Représentations de la féminité dans l’espace culturel francophone : Les « femmes » de l’humour maghrébin

Abstract

Humour about foreigners, as a crystallisation of bilingualism and multiculturality, is based on the
divergences between the interlocutors’ linguistic repertoires. Its marginality is enunciated in the manner of
expression as a strong recognition of the Other as different and as a source of comedy. It manifests itself here in
the “feminine” francophone discourse of Maghrebian humorists, namely Michel Boujenah and Elie Kakou.
Hybridization, as a founding mechanism of the humoristic discourse, imposes the alternation between two
languages: Standard French here coexists with Arabic. This is concretised in the construction of the ideological
and linguistic clichés that are identifiable in the discourse on femininity and in which the multiplicity of levels
and the adaptation of common loans and places play an efficient role in elaborating stereotypes. Put differently,
humour is the main focus of this study. The management of the coexistence of two languages, French and
Arabic, in the representations of femininity and the emergence of humour, is the topic of this paper