Paper short abstract:

One of the most viable subgenres of riddles are joking questions. The dynamics of the genre in social media shows a move towards illustrating/visualising. Paper analyses which conundrums are illustrated and how, what does visualisation add to the verbal riddles in aesthetic and emotional sense.

Paper long abstract:

One of the most viable subgenres of riddles are humorous joking questions or conundrums. In their short, dialogic form, they are well suited for expressing vernacular views. They are very often born and disseminated as newslore, being a reaction to daily (political or other) events. The dynamics of the genre in social media shows a move towards illustrating and visualising. A characteristic feature of these multimodal and -medial memetic representations is their literary, digital, folk visual quality.

In the presentation, I seek answers to the following questions:

- Which conundrums are illustrated and how?

- How often does inspiration come from the pre-digital period and in what way?

- What does visualisation add to the traditionally verbal joking questions in aesthetic and emotional sense (is the image merely an illustration to the text or do the verbal and the visual constitute a new whole?)

The material for the presentation is collected from the Estonian popular humour site meeldib.ee. This is open for all registered users who can post jokes, photos, videos, which have to be "their own intellectual creation". For a folklorist, this is anonymous folklore where the different layers of authorship are impossible to differentiate. The material is viewed to the backdrop of the database "Estonian riddles" (ca 25 000 texts; www.folklore.ee/Keerdkys, Voolaid 2004)

This study was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (IUT22-5), and by the European Regional Development Fund (CEES).