Ideologi och retorik i kungaskämt

Abstract

There are many jokes and humorous stories about Swedish kings. For example, the current king Carl XVI Gustaf has been the object for jokes in several humour programs on radio and TV, and in humorous stories on the Internet. This article describes and analyses royal jokes, and how these can be understood rhetorically and ideologically. The concept of ideology represents notions that are collective or semi-collective, and which speak both about how the world is and how it should be. Ideologies describe something, but also help to reproduce and create the described. The article discusses how jokes can challenge the king and the monarchy as well as the bourgeoisie in more general terms. But in many cases this questioning is (only) on a rhetorical level. Jokes are inside the ideological, which means that they represent a more or less legitimate genre in which it is accepted but also harmless to challenge the upper classes.