Abstract:
To study the Thai satiric short stories during 1992-2002 in terms of themes and techniques. It is found that the dominant themes consist of the criticism of some groups of people in Thai society, particularly the politicians, the criticism of the urban society as the modern capitalist society and the criticism of other social issues such as the decline of morality. The techniques of satire appear through the construction of literary elements, the use of writing techniques and the use of language techniques. The finding shows that most of the satiric short stories exploit ordinary plots to convey the themes of criticism while the stories are created to produce humor. The short stories which have humorous plots focus on playing with the readers' expectation. The characters are the main element that the authors utilize for attacking the victims of satire. They appear in the forms of both human and non-human characters who are deviant from normal standard in terms of their appearances and behaviors. The settings are also used for creating humor. The important literary technique is the selection of narrator. Most of the narrators take the authors' roles in directing criticism at the targets. The titles of the short stories have its functions in producing the unity of the story, generating the readers' interest and misleading the readers' anticipation for the twisted ending. For humorous result, special forms are also used in presenting the short stories. This experiment of the new forms is the uniqueness of Thai satiric short stories of this period. The language techniques are employed to originate humor from incongruity. Two dominant techniques include the use of verbal irony with sarcastic purpose to hurt the satiric victims and the use of analogy which reflects the writers' remarkable ability in applying words to satirize. The research clearly illustrates the close relationship between the themes and the techniques of Thai satiric short stories. It is showed that the authors are able to use various satiric techniques to sharply criticize the Thai society.