Kazakh Construction

Title: Kazakh Construction

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Lore,  Joke
  • Language: Kazakh
  • Country of Origin: Kazakhstan
  • Informant: Assel Uvaliyeva
  • Date Collected: 11-1-18

Informant Data:

  • Assel Uvaliyeva was born on February 25, 1995.  She is from Almaty, Kazakhstan, of Tatar and Kazakh origin. She currently works as a teachers assistant and studies at Dartmouth College as a graduate student. She speaks Russian, Kazakh, and English.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: There has been a lot of new construction going on in Abu Dhabi Plaza in Astana the capital of Kazakhstan. Despite the construction, the country has issues with shortages of labor and materials which contributes to plenty of missed deadlines. Furthermore, the President of Kazakhstan holds significant power and people always try to impress him. This joke ties together construction practices with the process of impressing the President.
  • Social Context: Assel found this meme on an Instagram account that regularly posts Kazakhstan memes.nMemes are visual representations of viral lore, that is understood by a large of group of people associated with the meme’s content, in this case the content is best understood by people familiar with the way construction is handled in Kazakhstan. Although Assel is not from Astana, she has personal experience with Kazakhs trying to impress the President at her university. Furthermore, there is a Kazakh expression for people working to impress political figures.

Item:

  • This joke is formatted as a meme from a popular Instagram page focusing on Kazakh memes. The meme pokes fun at lazy construction workers and people working extremely hard just to impress the President. The punchline is unexpected because instead of being a magical spell the worker lies and tells everyone the President is coming.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

  • First Panel: Person A- “Damn we’re not meeting the deadline. There is not enough materials.”
  • First Panel: Person B- “I actually have a magical spell that will help. To get it to work you need to climb to the top of the building and yell it.”
  • Second Panel: Person A- “The President is coming tomorrow!”
  • Third Panel: Person B- “Oh yeah, that always works.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • “This joke makes fun of Kazakh workers working extremely hard to impress the President. I experienced this first-hand at my university. We have fountains that the school never turns on. Then, when the President came by to visit, of course we finally turned on the fountains.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • I have never seen a meme making fun of people trying to impress the President. However, I feel like this humor is universal across most workplaces. When the boss comes by production always increases as people are usually trying to impress them. I think this meme would be effective even if the President was replaced with a boss or foreman.

Collector’s Name: Philip Berton

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Lore
  • Joke
  • Construction
  • Politics
  • Memes
  • Kazakhstan

 

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