expressions representing various types of humour. Out of the proposed 15 types of humour 14 types have been found except for satire, since the absence of this type is determined by the genre of romantic comedy. Some encountered stereotypes have intentional placement and function as intertexts; other stereotypes reinforce the preconceived notions of the French culture, character and way of life. The prevailing stereotypes also include traditional stereotypes associated with masculinity and femininity and diverse male and female approaches towards humorous expressions. The rendition of the analysed cases of the cinematic humour into Lithuanian through voice-over translation has been mostly successful with the exception of the cases where the originally intended mental images have not been adequately transferred and the humorous effect was partially or completely lost due to time and space constraints of the voice-over mode or the insufficient interpretative skills of the translator of the audiovisual texts. |
