The ridicule of pretentiousness in French and Russian jokes

The article deals with pretentiousness as condemnable behavior of people who overestimate their own importance. Such behavior is often ridiculed in jokes. A typical genre of such jokes is a short comical narrative. A desire to look more important than others is common for different nations, but there are certain cultural peculiarities of demonstration of one's pretentiousness and ridiculing it. It has been found that self-overestimation of an individual is gender specific. The following ethnic cultural peculiarities in communicative behavior of the French and Russians concerning pretentiousness as shown in jokes have been described. The French present comical pictures of the Non-French as people who overestimate their importance whereas the Russians find some other negative features with Non-Russians. Both French and Russians often show men and women as pretentious individuals, but the French often consider men pretentious (thus reflecting a feminine point of view) and the Russians show women as a pretentious kind of people which is a masculine position in jokes.