humor

READING GLORIAGARCI JOKES: THE SEMANTIC SCRIPT THEORY OF HUMOR/GENERAL THEORY OF VERBAL HUMOR

AND FILIPINO POLITICAL HUMOR

Maria Rhodora G. Ancheta, PhDDepartment of English and Comparative Literature

University of the Philippines Diliman

1.0 Political Humor and the Creation of Joke Work

Who has not heard of at least one GloriaGarci joke? Or has not laughed at [if not downloaded and made a mobile phone ring tone of] the “Hello Garci” opening of the continuing political debacle that is now termed Gloriagate?

It is, on the one hand, a testament to this situation’s gravity that a whole joke work cycle is devoted to it, as culture memorializes that which leaves the deepest cut to its psyche. However, it is also ironic that such a popular cultural artifact, while manifesting national concerns, is deemed too trivial for actual study, read only in the context of ephemeral entertainment. This is adjudged even more so in the light of these jokes current provenance the internet, and the mobile phone/ texting culture.

In 2005, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism came out with the book Hello, Garci?: Political Humor in the Cellphone Age, following the muchcelebrated Joke Ni Erap in 2000, which are written texts that not only compile the existing joke work and joke cycles of the mêlée of Philippine politics, but indeed, chronicle a more powerful delineation of how Filipino humor is deployed not only to “poke fun” at [illicit] holders of power, but to counter hegemonic states in this nation, by the powerless in Philippine society.

Sheila Coronel, in her preface to the book, avers that “jokes are not just a commentary on our politics and politicians… [but] are a form of political participation… by joking, Filipinos show that they are watching, commenting, and taking part in what is going on” (xi).

I contend that this “participation” of which Coronel speaks can be seen in a number of ways. The deployment of political humor places Filipinos as external observers of volatile political situations in which they are peripheralized, politics in the Philippines mainly open to the elite or moneyed classes, undermining, if not totally abrogating, the overt constitutional democratic role ascribed to the citizenry. The relegation of Filipinos as members of a “muted” group (cf. Ardener) in terms of the diminution of his political significance, seen in the absent or negligible role he has in engendering political communicative exchange, renders him/her powerless, and this discourse of the joke allows them to enter this turbulent space of exchange as subversive bearers of power. More than this, I posit that in reading these jokes, we see the Filipinos’ attempt not only to comment of this/their condition by way of this joke work, their participation becomes crucial and more intrinsic in that these jokes are a matrix of the

9th Philippine Linguistics Congress (2527 January 2006)Organized by the Department of Linguistics, University of the Philippines

Ancheta/Reading GloriaGarci Jokes

bases of their political and cultural identity.

For the purposes of this paper presentation’s time, I chose six jokes which I thinkare more representative of the collection’s thrust. While the different kinds of humor linguistic and visual in the PCIJ compilation could be read more extensively, I particularly chose jokes which I thought are more representative of those that could be transmitted by way of texting, and are more likely to be repeated and echoed in workplaces, homes, as communal discourse, in keeping with collection’s title, and in reference to the verbal quality required by the SSTH/ GTVH. I have to note here that the PCIJ collection has a section on humorously annotated comics depicting the Garci fallout, and a section of comical film plots, conjectures on “Garci”, etc., which I did not examine as they could not qualify as actual joke work.

Coronel spoke of the use of humor by Filipinos as “the preferred weapon of the weak… jokes are the great leveler, a way of fighting back, a path of resistance” (x). She continues to say that

if anything, cellphones have made this path easier to take. Any Joey or Josie can think up a joke, key it into a phone, and pass it on. You don’t have to be a Jose Rizal or a Marcelo del Pilar. You don’t have to deal with censors or editors either. In the anonymous, instantaneous, and spontaneous world of mobile telephony, everyone is welcome and all jokers are equal… (xxi).

I believe that that anonymity and the “difficult[y in] determine[ing] authorship” engendered by the passing of these jokes from one citizen to another, makes of these jokes the truly democratic input within a political exchange system denied of the Filipino in the halls of Congress or in Malacañang itself.

2.0 Defining Terms

Political humor is construed in this paper to refer to comic strategies, such as jokework, which “[target] political leaders, professional politicians, or elected representatives as well as political institutions, groups, parties… political ideas and the life of entire societies under a political regime … aimed at in political jokes” (Raskin 222). Victor Raskin, the proponent of the earlier Semantic Script Theory of Humor that I shall talk about in a little while, comments on the generally simple structure of the political joke, based on the opposition between the “script” for what leaders, political figures, ideas, groups, or way of life, ought to be and the script for what they actually are. This “good/proper” and “bad/improper” script opposition informs the joke work, which we shall also see later (cf. 222; my italics).

While Michael Mulkay specifically refers to the political cartoon when he spoke of humor and political action, I take from his discussion the function of political joke work to comment on current political issues, and as such “contribut[ing] directly to the world of real politics… dominated by serious issues, serious actions and serious discourse” (197;my italics).


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While it is possible to define the joke loosely in the sense of “an anecdote with a

humorous twist at the end”, or as “something designed to promote good humor” (Roeckelein 66), by the term “joke”, we refer to the “prototypical instance of verbal or textual humor” which is the matter for most linguistic humor theory (Hempelmann 13). Christian Hempelmann, referring to Attardo and Chabanne’s work on the joke, defines this as “a type of wellformed, selfcontained text sharing common features apart from the obvious variation in narrative structures,” seeing jokes as “micronarratives with an idealized trifold structure reduced in the most economical form” (16). First, they note an introduction, “setting the background against which and in reason of which the punchline appears incongruous” (Attardo and Chabanne qtd. in Hempelmann 16), an ensuing dialogue, and then the closing punch line. The punch line is seen as the integral element that defines the joke, usually in the final position (16), the substitution of which words by other words transforms the joke into a nonjoke (Hockett qtd. in Hempelmann 16).

I am examining the GloriaGarci jokes in the PCIJ collection as part of a joke cycle, a set of related jokes, or “large clusters of mutually related texts”, whose relationship is based on thematic links between the jokes (Attardo HT 69). We note here also that the verbal humor in which we frame the joke differentiates it from the referential the purely visual [such as cartoons or caricatures], the tactile [tickling], the situational, or other forms of humor. Verbal humor in the context of SSTH and GTVH “refers to all forms of textoriented humor, both written and spoken, in which language is necessarily involved” (Hempelmann 16).

While there are many ways to validate the functions of political humor inherent in this joke collection, this paper intends to read the current joke cycles and and joke work encompassing the GloriaGarci tapes by way of Victor Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) and Salvatore Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH).

Victor Raskin’s SSTH

Victor Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory of Humor is the precursor of the General Theory of Verbal Humor. While Hempelmann tells us that the earliest mention of the SSTH was in 1979, Raskin’s 1985 book Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, outlined his elaborate structure and elements for the SSTH (Hempelmann 19). In his book, Raskin already notes that “a linguistic theory of humor is supposed to account for the fact that some texts are funny while some others are not and to do it in certain linguistic properties of the text” (47). Noting the liabilities of earlier methods, he stated that

the early applications led, for instance, to frequency tables of high reliability, generality and validity, and there was nothing wrong with that. The only problem with many such applications was that there was no linguistic problem they were actually solving…

… the legitimate applications are therefore, problemoriented they strive to solve a real problem of the target field using the available facts…


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It follows then that if linguistics is applied to humor; i.e. linguistics is the source field and the study of humor the target field… then the problems, questions, and needs should come from humor, and the basic question coming out of there can be expected to be, “What is funny?” (5253)

Raskin posited the purpose of his proposed semantic theory of humor to be the formulation of “a set of conditions which are both necessary and sufficient conditions for the text to be funny”, which could provide answers to the question, “What semantic properties of the text make it funny?” (5758). Raskin notes that his scriptbased semantic theory is necessarily formal, functioning as “a mechanical symbolmanipulation device”, as “semantic theory is a formal object which provides semantic entities wit descriptions which are supposed to match the speaker’s intuitive judgments about the same entities…” (58, 59) and is “designed to model the native speaker’s intuition with regard to humor… his humor competence…” (58).

Raskin’s theory is made up of two components, first, the lexicon and then the combinatorial rules. Raskin refers to lexicon in terms of “the concept of the word and its inherent meaning [as being] psychologically real to the native speaker” (78), as he also refers to this as “a set of elementary units of meaning, each of which is the ability of the word to be used in a different phrase of language” (79). The SSTH, then, makes use of the recognition of word meanings and accounts for it in the lexicon (79). Hempelmann adds that “this corresponds to Raskin’s preliminary statement that the investigation of meaning must always consider the context, which contributes to the specification of the inherent meaning of a sentence”, stating that among the key efforts for script construction is to put in as much context into them as possible, without rendering them too vague as a concept” (19;my italics). Combinatorial rules, the second component of the scriptbased semantic theory function intrinsically to combine the meanings of the words which comprise the sentence “and which are characterized in the lexicon into the semantic interpretation, or simply…, of the whole sentence” (Raskin 79). Looking at the sentence as generated by the native speaker, Raskin states that the meaning of the sentence calculated by way of these combinatorial rules should coincide with the meaning assigned to it by the native speaker. Combinatorial rules then, should create two or more different interpretations for an ambiguous sentence, no interpretation for anomalous sentences, and identical interpretations for paraphrases. According to Raskin, these are operations combinatorial rules should be able to accomplish, in order to “produce ‘a description of the ideal speakerhearer’s intrinsic competence” (Chomsky qtd. in Hempelmann 20)

<<flash Raskin list 1 here>>

The notion of script is also integral to Raskin’s theory, and Raskin uses the term script to refer to

• a large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word or evoked by it. • The script is a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker and it

represents the native speaker’s knowledge of a small part of the world.


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• An internalized knowledge of certain routines, standard procedures, basic situations, how they do it, in what order [scripts of common sense]

• Individual scripts determined by background and subjective experience, restricted scripts which the speaker shares with a certain group, family, neighbors, colleagues, etc. but not with the whole speech community of native speakers of the same language (Raskin 81).

We add to this the view that script as used by Raskin is used in the sense of “a temporal sequence of frames” (81). Raskin notes too that “formally or technically, every script is a graph with lexical nodes and semantic links between the nodes” (81).

<<flash graphing sample here>>

Given these terms, Raskin’s central hypothesis in this scriptbased semantic theory is that

A text can be characterized as a singlejokecarrying text if both [these] conditions are satisfied:(1) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts(2) The scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite…

…therefore, the set of two conditions is proposed as the necessary and sufficient conditions for a text to be funny (99).

The overlap between two scripts, or the compatibility with two scripts, and the opposition of each to the other, are the requirements for textual humor, corresponding to an incongruityresolution theory of humor (Hempelmann 30). In a joke, what we usually find is a partial script overlap, “in which some part of the text remains completely incompatible with the other once two scripts are evoked” (30). Script oppositeness can be based on the use of situational, contextual, or local antonymy, and is therefore definable and detectible by the combinatorial rules in the semantic links (30). This opposition is necessarily binary in nature, and Raskin indicated the basic opposition to be

• Actual/nonactual,• Normal/abnormal,• Possible/impossible,

and these instantiate the twofold hierarchy of the real/unreal opposition, concretized by many pairs of opposition in diverse scripts (30).

Raskin does raise the idea that not all opposing scripts are funny, and Attardo later provides a graph to illustrate this:

<<flash constellations of script opposition here>>

Having said this, then, Raskin notes that there must be a trigger that will detect the switch


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from one script to another, a scriptscwitch trigger one that corresponds to the punch line of the joke. He identifies two semantic scriptswitch triggers in simple jokes, ambiguity or contradiction (31).

Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humor

The General Theory of Verbal Humor, which Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin collaborated on in 1991, is seen as “revised version” of the SSTH (Attardo HT 22), a revision of Raskin’s SSTH and Attardo’s fivelevel joke representation model (in Hempelmann 33). Where the SSTH is aimed at humor in general, the GTVH focuses on verbal humor, and where the SSTH was a “semantic” theory of humor, the GTVH “is a linguistic theory ‘at large’, that is, it includes other areas of linguistics as well, including, most notably, textual linguistics, the theory of narrativity, and pragmatics” (Attardo qtd. in Hempelmann 34). Attardo meant for the GTVH to account for not only the semantic aspect of humor, but for all its other linguistic ( and certain nonlinguistic features), a widening of its scope achieved by way of Attardo’s introduction of what he called Knowledge Resources or KRs, and the focus of the theory on joke similarity. We can look at Knowledge Resources as frames or parameters that must be accessed when generating a joke, in addition to the original KR of script opposition (SO) [script oppositeness in Raskin] from the earlier SSTH.

Attardo’s earlier fivelevel joke representation organizes these levels from the most abstract to the most concrete:

5 BASIC Script opposition and Logical mechanism

4 TEMPLATE Juxtaposing

3 TARGET+SITUATION selected

2 LANGUAGE Words, syntax, sentence lineup

1 SURFACE Result: text (of joke)

(Attardo qtd. in Hempelmann 42)

We note here that this hierarchy, in which the most abstract, deep levels are placed above transformation rules and resources, and in which the surface joke is lowest, does not correspond to the way a joker generates a joke, but was instead seen in relation to a Chomskyan view of generative approaches to language (42).

The GTVH’s Knowledge Resources are expansions or revisions of these five levels, postulating now “a hierarchical model of joke representation consisting of six levels…” (35), and while it is evident that the KR parameters do not have hardandfast boundaries, “the focus of the GTVH is the verbal material employed in humor production…” (41). Attardo himself notes that the “interdependence and/or independence


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among the KRs have allowed the determination of the hierarchical organization [of these]” (Attardo HT 27)

Vide the GTVH, Attardo thus outlines “each joke as a 6tuple [specification of the] instantiation of these parameters, in which

Joke: {LA, SI, NS, TA, SO, LM}

(27).

Attardo orders these KRs in this manner:

<<flash this>>

SO ↓

LM ↓SI ↓TA ↓NS ↓LA

(Attardo HT 28)

1. The KR Script Opposition (SO) is the parameter dealing with the opposition/overlapping required by the SSTH, and is the KR that is most abstract. Attardo states that any humorous text will indicate an SO (27). Hempelmann cites Attardo in defining the script in the GTVH as “an interpretation of the text of a joke”. While this is indeed a streamlining of the Raskin definition of scripts, this still takes into account “the incorporation of encyclopedic knowledge into the lexicon” (Hempelmann3940).

2. The KR Logical Mechanism (LM) is the parameter that embodies a “local logic” (vide Ziv), which is the “distorted, playful logic” (Attardo HT 25), the resolution of the


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incongruity in an incongruityresolution model, a logic that is limited as it presupposes a logic that may not hold outside of the joke “world” (25).

3. The KR Situation (SI) is deemed “’the props’ of the joke… objects, participants, instruments, activities, etc.” (24). This is what the joke is about, and is the KR that is not unique to humorous text, activated by all scripts (cf. Attardo HT 24).

4. The KR Target (TA), is the “butt” of the joke (23), and unlike SI may be an optional feature, in that not all jokes necessarily need a target (Hempelmann 38). Certain kinds of jokes, such as ethnic and political jokes, which focus on groups, or individuals representative of groups, stereotyped individuals or groups, or even ideological targets [such as romantic love, the “establishment”] maintain a connection with individuals and /or identifiable groups that signal tendentiousness or aggression. And these individuals or groups are those that are named by this KR ( Attardo HT 2324).

5. The KR Narrative Strategy (NS) is the KR that accounts for the genre or the microgenre of the joke (Attardo and Raskin 300). This is the parameter responsible for casting the joke into a narrative organization, such as a simple narrative, a dialogue, a pseudoriddle, an aside in a conversation (Attardo HT 23).

6. The KR Language (LA) is referred to by Attardo and Raskin as “all choices at the phonetic, phonologic, morphophonemic, morphologic, lexic, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels of language” (298). LA carries all the information necessary for the verbalization of the text, and “is responsible for the placement of the functional elements that constitute it, such as the punch line” (Attardo HT 22; also Hempelmann 37). And because the punch line is the center of the joke, all other KRs are interwoven with this, characterizing the surface structure of the joke (Hempelmann 37).

3.0 The GloriaGarci Jokes: Preliminary Applications

Of the many instances of humor in this collection, I had mentioned earlier that I did not consider those that did not appear in a joke format, such as annotated cartoons. And of the jokes that were included therein, I tried to choose those that had very clear punch lines, and those that will show overlap and opposition more clearly, even while, certainly, there are other jokes that qualify for this. I also chose two sets of jokes here, one set that focused directly on the GloriaGarcillano phone conversation, and another set that represented the jokes poking fun at GMA, either as a result of the diminution of her stature as president [owing to the Gloriagate affair, or perhaps engendered by earlier public distrust], or as result of the GloriaGarci coverup, in order to establish existing joke cycles. I note here that these are the two main categories under which we can slot the jokes in this collection. There is, indeed, on other category, which focuses on jokes segueing from election alsorans and other political characters, but I did not consider this at all for the purposes of this paper, though many of these jokes are better crystallized, and are perhaps, funnier and more familiar than the GloriaGarci jokes themselves. For most of these readings, I used the Attardo GTVH hierarchy of KRs and only in three instances, did I go back to Raskin’s SSTH. I shall explain why in a little while.


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A. J 23a

Citizens Gloria and Garci to speak to the nation tonight at 7pm. The plan to deny that it was them talking. They will demonstrate this by using SIGN LANGUAGE.

I begin here by reading this first joke using the GTVH KRs, as this first joke can already be read as a simple narrative.

Following the Attardo hierarchy, we can map this thus:

SO disclosure/concealmentVoice/mutednessFantasy/reality[real/unreal]

LM planning is an “almost situation”, exaggeration

SI plan; national announcement

TA GMA, Garcillano, media, TV audience [Filipinos]

NS simple narrative; news

LA irrelevant Here we find that the situation, the apparent plan for the national announcement of both GMA’s and Garci’s culpability does not only result in an even more unacceptable fiasco, but that the overlap between the scripts of truthtelling and expression is concealed thrice over. First, that this is a situation that “almost” happens, but does not is what the logical mechanism does to assist the joke’s punch line. Secondly, that the characters deem “sign language” as a possible “out” for them, in that they would remain “mute” and incomprehensible to the Filipino audience, presents them as ignorant and cunning, both, in that sign could indeed be comprehensible to many Filipinos. The joke certainly panders to the stereotype of sign language being a mishmash of “weird” gestures and hand signals, which it certainly is not. Also, the punch line certainly contextualizes the script of collusion and insincerity, as the unexpected end of the joke underscores the collusion before and during this announcement.

A reading of the joke using Raskin’s semantic script analysis underscores this opposition:

1. Citizens : inhabitant, dweller, belonging2. Gloria: name, female, President of the Philippines, highest government official,

dialogue partner, coplanner3. and: conj., addition,


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4. Garci: name, Garcillano, COMELEC commissioner, government official, dialogue partner, coplanner

5. to: prep., signal intent, directionspeak: action, communication, expression, information

6. to: prep., direction the: art., definite

7. nation: place, home, dwelling, place of belonging, identity 8. tonight: evening, definite time9. at: prep., place, direction, status10. 7 pm: evening, definite time11. They: pron., 3rdp plural, 12. plan: action, aim, definite goal13. to: prep., direction, intent14. deny: action, refute, deflect truth,15. that: pron., relative, signals relation 16. it: pron., 3rd p. sing. 17. was: action/status, be [past], linking verb

them: pron., 3rd p. objective, 18. talking: action, speech, communication, exchange19. They [see #13]20. will: action/status, be future [linking verb]21. demonstrate: action, show, exhibit, overtness22. this: pron., demonstrative23. by: prep., 24. using: action, present, utilize25. Sign Language: deaf,mute language, communication, expression

Of these we can begin to create four groups of words, as a modification of the Raskin combinatorial rules:

Belonging/identity: citizens, nation, they, them, andDeliberate action: speak, plan, deny, talking, demonstrate, usingSignals of definition: to (2x) , the, tonight, 7pm, sign language, Gloria, Garci Intent: to, at, plan, will

The signals of collaboration are evident here in the many instances of linked names and pronouns, and the actions indicated in the joke work are very definite ones. Even while these are referent to the joke narrative of appearing together for an interview, these signal deliberate action referent to the context of the joke work, collusion in padding votes, and collusion in keeping mum about the “transaction”/question. The signals of definition also abound in this text, not only in deciding to demonstrate [questionable] innocence by using sign language, so as not to be found out but more significantly in emphasizing the clearcut deliberation of the plan to dupe the audience/ fellow citizens. We note also that scripts of belonging and identity (citizen, nation) as applied to “Citizens Gloria and Garci” provide the very opposition here already because a great part of the joke [the inherent jab line] is that they cannot be counted as “citizens” because of the deliberate travesty they made [are making, in the context of the joke], of the communication, expectedly of truth alone. This also makes of the scripts of communication and


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expression here, incongruous sites of clarity, because they, in fact are not meant to convey truth or information. The exaggerated desire to conceal is signaled here by “sign language”, which of course, obscures, if not invalidates, the terms of the impending “interview”, and while this is improbable, the use of it by these two characters is not impossible. Sign language is seen here though as hidden language, but the referential ambiguity is that this is referent too to the “hidden language” in the GG tapes in the first place, which is even more concealed, because at least in Sign, one knows the signs and what they stand for, and this is what is lacking in the tapes.

B. J23b

Sa plane:

GMA: Hello, ako tapon 100 piso, 100 tao saya.Garci: Ma’am, ako tapon 1000 piso, 1000 saya. Pilot: Ako tapon kayo dalawa, milyon tao saya!

In this second joke, we use the GTVH mapping again:

SO money/no moneyProfligacy/lackLiteral/figurative [perverse] generosity

LM inferring consequences, proportion, exaggeration

TA GMA, Garci, Filipinos

SI flight, travel, poverty/problem alleviation

NS dialogue

LA telegraphic, abnormality of syntax adding to humorIn this joke, the situation signals poverty alleviation by two speakers/ government

officials GMA and Garci. The “throwing away” of money signals the generosity/ “compassion” of these two characters in the narrative, but the context points us to two frames one is the frame of poverty, in which the “tao” referred to are certainly those in need of the money. The script of profligacy or extreme generosity, points to what Filipinos do expect of their politicians, that they will “throw” money away so that they could be “made happy” [saya]. This becomes the implicit jab line, that while this is a script about GloriaGarci, it also does poke fun at those benefiting from the GloriaGarci “vote buying” even while this “reality” is not verbalized in the joke itself. In the joke we find the Filipinos [isang milyong tao] the recipient only of the pilot’s smartalecky plan, but we find in this script, a more complicit, and not all together flattering, aspect to this presence. The script of giving is seen in one sense in the dialogue between Gloria and Garci, but is ambiguated and made disproportionate in the pilot’s comic remark. We also see here why the joke should situate them “in a plane”, and why we are willing to go


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along with this situation. We do not ask “why are they flying?” and “why are they in a plane together?” [Or even if we do], we realize that what this “plane scenario” does is to activate the pilot as a truly generous person, even more than GloriaGarci, someone out of government and politics, even! The joke’s punch line admits too of the fact that while 100, 1000 people will be happy wit government doleouts, the parallelism is as true millions will be happier to do away not just with Gloria or Garci, but with the system that spawned them. The pilot is construed here, inferentially, as the real hero, should he be able to drop them from the heights. The joke contextualizes in another way the kind of “fall” that the people do wish of Gloria and Garci. Here it is literal, and this overlaps with the figurative political fall we wish of them, in reality.

C. J34b

Gayahin natin c God mapagpatawad. Patawad nya Adan & Eve pero pinalayas niya cla Eden, kaya patawarin natin c Ate Glo pero palayas din cya Malacañang.

SO high/low statureGentle virtue [mercy]/ brute force

LM false analogy

SI religious information, exile/ eviction, punishment

TA GMA, Filipinos

NS adjacency pair

LA cellphone abbreviations, vowel croppings, codeswitching

The humor of this joke is fairly simple we find here an exhortation to virtue in a theological sense, which, by way of a false analogy, overlaps with the application of the virtue in the political sense. We find in the first part of this premise, the information about the mercy of God, and the explanation of how such mercy is tempered by His justice [palayas nya cla sa Eden], illustrating what Raskin calls bonafide communication. Raskin looks at joketelling as an instance of “nonbonafide communication”, the purpose of the mode “is not to convey information contained in the text he is uttering but rather to create a special effect with the help of the text”, and in joketelling, this is to make the hearer laugh (Raskin 101). Bonafidecommunication then is “earnest, serious, informationconveying mode of verbal communication” (100). This instance of bonafide communication in the first part of the [literal] text [message] is reinterpreted in the second half because the utterance turns on itself. The false analogy here is may not be so false in assigning an errant status to “Ate Glo” [paralleling Adam and Eve], but in extending this to make of Filipinos “gods”, in advocating the similar expulsion from Philippine “Eden” “Malacañang”. While the script overlap here lies in the democratic belief of “being like God” by taking on his voice [vox populi, vox Dei], this idealized


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status of the Filipino voter/citizen is made more real and palpable here, removing it from the almost mythical Adam and Eve story with which the text begins. The script overlaps also make for the script oppositions here. The nonbonafide effect of this joketelling is to emphasize and foreground the enormity of emulation of virtue, and ultimately casts doubt on the possibility of mere mortals being able to balance the mercy and virtue of which we were informed in the first part of the joke. Such instruction is construed as joke in the light of Gloriagate, but the reverberations of the joke is furthered as the exhortation to expel “Ate Glo” from Malacanang also refers, tongue in cheek, to the penchant of the Filipino to forgive and forget, hence the earlier “template” to forgive, and expel/evict the “inhabitant” of the national residence.

D. J35

Sbe nLa swerte at maayos daw ang buhay pag may dwende sa bahay… e bakit sa malakanyang may dwende nakatira pero hirap pa rin ang Pilipinas?

Let us look at this by way of the GTVH mapping:

SO luck/misfortune Providence/ poverty

Fantasy/reality Real/unreal

Good/bad

LM faulty reasoning, parallelism, exaggeration

SI habitation, wish fulfillment

TA GMA

NS belief and rebuttal, adjacency pair, pseudo riddle, suspended question

LA cellphone vowel croppings (first part of narrative)

Now let us map this by way of Raskin’s semantic scripts:

• Sbe [sabi] say• nLa [nila] they, 3rd person, distance• swerte lucky, fortunate, blessed, prosperous• at prep. And, also, addition• maayos orderly, neat, normalcy• daw Tagalog modulator signifying uncertainty, indefiniteness• ang art., definite• buhay life, [alive]


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• pag connector, [kapag], when, instance, definition• may there [is], presence• dwende dwarf, fantastical creature granting good/bad luck, a person of small

stature• sa prep. In, presence, possession, belonging, enclosure• bahay house, home, residence, domain, enclosure, belonging• […] ellipsis; signals break in sentence information• e [ay] is• bakit why interrogative pron., question, inquiry, cause, effect• sa in [see above]• malakanyang name, official residence of Philippine president, home,

dwelling, habitation, power• may there [see above]• dwende dwarf, small stature, GMA• nakatira dweller, inhabitant• pero connector, but, opposition• hirap poor, miserable, difficulty, lack• pa still, Tagalog particle• rin connector, also• ang art. (see above)• Pilipinas name, country, definite, nation, home, dwelling, habitation

This is a joke that is usually construed as funny only in the light of the fact that it is a denigration of a political figure, among the many jokes of diminution of a political figure, and in GMA, this diminution is a physical/ literal one. Again, like the “Adam and Eve” joke, the first part of this joke functions as entry into bonfide communication we are informed of a standing cultural belief. The change from information to incongruity here is signaled evidently by the ellipsis, the transition working as a visible preparation for the punch line of the joke.

I would like to note, though, that the initial situation in this joke work does not primarily lie in the leader’s small stature, but in the existence and the cultivation of “luck” and prosperity in a Filipino home. We see the cultural context of the joke not only in the belief in supernatural creatures, or in a supernatural agency of engendering a “good” life, but in the sense of what constitutes that “good” life “swerte ” and “ayos” –as consequent concepts, luck and prosperity laying the foundation for normalcy and order.

We also find in this joke what we could construe as scripts of luck, and scripts of home, the latter we have already seen occurring in the “Adam and Eve/GMA” joke. The script opposition in the surface joke will certainly lie in the incongruity between the belief in the fantasy of a luck granting “dwende” in a Philippine home, and the reality of another “dwende”, a person of small stature, who is the quintessence of unluckiness and misfortune in a national home, which is Malacañang. This is not just the reversal of fantasy and reality, nor the discrepancy between expectation and reality. This intersection of familial dwelling place and national home, and the nation as home, is a script that


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occurs in many jokes in the collection [which we cannot examine due to the time constraint], and the parallel fates of expulsion in the earlier text, and misfortune in this text approach the same script, and should therefore be seen as an underlying imperative in the national/cultural context.

This, therefore, is not just a diminution joke, but one whose structure and agency continually underscores breakdown in belonging and order in the nation, and that is the real misfortune.

4.0 Conclusion

At the end of this paper, we ask, “does the funniness of these jokes change with our examination of these as humorous texts via the SSTH and the GTVH?”, and indeed, our answer is, “certainly not!”

But what the readings of these texts by way of Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory of Humor and Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humor is to provide patterns [scripts] and formal objects that allow us to move beyond the overt and palpable comic contexts of these jokes to track triggers and patterns that underpin the present political impasse.

We have noted in these four sample jokes that in the GloriaGarci jokes the embroilment of the president and the COMELEC commissioner in this scandal is marked by scripts of deliberation, definitiveness, and deliberate concealment [see J23a], and while in the real national scheme this is an unresolved issue, and is discourse marked by tentativeness, chaos, and irresolution, the joke cycles and the lexical scripts we have seen point to a more defined scenario. We may argue that these may be so because they are contrived narratives, but what we are seeing too is that this deliberate concealment is not itself part of the surface structure of these jokes but are markers that appear in the deep structure of these joke texts.

We also saw that in these joke cycles, the resort that people have in their futile attempts to get at the truth is to advocate violent, brutal means to undo GMA herself, and, consequently, the political institution she represents by way of the leaderstatus she holds, and this is effected in these jokes in ways by which she is diminished personally [hence the constant height jokes], or to be avenged against her wrongdoing by highlighting the opposition between the leader as “a person of good moral character and personal integrity, a kind and compassionate person” (Raskin 224), and the presentation of GMA as corrupt and untrustworthy. This is modified in the pilot joke in a way, in that GMA is initially shown to be compassionate and charitable, but the end certainly is the same—where the script of wishing a leader long life is negated by wishing her dead (225). In the collection, another way of denigrating the political figure is to use the sexual/nonsexual opposition, in that the leader is not supposed to be thought of in sexual terms, and any attempt to show the leader as a functioning, or potential, sexual partner is seen as degradation (224).

In the joke work referent to ineffectual governance due to this national scandal, our readings of these jokes by way of the SSTH/GTVH have inscribed GMA in contexts


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of disorder and unspeakable taboos [vide J 34]. The major script opposition we have found, therefore, in these joke texts is what Raskin noted as normalcy/abnormality; real/unreal, good/bad.

In ending, it is imperative that we be reminded of such unbending oppositions that manifest unflinching disgust at the chaos of falsehood making. This joke work, and these joke cycles are new venues that allow us to see just how deep this national wound is, and where we are in this national chaos. And while at many points in their discussion, even Raskin, Attardo, Hempelmann and other proponents of the GTVH have themselves said that this linguistic theory of humor, and the knowledge resources themselves bear more examination and study, this preliminary attempt at examining the formal aspects of current Philippine political joke work attempts to read jokes as popular texts that “slash at the heart of democratic polity” (Whitfield 197), as linguistic, cultural artifacts that interprets and reinterprets the nation and its search for truth/s.

Works Cited:

1. Attardo, Salvatore. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001.

2. Coronel, Sheila S. Hello, Garci? Political Humor in the Cellphone Age. Quezon City, Philippines: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 2005.

3. Garland, Nicholas. “Political Cartooning” Laughing Matters: A Serious Look at Humor. John Durant and Jonathan Miller, eds. NY: Longman, 1988, 7589.

4. Hempelmann, Christian F. “Incongruity and Resolution of Humorous Narratives Linguistic Humor Theory and the Medieval Bawdry of Rabelais, Boccaccio, and Chaucer” Unpublished M.A. Thesis. Ohio: Youngstown U, 2000.

5. Mulkay, Michael. On Humour: Its Nature and Its Place in Modern Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity P, 1988.

6. Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1985.

7. Roeckelein, Jon E. The Psychology of Humor: A Reference Guide and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 2002.

8.. Whitfield, Stephen J. “Political Humor” Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics. Lawrence E. Mintz, ed. NY: Greenwood P, 1988, 195212.


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