Blonde jokes as discursive practice: much more than laughter

In this article, we discuss humorous discourse, especially the popular genre of jokes, focusing specifically on blonde women jokes, as they are the ones with the most frequent popular appeal. We understand that the general context of a joke basically addresses social issues, including a specific class or social group with a specific characteristic, referring to sensitive or controversial situations, on which people have different viewpoints. In this vein, jokes circulate involving racial issues, genital anatomy peculiarities, physical disabilities or special mobility, religious beliefs, gender and sexual identity issues, social class issues, among others, so as not to extend too much. Jokes, therefore, would serve to hide (or expose) prejudiced, sexist, and extremist positions on issues that people would naturally fear exposing their true views. As a theoretical framework, we initially turn to Possenti (1998) to contextualize how jokes are constructed, and then we will see how Maingueneau (2001) points out the principles of the enunciative scene in discourse and how we can contemplate it in our analysis of blonde women jokes. As the corpus of analysis, we highlight a joke among several selected from the field of social networks. We hope, thus, to contribute to understanding how these women became the object of jokes and how prejudice and sexism justify and reinforce the persistence of certain stereotypes around this genre.