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A Polish joke is a discriminatory joke intended to mock the Polish people in the English language based on the hostile stereotypes about them. A 'Polish joke' belongs to the category of jokes whose understanding requires prior knowledge of ''what a Polish joke is'', because similar to all discriminatory jokes, they depend upon the audience's preconceived notions and ''affective'' dislikes for entertainment. The relationship between these internalized negative stereotypes about the Polish people and the persistence of ethnic jokes about them is not easy to trace, although they can be understood by many. Often an offensive term for the Poles themselves is used in the joke description as well, i.e. the Polack joke in English. ==History== Some of the early 20th century Polish jokes might have been told originally before World War II in disputed border-regions such as Silesia, suggesting that Polish jokes did not originate in Nazi Germany, but a lot earlier, as an outgrowth of regional jokes rooted in historical social class differences.〔Christie Davies, (''The Mirth of Nations.'' Page 176. ) ''Aldine Transaction'', 2010, ISBN 978-1-4128-1457-7.〕 Nonetheless, these jokes were later fuelled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German warlords and National Socialist propaganda that attempted to justify the Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles by presenting them as dirty and relegating them as inferior on the basis of not being German.〔Tomasz Szarota, ''Goebbels: 1982 (1939-41)'': 16, 36-7, 274; 1978. Also: Tomasz Szarota: ''Stereotyp Polski i Polaków w oczach Niemców podczas II wojny światowej''; Bibliografia historii polskiej - 1981. Page 162.〕〔Critique of Alan Dundes, professor of anthropology and folklore from University of California in Berkeley in ( ''The Mirth of Nations'' by Christie Davies )〕 Polish Americans became the subject of derogatory jokes at the time when Polish immigrants came to America in considerable numbers fleeing mass persecution at home perpetrated by Frederick the Great〔Maciej Janowski, (Frederick's "the Iroquois of Europe" ) (in) ''Polish liberal thought before 1918'', Central European University Press, 2004, Accessed August 4, 2011.〕 and Tsar Nicholas I.〔Liudmila Gatagova, ( "THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE PROCESS OF MASS ETHNOPHOBIAS IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. (The Second Half of the 19th Century)." ) The CRN E-book. Accessed August 4, 2011.〕〔( "January Uprising RSCI", The Real Science Index; ''in:'' "Joseph Conrad, March 12, 1857-August 3, 1924"; Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003 )〕 They took the only jobs available to them, usually requiring physical labor. The same job-related stereotypes persisted even as Polish Americans joined the middle class in the mid 20th century. "These degrading stereotypes were far from harmless. The constant derision, often publicly disseminated through the mass media, caused serious identity crises, feeling of inadequacy, and low self-esteem for many Polish Americans." During the Cold War era, despite the sympathy in the US for Poland being subjected to communism, negative stereotypes about Polish Americans endured, mainly because of the Hollywood/TV media involvement.〔("The Origin of the 'Polish Joke'," ) ''Polish American Journal'', Boston New York.〕〔Dominic Pulera, (''Sharing the Dream: White Males in Multicultural America'' ) Published 2004 by Continuum International Publishing Group, 448 pages. ISBN 0-8264-1643-8. Page 99.〕 Some Polish jokes were brought to America by German displaced persons fleeing war-torn Europe in the late 1940s.〔 During the political transformations of the Soviet controlled Eastern block in the 1980s, the much earlier German anti-Polish sentiment—dating at least to the policies of Otto von Bismarck and the persecution of Poles under the German Empire—was revived in East Germany against Solidarność (Solidarity). Polish jokes became common, reminding some of the spread of such jokes under the Nazis.〔(John C. Torpey, Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent ) Published 1995 by U of Minnesota Press. Page 82.〕 According to Christie Davies, American versions of ''Polish jokes'' are an unrelated "purely American phenomenon" and do not express the "historical Old World hatreds".〔Christie Davies, (''The Mirth of Nations'' ibidem. Page 181. )〕 This view is challenged by the Polish American Journal researchers who argue that Nazi and Soviet propaganda shaped the perception of Poles.〔http://www.polamjournal.com/Library/The_Origin_of_the_Polish_Joke/the_origin_of_the_polish_joke.html〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Polish joke」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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