On Terms for Laughter and the Comic in the Serbian Language

Abstract

The author analyzes words from contemporary Serbian that denote phenomena related to laughter and the comic. The corpus of analyzed words does not include those originating from dialectal sources. In the absence of prior lexicographic studies on laughter and ridicule, thematic categories have been proposed for the relevant terms: laughter without the comic, laughter, and ridicule. Based on the analysis of Serbian vocabulary, the author identifies the presence of words of Slavic origin as well as terms borrowed from classical languages, particularly from poetics and literary theory. The study also highlights the polysemy and semantic overlap of words denoting the comic with other semantic fields. A significant number of terms refer to individuals who provoke laughter, whereas there are no specific terms for those who laugh or are laughed at. The paper emphasizes that the results of similar studies in other languages could reveal both similarities and differences in the conceptualization of laughter and the comic within the linguistic worldview of the respective languages and their cultures.