PHONETICS IN RUSSIAN JOKES

Most native speakers naturally speak their language correctly, so it is no wonder that inaccurate pronunciation of certain sounds, a stress placed on the wrong syllable, or a non-standard intonation is an occasion for jokes in diff erent countries and among diff erent peoples. This article deals with Russian phonetic jokes, which are based on the features of oral speech of certain joke characters. These include oral speech characteristics common for a group of people (accent, stuttering, etc.) and individual features of a joke character, or, so to say, a ‘linguistic mask’ of a character. In addition, the article considers so-called ‘phonological’ jokes, in which words or phonemes of one’s own language are supposed to imitate or mock the sounds of another language, as well as jokes built on interlingual puns.