Psycholinguistic and cross-cultural analyses of the stimulus Deutscher Humor

Abstract

The research aims to identify the specificity of encoding German humour in real time based on the principles of cross-cultural and psycholinguistic analyses. The study employed the directed association test method, revealing peculiarities in the associations to the stimulus Deutscher Humor and structuring the reactions to it. The first group included 73 native speakers of different age groups from various regions of Germany. In comparison, the second group consisted of 94 non-native speakers, specifically students aged 20–34 from the Foreign Philology faculty of one of the universities in Ukraine. Typical and individual reactions to the stimulus were outlined with the aim of modelling elements of the paradigm of the humorous target linguo-culture, its comic product, and cultural code. Based on the quantitative analysis of associations at different language levels, productive semantic zones were identified that highlight the specificity of comprehending the conceptual component of the stimulus based on the interaction of linguistic, cultural, and psychic phenomena. The analysis of associative fields contributed to the formation of macro centres of stereotypical perceptions, mental representations, and linguistic thesauri. Idiomatic expressions with the component deutsch triggered both typical and individual reactions, as well as zero reactions. The identified reactions confirmed the practicality of conducting the word association test, which prompted respondents from both groups to engage psychomental mechanisms in perceiving the world to elicit associative reactions and immerse in active and passive vocabularies, and certified their speech competence and expertise.