The suitability of the corpus (Seinfeld) to the current study

Before discussing the key methodological aspects of the current study, it is worth stating why Seinfeld was chosen as a case study in this research. First, some well-known sitcoms, such as Friends, Mad About You, and Will and Grace, have been used in many other studies (e.g., Alkadi 2010, Alharthi 2011, and Ranzato 2013). In this regard, the researcher preferred not to use any of these sitcoms and raise the same issues discussed in other studies. Another reason for choosing Seinfeld was the ease of accessing the subtitled episodes because they are available on DVD.

In addition, Seinfeld is rich in terms of the types of humour used in the show, such as satire, irony, sarcasm, catchphrases, wordplay, retorts, etc. Of course, the previous section presented a detailed analysis of Seinfeld, its characters, plotlines, the language, and most importantly the humour in the show. However, in the following paragraphs, I will discuss briefly five important features of Seinfeld that make it suitable for the analysis of humour in this study: (1) references to Jewish and American culture, (2) the use of tabooed topics, (3) the language- play, (4) the utilisation of stand-up comedy, and (5) physical comedy.

Seinfeld is rich in references to both Jewish and American cultures, which are the typical sources of humour in the show. In some episodes (e.g., The Bris and The Yada Yada), the entire episode revolves around Jewish customs, public figures, and holidays (e.g., Hanukkah, mohel, Golda Meir, Holocaust). In addition, Seinfeld is filled with several references to American popular art, history, politics, and culture, including C. Everett Coop, John Cheever, J. Edgar Hoover, Tina Turner, Mr. Magoo, Superman, Man of Steel, Jor-El, The Merv Griffin show, Abbott and Costello, Dwight Eisenhower and his wife Mamie, Brenda Starr and Dondi, and Stein Eriksen. These cultural references are used in humorous situations to provoke laughter.

Seinfeld also uses humour that relies on some taboo expressions and tabooed topics. These themes are, for example, related to nose picking, bare nipples, breast implants, penis size, urinating in public, diarrhea, masturbation, testicles, sexual intercourse, a woman’s period, pee stains, and farting. What is interesting about these topics is the way they are presented in the show; the show uses ellipsis for these prickly issues and manages to preserve their humorous effects. For example, George uses “that” when he tells Elaine that his mother caught him masturbating: “I am never doing that again”.

Another paramount feature of Seinfeld is language-play. McFedries (2003: 1) argues that “to anyone who loves words and appreciates good (and even bad) wordplay, Seinfeld was really a show about language”. This is evident in the excessive use of a variety of wordplay and catchphrases, which are utilised to create humorous situations. According to McFedries, Seinfeld is different from other TV shows in a sense that it is “self-consciously verbal”, especially with the clever use of catchphrases that are constructed specifically for the show (ibid.).

What makes Seinfeld different from other TV shows is the opening monologue scene. Almost all episodes start with Jerry performing stand-up comedy, which, in many cases, serves as a kind of introductory look at the theme of the episode. Jerry addresses in a humorous way a number of topics, including travelling, friendship, fashion, sex, dating, and relationships.

Physical comedy is a prominent feature of Seinfeld. This type of comedy involves the physical appearance of the characters, their movements, and fashion tendencies. These aspects

work as a source of humour in the show. For example, many jokes are told about Kramer’s style of clothing and his imitation of dogs’ behaviour, Elaine’s poor dancing, and George’s disappointed reactions.

Tackling these features of Seinfeld (i.e., the use of cultural references, tabooed topics, language-play, stand-up comedy, and jokes bound to characters’ physical appearance) is a challenging task for subtitlers and specifically Arab subtitlers who work between very different languages and cultures. In other words, Seinfeld, with its unique features and its humour, is a reflection of the American language and culture. Translating the humorous instances of the show into another culture is most certainly a complicated task. Cassel (2006: 176) argues that in Seinfeld “some jokes, word jokes, and puns especially, are hard to translate, and viewers who have to go by the subtitles will therefore miss out on these kinds of jokes”. Cassel also stresses that language-play is not the only problematic issue for the audience and translators of other cultures, but culture-specific jokes are also hard to comprehend (ibid.).

4.4.2Methodological approach

The data for the analysis were collected as a first stage in the process of analysing humour; this stage involved looking for the available subtitled episodes of Seinfeld in Arabic. There were only 73 episodes available on DVD that were officially subtitled by Anis Obeid Translation Agency and aired on MBC, an Arabic private channel. An attempt was subsequently made to prepare the English transcript of each episode to ensure that the characters’ utterances were accurate. Then, I watched the 73 episodes of Seinfeld and identified the classification of humour based on the existing typologies proposed by Norrick (1993 & 1994) and Dynel (2009) (see chapter 2 for the typologies of humour).

Once the classification was established, a record of humour instances (126 instances in total) and their Arabic translations was made. In addition, the source text (ST) (characters’ utterances) and the target text (TT) (Arabic subtitles) are presented in tables in two columns. The left column presents the ST and the right the TT (Arabic subtitles) and their back translations (see table 4). It is worth mentioning that the enumeration of the examples starts at 1.

Example (1) Episode: The boyfriend.

ST TT

KRAMER: I mean, how can you prostitute

yourself like this? ؟ﺔﻘﯾﻳﺮﻄﻟاﺍهﻩﺬﮭﻬﺑﻚﺴﻔﻧﻦﻣﺮﻘﺤﺗﻒﯿﻴﻛ

Back translation: Why do you disparage yourself in this way? Table (4) The source and target texts

In finding answers to the research questions, this study draws on the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH; Attardo & Raskin 1991, Attardo 1994, Attardo 2001, Attardo 2002) and Pedersen’s (2005) model (12)_{. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were followed in this} study. The qualitative approach involved identifying each humour instance that represented a particular type of humour. Then the KRs of each source text joke were listed according to their hierarchical order in a table (see table 5). Once the KRs (i.e., SO, LM, SI, TA, & NS) were presented, an attempt was made to see whether these parameters were preserved in the target text joke. To put it in a simpler way, there was in-depth analysis of both the joke in a particular scene and its Arabic translation (subtitles) to investigate the similarities and differences between the two jokes in terms of their knowledge resources.

Script Opposition (SO) Usual/Unusual

Logical Mechanism (LM) Self-undermining

Situation (SI) Context

Target (TA) George

Narrative Strategy (NS) Dialogue Table (5) KRs of each ST joke

For the purpose of analysing the data, Pedersen’s model was used to investigate the strategies used by Arab subtitlers to subtitle different types of humour, including humour containing cultural references, and to uncover the factors that might govern the subtitlers’ choices (see table 6). Furthermore, a quantitative investigation was conducted using simple statistics to measure the frequency of the subtitling strategies used to render each type of humour.

Translation strategy Paraphrase/ official equivalent

Factors affecting the subtitler’s decision

- Retaining the wordplay in the TT. - Achieving a humorous effect

Table (6) Translation strategies and parameters affecting their implementations

4.5 Conclusion

This chapter introduced the corpus for the study and attempted to shed light on the sitcom as a TV genre. It also discussed the basic features of its different formats: the actcom, the domcom, and the dramedy. The genre has various components such as characters, narratives and presentations, which play a significant role in its production. Because it is about everyday life, Seinfeld is an example of a well-known sitcom that is considered to be the most successful and influential of its

kind in the eyes of many audiences. The main characters in the show are unrelated, which is unusual because many sitcoms focus on families, but Seinfeld is about four characters with totally different personalities, which leads to more conflicts and clashes between them.

The Jewishness of the show is evident, and Jewish culture is presented in a very funny way. In fact, there are some episodes that explicitly mock some Jewish traditions, such as the clumsy Mohel and the converted dentist. However, in spite of the significant amount of Jewish references in the show, viewers would not think of characters as Jewish, except Jerry, as the religious identities of the four main characters are less important.

Being a show about real life, Seinfeld as stated previously in this study, is about nothing in particular but is all about everyday life. Therefore, the humour in the show addresses things that people never talk about (e.g. masturbation), but about which they are well aware. Furthermore, there are different sources of humour in the show such as wordplay, catchphrases, parody and physical comedy.

The chapter presented a detailed discussion of the methodology used in the study and highlighted the reliability of the methods in the analysis of the data. The GTVH and its extended version as well as Attardo’s (2002) and Pedersen’s (2005) models were presented (see Chapters 2 and 3 for in-depth discussions of these theories). In addition, an attempt was made to highlight the methodological approach and the manner in which examples will be provided and analysed in the following chapter.

Chapter 5