Polari e identidade queer na radiodifusão: uma investigação dos diálogos de Julian e Sandy em Round the Horne

Abstract

This master's research aims to discursively analyze the discursive humor strategies of humor employed by the characters Julian and Sandy in an episode of the British radio program Round the Horne. The central premise is that these characters employ Polari, a sociolect historically associated with the British gay community, in conjunction with humor to challenge, strain, and simultaneously negotiate the prevailing social norms and expectations of gender and sexuality of that time. Based on a corpus consisting of the complete transcription of one episode and the selection of 14 fragments, the study investigates how queer representations mediated by wordplay, puns, ambiguities, and vocal performances are constructed in the dialogues. Theoretically, the dissertation articulates Discourse Analysis from a semiolinguistic perspective (Charaudeau) with contributions from Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics, understanding discourse as a staging device crossed by communication contracts, sociodiscursive imaginaries, and power relations. Methodologically, it combines qualitative analysis of fragments with an interpretive mapping of 137 occurrences of laughter, distributed according to humor strategies such as superiority, incongruity, relief, ambiguity, puns, and the use of Polari. The results point to the existence of a double communicative contract: a broad audience, which receives the sketches as "harmless" entertainment, and an audience with some prior knowledge, capable of decoding camp references, homoerotic allusions, and Polari lexicon. It is shown how humor, while reproducing stereotypes, operates as a discursive practice of resistance, allowing queer identities to circulate ambiguously within a regulated communicative context. In the end, the research contributes to expanding knowledge about Polari and to the debate on language, media, and sexual dissidence within the scope of Brazilian linguistic studies