Humour in online comments regarding Montenegro’s accession to NATO

Abstract

The empirical analysis in this paper deals with establishing humour examples based on script opposition patterns in online comments regarding Montenegro’s accession to NATO. It is established that the opposing scripts prevailing in the comments on political setting in Montenegro are heavily dependent on Montenegro’s turbulent history and dominant collective scripts such as pride and bravery. As online comments are an emerging genre, a reference to the influence of computer-mediated communication was also made, where pragmatic interpretation called for the help of critical discourse analysis. The results show that the script opposition parameters enable not only linguistic but also pragmatic revelations about Montenegrin people and their chief values or scripts. Script opposition examples within commenters’ standpoints are explained with reference to diachronic level and the modern values in Montenegro.