Cognitive processes and multimodal communication in the parody of politicians Isabella Poggi Dipartimento di Filosofia, Comunicazione e Spettacolo Roma Tre University Via Ostiense 234 – 00146 Rome isabella.poggi@uniroma3.it Francesca D’Errico Facoltà di Psicologia UniNettuno Telematic University Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 39 00186 Rome - Italy f.derrico@uninettunouniversity.net Abstract To single out the cognitive processes implied in the production of a parody, viewed as a distorted imitation of a text or behavior aimed at eliciting laughter and mocking someone, a corpus of parodies of politicians has been collected and multimodal communication analyzed through a devoted annotation scheme. Analysis allows to distinguish between surface and deep parodies, to single out the steps required for making a deep parody when the bare imitation of the Target is not enough for the Parodist’s satiric goals, and to see the intertwining of various modalities in conveying the crucial information of a parody: identification and characterization of a Target and of its flaws through allusion to some event. 1 Introduction A common activity in everyday life, entertainment, and political satire, is to make parodies. Students make parodies of their teachers, humor writers make parodies of poems or songs, comedians perform parodies of politicians. This work explores the cognitive and communicative processes underlying the production of parodies in political satire. 2 What is parody Holman and Harmon [1] define parody as an imitation intended to ridicule or criticize, that to be understood requires familiarity with the original object, and to be effective has to “sound true”, that is, faithful to the original. Rose [2; 3] sees parody of literary works as the comic reworking of preformed material through their partial imitation or evocation in a comic manner that marks the ambivalence of the parodist’s attitude to the object of criticism. Being a case of intertextual work, the parody contains two texts-worlds, and the reader must understand the comic satiric relationship between them. [3; 4; 5]. Parody is not a simple imitation, but an “approximation” to an original source, in which, like in sarcasm, “the subject is treated in a contradictory manner: elevated subjects are debased and low ones are elevated” [4; 5; 6]. Bachtin [7: 76] views the parodistic act as “an arena of conflict between two voices”, split from one another in a hostile contrast, with the second voice representing a “semantic authority” with which the audience is expected to agree. Rossen-Knil and Henry [8] mention four pragmatic aspects of parody: (1) the intentional verbal representation of the object of parody, (2) the flaunting of the verbal representation, (3) the critical act, and (4) the comic act. The techniques used by the parodist to refashion an older text or image range from caricature to substitution, addition, subtraction [9], exaggeration, condensation, contrast, and discrepancy [5]. Luttazzi [10] attributes two goals to parody, informing and deforming, the latter often using “bodily reduction” to physical needs, with the aim of dissacrating and destroying hierarchies, mixing sacred and secular, and making fun of boasting characters and their arrogance in a blasphemous way. Various authors [2; 3; 5; 9], stress how the parodistic act depends on the successful interaction between parodist and audience, that not only needs to acknowledge the Parodist’s “authority” and moralistic intention, but also must know vices and virtues of the Target, especially when the parody is focused on his/her body and verbal features (tics, stuttering…) that are the trigger of the comic part. In brief, a verbal parody is a highly situated, intentional, and conventional speech act that re-presents some object but flaunts the re-presentation to convey humorous criticism [11; 12]. Proceedings from the 1st European Symposium on Multimodal Communication, University of Malta, Valletta, October 17–18, 2013 65