Diglossia as an Agent of Humor in the Writings of Elena Akrita

Diglossia, the existence of two language varieties within the same language community, can be used for humorous effect under certain conditions. Although linguistic approaches to humor are not widely available or formalized, it is possible to use a number of key concepts such as scripts, incongruity, and surprise, in relation to such sociolinguistic concepts as high and low varieties of language, in an attempt to explain why texts are funny. The work of Elena Akrita, a member of the new generation of Greek humorists, provides numerous instances of texts that are based on what I will call diglossic humor. Should one wish to poke fun at a once-revered language variety, that variety must have been "vilified" and thereby have lost its status. This is indeed the case with katharévusa, as Akrita's humor shows.