In the process of intercultural communication or with the help of it we can see the mechanism of transmitting complex categories such as values, motives, stereotypes and even prejudices. An anecdote reflects all the typical situations in a person’s life in a special linguistic form: family, schooling, work, politics, the army, shopping etc. So the anecdote can be considered as one of the most informative sources that shows the reality. The international anecdote contains a huge variety of stereotypical images of national characters, so it is likely to analyze national characters of different nations by means of the international anecdotes. They seem to be the humoristic mirror of the acquired experience in the process of intercultural communication.
The anecdote is one of the few productive genres of the modern folklore in which distinguishing features of the definite linguocultural nation can be found. One can observe the norms of behaviour, traditional, sociological, psychological attitude and ethnic images in the anecdote on the level of the text. A special feature of the international anecdote is the model they are built on. The main characters of the international anecdotes react variously in one and the same situation depending on the features of their national character demonstrated in the anecdote. For example, the English are portrayed as polite and tactful, the Jews are shown as rather greedy and even stingy, the Americans are patriotic, self-reliant and ambitious, but the Russians are lazy, sentimental and sometimes really paradoxical.
Thus an international anecdote is a wonderful source of information of the national character but on the other hand can mislead and confuse the reader, so one should be attentive not to construct the wrong stereotype about this or that culture.