Deconstructing Female Stereotypes through Humor in Sylvia Orthof's O cavalo transparente

Abstract

The widespread use of humor in children's literature used to make readers reflect on important social mattters, such as inclusion and gender equality. The study focuses on the analysis of this technique as exploited in the story O cavalo transparente by the Brazilian writer Sylvia Orthof (1987). Through strong comic traits, the author deconstructs traditional female stereotypes, choosing the protagonist Carmen, a gypsy anti-heroine who embarks on a journey to search for a lost magic bottle. The function of humor will be highlighted by analyzing the most significant part of the text, determined by the climax, in which the protagonist encounters a mermaid, whose physical characteristics differ from the usual canonical model. This analysis depicts how humor in O cavalo transparent operates to subvert traditional female stereotypes. It examines the dialogues between the two anti-heroines from a pragmatic perspective, highlighting how their interactions give emphasis to the atypical physical characteristics of the mermaid. Also, this study explores these humorous elements into Italian in reference to the functionalist model as a frame. This model considers the cultural context of the text which influences conversational styles, the choice of registers, lexical labels, politeness strategies and allocutive formulas, and domestication. This approach emphasizing domestication brings the text closer to the reader, adhering as much as possible to the linguistic and social conventions of the target culture. Within the framework of the ‘linguistics of humor’, this study demonstrates how the conveyance of comedy is strongly anchored to the socio-pragmatic precepts of each linguistic community. The study underlines the challenges of retaining the original comedic text effect of O Cavalo Transparente when adapting it into the target culture, revealing how the comedic essence may be altered in translation. This research contributes to understanding the effect of humor in literature and the intricacies of cross-cultural translation. Humor could be used as a valuable pedagogical means to stimulate effective learning as comedy by inducing positive emotional states, significantly contributing to lowering the Affect filter and performance anxiety.