Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry 303140386X, 9783031403866

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Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry Edited by Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju

Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry

Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju Editor

Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry

Editor Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju Department of English Studies University of Ilorin Ilorin, Nigeria

ISBN 978-3-031-40386-6    ISBN 978-3-031-40387-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Perhaps one way to begin is to see humour, episodes involving language that intentionally or otherwise generate laughter, as simply one of the things people do, one of the things that is natural, spontaneous, and typical in human behaviour. The comic is a speech act of a particularly broad and varied kind, with no clear edges… Michael Toolan (in this volume) In humour, narrative and stylistic strategies create text-worlds where ‘normality’ or expected conventions are up-turned, and new perspective trigger humorous effects. Katie Wales (in this volume) In humour stylistics, to locate the language is to locate the humour,  and vice-versa. Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju (in this volume)

Humour and Style: A Foreword

This volume shows what stylistic analysis can bring to the study of humour in the many genres, involving a substantial language component, in which it occurs: radio and TV comedy, comic films, stand-up, comic newspaper political sketches, comedic drama, and novels and poems. These sub-types are too various to be susceptible to useful analysis by a single set of stylistic analytical resources; but stylistics itself comprises a diversity of analytical categories and procedures, so the project remains viable. And comedy itself is an almost immeasurably diverse phenomenon, even just its language-reliant forms, ranging (at least) from the kind of pleasure a crossword-solver gets from seeing the ingenious whimsy at work in a particularly cryptic clue, to the savage satire of a Marina Hyde (a political commentator in the UK Guardian newspaper). As Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju intimates in the opening chapter, there is limited consensus among stylisticians or linguists—or indeed people generally—as to what the necessary and sufficient elements of verbally facilitated humour, linguistic and contextual, are. Perhaps one way to begin is to see humour, episodes involving language that intentionally or otherwise generate laughter, as simply one of the things people do, one of the things that is natural, spontaneous, and typical in human behaviour. The comic is a speech act of a particularly broad and varied kind, with no clear edges; there is certainly no explicit or bald performative as there is vii

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for warnings, promises, and the like. No I hereby amuse you by averring (the very idea will strike some as … risible). But it is a doing something in language, just as are many other acts we perform, that are hugely enabling for interpersonal harmony and cooperation as well as for personal well-being, such as apologizing, wooing, undertaking, warning, thanking, and encouraging. Humour takes many forms and has many functions, and try as we might to unify these under some single principle or unifying logic, such efforts seem doomed. Explanations (stylistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic, whatever) that may work very well for one well-defined form or practice (satire, parody, knock-knock jokes, puns) cannot be stretched to fit all other forms. Instead, in these essays there are thoughtful explorations of some of these relatively clearly delimited types or formats, such as Monsurat Nurudeen’s pragmalinguistic analysis of Helen Paul's Alhaja Donjasi comedy skits, as shared on instagram. Or contributors focus on one important component of one established format, as when Ibukun Filani and Catherine Olutoyin Williams explore kinds of intertextuality deployed for comic purposes in Nigerian stand-up comedy routines. Nevertheless, we will keep trying to unify, to identify an underlying single process that is satisfactorily explanatory or illuminating. Indeed, it is hard to see how a researcher could devote themselves to the study of humour without wishing and striving to identify some such better or richer synthesizing account. Along these lines, Chambers Faye helpfully compares and contrasts ‘release’, ‘hostility’, and ‘incongruity’ theories and proposes we look closely at linguistic deviation as a deep unifier underlying these and other approaches. Moving in a related direction, Matthias Springer reports a study that aims to measure the individual’s ‘humor ability’ as distinct from the ‘humor potential’ of a situation presented to that individual. Springer starts from an awareness that not everyone can see the funny side of things—even things carefully designed to be funny, where you might expect that given that stimulus, laughter, or similar amused response is highly expected. And yet the joke, or funny situation, fails to amuse. No sense of humour, no funny bone; we complain of someone (contrasted with something so important that in ‘love search’ personal ads it has its own acronym: GSOH). The connections between love and humour merit extensive pondering. How many times

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have we heard someone explain—in part—why they chose a particular life partner by affirming ‘and they make me laugh’. Actually (correct me if your experience is different) isn’t it usually a woman, saying of her male partner, ‘and he makes me laugh’? Or is this just as often said by men of women or between same-sex couples? Oloruntoba-Oju’s discussion of satirical humour in the works of some of Nigeria’s literary giants demonstrates the cultural embeddedness of humour, reminding us of the crucial social context of every kind of humour. Humour is a social act, Oloruntoba-Oju irrefutably declares, but equally evident in the analysis is the intermingling of the social and the personal. Social satire often has individual targets—those who have been thrust upon the society in one capacity or the other. At the opposite end of satirical humour are various forms of what might be called commercial comedy (i.e., humour produced for remuneration, usually for a large unknown audience). But what did we do for comedy (he asks facetiously) before we had radio, TV, film, mass printing? Before we had paid fools and jesters, or didn’t happen to live so opulently that we could retain a comic entertainer? What did my eighteenth-century ancestors, subsistence farmers in the west of Ireland, with probably minimal encounter with writing in any form, get a laugh out of? Clearly the roots of verbal humour lie in speech interactions between people who know each other well, have some sense of a collective wish to thrive, to be happy and creative, and some sense of the threats to this from infection and ill-health, bad weather, and hostile outsiders. In these basic circumstances, how and where does humour arise, and what are its linguistic foundations? Humour-laughter makes things bearable; it can make almost anything bearable: failure, loss, theft, exposure, defeat, pain and suffering, death. All the things liable to suck us down into a vortex of fear, anxiety, depression, inertia, and despair. What is laughter’s opposite; suicide perhaps? Or untimely death generally, particularly murder. All of which makes Lynn Blin’s examination of David Sedaris’s humorous writing especially relevant: how does a humorous writer ‘get away’ with confronting something as sad as a sibling’s suicide in such a way that some humour can be found therein? Not belly-laughs at slapstick pratfalls, of course, but a more empathetic smiling at, or tasting of the bitter-sweet, in such an irretrievable situation.

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Undertaking stylistic analysis of something as convention-bound as the stand-up comedy routine, in front of what we always call a live audience (so much more appreciative than a dead one), is risky. It can easily turn into an airless ‘explaining’ of how each joke works, when any cultural insider is likely to understand this spontaneously. Ibukun Filani avoids this trap, directing their analysis to something more specific: showing how Nigerian female comedians’ routines succeed or fail, with particular attention to questions of gender and sexism. Ideas of contrast, counterfactuality, possible worlds and parallel worlds, hyperrealism, and deviation are frequently prominent in the chapters that follow. It is certainly true that in much humour there is an implicit invitation to the addressee (or overhearer, the disinterested bystander) to see the unfolding situation—what the participants are doing or what is happening and what language is being used—relative to a similar but different situation, which is more normal and every day, more conventional, unremarkable, so routine as to be virtually unnoticeable and unmemorable. Drawing our attention to the divergence (between the normal/expected and the actual) can be astringent and even didactic, as in some of the political cartoons that Oyinkan Medubi discusses. Or, as Comfort Ojongkpot shows in a study of Cameroonian women, humour has many functions, and solidarity among grieving women has turned out to be one them in this African community. Ugandan humour is also brought to life in Danson Kahyana’s investigation of Barbara Kimenye’s The Moses Series. The series clearly demonstrates a mismatch between ‘what is actually going on’ in the depicted world and ‘what we might imagine would go on in an ideal or simply a normative world’. This may also invite us to evaluate the incongruity as very much to the detriment of the actual world, prompting reactions of disbelief, condemnation, or the less disciplinary reaction, laughter. Given the importance of contrast or divergence in humour, there is much to be said for ‘drilling down’ to examine just one feature among the many that contribute to comedy, in real or contrived situations. That seems the basis on which Lekan Olawale elects to look specifically at English-language ‘verbal blunders’ in Nigerian TV sit-coms, making the point that for an audience of predominantly second-language users of English, the amusement derived from English errors (blunders,

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malapropisms, mis-speaking, spoonerisms, mispronunciations) may be of a different order than where English is the first or native (and only?) language for actors, characters, and audience: an idea that merits extensive consideration. It is certainly true, in my experience, that a kind of ‘gold standard’ of linguistic proficiency in a language is met when you understand jokes and humour in that language-culture nexus. As Jonathan Culler taught us decades ago, channelling Barthes and Derrida, meaning is context-bound but context is boundless. This is confirmed over and over in the following essays, each of which is mindful in its own way of the complex circumstances that surround any particular moment of funniness. You had to have been there to have seen the humour, we say (and when we do get the humour in a described situation, it’s because we’ve used our imagination adequately to visualize and inhabit the situation). At the same time the circles of situatedness ripple outward without clear endpoint, which is why Ibukun Osuolale-Ajayi is right to discuss online begging, and the sometimes humorous ways those solicited respond to supplicants, in relation to framing Nigerian societal attitudes concerning online supplications, genuine or simulated. Katie Wales directs our attention to the set of four comic children’s stories Charles Dickens published in 1868, just two years before his death and following a long reading tour of America. Wales is especially interested in the stories’ carnivalesque overturning of the ordinary child-­ constraining adult-controlled world. The stories are inventive (for the time) in creating child narrators, albeit ones that allow room for plenty of adult-minded evaluation, so that for the contemporary reader (adult or child) there is a continual modulation in the nominally childish voice, between a naive but fresh perspective and a knowing but orthodox (adult) one. Or as Dickens wrote to a friend, the narration involves ‘a queer combination of a child’s mind with a grown-up joke’. The overarching theme seems to be that while all children will in time become adults, the content of these stories might encourage child-readers to consider pursuing a different adulthood than the received and expected one. Being able to perceive the divergence between the actual and the usual, and being expected to, seems crucial to comedy in speech or writing. It separates comic situations from simple lying, where the liar certainly doesn’t wish you to see the gap between what they say is the case and what

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actually is the case. It also separates comedy from political chicanery that is no laughing matter, such as declarations of the many British politicians who sold Brexit to UK voters on spurious grounds and distorted figures. Thus, divergence is not enough. But nor, surely, is displayed or explicitly acknowledged divergence enough, although it does seem necessary. There must be something about the represented situation, relative to the background or normal or expected one, that makes laughter and not, say, tears, appropriate. Perhaps it is simply that the represented situation is less harmful, less dangerous, less threatening, just less difficult, than the normal, the what it could well have been. At least, this seems often the case where the potential victim of the situation is an ordinary person (e.g., ourselves or one of our peers). Where however the victim or butt of the comic situation is someone otherwise far above us, with unwelcome and perhaps unmerited powers over us, then perhaps the reverse outcome is preferred: we are pleased to see such a person more discomfited, brought down from the higher power or status that they ordinarily wield. These are just some of the ideas brought into play by this stimulating collection of essays. The collection does well in bringing together aspects of humour styles from different cultures, especially European, American, and African cultures. University of Birmingham

Michael Toolan

Acknowledgements

This book has benefitted tremendously from my association with the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), which provided the platform for the initial presentation of some of the ideas of humour contained in the book. When my proposal to convene a special interest group (SIG) titled was accepted for the PALA conference at Aix-Marseille in France, this became the launch pad needed to bring together many thought-­ provoking ideas on language and humour—the bulk of the contributions to the book, all peer reviewed, started as a proposal to that SIG. Thanks to the duo of Profs. Linda Pillière and Sandrine Sorlin for their direct and indirect roles in this, and thanks to the wonderful and inspiring gathering at Aix-Marseille. I thank Prof. Michael Toolan for his encouragement and for writing an excellent foreword to the volume. I also thank Prof. Paul Simpson for his encouraging words, as well as Prof. Katie Wales, who, in addition, accepted to contribute a chapter to the book. I should also mention Cathy Scott, whom I met at Aix-Marseille, in appreciation of her encouragement. I thank the other Palgrave team members as well, for the good work. Part of the work of organizing the book and its content was done during some of my visits to Germany facilitated by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. xiii

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Special appreciation to all the contributors for the time and effort that they put into making this book a reality despite their numerous other commitments. The pressure on them from those commitments has been tremendous, coupled with my own insistent nudging, and the arduous demands of peer reviewers. Notwithstanding the general nature of the subject matter of the book, putting it all together was not a funny affair in the least, but the contributors bore all with equanimity. Thanks to the two Ibukuns (Ibukun Filani and Ibukun Osuolale-Ajayi), as well as to Lekan Olawale, for the extra (editorial) assistance that they gave. Matthias and Lynn were physically present at Aix-Marseille and have since become part of this humour train—thanks. Appreciation to my partner, colleague, and friend, Prof. Omotayo Oloruntoba-Oju, as always, for her constant support. Thanks to all.

Contents

1 “Shamuz,  Shamuz, Everything Is with Shamuz”—Making Sense of Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry: An Overview  1 Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju Part I Humour Theory and Literary Texts in European, American and African Contexts  37 2 Unifying  the Humour Theories: A Stylistic Approach 39 Faye Chambers 3 The  Rasch Model in Humour Research 63 Matthias Springer 4 Humour  and the “Mooreeffoc Effect”: Inversion and Subversion in Charles Dickens’ Holiday Romance 87 Katie Wales 5 The  Uses of Humour in Barbara Kimenye’s Moses Series 99 Danson Sylvester Kahyana xv

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6 Ridicule  and Scorn in David Sedaris’s “Standing By”: The Responsibility of Humour115 Lynn Blin 7 Satire,  Humour, Language and Style in Nigerian Literature143 Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju Part II Language, Humour, Society and Media in Africa 179 8 The  Linguistic Style of Nigerian Mediated Comedies in English181 Ibukun Filani 9 Humour  and Language in the Era of Crisis: A Socio-­ pragmatic Analysis of Cameroonian Women’s Humour Styles During the Anglophone Crisis205 Comfort Beyang Oben Ojongnkpot 10 Humour  and the Many Worlds of Nigerian Political Cartoons225 Oyinkan Medubi 11 Toward  the Analysis of Online Supplication and Interactional Stance-Taking249 Ibukun Osuolale Ajayi 12 A  Preliminary Sketch on Intertextuality in Nigerian Stand-Up Comedy271 Ibukun Filani and Catherine Olutoyin Williams

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13 Pragmatic  Acts of Humour in Selected Series of Helen Paul’s Alhaja Donjasi Comedy Skits303 Monsurat Aramide Nurudeen 14 An  Analysis of Humour Style in Nigerian Situation Comedy321 Lekan Christopher Olawale I ndex347

Notes on Contributors

Lynn Blin  is an honorary associate professor at Université Paul Valéry Montpellier3. Her research is devoted to grammar and style and she has worked and written extensively on Alice Munro and Lydia Davis. She wrote the chapter on Lydia Davis for the Handbook of the American Short Story published by De Gruyter in 2022. She has been working on humour since 2015. Faye Chambers graduated from the University of Huddersfield, London, UK, in 2022. Her doctoral thesis focused on the language of jokes, building on the work of critical stylistics and textual meaning theory to propose a theory and framework of ‘Textually Constructed Meaning Shifts in Jokes’, with the aim of providing a tool for the stylistic analysis of humorous texts. She is pursuing her academic interests in Stylistics and Humour as an independent researcher, alongside her role as a university research support officer. Ibukun Filani  is a George Forster Postdoctoral Fellow (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) in English Language and Linguistics at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. He has also held a visiting fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Central European University in Budapest. He has taught English linguistic courses in McPherson University and Augustine University, both in Nigeria. His speciality is in xix

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discourse analysis and pragmatics. His research has focused on performance humour in Africa. His papers on humour have probed the strategies for contextualizing jokes, how comedy is constitutive of identities and social categories, and the significance of humour for civic engagements. His current project in Germany is a corpus-based discourse study of post-truth claims in Nigerian political campaigns. Danson Sylvester Kahyana holds a PhD in English Studies from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, to which he is affiliated as a research associate in the English Department. He is an associate professor in the Department of Literature at Makerere University, Uganda, where he teaches courses on orature, poetry, and creative writing, among others. His critical work has appeared in peer-­reviewed journals like English in Africa, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Social Dynamics, Nomina Africana, and Matatu, among others. He also writes poetry, short fiction, and children’s books. He is a recipient of the African Peacebuilding Network Individual Award (2022), Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2021), the Andrew W. Mellon Early Career Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018), and the African Humanities Programme (AHP) Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015), among others. He is President Emeritus, Ugandan PEN, and a freedom of expression advocate. Oyinkan Medubi  is Professor in the Department of English, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. Her main research areas are sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics and media studies, with special interests in Nigerian, American, and German newspaper political cartoons. She was a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt (Georg Forster) Foundation in Duisburg, Germany. Monsurat Aramide Nurudeen is a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. Her research interests include multimodal discourse analysis, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. Comfort Beyang Oben Ojongnkpot  is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics, and Head of Department of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Buea in Cameroon. Comfort holds

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a PhD in Linguistics. Her research interests include, but are not limited to, Language Contact, Revitalization and Documentation, Sociolinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Language and Gender, Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Language Teaching and Morpho-­ syntactics. Comfort has been a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Technological University of Chemnitz, Germany. Her works have been published widely and she has been Travel Award grantee to many international conferences, workshops, and symposia. She has also attended Summer Schools in Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia. She is member and coordinator of a number of scientific associations across the world. Lekan Christopher Olawale  obtained his M.A. at the Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, with a thesis on gender representations in the performances of male stand-up comedians in Nigeria. His research interests include humour studies, gender studies, ideology, and rhetoric. He is a member of the English Scholars’ Association of Nigeria (ESAN). He has presented papers at international conferences and his works have also been published internationally, more recently in the journal, Revue de Traduction et Langues (Journal of Translation and Languages). Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju  is Professor of English and Applied Linguistics in the Department of English, University of Ilorin. His research focus has been on language and literature, language, youth and gender, language development and decoloniality, as well as African paroemia. His interest in humour dates back to the late eighties when his article on the subject was accepted for publication in the then celebrated Language and Style: An International Journal and was also later published in a book edited by Edmund Epstein and Robert Kole. He has since authored papers on humour and related discourses such as invective and satire. OloruntobaOju has been a fellow of the British Council/ODA, Alexander von Humboldt (George Forster) Stiftung, Nordic Africa Institute, The University of Edinburg and the Cambridge Writers Seminar.

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Ibukun Osuolale Ajayi  is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ilorin. Her research interest is in humour, pragmatics, and gender studies, and she has written articles in these areas. She is a member of English Scholars’ Association of Nigeria (ESAN), Pragmatics Association of Nigeria (PraN), and Poetics and Linguistic Association (PALA). Matthias Springer is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute for German as a Foreign Language at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Univerrsität München. His research focuses on empirical literary studies, computational philology, cultural studies, with a view of transcultural spaces as heterotopias, the relationship between language–culture–thought, media didactics, sustainability, and early foreign and second language acquisition. He received his doctorate with the topic ‘Humor aus dem Computer? Grundlagen einer Web-Applikation zum Test narrativer Texte’ (‘Humor from the Computer? Foundations of a Web Application for Testing Comedy in Narrative Texts’). Most recently, he has authored, together with Christine Fourcaud, the book, Frühkindlicher Mehrsprachenerwerb in den «Elysee-Kitas (Early childhood multilingual acquisition in the «Elysee daycare centers»). Since 2018, he has been leading the partnership project DaF@LMU-ChAN in LMU's China-Academic-Network. He is a member of the International Society for Empirical Literary Studies, where he has presented concepts for empirical and computational research on literariness in papers at several conferences. Michael Toolan is Emeritus Professor of English Language at the University of Birmingham, where for twenty-five years he taught courses in many branches of language studies, but particularly Stylistics and Narrative Analysis, the fields in which he has written most extensively. In retirement he has turned to writing fiction. His most recent academic monographs are Making Sense of Narrative Text: Situation, Repetition, and Picturing in the Reading of Short Stories (Routledge 2016), and The Language of Inequality in the News (Cambridge University Press 2018), which analyses changes in the representation of UK wealth inequality in the British press.

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Katie Wales  is Special Professor in English Language and Literature at the University of Nottingham. She is a founder member of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), and co-founder of its journal Language and Literature. Her main literary research interests are in stylistics and rhetoric (see her Dictionary of Stylistics, 3rd edn 2011). She has written on literature from Old English to the present day and on authors as varied as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Philip Larkin, and especially Charles Dickens and James Joyce (see her The Language of James Joyce 1992). Catherine Olutoyin Williams  is Professor of Literature in English in the Department of English Studies, Tai Solarin University of Education, where she teaches African American literature, literary theory and criticism, gender and sexuality, at both degree and post graduate levels. Her academic papers have been published in reputable National and International journals. She is the Deputy Director, Part Time Programmes of her University, TASUED.

List of Cartoons

Cartoon 10.1 Cartoon 10.2 Cartoon 10.3

The Punch (2019) The Guardian 7/10/2020 Vanguard (5/3/2019)

238 241 244

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List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Model of the humour process 67 Fig. 3.2 Item characteristic curve 70 Fig. 3.3 Example item “Meme Kinder” from the questionnaire (Source: https://cornerstonefamilyservices.org/wp-content/ uploads/2016/03/German-Children.jpg)72 Fig. 3.4 Ranking of the items by mean including humour class by relative frequency 74 Fig. 3.5 Frequencies of humour classes for each item 75 Fig. 3.6 Item characteristic curves of all items on a 500 scale 76 Fig. 3.7 Ordered item difficulties with respective humour class of stimuli 77 Fig. 3.8 Humour classes: item characteristic curves and ranked by mean 78 Fig. 3.9 Absolute frequencies of all items 83 Fig. 6.1 French Army Knife (Michael Crawford 2010, https://www. cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-gki9t8g2p/images/stencil/1280/ products/5038/16551/NYC19214044.1582214120.jpg?c=é121 Fig. 6.2 Jab lines, bridges, strands, combs: yellow: mockery and scorn; navy blue: obscenity; blue: the end of the American Dream; fuchsia: war; white: serious relief 124 Fig. 7.1 Satire’s base and output components 149

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Fig. 10.1 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 13.1 Fig. 13.2

List of Figures

Interaction of pictorial and verbal elements in cartoons 229 Du Bois’ (2007) Stance triangle 254 Model of pragmatic acts (Mey 2001, 222) 307 A screenshot of Helen Paul’s dressing parodying Alhaja Donjasi311

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4

Difficulty and mean of humour classes Difficulty and mean of items Extract from the data matrix of each subject Frequencies of the middle option for each item

79 79 80 83

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1 “Shamuz, Shamuz, Everything Is with Shamuz”—Making Sense of Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry: An Overview Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju

Introduction The language issue in humour is clearly complicated by two related problems. The first is that the major theories of the comic, namely “incongruity,” “hostility”/“superiority,” “relief” and even “play,” are not linguistic or stylistic but sociopsychological and literary theories. Distinguishing between psychological, genetic, and linguistic factors in the constitution and appreciation of humour is therefore a challenge. Humour, theorists assert, is an unreliable quality. I find Styan (1968) particularly succinct on the difficulty encountered by analysts of the comic, and I quote him here at length: The diagnosis of comedy presents many difficulties. Laughter, a recurring and therefore an evidently important ingredient seems to come from a great variety of sources: we laugh at other people’s bad luck, or at a relief

T. Oloruntoba-Oju (*) Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_1

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from embarrassment, at a little flattery or even when we do not want to laugh […] There is considerable discrepancy between the things we find comic in life and those contrived on stage. A man falling on his face in the street may be an object of pathos, but on the stage an object of derision […] a sense of humour is an unreliable quality, and what would seem laughable to an English audience will not necessarily seem so to a Scottish […] what will seem laughable on Monday may be damned on Tuesday. (Styan 1968, 38–39)

The widely accepted thesis that humour is context-dependent, which is elaborated upon by Styan above, is ironically substantiated by the interesting coincidence that the same vignette of “a man falling in the street” had been projected as a trigger of laughter by Henri Bergson, nineteenth-­ century French philosopher and theorist of humour. This is in stark contrast to Styan’s assessment of the improbable comic potential of such scenarios above.1 Martin et al. (2003) have also demonstrated, through one of the most established humour styles questionnaires in the field, that reaction to humour or the comic is marked by vast individual differences. Motivations for engagement with humour range from “self-enhancing,” “affiliative” and “aggressive” factors to “self-defeating” or self-denigrating motivations or postures. A model of comic procedure is therefore obliged to account for variation in responses to humorous material. The second complication, which is closely linked to the first, is the lack of agreement, even amongst linguists, and especially stylisticians, on the precise mechanism by which language per se triggers specific effects such as comic feeling. The fact that similar linguistic stimuli are known to have elicited different and sometimes contradictory reactions adds to this complication. Phrased differently, this puzzle concerns “the relationship between formal patterns in text and the capacity of these patterns to induce a humorous reaction in readers, viewers or listeners. In other words, what kind of constituency separates readers who draw a humorous reading from a particular literary text from those who do not?” (Simpson  It is not clear if Styan was aware of the example from this vignette as rendered by Bergson; although he (Styan) does make some references to Bergson in his book, he does not cite the Bergsonian example. If he was aware of it, then it is curious that he chose to not engage it. 1

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and Bousfield 2017, 171). Sceptics of linguistic stylistic analysis (iconically represented by Fish [1980]) had often cast doubt on the ability of linguistic elements to by themselves confer stylistic significances or values on the texts in which they occur. Stylisticians who have engaged pointedly with this criticism, such as Toolan (1990, 1996) have not necessarily dispelled it. Simpson and Bousfield (2017) caution that “linguistic features of a text do not of themselves constitute a text’s ‘humor,’ though an account of linguistic features serves to ground the stylistic interpretation” (159). Also, Oloruntoba-Oju (1992/1998) draws attention to the apparent confusion or conflict between rhetorical and linguistic elements in the constitution and analysis of humour, noting that rhetorical “tags” such as pun, parody, verbal humour, and the like are often “conveniently slapped” on to comic expressions, but this tends to blur stylistic enquiry into the precise nature of linguistic contribution to such expressions (153). The overall stance here is that humour content does present daunting prospects to the stylistic enquirer. This volume derives from this writer’s fascination with comic discourse, and a stylistic interest in analysing the features and verbal patterns of humorous texts from different geographical and ethnic environments. In the following sections, I look retrospectively, albeit briefly, at humour theory and at stylistic enquiry, then link both with the endeavour in the current volume. I make the point ultimately that despite “anti-language” views of stylistics in general, and of humour in particular, the linguistic factor in humour is inevitable and demonstrable. I argue that the linguistic factor is overwhelming even with regard to the so-called non-verbal or non-linguistic humour, and is demonstrable irrespective of factors such as intentionality. I specifically examine the involvement of language in “humour catalysis,” including linguistic tokens that behave anaphorically and cataphorically to activate the sensations of humour, and the potential of apparently innocuous or unremarkable elements of language to generate humour catalysis, sometimes in ways that do not necessarily accord with established philosophical notions of humour.

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Humour Theory Humour theory up to the twentieth century was dominated by names such as Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Kant and Bergson, among others, and a common thread runs through their pronouncements. Firstly, they posit an almost invariable correlation between laughter and the comic—that is, the latter leads to the former. Thus, as Grene (1980, 210) puts it, an aesthetic of comedy would often “end up as a psychology of laughter,” and the question, “what is comic?” is more often than not rephrased as “why do we laugh?” Secondly, the theory of laughter and the comic has, since Aristotle, always included reference to incongruity, ridicule or a sense of superiority. Variants of incongruity include the ridiculous, the disproportionate, the fantastic, the absurd, and so on, one or more of which could be emphasized by one theorist or another. English critical theorist, Philip Sidney, separates the laughter of delight from laughter on the anomalous (Sidney 1580/1962, 43). Aristotle himself emphasized the ridiculous as a source of comic feeling. For him, “ugliness” is the object of laughter, and the ridiculous is “merely a subdivision of the ugly.” It consists of some defect or ugliness … (1974 [n.d.], 38). Aristotle’s preference was motivated by a didactic concern with the comic phenomenon. The philosopher/artist presents certain human defects in artistic form; this generates laughter, and in this consists catharsis of some sort—a purgation of one’s soul of possible indulgence in, or association with, “ugly” passions. Sidney further explicates this Aristotelian concept: “Laughter almost cometh of things disproportionate to ourselves and nature. … We laugh at deformed creatures, at mischances” (43). Sigmund Freud’s (1905a, 1905b) theory of laughter draws parallels with the realm of the unconscious and with emphasis on the fantastic. His classic “The Interpretation of Dreams” is considered canonical with regard to the theory of signification in general. For instance, many semioticians aver “the centrality of psycho-analysis [pivoted on Freudian principles] to semiotics” (Silverman 1983, vii), while his postulates are also important with regard to comic significations. For Freud, the comic, like

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dreams, rely for effect on the fantastic images they evoke and the release of psychic energy, which laughter also represents. Also writing in the Freudian vein, Mauron (1964) comments that comedy “represents the revenge of the comic principle on the reality principle” (cited in Grene 1980, 211). In other words, laughter sometimes represents a certain delight in the fantastic, as an antidote to or relief from the repressions of the realistic. Working from a similar perspective, Thomas Hobbes (1840), as cited in Grene (1980, 211), proffers a quasi-psychological explanation of comic procedure. According to him, laughter is a mockery of the ridiculous and it comes from a (psychological) feeling of elevation—that is, above the object of ridicule—“a certain conception of some eminence in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others.” Bergson, a philosopher and himself a comic motivator, sees the mechanical as a variant or manifestation of the incongruous. The mechanical is mostly ridiculous or even absurd. In fact, the incongruous is, for Bergson, an imposition of the mechanical upon the natural. Thus, human actions or thoughts that give the impression of mechanical, unnatural constitution are comical. For instance, “we need only to shut our ears to the sound of music in a room where people are dancing for them to suddenly appear ridiculous to us” (737). The involuntary, like the mechanical, is that which occurs “without intelligence or conscious will” (Chambers’ Twentieth-Century Dictionary). In short, the involuntary is mechanical, and vice-versa. It is therefore often ridiculous to the perceiver and leads to comic explosion, given the appropriate context. Involuntary laughter results from unexpected, incongruous, sequences. Kant framed incongruity as an “absurdity” that often results from a “sudden transformation” of the expected into nothingness, resulting in involuntary laughter. He also framed humour in part as a “play with thoughts” (Clewis 2020). Other commentators on the comic phenomenon view incongruity or anomaly in one form or another as a central, obligatory, ingredient. To name a few, Soren Kierkegaard finds comic causation in the contradiction expressed by the comic

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(Kierkegaard 1846/1974, 556). Northrop Frye (1957) places comic beginnings in ritual, “through confusion to the discovery of identity in a new comic society,” and Luigi Pirandello (1920/1974) sees humour as “the feeling of polarity,” and the comic as a mirror of distortions. Contradiction, confusion, polarity, and distortion are, of course, variants of anomaly or incongruity. I have sketched the above early interventions briefly in order to highlight the classical beginnings of contemporary theories of the comic in western discourse, and especially as they centred on notions of incongruity, relief, superiority/hostility, and play. Recent theorists have drawn copiously on these beginnings. Today, it is clear that these approaches are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive, but overlap considerably (Raskin 1985; Larkin-Gallinanes 2017). Raskin (1985) was to point out that the “differences” between the theories were only a matter of perspective, with incongruity-based, superiority and relief theories emphasizing, respectively: comic stimulus, interpersonal relations and attitudes, and the feelings and psychology of the hearer (40). What the foregoing sketch also highlights is that humour theorists have mainly been philosophers, psychologists, and comedians, rather than, for example, linguists, which has obvious implications for the non-­ linguistic focus of comic theory in the early days. The comic phenomenon, being mostly accounted for within a unified concept of incongruity, would therefore seem to preclude a special or significant linguistic input beyond a general communicative requirement. This does not seem a particularly cheerful prospect for the stylistic investigator whose concern is with linguistic input to humour effects.

Stylistic Enquiry One main task of the stylistic enterprise is to identify the structural patterns and forms exhibited by various texts, including single expressions and longer discourses. A second main task is to show the relationship between these structures and the matters that they present, while a third main task is to show how these structures are distinct from ordinary

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usage and from other distinct usages or genres (e.g., from legal language, “religious language,” language of conversation, etc.). Wales (2001) has noted, in a definition that has attracted much critical attention, that stylistics aims not only at a formal descriptiveness but also at a form–function relatedness, thereby accounting for the hermeneutic potential or significance of forms—in other words, the task of stylistics is “not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but in order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text.” Many scholars had weighed in much earlier with related definitions that focus on different aspects of the stylistic enterprise. For example, Crystal and Davy (1969, 9–10) note that stylistics involves “studying certain aspects of language variation … to analyze language habits with the main purpose of identifying from the general mass of linguistic features … used on every conceivable occasion, those features which are restricted to certain kinds of context.” Leech (1985, 40) also notes that stylistics studies how language use varies according to varying circumstances, for example, circumstances of period, discourse situation or authorship. The classic stylistic methodology therefore seeks to achieve a fusion of description and interpretation in line with the situational and investigative contexts that pertain to specific texts. For Enkvist (1993, 715), stylistics is to isolate those features of text that activate a stylistic response and describe these features in terms that are “as stringently linguistic as possible” and, as Mick Short (1995) further explains, “to explicate how our understanding of a text is achieved, by examining in detail the linguistic organization of the text and how a reader needs to interact with that linguistic organization to make sense of it.” In all, the critical raison d’ȇtre of modern stylistics is to avoid impressionism in the interpretation of literary texts and substitute this with “precise and rigorous linguistic descriptions, and to proceed from those descriptions to interpretations for which [stylisticians] can claim a measure of objectivity” (Fish 1980, 70). This task requires what Simpson (2004) called the three “Rs” of rigorousness, retrievability, and replicability. Replicability was thought to be the most difficult problem for

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stylistics, since no reading experience can be replicated (Stockwell 2005, 747). However, the demand of objectivity and scientificity as phrased by Fish above also raises an evidentiary bar that would seem difficult to meet, more so for the stylistic investigator of humour. Since humour theory attributes comic causation largely to the perception of anomaly, incongruity, and so on, and since such incongruity could even be conveyed non-verbally, comic causation may sometimes appear to be insensitive to linguistic variation. This problem of attribution, sometimes referred to as “the problem of interpretation”2 is by no means restricted to comic discourse. Guiraud (1971, 17) had noted in a different but related context that stylisticians in general had failed to maintain or manage the dichotomy between code and message, sometimes confusing the effect of style with the efficacy of form: “The traditionalists have frequently confused the effects of style with the properties of the (linguistic) system, and the structuralists, in an understandable but unfortunate reaction, have considered as inherent properties of speech, values which have their origin in the (social) system.” This predicament echoes the classical distinctions between stylistic monism and duality or pluralism, between style as “organic” or “ornate” (Cluett and Kampeas 1979, 43) or style as a fruit, “with the flesh being the form and the pit being the content,” or as “an onion, with layers” (Barthes 1971, 10). Fish (1980) elaborated on this predicament when he observed that the stylistic enterprise is often fraught with false or doubtful readings in which linguistic significances are “asserted” rather than “proved.” This reading was to presage Fish’s preferred “affective” or “readers response” approach to stylistics, based on the notion that texts of themselves do not confer significances; rather, it is readers who infer them. The two potential sins of stylistics in this regard, in Fish’s view, are circularity and arbitrariness. Arbitrariness occurs “when particular interpretations are foisted on linguistic facts or features of discourse without regard to contending analytical possibilities,” and circularity occurs where conclusions reached  This has more recently been described as the problem of literary value (Meyer-Lee 2023).

2

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in the course of a stylistic investigation “merely rephrase the data or beg the question that the investigation ostensibly sets out to answer” (Oloruntoba-Oju 1998, ix). Toolan (1990) had also agreed with Fish to the extent that “the stylistician’s ascription of determinate meaning to [linguistic pattern] is either unwarranted or simply a restatement of the pattern as meaning” (Meyer-Lee 2023, 195). Toolan, however, cautions against throwing the baby away with the bathwater. The problem associated with the core demand of evidentiality and falsifiability in stylistics is accentuated with regard to humour theory or comic aesthetics. Humour theorists generally agree that the comic phenomenon can be adequately accounted for within a unified concept of incongruity and its varieties, or the cognate concepts of relief and hostility. Stanley Fish’s ultimate argument is against a Cratylistic view of language, that is, against the idea of a form-meaning congruence—in this view, form itself is motivated by meaning, and a word or an expression takes its form precisely because of the meaning that it conveys. Fish’s thesis, in plain language, is that formal elements or verbal patterns would not necessarily “convey,” “enshrine,” “embody,” “encode” or correlate with specific meanings (82), as stylisticians are wont to declare, more so that the same situations can be conveyed through a variety of forms of expression. This assessment appeared so devastating for the stylistic enterprise that the fear of Fish, or, in the alternative, how to avoid being hooked on Fish, became the beginning of wisdom for a while after his article. Interpretation, the cornerstone of the stylistic enterprise, or what made it meaningful, had suddenly become hazardous. Meyer-­ Lee (2023, 196) notes that Fish’s article had generally led stylisticians to “more nuanced and guarded approaches to their work.”3 But how does this bode for stylistic work on humour?

 “[Michael] Toolan, for example, concedes that stylistics cannot serve as “a discovery procedure for finding interpretations or a means of validating an interpretation’, but rather, much more modestly, it establishes ‘public’ or common evidentiary reference points among readers who might otherwise disagree about a text’s meaning” (Meyer-Lee 2023, 196). 3

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Stylistics, Humour, and Attributive Ambiguity When comic effect is provoked in a verbal situation, the instinctive stylistic response is to attribute this effect to linguistic usage, especially when such usage is “marked” in some way. A causal or attributive ambiguity thus ensues in which the philosopher of humour would attribute comic effect to the incongruity expressed, while the stylistic investigator or discourse analyst would attribute it to “the manner in which the author (or speaker) has used language.” One of the examples from Oloruntoba-Oju (1992/1998) helps to illustrate this: 1. How can one bear the thought of sleeping beside a wholly naked man? (from Le Preciuse Ridicules, by Molliere) The humour here may be attributed to a “thought process incongruity” or “ideational incongruity” (the very thought or idea of the “dread” expressed within the text seems incongruous and amusing, so does the reduction of the entire institution of marriage to this notion, and so does the coy avoidance of the actual mention of coition, which is the actual object of the “dread”). However, the packaging or conveyance of these thoughts is linguistic. The manipulation of linguistic elements in the effort to achieve humour is well demonstrated in different translations of the same text above by different translators. As shown below, the translators deploy a variety of relexifiers in other to create or accentuate humour: (2a) As for me, uncle, all I can say is, that I think marriage a very shocking business. How can one endure the thought of lying by the side of a man, who is really naked? (Produced by David Moynihan, D. Garcia, Charles Franks) (b) As for me, Uncle, all I can tell you is that I consider marriage a very shocking thing. How can one endure the thought of sleeping beside a man who is actually naked? (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/ books/299128/tartuffe-­a nd-­o ther-­p lays-­b y-­j ean-­b aptiste-­m oliere-­ translated-­and-­introduction-­by-­donald-­m-­frame-­foreword-­by-­virginia-­ scott-­and-­an-­afterword-­by-­charles-­newell/9780451474315/excerpt)

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(c) My uncle, all I can say is that I find marriage to be a totally shocking thing. How can one bear the thought of sleeping next to a man who is unambiguously naked? (Translated by Brett B. Bodemer)

The notion, idea or “script” (Raskin 1985) of “endurance” and of “nakedness” is among those variously relexified by different translators serving as remote agents of the comic, hence: “bear the thought”/“endure the thought”; “wholly naked man”/“a man who is really naked”/“a man who is actually naked”/“a man who is unambiguously naked.” In each of these translations, language elements appear marked to achieve humorous effect beyond the basic notions being expressed.

Referentiality and Linguistic Evidentiality Notwithstanding the explanations above, the evidentiary bar within stylistics in general remains high, and the linguistic locus of comic effect is particularly vulnerable to this bar. Simpson and Bousfield (2017, 159) phrase the evidentiary bar succinctly: “it is simply not enough for the critic-analyst to decree that a passage of writing is humorous.” One distinction in humour research that seems apposite here is the “referential”/“verbal” distinction. The distinction has antecedents in the classical dichotomy res/verba or content/form. In many instances, verba is irrelevant once the res is preserved, while in others, verba may certainly alter the res. How to distinguish one from the other in highly integrative constructions such as punning has always been an issue. Cicero (cited by Aljared 2017, 67) notes that a joke can be about what is said or “the thing” (the expression). Attardo (1994) describes the “referential” joke as one that relies on the meanings of the text, while the “verbal” joke relies on elements of the text or elements of its language. However, since, on the one hand, res and verba are often integral, and on the other hand, just about any comic situation, however conveyed, would excite comic feeling, substantiating linguistic causation or the value of specific language elements in humour discourse, beyond established rhetorical categories such as pun, wordplay and the like, appears difficult.

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As I will elaborate later, this evidentiary bar becomes even more complicated when humour is conveyed apparently without the agency of language, as, for example, in the so-called non-verbal humour. As a measure of this difficulty, some scholars, for example, Chlopicki (2017, 148) include in their analytical grid an opposition between “the linguistic and the humorous,” where the one is “conventional” and the other “cognitively refreshing, creative and thus amusing.” Perhaps it is these daunting prospects that account for the relative dearth of evidential stylistic enquiries into humour, compared with philosophical, psychological, and literary enquiries. Many “anti-language” approaches to the comic tend to mimic Stanley Fish’s objection to the stylistic assignment of meaning or effect to specific forms or structures of language.

 nti-language Responses and Linguistic Approaches A to Humour The brief revision of comic theory and of the nature of stylistic enquiry above reveals the problematic of matching the linguistic structures of comic expressions with the philosophical/psychological fount of comic feeling. Are these structures redundant in terms of comic provocation or are they significant? Do comic expressions exhibit distinct diatypic features? These are the relevant questions. The argument between language and style is well replicated in debates regarding the language of comics. The genre of comics is quintessential in this regard, since many comics do not bear words to convey their effect and those that do often do so in conjunction with images. The debate therefore concerns whether comics, iconically represented as cartoons and also in various forms of social media memes, can be regarded or analysed as language, or even whether language has much, if anything, to do with their effect. Views range from the denial of any such linkage (e.g., Postema 2013; Miodrag 2013, among others), who argue that comics or the images in them are not structured like, nor could be understood in terms of language, to the acknowledgement of comics as forms of language, for example, Forceville (2011) who argues that comics such as pictorials are “narratively salient,” which suggests

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that they mimic the structure of language (see also Abbott and Forceville 2011). In arguing against “anti-language” critical postures in the discussion of comics, Cohn (2012, 2014) suggests that those who discount the role of language in comics have an outdated, strictly structuralist view of the nature of language (Cohn 2014, 58), insisting that graphic representations, “along with structures necessary to bring them into sequence,” are tantamount to employing “visual language” (Cohn 2012, 97). Bramlett (2016) also notes that the influence of language in comics is not restricted to the visual representation in speech and thought balloons but also lies in the fact that specific forms of language are used to achieve certain effects. Scepticism regarding the role of language in humour is frequently countered by the insistence that linguistic and stylistic varieties often function as sources of humour. Attardo (1994) referred to verbal humour as “stylistic humour,” thereby modifying earlier renditions of verbal humour as “register humour” (Attardo 1994, 2009). Attardo (2020) also distinguishes linguistic humour from verbal humour. The former is humour expressed through language, as against visually expressed humour (25). Verbal humour on the other hand “consists of puns” that is “humour which relies significantly on semantics (meaning) and similarity of identity of two linguistic forms” (25–26). This distinction is not always clear, since, as Attardo also notes, “verbal humor also relies on meaning, but not exclusively.” Simpson (2003) and Simpson and Bousfield (2017) observe two theoretical principles underpinning the phenomenon as: the involvement of incongruity and the capacity of humour to operate “at any level of language and discourse.” Oloruntoba-Oju (1992/1998) had also advocated the employment of a levels of linguistic analysis approach to the analysis of humour and the comic. He however contended that humour in linguistics would not always involve an incongruity, and also de-emphasized “the rhetorical game” (reliance on tags such as pun, persiflage, and the like) in linguistic stylistics, especially where analysis is silent on the specific linguistic properties of specific rhetorical elements. Simpson and Bousfield refer specifically to some of the key rhetorical tropes, such as pun’s parade of double entendre, capable of twin meanings, as well as parody, irony, and satire. Attardo (2020) however elaborates further on various categories, and

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linguistic characteristics of punning, which are useful for the linguistic and stylistic analysis of pun. Some other scholars within the African setting have employed pragmatic and discourse linguistics approaches, as well as the rhetorical approach, to the analysis of humorous texts (e.g., Filani 2016; Olaosun 2009; Osuolale-Ajayi 2022).

Sample Models of Analysis Two analytical models that have become very influential in the linguistic analysis of humour are the Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH) and the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). SSTH (Raskin 1985) was essentially applied to short humorous texts such as jokes, in which there are often two opposing or overlapping scripts whose clash produces humour. The idea of incongruity is central to this scheme. The scripts relay “high level” opposing schemes such as, in Raskin’s taxonomy, “good/bad, normal/abnormal, and actual/nonactual” (Attardo 2020, 151). The follow-up model, GTVH (Attardo and Raskin 1991), retains the notion of script opposition but expands the framework to cover humorous texts other than jokes, and lengthier texts. They include what the authors refer to as knowledge resources (KRs) governing the analysis of humour. The six KRs are hierarchically organized, according to the authors, and include: script opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), situation (SI), target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), and language (LA). As noted by Blin (2023, in this volume), Canestrari (2010) includes a Meta-­Knowledge Resource that refers to the speaker’s intention and hearer’s recognition, while Tsakona (2017) adds an eighth resource, the context resource that refers to the socio-cultural knowledge that a hearer brings into the recognition. While the KRs appear self-explanatory on the surface, their application raises complex issues. Criticism of the related theory has included the nonspecialized nature of the KRs, since these items are omnipresent, covering even texts that are not humorous, and the general absence of clarity of the model’s operations (Ritchie 2004; Oring 2011). Transparency may also be an issue, as some of the key concepts depend on idiosyncratic interpretations and are therefore not quite replicable. For example, Attardo (2020, 151) would complain that many researchers seeking to apply the model “get

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confused because they try to identify the very abstract Script Opposition, without first identifying the text-specific script opposition.” While it is reasonable to demand a search for text-­specific local oppositions, the example given by the authors would not always guarantee replicability. These observations further exemplify the problem of stylistic enquiry into humour, as earlier highlighted. Part of the problem in this instance seems to be the hierarchization of the KRs in GTVH, with, presumably, the language resource taking a back seat until its “turn” to be activated within the hierarchy. A different orientation is to foreground and deploy the linguistic mechanism, including the identification of language elements, as the fulcrum or focal point of the analysis itself. In such a case, the KRs would be seen as integrative rather than hierarchical.

 Unified Levels of Linguistics Analysis A (ULLA) Approach Oloruntoba-Oju (1992/1998) attempted to show, through simplified patterns, how various elements of language are deployed intentionally or unintentionally in the service of humour, a sort of humour catalysis, and how these can be unravelled in the course of humour analyses.4 This approach is further expanded here as an integration of levels of linguistic analysis towards the analysis of humour. The focus of the analysis is to determine as far as possible the precise linguistic causative agents of humour within the text, employing the levels of linguistic analysis in a unified or integrated manner. The integration or unification also involves an eclectic deployment of concepts and terminologies from other established analytical models or systems as may be considered expedient. The model is shown diagrammatically below and is further explained thereafter.  The question of intentionality or unintentionality has been well dealt with in the literature. As noted by Blin (2023), Olawale (2023), and Springer (2023), all in this volume, intentionality is often bracketed as a necessary feature of cohesion and sometimes of humour (Attardo and Chabanne 1992; De Beaugrande and Dressler 1981; Dynel 2015). These are also aspects of the “comic contract” in the manner of Grene (1980); however, it has also been established that humour is sometimes perceived irrespective of the intention of the encoder of a particular text (Tsakona and Chovanec 2020, cited in Chovanec 2021, 199). See also the references to “found humour” (Simpson 2003), in which humour was unintended by the encoder, and “failed humour” (Faye 2023, in this volume), in which intended humour fails to secure the necessary uptake.  4

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 umour Catalysis: Unified Levels H of Linguistic Analysis

L ayers in Humour Aesthetics: The Integration of Language and Humour Three interactive layers seem identifiable in the consideration of linguistic input to humour: a layer of COMIC CAUSATION, which can also be referred to as a BASE LAYER, a layer of LINGUISTIC INPUT, and a PERLOCUTION LAYER or layer of COMIC EFFECT. These layers are integrative and not hierarchical. Comic causation is usually situationally or ideationally apprehended, and consists in the recognition of some incongruity, anomaly or some humour causative agent in a given text, which may be verbal or non-verbal. This situation can be presented visually as, for instance, a real-life event, a mute act on stage or screen, a cartoon strip in a newspaper, and so on. In short, it could present without the agency of words. I would refer again to the example by Bergson. The vignette is short:

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(3) A man, running in the street, trips and falls. The passers-by laugh. (Bergson 1900/1974, 738)

In a similar, hypothetical, example (not Bergson’s): (4) A very short man and a very tall woman walk up the street. They stop and kiss each other. People laugh.

Comic causation in the above is seen in the incongruity or seeming incongruity expressed by the situations. In (3), it is the incongruity expressed by the man being one moment in full flight and the next moment, unexpectedly, on full length. As noted earlier, a scenario such as this may be a cause for pathos or of mirth, depending on the circumstance. Other factors may be involved as comic enhancers—for example, the vestment, whether the target is clothed ceremoniously or otherwise awkwardly in inappropriate shoes or wears, only to encounter this misfortune. In the other instance (4), it is the inherent contradiction, the ridicule, awkwardness, and so on, of the tall woman reaching low down and the short man reaching high up to achieve labial contact that serves as the causation. Perhaps the fact that this awkwardness is in public display also enhances the comic effect. Verbal language seems to have nothing to do with it, but more on this later. What seems clear is that the base layer of the comic is an obligatory layer for comic effect, and it may be analogous to the classical division, res or content, as against the division verba. The base is the constant element in comic structure, the central, underlying prop of the system.

The Base as Self-encoded or Constructed Variants of the Bergsonian vignette above are witnessed de jour, in a thousand and one sites of encounter. Non-verbal humour resulting from such vignettes can be regarded as “self-encoded”; in other words, scenarios such as (3) and (4) above occur as incidental, accidental or unintended humour, but are spontaneously re-analysed as humorous by equally accidental perceivers. Against the background of the processing of non-verbal

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stimuli such as pictorial cartoons and wordless comic strips as visual language, it is arguable that language is involved in the processing of even such “non-verbal” vignettes as the above. However, since the original incident was not meant to be humorous, some form of construction is evident in the realization of the vignette as humorous. This would also involve some form of deep structure linguistic or thought processing. Any re-rendition of the primary situation, whether by non-verbal or verbal means, amounts to constructed humour. Thus, Bergson’s re-rendition of the primary event as humorous amounts to constructed humour. The linguistic input to this construction of the comic is much evident in the verbal re-rendition, which I repeat below: (5) A man, running in the street, trips and falls. The passers-by laugh. I think they would not laugh at him if they thought a whim had suddenly come upon him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because he sits down involuntarily. It is not then this abrupt change of posture that causes the laughter; it is that there is something involuntary in the change; it is the awkwardness.

Oloruntoba-Oju (1992/1998) had noted that the “slant” of the original event above can be described in linguistic, rhetorical and pragmatic terms. Let us just note this time that such slants usually involve the verbal alteration of the “situation-substance” of the original, and the mobilization of opposing scripts (e.g., “sit down”/“fall down,” “falls”/“abrupt change of posture,” etc.). In the first example, “sit down” is semantically anomalous relative to the exact state of affairs (slip and fall down); in the second example, “abrupt change of posture” is semantically vague relative to the actual state of affairs. Every constructed humour text brings language into play. These linguistic embellishments integrate with and reproduce the comic bases; the language itself becomes “the thing” or is inseparable from “the thing.” In humour stylistics, to locate the language is to locate the humour, and vice-versa. It seems therefore that linguistic input to comic aesthetics can theoretically be divided into three distinct categories, PRIMARY LOCUTION, SECONDARY LOCUTION and BASAL INTEGRATION, as indicated in the above diagram.

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Primary locution refers to the basic marshalling of words to express any situation or idea, including comic ones. Verbal expression in these terms may be seen as reportorial—an inevitable consequence if the verbal medium is to be employed. A verbal joke is often “reported” although it is also often conversational, occurring in the process of interpersonal exchange (see also Filani 2023, in this volume on “conversational language play”). Secondary locution refers to elements of embellishment that enhance humour, as in the Bergsonian reconstruction above. It describes the deployment of marked or foregrounded usage. In other words, “something extra,” Eipstein’s (1978, 4–5), phrase for markedness, is done to accentuate comic feeling. Faye Chambers (2023, in this volume) has noted that “the unifying factor between the branches of humour research is the stylistic concept of foregrounding,” and that the effect of foregrounding is achieved “through textual choices which are made in order to draw attention in some way to the text.” What we have here is a case of “introversive semiosis”: Jakobson’s (1960) term for usages that metalinguistically draw attention to themselves, even more than or as much to the subject or content that they ostensibly convey. Basal integration as a layer of linguistic input occurs in the intertwining of elements of meaning and language itself. This “basal integration” category is sometimes a problematic layer in humour, especially for the stylistician whose objective is to distinguish the language of the comic. Where linguistic usages intertwine with incongruity and are apparently inseparable from the so-called comic base, this creates a problem of both distinguishing and of evidentiality. Most puns carry this burden of indistinguishability of res and verba. In (6) below, a Yoruba proverb, roughly translated, the locus of the humour is semantic: (6) We only asked for someone with a back to give our daughter to in marriage; the hunchback promptly offers himself.

The metaphoric “back” clashes with the physical back, the script of affluence clashes with the script of physical prominence, leading inevitably to comic explosion. While there is situational incongruity here as

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well, the comic base is activated by the linguistic incongruity between metaphor and plain language. Language itself constitutes the humour. Clearly, the three categories of input above are not mutually exclusive but interactive and integrative. Thus, the perlocution layer is also intertwined with the other two layers. Comic effect in many comic texts is provoked by the underlying situation or idea and its verbal realization. Without language there will be no humour and no humorous effect. Primary and secondary locutions are invested with the illocutionary force of amusement. Perlocution is ostensive, since humour manifests outwardly in many cases, as the resultant comic feeling is expressed through laughter, a smile, a grin, and so on. The perlocution layer is therefore the level at which input at the causative layers is referenced. If the medium is verbal, the illocutionary force of amusement increases with “verbal intensification” as described above, and there is a corresponding increase in perlocutionary manifestation (i.e., mild laughter with mere “verbal expression” of a comic material, loud laughter with a “verbal intensification” of the same material). In other words, the degree of perlocutionary manifestation is also a good measure of the degree to which one layer or another in comic aesthetics is involved in the provocation of comic feeling in a given comic expression. In sum, the base component of humour comprises integrated elements of language and situation, including incongruity, anomaly and other comic causation agents interacting with contextual features of the text.

Unified Levels of Language Analysis: A Vignette The following vignette was adapted from a long-running TV series of the 90s in Nigeria. The characters in the vignette clash in the course of one of the episodes of the series: (8) A day after, the nimble talebearer tiptoed to Mr. Shamuz, the highly irritable money lender. “Have they now found the things?” the talebearer asked. “What th-th-ings???” Shamuz asked irritably. “Oh, Mr. Apampa was saying yesterday that everything was with you.” “He t-t-old you that?” “He said it repeatedly: ‘Shamuz, Shamuz, everything is with Shamuz.’” Without

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another word, and with the talebearer barely keeping pace, Mr. Shamuz flew to the apartment of Mr. Apampa, the artful debtor, in visibly double the accustomed rage: “How d-dare you say the th-thing is now with me!” It seemed that there was indeed “a thing” between them after all. “I said no such thing!” Apampa snapped back with righteous velocity. “Yes, you did,” Talebearer interjected, anxious for a spirited corroboration. “I said that to you?” Apampa cross-examined. “I was right beside the wall,” she insisted, somewhat with accustomed honesty. “You said: ‘Shamuz, Shamuz, everything is with Shamuz.’” “Th-There you go!” said Mr. Shamuz, now raising his hand with double the accustomed level of threat. “Oh … ‘shambles’!” Apampa exclaims, half lost in recollection. “I was in my room, I remember now, and indeed I was talking to myself.” “Th-there you go,” goes Shamuz, readying his fist the more. “But I only said: ‘Shambles, shambles, everything is in shambles.’” “What!” Shamuz turns swiftly, now with thrice the accustomed rage and four times the accustomed level of threat, to confront the tale-bearer. And then he discovered, to his utmost dissatisfaction, that the talebearer had nimbly vamuzd. (Adapted from The Tramp, NTA Ilorin, 1995)

Various levels of linguistic analysis come prominently into play in the analysis of the above sequence. Most prominent are the lexical, syntactic, semantic, graphological, and pragmatic levels of analysis. Into these levels we integrate various “scripts” or elements that can be constructed as humorous, employing other terminologies from other models of analysis as may be expedient. Perhaps the most conspicuous script oppositions in this vignette are those of appearance–reality, normality–abnormality, apparent honesty–apparent dishonesty. However, the task here is to discover how elements of language at various levels of linguistic analysis unite catalytically to engender or enhance humour.

Language and Humour Catalysis: Humourlects A noticeable strategy in the text above is the construction of comic expectation through stereotypes that create comic expectation or act as humour enhancers. Stereotypes often serve as cues of humour (Attardo 1994; Gruner 1997; Watkins 2010). Cues of the stereotype—in the above case,

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the gossip or talebearer, the moneylender, and the stutterer (as legendarily a personality on a “short fuse.”)—are nominally referenced and set up to activate the expectation of humour. The nominal references to stock characters act as humourlects (lexical and other linguistic items that create humour). They prepare the audience/hearer not necessarily for the unexpected but often for the expected. I argue here that the lexical items “talebearer,” “money lender” and “artful debtor” and such other nominal descriptors together create an environment of humour ab initio, linguistically constructing a humour collocate that echo in the mind of the receiver and generate an anticipated disaster, and comedy, in relation to the stock characters. While this analysis acknowledges a cognitive relaationship between language and the background or common ground knowledge of what may often happen with such stock characters, and some degree of humour competence on the part of the decoder, it is the naming itself, the language that names, the vocative, that foregrounds the characters and forcefully creates the expectation of the comic. Compare the effect had these characters been merely introduced as characters A, B and C. Their eventual actions and reactions may well create humour down the line, but not the anticipation created ab initio by their naming. As Cohn (2012, 64) has emphasized, “evidence to support or deny the existence of a grammar in sequential images can only be provided by manipulating a sequence (or a panel) and comparing the generated results.” Such manipulation involves, in this case, the substitution of linguistic elements in the sequence in order to test their effect. The elements act cataphorically to produce an “aha” effect down the line. In other words, following this establishment of comic expectation through humourlects ab initio in the vignette above, every realization of the expectation produces a more intense humour or amusement, and an explosive laughter at every turn. Borrowed registers also provide mini comic explosions and constitute humourlects within the context. These include items such as “cross-­ examine,” from the legal register, “flew,” from the aviation register to depict speed, “righteous,” from the code of moralities, and “velocity,” from the code of physics or of gravity. They are foregrounded by their unusualness within the semantic and syntactic spaces in which they occur, drawing attention to themselves and creating humour.

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Even as the stereotypes in the text are introduced by lexical humourlects, the references are syntactically reinforced by premodification with the definite article “the,” which, simply by the use of this article, grounds the stereotypes within the frames of habituality, thereby enhancing comic expectation. One of the stereotype scripts (stutterer on a short fuse) is ingrained in the reader’s mind, not only through lexical descriptions (“irritable,” “accustomed,” “twice accustomed,” etc.), and through their repetition in the text—thereby mimicking Michael Halliday’s linguistic devices of cohesion—but also through graphological elements, that is those hyphenated letters or broken up words that are visible to the eye and impressive on the mind. More humour-enhancing graphological level elements will be encountered later within the text. Still at the syntactic level, we find that gendered identity is generally marked by the use of pronouns; however, the gender identity of the talebearer is artfully concealed linguistically, by substituted nominal referencing, right up until the second half of the sequence. This reinforces the “aha factor.” Since the stereotypic gender for the (Shylocky) moneylender is male, and that for the gossip or talebearer is female, the popped-up pronoun identifying the talebearer as female reinforces this stereotype, forcing another explosion of laughter. The pronouns therefore serve to signify gender in the text at that point and to reinforce comic characterization. Reinforcement of other comic concepts also occurs through lexico-­ syntactic structures, mostly adjectival constructions—“nimble talebearer,” “highly irritable money lender,” “righteous velocity,” “accustomed honesty,” “utmost dissatisfaction,” and so on—that give a sense of either aptness, irony, understatement, bombast, or the like. The combination “nimble talebearer” is particularly humorous, since “nimble” is polysemous and in this instance links both “light of foot” and “running of the mouth.” The collocation of “nimble” and “tip-toeing” as character signals also creates amusement. Lexico-syntactic iterations also mutually reinforce the stereotypes, welding narrative sequence in the process. For example, “nimbly vamuzd” in the last line/last action, echoes and coheres with “nimble talebearer” in the first line/first action, again lining up the cascade of humour explosions. Linguistic echoes act as anaphoric scripts, bringing up recollections of previous scripts and interfacing with them to

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produce the kind of knowledge necessary for the uptake of humour. While the text does interact with social variables, such as gender, or behavioural and socio-psychological attributes such as anger, it evidently requires the specific input of language elements, through the deployment of the humourlects referred to above, to activate this interaction. Nor is it less humorous that Mr. Shamuz would find in the end, “to his utmost dissatisfaction,” that the quarry of his anger has vamuzd. This latter morphosemantic process, a neologism created by the morphophonemic and graphetic yoking of segments of Shamuz’s name with the slangy or informal English word for disappearance, creates comic enhancement.

 umour Phonotactics, Morphotactics, H and Morphophonemics The climactic joke in the sequence involves a humour strategic use of miscommunication or auditory illusion/misperception. Simply, talebearer heard “Shamuz,” instead of “shambles.” The context for this misperception is phonotactic and morphotactic (involving sound and word formation modalities), and morphophonemic (involving the combination of morphological and phonological features). Phonetically and morphophonemically, the terms differ only minimally (/shamuz/ v. / shamblz/) (/ʃɑ́ːməs v. /ʃæm.bəlz/) and it is plausible that talebearer misheard the words. Situationally and sociopragmatically, the fact that talebearer is positioned behind the wall, and that there is indeed a Mr. Shamuz, heightens the plausibility. Humour language typically restructures situations and manipulates the relevant contexts linguistically to achieve humorous outcomes.

Other Semantic Lects Talebearer’s strategic evasions, occurring twice in the sequence, are linguistically accomplished by deploying a specific semantic form, vagueness, rather than, say, ambiguity, as strategy. Vagueness is a more subtle

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semantic instrument in the realization of the humour here, being more effective in concealing motives without appearing to do so—ambiguity exposes duplicity more quickly, for those with very keen ears. When Shamuz asks: “He t-t-old you that?” she responds: “He said it repeatedly…,” thereby evading the question by employing contextually vague terms. Similarly, when Apampa asks “[I said that] to you?” talebearer evades a frontal denial by saying “I was right beside the wall.” The choice of “beside” rather than “behind” also creates a small humour explosion at the evasion. Two important semantic (and ethical) scripts: truth/dishonesty; appearance/reality are activated through a deployment or manipulation of vague lexes. On the one hand is talebearer’s peculiar or “accustomed” “honesty.” She does tell the truth, according to the language—since after all, she was truly beside the wall (albeit on the outside), and Apampa did say what he said repeatedly, just as she asserts—but it was only half-truth, hence the corresponding script oppositions; dishonesty is disguised as honesty, reality substituted with appearance. The entire hoopla was created in dishonesty—talebearer snooping or eavesdropping around—but she is certainly truthful in narrating what she heard, even though it turns out to be “untrue,” a mini representation of the liar paradox. On the other hand, Apampa’s righteousness is linguistically twisted and therefore doomed; he tells the truth but it is made to appear like a lie. And when he says oh, “I remember now,” it first appears as if he is confirming himself to be a liar, and almost receives Shamuz’s blow to his head, but what he remembers is not what he is expected to remember. A confirmation/denial opposition is instantiated, which leads to the resolution of the puzzle. Shamuz himself frequently instantiates the word/action, action/inaction, aggression/restraint script oppositions. Speech-challenged but somewhat eloquent, his aggressive stance is not ultimately consummated—the action belies the words or vice-versa; he raises his fist almost a dozen times but does not land a single blow; he rushes into the arena of war, so fast even the nimble footed talebearer could not catch up with him, but he ultimately fights no wars. His language, which includes paralinguistic elements of force, belies an inner choice of peace and tranquillity; appearance conflicts with reality. And in the end when he could have actualized his words with a blow on talebearer, she providentially has

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vamoosed, leaving that conflict between words and actions unresolved, perhaps to the amusement of all. We have in this vignette a complicated web of ironies engendered by a complex and integrated web of linguistic processes. Almost at every turn, the language is the humour and the humour is recoverable at various levels of linguistic analysis through a unified or integrated analysis. Generally speaking, humour is frequently activated through constructions such as the above, lighting up the face or creating secondary and tertiary explosions as the humour cascades through series of actualizations in the sequence. All four major theories of humour are implicated in the sequence, since many of the actions are incongruous between perception and reality; we laugh at the folly and foibles of the stereotypes, and experience release and relief with every little explosion of humour/ laughter along the sequence. The humour in this text is however activated by means of a deft manipulation of linguistic elements. As Michael Toolan notes, in his foreword to this volume: “humour episodes [involve] language that intentionally or otherwise generate laughter” (emphasis added). Intentionality is framed in the sequence above through linguistic elements that set the stage for laughter. However, whether intentional or not, every point of humour explosion in the sequence is marked in language. In other words, humour is inevitably marked in language, and in the hands of the humourists, elements of language are foregrounded, virtually leaping out at the observer, consciously or unconsciously inviting a linguistic analysis of the comic elements.

Summation It seems axiomatic that no single model of linguistic analysis can account for all the dimensions of humour in a text. What the foregoing demonstrates, however, or reiterates, following earlier positive evaluations, is that stylistic enquiry into comic discourse is both possible and necessary, notwithstanding scepticism to the contrary. The foregoing demonstrates that the manner in which linguistic structures function to realize or even constitute a source of comic feeling can be ascertained and demonstrated. The evidentiary bar in stylistics in general, and humour stylistics in

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particular, can be attained. The foregoing also demonstrates that stylisticians must avail themselves of every possible linguistic tool for, or approach to, the study of verbal structures. “Every approach,” says Guiraud 1971, 20) “is legitimate, even indispensable, provided one has a clear sense of one’s intentions and methods and these are unambiguously specified.” We need only add that, with comic discourse in particular, the stylistic investigator needs to carefully weigh (indeed test) every claim regarding the relationship between the structures of a given comic expression and the comic matter expressed. Finally, it is possible to reiterate on the basis of analytical exercises such as the foregoing, that every instance of humour, including the so-­ called non-linguistic or non-verbal humour, requires the instrumentality of language. It has been well established that language and the mind are cognate structures, and one is often inseparable from the other.5 In other words, the very structure of language replicates the structure of thought. It is therefore impossible to produce, or process, humour without language or its deep structure equivalent in the mind. I.A. Richards (1924/1972, 106) phrased this thought eloquently exactly a century ago, long before Chomsky: The very structure of our minds is largely determined by the fact that [humans] have been engaged in communication for so many hundreds of thousands of years, throughout the course of [their] human development and beyond even that. A large part of the distinctive features of the mind are due to its being an instrument for communication. An experience has to be formed no doubt, before it is communicated, but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to be communicated.

Related to humour, it is possible to assert with a great deal of confidence, borrowing structures from the eloquent character in the vignette above: Humour, humour, everything is with language.

 This is why, for example, a dissociated consciousness or distorted thought process is automatically reflected in a distorted or dissociated language use. Also, in children’s episteamic development (Schulz 2012), they eventually make sense of the world around them through a linguistic trial and error. 5

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Interventions in This Collection The various contributions to this chapter are unified in their concern to address issues in the debate on language and humour, and also to advance different perspectives in addressing these issues and in analysing established or emerging data in the respective environments of the contributors. Prof. Michael Toolan’s foreword has masterfully touched on most of these perspectives, and I would only add a few additional summaries here. The contributions are divided into two parts, one of which is devoted to those contributions that engage specific theories of humour and language and or relate the theories and perspectives to literature. The second part is devoted to those contributions that examine the newer forms of expression especially on social media. The contributions also span different geographical areas, in Africa, Europe and America. In the introductory chapter, Oloruntoba-Oju first sketches the trajectory of style, humour and language, and considers some of the linguistic models of analysis. He then proposes a “unified levels of language analysis” (ULLA) approach that demonstrates the pervasive influence of language in humour stimuli and perlocutionary outcomes at every level of linguistics. Faye Chambers also begins with an overview of the prominent theories of humour, including sundry definitions and the related theoretical underpinnings. She opines that form and function-based definitions tend to disregard the vital role that the content and meaning of the text play in humour construction. She however zeroes in on foregrounding as the stylistic element that is common to the various theories and perspectives, and demonstrates how foregrounding works with each of the theories and the associated humour texts. Matthias Springer engages the Rasch-Model of predicting the probability of humour effect as a way of grappling with the stimulus–recipient trap in humour literature. The trap concerns the debate on the actual locus of humour stimuli, whether with the subject or object, the encoder or decoder. Deploying relevant data from Germany, Springer suggests that humour should rather be seen as “a problem-solving process [that] includes cognitive abilities and skills to solve the specific problem of

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perceiving objects or situations that seem nonsensical or unreasonable to us.” Springer here develops a schema of humour as competence. Katie Wales examines the works of Charles Dickens from the perspective of humour and style. She examines the stylistic trajectory of Dickens’ works from the colloquial to the narratorial and the conversational, addressing the inversion (“mooreeffoc”) effect as structurally facilitated by the use of child characters adopting adult mannerisms and feigning suzerainty over the world of adults. She links this with Bakhtinian role reversals and the “peculiar logic of the inside out,” as humour ingredients and the key to Dicken’s humour style. From Uganda, Danson Kahyana obtains data from Barbara Kimenye’s Moses Series to illustrate different uses of humour and propose a “grammar of humour” in children’s stories. The use of figurative language and verbal irony features prominently in the analysis. Kahyana shows how characterizing Moses as asocial deviant in the series helps to develop stereotype features that support the analysis of the series as humour. Of particular interest is the employment of what Kahyana describes as “subtle humour” in transforming Moses the transgressor to an endearing character, and dovetailing into the interesting notion of humour as a chameleon. Lynn Blin’s chapter offers a glimpse of contemporary American literary humour, and its relation to humour theory. Analysing the works of David Sedaris, Blin examines foregrounded elements of style in the light of linguistic humour models such as Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour. Of particular interest is the notion of intentionality, how the text is framed with the intention to provoke laughter, as well as the knowledge resources that go into the construction and perception of humour. Oloruntoba-Oju takes another look at satire in the Nigerian context, not only in terms of established satirical types but also in terms of the linguistic appraisal of satire. The works of Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare and Olatunji Dare prove to be exemplary in relation to world satire and also in terms of African and Nigerian peculiarities. In Part II, contributors dwell largely on forms of humour and again the language resources that go into their construction. African forms of humour expression and the associated linguistics are fully on display here. Ibukun Filani examines the linguistic style of Nigerian mediated comedies in English, and especially the pattern of code selection in the

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comedies. The sociolinguistic frameworks of stylization and audience design are employed. Focusing also on forms of language such as Broken English and code-mixed varieties, Filani suggests that some of the grammatical infelicities encountered in skits and TV representations reflect the Nigerian linguistic realities and lectal range. They also constitute styles and strategies of humorous usage in the environment. Comfort Beyang Ojongkpot considers one of the theories of humour, the relief theory, and how the situation in Cameroon during the era of crisis reflects this function. Employing a socio-pragmatic analysis, the study considers many samples from women’s humorous usages. This in itself presages the involvement of gender in humour production and analysis. The range of linguistic involvement in this chapter also reflects the African cultural background and the manner in which aspects of ethnicity permeates the language of humour. Oyin Medubi’s humour styles in political cartoons demonstrate how language works in visual comic genres. Employing the Parallel Worlds Linguistic theory, as adapted from Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation theory, Medubi analyses Nigerian cartoons with the aim of “accounting for verbal resources of humour in social actions.” She also examines the intersection of language and cultural schemas as defined by cognitive anthropologists. The analysis shows patterns of coherence and decoherence, among other contextual elements that mark out Nigerian cartoons. As noted by Michael Toolan in his foreword, Ibukun Osuolale-Ajayi’s examination of online humour supplication in the Nigerian environment demonstrate how, sometimes in the analysis of humour, “circles of situatedness ripple outwards.” Employing the framework of interactional stance taking along with insights from pragmatics and linguistics, Osuolale-Ajayi’s analysis shows linguistic cum social strategies and parameters that constitute the style of online begging or supplication. It shows how humour borrows from the language of the environment to influence the environment in many ways. Ibukun Filani and Catherine Olutoyin William engage the theme and mechanics or principles of intertextuality in considering the style of stand-up comedy in the Nigerian context. The authors identify intertextuality as a pragmatic component of humour, and in the discussion of stand-up comedy in particular, the sequentiality of conversations draws

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on different and sometimes disparate texts to forge a path to comic consciousness. Indeed, beyond stand-up comedy, “most, if not all, forms of humour depend on intertextuality” according to the authors. Their analysis shows that the instantiation of discourse markers that bear “social, ideological and political-economic connections” is just one of the indices of intertextuality as style in stand-up comedies in Nigeria and elsewhere. Monsurat Ahmed employs paradigms from the field of Pragmatics to analyse Nigerian comedy skits. In this manner, the skits of Alhaja Don Jasi are investigated for pragmemes and acts that constitute elements of style in the genre. Humour is linguistically coded in the skits, and Ahmed observes that this is a deliberate, rather than unintentional, habit. The stylistic principle of choice is also a factor in selecting those items of language that are most likely to elicit humorous responses from audiences. Still on comedy, Olawale Lekan Christopher zeroes in on bombast and verbal blunders as stylistic markers in Nigerian acts. Here once again we find the language of the environment entering into the construction of humour. According to Olawale, situational comedy makes specific use of these two forms to enhance the recognition necessary for the appreciation of the comedies; that is, the languages are recognized as part of the artefacts of society. This is why the recipient design theory is also useful in the analysis of comedy since comedians rely on the reaction of the audience. In all, language remains the recurrent element in the construction, reception and appreciation of humour. This volume elaborates on how this is so. The volume showcases the imperativeness of a linguistic approach to the analysis of humour as style, and the perspectives of scholars with profound familiarity with humour discourse.

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Gruner, Charles G. 1997. The Game of Humour: A Comprehensive Theory of Why We Laugh. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Guiraud, Paul. 1971. Immanence and Transitivity of Stylistic Criteria. In Literary Style: A Symposium, ed. S. Chatman. London: Cambridge Universty Press. Hobbes, Thomas. 1840. Hobbes’ Tripos in Three Discourses. London: Ref. to English Trans, in Grene, 1980. Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language, ed, T. Sebeok (Ed.), 350–377. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kierkegaard, Soren. 1846. The Comical. In Dramatic Theory and Criticism. From Greeks to Grotowski, ed. B.F. Dukore. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Larkin-Gallinanes, Cristina. 2017. An Overview of Humour Theory. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 1st ed., 4–16. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162. Leech, Geoffery. 1985. Stylistics. In Discourse and Literature: New Approaches to the Analyses of Literary Discourse, ed. Teun A. Van. Dijk Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Martin, R.A., Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray, and Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual Differences in Uses of Humor and Their Relation to Psychological Well-Being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37: 48–75. Mauron, Charles. 1964. Psycho critique du Genre Comique, Paris. Ref. to English trans. in Grene, 1980. Meyer-Lee, Robert J. 2023. Interpretation in the Problem of Literary Value. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526167958.00012 Miodrag, Hannah. 2013. Comics and Language: Reimagining Critical Discourse on the Form. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Olaosun, Ibrahim. 2009. Panhandlers as Rhetors: Discourse Practices of Peripatetic Beggars in Southwestern Nigeria. California Linguistic Notes 32 (2): 1–18. Olawale, Lekan. 2023. An Analysis of Humour Style in Nigerian Situation Comedy. In Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, ed. Taiwo Oloruntoba-­ Oju. Palgrave Macmillan. Oloruntoba-Oju, Taiwo. 1992/1998. Rhetorical and Linguistics Games in Comic Aesthetics. In Language, ed. E.L. Eipstein and R. Kole, 153–168. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. (Reprinted from Language and Style: An International Journal 25(3) Summer 259–269).

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———. 1998. Language and Style in Nigerian Drama and Theatre. Ibadan: BEN-EL Books. Oring, Elliot. 2011. Parsing the Joke: The General Theory of Verbal Humor and Appropriate Incongruity. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 24 (2): 203–222. Osuolale-Ajayi, Ibukun. 2022. Discourse and Humour Strategies in Two-Person Stand-up Art in Nigeria. In Stand-up Comedy in Africa, ed. Izuu Nwankwo. Stuttgart: Ibidem. Pirandello, Luigi. 1920. On Humor. In Dramatic Theory and Criticism. From Greeks to Grotowski, ed. B.F. Dukore. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Postema, Barbara. 2013. Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments. Rochester, NY: RIT Press. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Reidel. Richards, Ivor Armstrong. 1924/1972. Communication and the Artist. In Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, ed. David Lodge, 106–110. London: Longman. Ritchie, Graeme. 2004. The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. London: Routledge. Schulz, Laura. 2012. The Origins of Inquiry: Inductive Inference and Exploration in Early Childhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16 (7): 382–389. Short, Mick. 1995. Understanding Conversational Undercurrents in ‘The Ebony Tower’ by John Fowles. In Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to Context, ed. P. Verdonk and J. J. Weber, 45–62. London: Routledge. Sidney, Paul. 1580/1962. An Apology for Poetry. In English Critical Texts, ed. D.J. Enright and E. De Chickers. London: Cambridge Universty Press. Silverman, Kaja. 1983. The Subject of Semiotics. New York/Oxford: Cambridge University Press. Simpson, Paul. 2003. On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humor. Linguistic Approaches to Literature 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Simpson, Paul. 2004. Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. Psychology Press. Simpson, Paul, and Derek Bousfield. 2017. Humour and Stylistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Humour and Language, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 159–173. London: Routledge. Stockwell, Peter J. 2005. Stylistics: Language And Literature. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ed. B. Aarts and A.D. Mcmahon. Blackwell. Styan, John L. 1968. The Dark Comedy. Cambridge University Press.

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Toolan, Michael. 1990. The Stylistics of Fiction: A Literary-Linguistics Approach. London: Routledge. ———. 1996. Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics. London: Routledge. Tsakona, V. 2017. Humour Research and Humour Reception: Far Away, So Close. In Humorous Discourse, ed. W. Chłopicki and D. Brzozowska, 179–201. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Wales, Katie. 2001. A Dictionary of Stylistics. Longman. Watkins, Angela. 2010. Language Variety in Literature. In Encyclopaedia of Identity: Volume I, ed. Ronald L. Jackson, 425–429. California: Sage.

Part I Humour Theory and Literary Texts in European, American and African Contexts

2 Unifying the Humour Theories: A Stylistic Approach Faye Chambers

Defining Humour According to Nash (1985, 1), “Humour is a specifying characteristic of humanity.” Raskin (1985) also proposes that “the ability to appreciate and enjoy humor is universal and shared by all people” (Raskin 1985, 2). These assertions raise an important question: just what makes a text humorous? This chapter will highlight how taking a stylistic perspective could be a key factor in linking the hitherto disconnected theoretical approaches to humour analysis. The first problem anyone wishing to conduct an analysis of humour is likely to encounter is the difficulty in defining exactly what humour is. Humour is complex and multifaceted (Lee and Lang 2010), with Attardo and Raskin (2017, 51) stating that “we have never really defined humor just as love, life, emotion and society defy concise and universally accepted definitions.” In everyday interaction, humour is recognized by speakers and hearers using intuition, without the need for a formal definition: the

F. Chambers (*) University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_2

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ability of humans to both recognize and produce humour is a process of cognitive development which begins in childhood (McGhee 2002). This poses a problem for those wishing to study humour, as it would be difficult to implement any testable hypotheses or methods which relied on intuitive identification of an utterance as humorous. Some analysts have tackled this issue by identifying humour through the presence of a hearer’s response which indicates amusement (Holmes 2000, 163), and humour is often defined as a stimulus which evokes the response of laughter from a recipient (Raskin 1985; Archakis and Tsakona 2012, 77–78)—however, Glenn (2003) and Provine (2017) reject the laughter response as a means of defining humour, as humour does not always elicit laughter, nor is humour the sole cause of laughter production. Conversely, those approaches which define humour through a speaker’s intent to amuse (Pizzini 1991) are also limited in scope: in addition to the difficulty posed by verifying speaker intentions, this definition cannot account for instances of “found humour”—where an utterance with a serious intention is perceived as humorous by a hearer (Simpson 2003)—nor can it explain instances of failed humour, where despite an intention to amuse humour has not been constructed. A problem with defining humour through either speaker intent or hearer response is the implied assumption that humour is manifested outside of the text, suggesting that any utterance can become humorous if it is intended to be and/or perceived to be so by interactional participants. There are also difficulties posed with implementing the more text-­ based approaches to defining humour, as these are often post-hoc conceptualizations applied to examples of prototypical humour using a top-down approach. Lee and Lang’s (2010) definition of humour is that it “manifests as jokes, puns, funny stories, laughter, banter, teasing, wit, and humorous behaviours like playing the fool. Humor may also take the form of satire, sarcasm, ironic remarks, and ridicules” (Lee and Lang 2010, 46). This definition proposes a variety of text-types which humour can take (including laughter, which is arguably a response to humour rather than a humour stimulus in itself ), but fails to pinpoint any underlying features which distinguish these forms from other techniques in “bonafide” (Raskin 1985) or serious (Mulkay 1988) discourse. Mulkay

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(1988) and Raskin (1985) both argue that humour functions in an alternative mode of discourse, but the distinguishing features of these modes are ill-defined, making it difficult to identify them in a text. By contrast, structural approaches (such as Nash 1985; Attardo 1997) emphasize form over function as a marker of humour, suggesting that anything in a particular syntactic structure can become humorous, irrespective of textual meaning. Both form- and function-based definitions disregard the vital role that the content and meaning of the text play in humour construction, rather than taking a stylistic approach through investigating how choices made in a text contribute to a constructed humorous meaning. The General Verbal Theory of Humour (GTVH) (Attardo and Raskin 1991; Attardo 1994, 1997) does arguably take this stylistic approach to humour analysis, building on Raskin’s (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH) (see Section “Applying Foregrounding Analysis to Jokes”) to provide a list of six hierarchical knowledge resources (KR) (Attardo 2017, 128) which are said to “inform a text’s humour.” The SSTH and GTVH have been criticized, however, both due to lack of methodological clarity, ill-defined key concepts (Oring 2011b, 2019a, 2019b), and because the KR’s which the GTVH claims are always present in humour (such as “language,” “situation,” “narrative strategy”) could be identified in all texts, regardless of whether they are humorous or not (Ritchie 2004, 78). The lack of consensus as to how humour should be defined has led to the separation of humour research into three distinct theoretical fields. In his comprehensive survey of literature on humour, Attardo (1994) describes research trends dating back to the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with evidence that the concepts presented by these scholars still dominate humour research today. He presents the three categories which are regarded as the main “families” of humour research: psychoanalytical, social, and cognitive (Attardo 1994; Larkin-Galiñanes 2017). These take the forms of release, hostility, and incongruity theories respectively. Though these approaches to humour research have developed quite separately, there is an argument that they may not be contradictory, and in fact that they may be linked in some way. Larkin-Galiñanes (2017) states that there is much overlap between the three areas of humour

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research, so they should be seen as complementary. As an introduction to humour research, Raskin (1985) also points towards an overlap in the theories: The three approaches actually characterize the complex phenomenon of humor from very different angles and do not at all contradict each other— rather they seem to supplement each other quite nicely. In our terms, the incongruity-based theories make a statement about the stimulus; the superiority theories characterize the relations or attitudes between the speaker and the hearer; and the release/relief theories comment on the feelings and psychology of the hearer only. (Raskin 1985, 40)

The point at which these theories intersect, however, has not yet been identified, but through discussion grounded in stylistics I will attempt to identify the unifying thread between them. I propose firstly that incongruity is synonymous with foregrounding through deviation (see Section “Stylistics, Foregrounding, and Textual Meaning”), and secondly, that the release and hostility theories refer to specific types of foregrounded deviation, enabling the three schools of thought to be assimilated into a single theory: that humour relies on the text’s deviation from some established norm.

Stylistics, Foregrounding, and Textual Meaning Leech and Short (2007, 13) state that stylistics aims to explain “the relation between language and artistic function.” Simpson and Bousfield (2017) argue that stylistic techniques are well suited for the analysis of humour: through textual analysis, we can begin to investigate how choices made in a text’s construction result in a humorous meaning. However, according to Simpson et  al. (2019), stylistic research into humour has been somewhat limited compared to the study of other literary and non-­ fictional texts. A key part of stylistic analysis is recognizing those elements of a text which are foregrounded, and this effect of foregrounding is achieved through textual choices which are made in order to draw

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attention in some way, either through parallelism—the repetition and establishing of patterns—or through deviation, which is a break from patterns or expectations (Short 1996) within the text. Deviation will be the focus of this discussion in relation to foregrounding and humour. The concept of deviation in language, like much of stylistics, is rooted in Russian formalism (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010, 31), and is a description of how textual elements can stand out by deviating from some pre-­ established norms. Deviation can be either internal, deviating from patterns established in the co-text, or external, deviating from standard conventions of the language or how language is used within the situational context, thus becoming foregrounded. Whilst internal deviation describes a break from “a norm set up by the text itself ” (Short 1996, 59), the concept of external deviation relies on the assumed presence of norms in language practice which are recognized and generally adhered to by competent speakers of that language. These norms can be established in the language system itself, such as the rules of grammar and syntax, but speakers will also possess conceptual knowledge of more abstract norms regarding interaction, societal expectations and how the world around them works. Jeffries (2010) labels these “naturalised schemas” within her work on Critical Stylistics and its subsequent expansion to a theory of Textual Meaning (Jeffries 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2016, 2018), which examines how linguistic choices embed both ideational and ideological information in a text, and from this picture “draw[s] some conclusions about what is seen as acceptable or unacceptable in the world created by the textual features” (Jeffries 2016, 160). The textual meaning framework draws on the Systemic–Functional Linguistic (SFL) model originally developed by Halliday (1985). Jeffries states that between the SFL levels of linguistic and interpersonal metafunction, there is a third level blending these two planes which is the textual meaning; this is how a text-world is constructed, and must be accepted in order to make sense of the text’s meaning (Jeffries 2014a). This, she argues, is because textual meaning is a specific and dynamic level of meaning which is constructed within a text, with the underlying “linguistic” metafunction providing the resources to construct a textual meaning which has ideational and interpersonal effects.

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Incorporating the metafunctions proposed in Systemic Functional Linguistics into one general approach of explaining textual meaning construction “allows us to integrate the insights from much of the work of linguistics into a single, unified model” (Jeffries 2014b, 471), and this enables an expansion of foregrounding analysis to include discussions of deviations from ideational and interpersonal norms, where these norms relate to assumed knowledge about how the world is and expected behaviour patterns within it. Although foregrounding analysis is primarily applied in terms of linguistic-level deviations, Short (1996, 32) states that any rule-based system invites the possibility to deviate from those established rules, and that as a consequence would be foregrounded and “highly interpretable.” Deviation from these norms and their relationship to humour theory will form the discussion of the remainder of this chapter, where I will argue that the release, hostility, and incongruity approaches to humour can be unified, as they can all be considered examples of foregrounding through linguistic, ideational, or interpersonal deviation.

Incongruity (Resolution) Theories Of the three families of humour research, perhaps those with the most obvious similarities to foregrounded deviation are the incongruity theories, which argue that humour relies on the presence of a perceived incongruity. This relationship between incongruity and foregrounding theory has been previously acknowledged in stylistic humour research (Simpson 2003; McIntyre and Culpeper 2010), as incongruity can be described as a clash with, or deviation from, norms. The general approach of incongruity humour theories is a cognitive-perceptual one, proposing that in a humorous text two or more clashing concepts are presented at some level, and that this clash results in humour. It has long been asserted that humour comes from a surprise in expectations. Schopenhauer believed that humour (which he called the ludicrous) is perceived “when we are struck by a clash between our initial conceptual interpretation of a word and our perception of another “real” interpretation as activated by the context in which we find it” (Schopenhauer 1883 in Figueroa-Dorrego

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and Larkin-Galiñanes 2009, 487). Simpson and Bousfield (2017) also argue that stylistic approaches to humour rely on the assumption of an incongruity being present in the text, and that this can occur at any level of language and/or discourse. There are several different theoretical stances on the nature of incongruity in humour, some of which include a “resolution” stage. The incongruity-­resolution (IR) model (Suls 1972, 1977) focuses on the cognitive processing of jokes and has two stages. Suls argues that in the first stage something in a text is recognized by the hearer/reader as incongruous. This forces the recipient to search for an alternative, congruous meaning; a “rule” to apply in order for the incongruity to make sense. When this rule is found, the “solving” of the puzzle results in speaker amusement, and this is what Suls calls the second “resolution” stage. This addition of the resolution stage is a step towards distinguishing incongruity in humorous utterances from incongruity more generally, but the nature of resolutions in humour remains ill-defined (see Section “Applying Foregrounding Analysis to Jokes”). An issue with the IR model is that it fails to account for finding a joke funny more than once. If amusement comes from solving the incongruity as Suls suggests, then a second hearing would not require this same puzzle solving, and therefore according to the model would not result in subsequent amusement. Real-world evidence contradicts this, as the same joke can be found humorous more than once; this is something comedian James Acaster acknowledges in his recent Netflix stand-up special “Repertoire” (Acaster 2018). Acaster tells the audience he went to Pret a Manger to “Manger a banana,” and his use of the word “manger” elicits laughter (which, in the context of a stand-up comedy show, can be assumed as a positive indicator of humour appreciation). He continues to repeat this phrase in place of the word “eat” throughout the show, and stops to tell the audience “funny every time that one, manger, still funny.” As Acaster predicts, every substitution of “manger” garners laughter from the audience, and this laughter intensifies the longer the joke is repeated. Taking a stylistic approach and framing the analysis around foregrounding, rather than surprise or incongruity-resolution, offers a possible explanation for this continued amusement. Acaster’s use of “manger” is an example of foregrounding achieved through deviation at a lexico-­semantic

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level from external linguistic norms, incorporating a word from the French language into an English Language comedy routine for an English-speaking audience—arguably this is also internally deviant, due to it being an example of code-switching within the discourse. Whilst the repetition of this code-switch negates the cognitive-perceptual aspects of surprise and resolution, it continues to deviate from pre-established external norms, and this can account for hearers finding repeated amusement from the same material. The repetition is also an example of parallelism, which is another way to achieve foregrounding effects, and is frequently employed by comedians through cognitive play in the form of a “call back.” Another issue with the perception and processing-based focus of Incongruity-Resolution is the suggestion that an utterance only becomes humorous when processed by a recipient. According to Ritchie (2004), Suls’ model is more concerned with funniness than jokehood; it serves to explain how an audience found an utterance funny, which is slightly different from providing a method for distinguishing whether a text is or is not humorous. A stylistic perspective instead allows for a focus on the text itself—for a hearer to perceive a clash, this clash must first be encoded in the textual meaning, regardless of whether anyone hears or reads it. Ritchie’s (2004) forced reinterpretation model attempts to address the issues of Suls’ recipient focused IR approach by suggesting that two possible meanings are “set up”1 within a humorous text, which he calls SU1 and SU2. SU1 is initially more obvious to hearers than the covert meaning SU2, but some element of the latter part of the text forces acknowledgement of SU2, thus forcing a “reinterpretation” of the entire text. This is evidenced in jokes such as in the example (example 2.1) below, where SU1 is a metaphorical meaning that becomes literalized with SU2: Example 2.1 I remember my first date with my wife. She gave me butterflies, which was an odd gift.

 The phrase “set up” as used by Ritchie (2004) is not the same concept as Nash’s (1985) use of the term “set-up” in relation to joke structure. 1

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Framed in terms of a stylistic foregrounding analysis, there are several identifiable points of deviation. The literalization of the dead metaphor “gave me butterflies” is foregrounded due to deviation from externally established semantic norms. This is also internally deviant, due to the co-­ textual elements in SU1 establishing the semantic field of love/romance “first date,” “wife” which primes (Hoey 2005) the metaphorical meaning of the phrase, before introducing SU2 with an adverbial clause which is incompatible with the metaphorical meaning, necessitating a shift to the literal interpretation. The scenario depicted by the textual meaning is in itself foregrounded, as gifting butterflies on a first date deviates from societal norms. An advantage of Ritchie’s forced reinterpretation model is that it takes a textual approach to identifying the defining features of humour, rather than relying on hearer perceptions as markers of humour. Both Ritchie and Suls’ work, however, suggest a linear processing of humour whereby one meaning is recognized, then discounted in favour of another. This is not always how meaning shifts in jokes, particularly in puns, where multiple meanings are compatible with the whole text and therefore neither interpretation can be discounted or favoured. In contrast to the linear processing explanations, Koestler (1989) offers the concept of “Bisociation.” Koestler argues that two associative contexts which are usually incompatible with one another are encoded in a humorous text simultaneously, and that a recipient pivots between these meanings, taking enjoyment from the dual-processing, such as in the pun example (example 2.2) below: Example 2.2 Clowns Divorce: Custardy Battle. Although the written form of this joke removes the ambiguity, when performed orally this text proposes two plausible meanings, and it is impossible to determine whether the intended sense is “custardy” or “custody” and discount one interpretation in favour of another. This intentionally maintained ambiguity is in itself a form of deviation from interactional norms, flouting the Gricean maxim of manner. The textual meaning also depicts a situation whereby divorce proceedings are being

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resolved by clowns battling with custard, constructing a foregrounded tonal clash between serious and silliness, resulting in humour. These joke examples show that humorous textual meanings can sometimes take the form of a reinterpretative shift from one sense to another, and other times maintain a bisociative meaning, but that both can be classified as forms of foregrounding through deviation, due to the deliberate construction of an ambiguous textual meaning—as Jeffries and McIntyre (2010) explain, ambiguity is considered to be an example of foregrounding through deviation at a linguistic level. Though there are several incongruity approaches to humour with their own nuances, their central argument that humour is reliant on a “clash” between what is expected and what has been presented appears to be synonymous with foregrounding through a clash or deviation from norms and expectations. I will now argue that both the hostility and release theories can also be regarded as types of incongruity and therefore examples of foregrounding through deviation, allowing the three research families to be incorporated into a single, holistic approach for humour analysis.

Hostility Theories Hostility theories of humour are based on the premise that humorous utterances have a hostile intent, and that amusement is found in the deprecation of a particular individual or social group. The resulting effect is a constructed pseudo-social hierarchy whereby those partaking in the humour feel superior to the humour’s target. This asymmetrical shift in power supposedly results in enjoyment or pleasure for those on the higher footing (Goffman 1967), at the expense of those being disparaged. The aggressive nature of humour was originally noted by the Ancient Greek philosophers (Plato, quoted in Attardo 1994) but, as humour was also branded as sinful up until well after the Middle Ages, the phenomenon remained understudied. This resulted in a research-gap into humour and aggression which was not addressed until the work of Descartes and Hobbes in the seventeenth century (Attardo 1994; Figueroa-Dorrego and Larkin-Galiñanes 2009). More recently, humour research in stylistics has produced work grounded in the hostility approach: Simpson (2003)

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highlights that satire relies on an aggressive function towards its target, referred to as the “satired,” and humour analysis by Simpson and Bousfield (2017) also employs the hostility approach, identifying how textual features of impoliteness (Culpeper 2011) in various types of discourse construct humour. Cronin (2018) also finds a correlation between impoliteness features and audience laughter in three British-Irish sitcoms, and these applications of impoliteness theory to analyse humour further supports Bousfield and Locher’s (2008) explanation that humour relies on superiority. As with lexico-grammatical rules, native speakers are aware of “norms of appropriateness” (Locher 2006, 250), and gain an understanding of what is acceptable to say and do in a given situation (Culpeper 2011), and humour realized through hostility occurs when a speaker deviates from expected interpersonal norms such as politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987) or co-operation (Grice 1975). Leech (1985), Mills (2003) and Cronin (2018) also state that impoliteness—a prototypical form of hostile humour—is a break from the expected norms of interaction, a point on which Simpson and Bousfield agree: The appearance and production of situations representing the construction and communication of impoliteness essentially indicate a break from the norms of expectation either within the text world created (in fiction, and drama), or within real life. (Simpson and Bousfield 2017, 163) This literature on impoliteness states that speakers are implicitly aware of interactional norms, and that tactics such as impoliteness deviate from these assumed norms, so are therefore foregrounded. Whilst impoliteness cannot serve to explain the construction of humour in texts with no opportunity for interactional turn-taking—such as stand-up comedy or written collections of canned jokes—the concept of hostility more broadly can still be used to analyse a text where interactional participants are not present, for example in jokes which disparage others, or when stand-up comedians perform self-deprecating humour to position themselves as inferior to the audience. Incorporating hostility as one aspect within a wider framework of foregrounding in humour addresses the difficulty in applying hostility approaches to humour which does not target aggression towards an individual or group, such as the joke example (example 2.3) below:

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Example 2.3 Hedgehogs…why can’t they just share the hedge? The joke (example 2.3) above does not appear to be produced in order to disparage any particular group; there are no evaluative modifiers present which could be interpreted as disparaging to “hedgehogs,” and the foregrounding effects instead appear to come from the wordplay. The noun “hedgehogs” is usually a single bound morpheme, but this text forces a reinterpretation whereby it becomes a compound neologism composed of two morphemes, to refer to the behaviour of “hogging a hedge”—this is foregrounded through deviation at both a morphological and a semantic level. Whilst it could be argued that the resulting textual meaning is a criticism of hedgehogs’ purported selfish behaviour, the text’s humour is achieved through the foregrounded stylistic choices which construct this meaning, rather than being attributable to the disparagement of the hedgehogs themselves. La Fave (1972) rejected hostility as an explanation of humour on the basis that it could not account for a large collection of humorous texts. Similarly, in the “General Theory of Verbal Humour” (Attardo and Raskin 1991, 2017; Attardo 1994, 1997) “target” is labelled as an optional component for humour production, further suggesting that non-hostile humorous texts do exist. Humour can aid social cohesion and group-bonding (Apte 1985; Holmes 2000), directly contradicting the idea that humour is inherently aggressive. Larkin-Galiñanes (2017) posits that humour is a way of forming social connections, with senses of humour varying between speakers of differentiating societal groups, supporting Holmes’ argument that “Shared humour is an important in-group vs out-group boundary marker” (2000, 160). An explanation for demarcation of in-groups and out-groups in terms of hostility theories is that those participating in the humour bond over their shared disparagement of a target, and by marking this target as an outsider the humour has a hostile function. This, however, does not account for nonhostile humour being used within a social group, with no “out-­group” being identified. This renders the hostility theories an incomplete explanation of what makes a text humorous, but this issue is solved through the acceptance that hostility is one form of deviation from established interpersonal norms. I therefore propose that this is justification for

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adapting foregrounding theory to incorporate deviation from norms at this interpersonal level of discourse, and thus incorporate hostility as one aspect under a unified theory of humour reliant on a foregrounded textual meaning.

Release Theories Psychoanalytical approaches to humour, known as release and/or relief theories, are rooted in the wider discipline of psychoanalysis famously developed by Freud in the early twentieth century. Release theories are based on the assumption that the repression and denial of thoughts and desires to the subconscious mind results in tension, and that humour is a means of release or liberation from these tensions (Freud 1991 [1905]): they assert that humour allows the conscious expression of thoughts commonly viewed as deviant from societal norms, and that this expression results in pleasure and relaxation. Release theories of humour are grounded in expression of those subjects and situations which, in serious discourse, are believed to cause the producer and/or receiver tension. Koestler (1989) states that the relief experienced through humour specifically concerns topics which could cause intrapersonal and interpersonal tension, such as sex, anger, and fear. Lacan (1997) viewed humour as an important aspect of the individual’s developing capacity to address the limitations imposed by society, mortality, and the unspeakable terror of the real, and Zizek (2001) argues that comedy is a powerful way to symbolize those aspects of human experience that leave us speechless and horrified. By discussing these difficult topics through humour, interactants are allowed a pleasurable relief from the tension they cause, without a need to confront the emotions with any serious action (such as engaging in violent or sexual behaviours). Berger (1999) also finds that those topics which deviate from societal norms of acceptable discussion—known as taboos—are a common subject of humour. Schoemaker and Tetlock (2012) assert that taboos are a universal feature of social systems which place restrictions on what is permissible to discuss, or even think about.

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Freud (1991 [1905]), Koestler (1989), and Berger’s (1999) assertions that humour is achieved through relief from addressing taboos ignore and exclude any humour which does not concern taboo or repressed desires from their definition. This is an issue which could be addressed by reframing relief as one aspect of foregrounding through deviation, being achieved through a violation of “norms” more generally, rather than it being specifically concerned with repressed tensions. The fact that taboos exist within speech communities reinforces the claim that speakers have implicitly agreed customs of social practice governing their behaviour and interaction, which is evidence that foregrounding through deviation can occur at the levels of ideational and interpersonal meaning. Holding or expressing ideologies outside of the norm is deviant at an ideational level, whilst the overt expression of taboo(s), and finding humour in them, deviates from expected interactional norms, so is foregrounded at the interpersonal level of language. O’Driscoll (2020, 40), defines taboo as “any use of language deemed transgressive of polite social norms,” which is further argument that taboo and/or impoliteness in interaction are foregrounded through deviation. In addition to being a form of hostility (as discussed in Sect. “Hostility Theories” above), impoliteness is also labelled by Simpson and Bousfield (2017, 163) as a form of relief. They state that “Impoliteness can be constructed and communicated as a means of socio-cognitive relief (see Bousfield 2008) from pressure, stress or other perceived tension.” I would expand further and argue that expressing taboo or repressed desires through the playful form of humour provides a retreat which would not be available to the speaker if uttered explicitly in so-called bonafide (Raskin 1985) conversation. This allows the speaker to both liberate themselves from tension and plausibly deny anything which may have caused offence and “save face” (Brown and Levinson 1987). In addition to relief from social and psychological boundaries, an interesting application of release theory by Attardo (1994) is that this concept of liberation could also apply to language conventions. Attardo argues that in breaking the rules of language we are released from the constraints of linguistic norms and thus find pleasure in this relief. Deviating from norms of language use in this way is an example of foregrounding through deviation at the linguistic level of meaning.

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A stylistic approach also addresses the issues of validity in producing analysis with regards to the unconscious mind and repression: it can be difficult to verify what a speaker’s unconscious or repressed desires are, as they are, by nature, inaccessible to the conscious mind. In addition to this, release theories only define humour in terms of the psychological effect humour has on a speaker or hearer, relying on the experiencing of tension release as a defining feature which identifies a text as humorous, resulting in a cyclical definition whereby the presence of relief is used to identify the humour which caused it in the first place. By contrast, beginning with a text-based stylistic analysis can identify those elements of the text which construct a foregrounded conceptual meaning, referring to ideational and ideological norms to discuss the elements which transgress from these norms, in order to provoke a reader response of relief.

Applying Foregrounding Analysis to Jokes I have proposed that the three approaches to humour research are all aspects of foregrounding, achieved through deviation at the linguistic, ideational, and interpersonal levels of meaning. The aim of this argument is to provide a more unified approach to the analysis of humour which encompasses all aspects of textual meaning, as opposed to seeing release, hostility, and incongruity-resolution theories independently, where they each have shortcomings in their ability to account for what is humorous and leave elements of textual meaning unexplained. In addition to enabling the three families of humour research to be used with a more holistic approach, other more specific branches of linguistic humour research could be encompassed within this standpoint by their classification as examples of foregrounding. Attardo’s (1994, 235–236) concept of “Register Humour” states that deviating from expected register for the utterance context results in humour, and this judgement of appropriateness in context implies that breaks of register are foregrounded through deviation at an interpersonal level. Attardo (1997) and Yus (2017) suggest that flouting the Gricean Maxim of Relevance (Grice 1975) can result in humour, and this flouting is also an example of interpersonal deviation from assumed co-operative

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interactional strategies, resulting in foregrounding (Mifdal 2019, 34–35). Sperber and Wilson’s discussion of Relevance Theory even goes as far as to acknowledge the recognition of foregrounding in a text, stating that readers and speakers “pay attention to some phenomena rather than others” (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 42). Based on the arguments above, I have proposed that humour will always contain a deviation from some established norm which is recognizable in the text, resulting in a foregrounded effect, and that these foregrounded elements contribute to the text being humorous. This is a claim which should be tested through undertaking qualitative textual analysis, using evidence from the text to back up any findings in order to adhere to the principles of objectivity, replicability, and falsifiability, in line with the aims of all empirical sciences (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010). A brief discussion of a joke example (example 2.4) is presented below to show how a textual meaning analysis can identify the foregrounded elements of a humorous text, and to contextualize this discussion in terms of the release, hostility, and incongruity-resolution approaches, in order to understand how a humorous textual meaning is constructed. Example 2.4 Abortion wasn’t legalized in Ireland until 3075. This joke constructs a textual meaning which proposes that abortion in Ireland has been legalized, but at a date over 1000 years in the future, and the simultaneous assertion of these propositions is logically impossible, thus foregrounded at an ideational level. There are many aspects of the text which combine to construct this foregrounded textual meaning: Jeffries (2010) introduces a framework of ten “Textual Conceptual Functions” which capture “what a text is doing in conceptually presenting the world” (2014a, 409), with some “core” TCFs (such as naming and describing) being essential to all texts, and others (such as enumerating) being more “peripheral” (Jeffries, forthcoming). The foregrounded aspects within this joke text were identified within three of these TCFs which are discussed below: Naming and Describing; Representing Time, Space, and Society; Implying and Assuming.

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Naming and Describing The use of the noun “abortion” in the joke text is foregrounded initially due to its taboo nature, and combined with “Ireland” activates the naturalized knowledge of Ireland’s extremely strict abortion laws, which prohibited terminations in almost all circumstances at the time the joke was produced: the joke example is taken from 2015, which as before the 2018 “Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018” legalizing abortion was passed in Ireland.

Representing Time, Space, and Society The temporal deixis in this text is internally deviant at a linguistic level, through the use of clashing tense markers. The past tense verb conjugations “wasn’t” and “legalized” dictate that legalization took place in the past, but the date of “3075” is located in a future time, and therefore incompatible with the rest of the sentence. The selected date of “3075” is also integral to the constructed textual meaning, as positioning the legalization so far in the future constructs an imperceptibly huge temporal distance which indicates the view that legalizing abortion in Ireland in the near future is an unachievable goal.

Implying and Assuming The change of state verb “legalized” presupposes that abortion was once illegal in Ireland, and entails that it is no longer illegal. The adverb of entailment “until” also suggests that this legalization has already taken place in the past, which clashes when presented with the future date of “3075.” This text therefore flouts the maxims of manner and quality, in being both unclear and untrue. This use of foregrounding to construct a humorous textual meaning can be discussed in relation to all three families of humour research. With regard to incongruity-resolution, the illogical grammar of the text is recognized as incongruous, and subsequently resolved by interpreting the

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joke’s implications: that Ireland won’t legalize abortion, and the hyperbolic assertion that Irish lawmakers are over 1000 years behind the rest of the UK on this issue. This in itself is a hostile attack on the restriction of reproductive rights in Ireland, which though mitigated by expression through humour, is still a political statement allowing us an insight into the ideology of the joke’s writer. Expressing this ideology through the form of a joke allows the comedian to express her views on abortion, whilst also framing it as a humorous performance as opposed to a confrontational interaction. This relieves both speaker and audience from potential tension that conflicting ideologies surrounding abortion, encompassing the complex taboo issues of sex, religion, and death could cause in the serious mode. By contrast, if choices were made in the text’s construction which removed the foregrounded clashes, such as in the below (example 2.5), this would also remove the humour: a process Jodlowiec (2019) refers to as “killing the joke.” Example 2.5 Abortion Wasn’t Legalized in Ireland Until 2018 A curiosity is that, although the textual meaning of (2.5) is no longer foregrounded in terms of deviating from linguistic norms or naturalized world knowledge, this construction could arguably still be foregrounded in terms of release and hostility—the taboo subject matter of abortion remains, and depending on the co-text and context surrounding it, the text could still function as an ideological critique on Ireland’s historical stance on reproductive care. This suggests that certain, specific types of foregrounded textual meanings must be present to construct humour: earlier it was shown how this foregrounding could be through reinterpretation (examples 2.1 and 2.3) or bisociation (example 2.2), but in the case of example 2.4, the foregrounded textual meaning being constructed is a contradiction. Contradictions are not inherently humorous, and speakers contradict themselves often: through either displaying hypocrisy, lying, or simply changing their minds. This joke example differs in that the contradictory meaning aspects are both constructed within the same text, by the same speaker, at the same time and the resulting

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construction is a text with meaning aspects which simultaneously pull in opposite directions, resulting in foregrounding which can be interpreted as satirical humour (Simpson 2003). Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory of Humour (1985) states that incongruities in jokes always take the form of a script opposition, though this concept of opposition remains ill-defined (Ritchie 2004; Oring 2011a, 2011b, 2019a, 2019b; Chambers 2022). A definition of humour should ideally provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for a text to be classed as humorous (Raskin 1985; Attardo 1994). Though I argue that foregrounding is a necessary condition for a text to be humorous, it is not a sufficient way to define a text as humorous: deviation from established norms can occur in any text, as stylistic research has shown, and the resulting foregrounded clash does not always result in a text being interpreted as an example of humour (Simpson and Bousfield 2017, 159). The distinction between humorous and serious incongruity is addressed in the “resolution” stage of incongruity-­resolution theories, but the nature of resolutions in humour remains ill-defined. The resolution stage is also not restricted to jokes (Simpson 2003, 55), as metaphors involve the recognition of a foregrounded or novel textual meaning, followed by a search for an interpretative rule to make sense of the metaphor. Oring (2011a) attempts to clarify the difference by making a distinction between pure, resolved, and appropriate incongruity. Pure incongruity cannot be rationalized or resolved, and remains solely incongruous, resulting in confusion; resolved incongruity results in the solving of a puzzle, or processing a metaphor; Oring argues that appropriate incongruity, incongruity which is partially resolved, is the type which is present in humour, though he does not provide any means of defining the “appropriateness” of a resolution (Davies 2011, 171; Raskin 2011, 224), or how a partial resolution differs from a full one. My suggestion is that the cognitive concept of “resolved” incongruity should be abandoned in favour of a bottom-up, text-focused investigation of whether there is any observable pattern in the types of foregrounding which specifically construct textual humour: this chapter has presented joke examples to tentatively highlight three of these types in the form of reinterpretation, bisociation and contradiction, and analysis of a large data set of prototypical humour, such as a joke corpus, could

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uncover many more. Centring the analysis of humour around the anchor point of foregrounding enables the identification of patterns in the types of deviation present, as well as allowing for comparative analysis with other non-­humorous foregrounded text-types, such as metaphors or poetry. This approach also shifts the focus of humour analysis away from the processing of the text, which suggests humour is found through the process of resolving incongruities, and instead examines how humour is encoded in the textual meaning itself, in order for it to be recognized and provoke amusement. A stylistic approach to humour analysis may not be an immediate solution to the centuries-old debate on how best to define humour, but in pairing a holistic theoretical approach with systematic and rigorous textual analysis, it is a step in the right direction towards answering the elusive question that keeps us humour researchers awake at night: just what makes a text funny?

References Acaster, James. 2018. Recognize (Episode 1) [Television Series Episode]. In Repertoire by Stuart Laws (Producer). Netflix. Apte, Mahadev L. 1985. Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Archakis, Argiris, and Villy Tsakona. 2012. The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. 1st ed. New  York: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 1997. The Semantic Foundations of Cognitive Theories of Humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (4): 395–420. ———, 2017. The General Theory of Verbal Humor. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 1st ed., 126–142. London; New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162. Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin. 1991. Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 347–411. ———. 2017. Linguistics and Humor Theory. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 1st ed., 49–63. London; New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162.

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Berger, Peter Ludwig. 1999. Homo ridens: La dimensione comica dell’esperienza umana. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. Bousfield, D. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction (Vol. 167). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bousfield, Derek, and Miriam Locher, eds. 2008. Impoliteness in Language: Studies on its Interplay with Power in Theory and Practice. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chambers, Faye A. 2022. Textually Constructed Meaning Shifts in Jokes: A New Stylistic Theory of Jokes. PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield. Cronin, Marianne Eve. 2018. ‘Feck Off!’: Exploring the Relationship between Impoliteness, Laughter and Humour in the British-Irish Sitcoms ‘Father Ted,’ ‘Black Books’ and ‘The IT Crowd.’. PhD thesis, University of Birmingham. Culpeper, Jonathan. 2011. Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davies, Christie. 2011. Logical Mechanisms: A Critique. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 24 (2): 159–165. Figueroa-Dorrego, Jorge, and Cristina Larkin-Galiñanes, eds. 2009. A Source Book of Literary and Philosophical Writings about Humour and Laughter. New York: Edwin Mellen. Freud, Sigmund. (1991 [1905]). Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.Translated by James Strachey. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Glenn, Phillip J. 2003. Towards a Social Interactional Approach to Laughter. In Laughter in Interaction, ed. Phillip J. Glenn, 7–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interactional Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. London: Penguin University Books. Grice, Paul. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, vol. 3, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 1985. Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. 1st ed. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203327630. Holmes, Janet. 2000. Politeness, Power and Provocation: How Humour Functions in the Workplace. Discourse Studies 2 (2): 159–185. https://doi. org/10.1177/1461445600002002002. Jeffries, Lesley. 2010. Critical Stylistics: The Power of English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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———. 2014a. Critical Stylistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, Routledge Handbooks in English Language Studies, ed. Michael Burke, 408–420. London: Routledge. ———. 2014b. Interpretation. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics), edited by Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley, 467–484. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139237031.035 ———. 2015. Textual Meaning and its Place in a Theory of Language. Topics in Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.2478/topling-­2015-­0006. ———. 2016. Critical Stylistics. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, ed. Violeta Sotirova, 157–176. London: Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi. org/10.5040/9781472593603.0014. ———. 2018. Irony in a Theory of Textual Meaning. In The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter (Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 30), ed. Manuel Jobert and Sandrine Sorlin, 23–29. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. Jeffries, Lesley, and Dan McIntyre. 2010. Stylistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jodlowiec, Maria. 2019. Killing Jokes and the Nature of Verbal Humor (CIVH Congreso 2019). Alicante. Koestler, Arthur. 1989 [1964]. The Act of Creation. London: Arkana. La Fave, Lawrence. 1972. Humor Judgements as a Function of Reference Group and Identification Classes. In The Psychology of Humor, ed. Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, 195–210. New York: Academic Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1997. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Larkin-Galiñanes, Cristina. 2017. An Overview of Humour Theory. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 1st ed., 4–16. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162. Lee, Chay Hoon, and Josephine Chinying Lang. 2010. Workplace Humor and Organizational Creativity. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 21 (1): 46–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585190903466855. Leech, Geoffrey N. 1985. Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman. Leech, Geoffrey N., and Mick Short. 2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd ed. New York: Longman. Locher, Miriam A. 2006. Polite Behavior within Relational Work: The Discursive Approach to Politeness. Multilingua 25 (3): 249–267. https://doi. org/10.1515/MULTI.2006.015. McGhee, Paul E. 2002. Understanding and Promoting the Development of Children’s Humor: A Guide for Parents and Teachers. Kendall/Hunt Publishing.

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McIntyre, Dan, and Jonathan Culpeper. 2010. Activity Types, Incongruity and Humour in Dramatic Discourse. In Language & Style, ed. Dan McIntyre and Beatrix Busse, 204–224. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Mifdal, Mohamed. 2019. Breaking Frame and Frame-shifting in Bassem Youssef ’s Satirical TV Show Al-bernameg. European Journal of Humour Research 7 (2): 30–43. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR2019.7.2.mifdal. Mills, Sara. 2003. Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mulkay, Mike. 1988. On Humour: Its Nature and its Place in Modern Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nash, Walter. 1985. English Language Series: The Language of Humour. London Taylor and Francis. O’Driscoll, Jim. 2020. Offensive Language: Taboo, Offence and Social Control. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Oring, Elliot. 2011a. Still Further Thoughts on Logical Mechanisms: A Response to Christian F.  Hempelmann and Salvatore Attardo. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 24 (2): 151–158. ———. 2011b. Parsing the Joke: The General Theory of Verbal Humor and Appropriate Incongruity. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 24 (2): 203–222. https://doi.org/10.1515/HUMR.2011.013. ———. 2019a. Oppositions, Overlaps and Ontologies: The General Theory of Verbal Humour Revisited. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 32 (2): 151–170. ———. 2019b. Formalizing Humor: A Response to Christian Hempelmann and Julia Taylor Rayz. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 32 (4): 537–543. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-­2019-­0059. Pizzini, Franca. 1991. Communication Hierarchies in Humour: Gender Differences in the Obstetrical/Gynaecological Setting. Discourse & Society 2 (4): 477–488. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926591002004008. Provine, Robert R. 2017. Laughter as an Approach to Vocal Evolution: The Bipedal Theory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 24 (1): 238–244. https://doi. org/10.3758/s13423-­016-­1089-­3. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Lancaster: Reidel. ———. 2011. On oring on GTVH. Humor 24 (2): 223–231. https://doi. org/10.1515/HUMR.2011.014. Ritchie, Graeme. 2004. The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. London: Routledge. Schoemaker, Paul J.H., and Philip E. Tetlock. 2012. Taboo Scenarios: How to Think the Unthinkable. California Management Review 54 (2): 5. Short, Mick H. 1996. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays, and Prose. New York; Harlow: Longman.

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Simpson, Paul. 2003. On the Discourse of Satire. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins. Simpson, Paul, and Derek Bousfield. 2017. Humour and Stylistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 1st ed., 158–173. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162. Simpson, Paul, Andrea Mayr, and Simon Statham. 2019. Humour, Language and Power. 2nd ed. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429468896-­6. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Suls, Jerry M. 1972. A Two-Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons: An Information-ProcessingAnalysis. In The Psychology of Humor: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Issues, ed. Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee. New York: Academic Press. ———. 1977. Cognitive and Disparagement Theories of Humor: A Theoretical and Empirical Synthesis. In It’s a Funny Thing, Humor, ed. Anthony J. Chapman and Hugh C. Foot. Oxford: Pergamon. Yus, Francisco. 2017. Incongruity-Resolution Cases in Jokes. Lingua 197: 103–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.02.002. Zizek, Slavoj. 2001. Enjoy your Symptom: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and ut. New York: Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203950982.

3 The Rasch Model in Humour Research Matthias Springer

Introduction: The Stimulus-Recipient Trap in Humour Research The question how to appraise the quality of humour, in other words, how to measure how good a joke, a cartoon or a comedy is, has bothered theorists for centuries. I have also preoccupied myself with this question for a long time. In this respect, humour seems to be most easily measured by the response of recipients, for example, by the intensity of laughter or mirth indicated on appropriate scales. Such humour appreciation tests are widely used and have been developed primarily to answer the question of what kind of humour a person presents (Martin 2007, 195). This quickly leads to the theoretical question whether there are indicators in the stimuli that point to the quality of jokes, and where the differences lie, since some jokes are appraised as more humorous than others.

M. Springer (*) Institute for German as a Foreign Language, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_3

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However, studies on this question lead to not only the conclusion that a person appreciates different types of humour differently, but also that one and the same joke is appraised differently by different people. If one wants to examine this question properly therefore, one has to leave the object level and turn to the subjects. But even that is very unreliable, because even subjects will differ, and again, one does not get a reliable (i.e., objective) statement regarding the quality of a joke. This is because different types of humour are appreciated under the influence of personality traits. Stimuli assigned to various structures of humour have therefore been used to study sense of humour indirectly as a personality trait (Martin 2007, 195). Clearly, the stimuli-response approach feels like a trap, because humour seems to be a property of objects as well as of subjects. Only when both sides come together in the right combination will the effect actually unfold. And so, telling a joke is not only an art, but also always a bet on whether it will have the desired effect on the listener or not. Hardly anything is more frustrating or embarrassing for both teller and hearer than jokes that are not laughed at. The irresistible conclusion here is that there is no certainty about humour, and the dilemma lies in finding a finely balanced mix of objective characteristics and subjective conditions respectively for stimulus and response in any and every instance of humour. This suggests an inescapable circularity in humour theories, in a situation where, the nature of objects is often described as humour, but the humour itself only arises through the reaction of a recipient, which in turn is seen as a condition of humour. The contradiction cumulates in the everyday wisdom that “[h]umour is when you laugh anyway,” except that neglecting one side of the coin at the expense of the other leads to incomplete theoretical concepts. Davis and Hofmann (2023) offer a remarkable proposal with their humour transaction schema, which strives to integrate all elements or dimensions to be considered in the production, medial manifestation and styles of humour, as well as processing and response to humour by recipients, and at least the distribution among people by sharing the products in a three-stage model. This is also based on the attempt to resolve the dilemma of the subject-object paradox and to establish a

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common terminology. To this end, a wealth of studies dealing with single aspects of humour were analysed and integrated into the theory. In summary, it is quite possible to avoid this object-subject-trap by not looking for humour as a particular quality of an object or a set of conditions that a person must possess. A theory of humour must then take into account both the nature of the stimulus and the subjective conditions of its processing. My thesis in this chapter is therefore that humour is an ability to perceive things whose characteristics seem to us to be nonsensical in a certain way and by which one recognizes this nonsense and to which we in turn respond with smile, grin, or mirth. This thesis resonates with the incongruity-resolution approach to humour. Researches such as Martin (2007, 216) examine humour as a skill (Martin 2007, 216). Other researches have also linked humour with intelligence. However, it reduces the ability to produce humour and see it in correlation with creativity and self-monitoring under the umbrella concept of “sense of humour.” The ability to perceive nonsensical stimuli and to process them in an emotionally and cognitively humorous way comprises, in my understanding, receptive skills, and shows analogies to a construct commonly referred to as “competence.” This offers the possibility of using models of competence measurement to address the question of how to examine the quality of humour. In the following sections, I will first present a model that describes the ability to process stimuli in a humorous way. In addition to cognitive factors, affective-emotional and social-societal factors are also included. I will then introduce the construct of competence and explain why its application to humour is appropriate. Finally, I will present the Rasch model, a method of measuring competence that can be used to determine both the quality of stimuli and the ability of people to interpret them as humorous. With regard to Davis and Hofmann’s model, this approach is compatible with and gives a deeper insight into the second stage of their “humor transaction schema” which deals with “communicating, experiencing and responding to humor” (Davis and Hofmann 2023, 334).

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 he Process of Perception T and Humour Competence As a premise, humour is defined here as the ability to grasp things mentally in such a way as to find the cognitive rule of and play with bisociations within these stimuli and to react to them. Bisociation, on the other hand, is a term that goes back to Arthur Koestler (1967) and refers to those cognitive concepts that are considered fundamental to humour. It is the ability to recognize a specific sense in what appears senseless, namely the nonsense information of a stimulus that lies outside everyday experience and predictable logic and plausibility based on our experiential knowledge. It is a process of perceiving and comprehension that can also be seen as a problem-solving process and was described by Suls in an “Incongruity Resolution Model” (Martin 2007, 65; Suls 1972). Derived from this, my model for the emotional as well as mental processes of experiencing humour would look like Fig. 3.1. It is a stimulus-response model that includes both an emotional and a cognitive side horizontally, and an unconscious and conscious level vertically. On the left, you see that the stimulus arouses our emotions, and studies suggest that this not only happens before our cognitive processing, but it grabs our attention first, initiates the process and steers it in a certain direction (LeDoux 2010; Damasio 2003; Schachter and Singer 1962). Before we are aware of what we are laughing at, we have already prepared ourselves to laugh at something humorous (un-logical, not plausible in the usual way) by the emotion of mirth and the cause of which we will now uncover in the stimulus. So one does not feel mirth at having understood the punch line of a joke, but it has been understood by us because we are feeling mirth at it. The cause-effect relationship is not stimulus— understanding the punch line—being mirth, but contra-intuitively stimulus—being mirth—understanding the punch line and, as a response feeling delight and laughing. The emotional system creates the effect of mirth that influences our cognitive processing of the stimulus and initiates the problem-solving process within the framework of humour (Springer 2013, 68). In doing so, we search our memory for concepts of bisociations with which we compare its features (right side of the model)

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Perception and Processing Model of Humour activate

Stimulus

Emotions Features

activate

Memory

search for rules to match

Affect: mirth

Feeling, Response

laughter, delight, etc.

regulate

compare & identify

Within the frame of humour: proof for consistency & moral valuejudgment

Construct, Mental Representation

regulate

Concepts: bisociations

Knowledge, Cognition

plausibility as non-sense

Fig. 3.1  Model of the humour process

in order to identify its incongruities. There is much to suggest that this is a concept-driven transformation process for information processing (Kebeck 1997, 49). Models for this process to activate the patterns of humour are provided by the Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH) and General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo (Raskin 1985; Attardo and Raskin 1991; Attardo 1998). The emotional affect supports us in this by pointing out that we should not look for sensible meanings, but for nonsense ones like bisociations, so that cognition and emotion go together by grasping the contradictory but seemingly logical meaning of the information contained in the stimulus, so that the punch line is plausible and we can

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express our joyful realization of it. For more details on this structure which is modelled as a semantic square of humour, see Springer (2013, 100). At the end, we “get the joke.” All of this, both the production of the emotional state we experience due to the stimulus and the construction of meaning and significance we then recognize in the stimulus, is produced at an unconscious level of our brain (Springer 2013, 70). This is delimited in the model by the triangle from the external environment and the level of consciousness. The lower part of the model marks the outcome of mental processing. On the cognitive side is the construct that we perceive as absurd (in the sense of funny and humorous), and on the emotional side is the sensation of pleasure and joy that is tied to humour along with the physical response of laughing or smiling. In between lies what I call a personal qualitative-­ moral evaluation system based on our own experiences with humour. In it, we check on a semantic level whether the identified object follows the patterns of humour that we have stored for its construction. Statements like “I don’t get the joke” stand for the assessment of the consistency and plausibility of the unexpected nonsense, in contrast to the expected sense. At the same time, we check whether the theme, motif, or subject of the joke corresponds to our moral values or whether boundaries are crossed in the process: are people offended and do they come to harm in the process? This question usually refers to ethnic, sexual or religious groups or content. One reacts to this by prohibiting oneself from humour and laughing at it and by rejecting such jokes as being in bad taste. The laughter literally gets stuck in your throat. All in all, we can consider this as an epistemology of humor that is conventionalized in our cultural system. To summarize, emotions activate memory and draw attention to the features of the stimulus. Cognitive abilities are necessary to compare the characteristics of the stimulus with concepts and to identify its construction as humorous. Ultimately, the recipient must have the will to accept the humour and its affective responses such as laughter and mirth. Thus, the model integrates both subject- and object-related elements. But it goes even further. It can also be understood as an anthropological model. Humour can be seen as the ability to process stimuli in a special way. It saves us from the breakdown of our mental system when the meaning of a perception is not apparent to us. It switches to the “humour

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mode” and activates the “humour frame.” In it, it looks for patterns of nonsense in the seemingly senseless bisociations. It satisfies our desire to laugh (Anz 1998). We use this ability to defuse critical incidents in social interaction and make them bearable. It can serve to highlight and denounce grievances under the cover of humour. In this understanding, humour can be described as a competence that enables people to deal with objects, other people and ourselves in a certain way that fulfils protective functions and makes life bearable in a variety of situations.

 easuring Humour Competence M with the Rasch Model To conclude the theoretical framework, I want to state that cognitive, emotional, and volitional aspects of my model point to a concept of competence as it is defined by Franz Weinert. Competences are “the cognitive abilities and skills available in or learnable by individuals to solve specific problems, as well as the associated motivational, volitional and social dispositions and skills to use the problem solutions successfully and responsibly in variable situations” (Weinert 2002, 27). In my adaption of this definition, humour, as a problem-solving process, includes cognitive abilities and skills to solve the specific problem of perceiving objects or situations that seem nonsensical or unreasonable to us (Springer 2013, 20; 66). Likewise, motivational, volitional und social skills are needed to respond spontaneously and uncontrollably to this nonsense in the entities with mirth, delight, and laughter. With this conceptualization of humour as a competence, it is now possible to fall back on methods of competence measurement such as the Rasch model, which combines both the abilities of the subjects as a latent construct and the difficulty of the tasks. Strobl (2015) offers a good introduction to the model, which I will follow here. The Rasch model represents a probabilistic test which calculates the chance to solve a test item with a specific difficulty in relation to the abilities of a subject. For this, the test result in the Rasch model is composed by the person parameter 𝜉 and the item parameter 𝛽. If the abilities of the

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subject exceed the task difficulty, the probability for the person to solve the task is correspondingly high. This is a positive correlation. The same applies the other way round. If the person’s ability drops below the level of the test item’s difficulty, the chance of solving the task decreases. The Rasch model can estimate both the item difficulty and the person’s ability. If the item difficulty and the person parameter correspond, for instance, their difference is near to zero, the probability to solve the task is 50%. This relationship can be described by the logistic function mathematically. Its graph depicts the item characteristic curve (ICC; Fig. 3.2). The left black line represents an item with difficulty of “3” which indicates an easy task. To solve this with a 50% chance, a subject needs low ability also ranked as “3.” If the same subject tries to solve the grey middle item with a difficulty of “6” his chance to solve is less than 5%. Let’s have a look at the middle item with difficulty of “6.” To solve this by a 50% chance one needs a person parameter from “6.” But this person can solve items with a difficulty less than 6 by a chance more than 50%, for example, the left item with more than 95%.

100

ICC with different item difficulties

60 40 0

20

Solving Probability (%)

80

  3   6   9

0

2

4

Fig. 3.2  Item characteristic curve

6 Latent Dimension 

8

10

12

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According to this principle of measuring, the empirical study of humour can handle the subject-object problem outlined at the beginning. For this purpose, the humour appreciation tests must be regarded as proficiency tests and the appraisal of the stimuli as tasks to be solved. In the application of the Rasch model on humour research the subject’s capacity on humour represents the latent construct as a person parameter. It is the sense of humour anyone possesses as a competence when judging a stimulus in terms of its humour quality. The item parameter of the model, on the other hand, is present as information that is encoded in the stimulus and has to be recoded with the cognitive patterns of humour in order to get their specific type of meaning. This parameter can also be considered as a quantification of the humour potential of an item. In the next section I will present a study to demonstrate the evidence of this model.

 pproaching Humour as a Competence A with the Rasch Model In the study now presented, participants were shown 13 different stimuli. Their selection was made heuristically and intuitively. It is based on personal experience, but friends and colleagues were also asked to contribute materials to this study. Subjects were requested to rate on a five-point scale with smileys how humorous they found them, with the very sad smiley (coded with the value 1) for a negative response, the middle one (coded with the value 3) for neutral and the very happy smiley (coded with the value 5) for very humorous. Figure  3.3 gives an example of an item. The stimuli differed in their media form, their content, and the type of humour they represented. They were acted scenes, sketches, jokes, puns, a short story, cartoons, and memes. The content included harmless as well as nonsense puns. Other bisociations include puns across language and national borders. Furthermore, themes from the gender discourse are raised in the stimuli and social groups are exposed to ridicule. The humour stimulated in the items takes harmless forms that simply serve to

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Fig. 3.3 Example item “Meme Kinder” from the questionnaire (Source: https:// cornerstonefamilyservices.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/German-Children.jpg)

entertain and amuse. However, some are also directed aggressively against groups or appeals to the intellect by causing cognitive dissonance through incongruities that must be resolved by the recipient in order to grasp their meaningfulness. The last point concerns the idea that humour theories can be systematically divided into three classes. These can be named with the terms, incongruence, hostility, and liberation (Attardo 2008, 103), with the first

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indicating cognitive, the second social, and the third psychological factors of humour. The selection of the stimuli took into account that through them all three classes were represented in the study. The problem with such a taxonomy of humour is that it is a theoretical and abstract model and the stimuli cannot be clearly assigned to a particular type of humour. In order to produce valid classifications, preparatory studies such as Ruch’s would have to be carried out, or validated stimuli would have to be used, neither of which was possible or desired here (Ruch 1992). In the current case the assignment is based on intuitive and heuristic principles and must be considered subjective. The aim of the study is not to question the validity of such taxonomies, but rather, as a side effect, to observe whether a certain type of humour is easier for recipients to process than others. In order to make ambiguities visible and put the assignment on an empirical basis, participants were asked to assign each stimulus to one humour class. For this purpose, the class was offered as a single choice to click on, as can be seen in Fig. 3.3. About 148 subjects participated in the study. They were young adults from the German as a Foreign Language B.A. at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Since this is an international group, it must be assumed that not all of them are of German origin and claim German as their native language. Personal data such as gender, age, and mother tongue were collected on a voluntary basis and were not included in the following evaluation. The influence of language and cultural imprint on the results was left to chance, as were the variables gender and age. The study was conducted online with the web-based tool SoSci Survey (Leiner n.d.). The evaluation was done in R with the package eRm (Mair et al. n.d.). Before I use the Rasch model to determine the item difficulty as an operationalization of the quality of the humour-provoking features contained in the stimuli, I would like to present the ratings of the stimuli in a descriptive way. Figure 3.4 shows the ranking of the items according to their mean score. The original scale was shifted so that the neutral value is 0 and extreme values are 2 or −2. Stimuli that were rated as humorous by the participants are therefore shown with a positive value. If an item is rated not humorous, its value is negative. On the right side of the bars, you can see the humour classes to which the stimuli have been assigned by a

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Stück mit "G" German Kinder

Release (59.5 %)

Soziale Medien

Release (46.6 %)

Sprachkurs

Release (33.1 %)

artgerechte Haltung

Release (39.2 %)

Wortschatz

Release (37.8 %)

Ortsname "Anus"

Hostility (42.6 %)

Geschlechterkampf

Hostility (43.2 %)

Zonen−Gaby

Hostility (45.3 %)

Autodiebstahl

Hostility (61.5 %)

Ortsnamen "Lust"

Hostility (34.5 %)

Gender

Incongruity (40.5 %)

Heinsch

Incongruity (48.6 %)

−0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

Rating

Fig. 3.4 Ranking of the items by mean including humour class by relative frequency

relative majority. The percentage refers to the relative frequency with which the respective category was chosen. Figure 3.5 shows the distribution of classes per item. As expected, a heterogenic picture emerges in the assignment of the stimuli to the classes. For some stimuli, however, this seems to be clearer, for example, for “Stückmit G” with over 60%, whereas the sketch “Sprachkurs” shows an ambivalent result. It is assigned to the type “release” with 33%—just over a third of the votes—followed by the class “hostility” with 27%. A similar ambiguity regarding the assignment to the humour class can be observed with the cartoon “Artgerechte Haltung” and as well as the puns “Ortsnamen Lust” and “Wortschatz.” Thus, the results do not indicate a clear assignment to a class, but also the assignments seem to contradict the obvious structures in the stimuli. The stimulus “Kinder” is a phonological bisociation due to code-switching between German and English and can be seen as a proto-typical example

3  The Rasch Model in Humour Research  Autodiebstahl

Ortsname "Anus"

60 20

15

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0 5 20

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German Kinder 50

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0 10

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20 10 0 Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

artgerechte Haltung

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25 15 0 5 Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Soziale Medien

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Geschlechterkampf

Ortsnamen "Lust"

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

30

30 20

20 10 0

0 Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Wortschatz 30

40

40 30

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Zonen−Gaby

Stück mit "G"

40

25

40 30 Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Gender

Sprachkurs

40

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

0

0

0

10

20

20

40

10 20 30 40

60

Heinsch

75

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Incongruity Hostility Release not answered

Fig. 3.5  Frequencies of humour classes for each item

of cognitive incongruity-resolution. Its majority classification in the more psychological class “release” is therefore somewhat surprising. It would be interesting to discuss this in more detail, but that is not the main goal of my study, which is to find out whether the Rasch model is suitable for humour research. For a discussion about classification, one would have to analyse the individual stimuli in more detail like Ruch (1992) did in his factor analysis research about the structure of humour. But there are indications that they combine different types of humour and thus influence the effect. This in turn points to the difficulty of understanding and engaging with the potential humour in the items. In reality, we do not encounter humour in an elementary pure form or class, but rather a hybrid form or a molecular structure as a combination of the individual elements. Some elements react better which each other, others more poorly, so the challenge of recognizing and responding to the humour is different. What is of interest to me here is that the tendency of

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an item to belong to a class as an explanation for its humour is at the same time an indicator of its difficulty in recognizing and processing the humour in it in terms of problem solving, which in turn requires individual abilities. At this point, I would like to bring the Rasch model into play, which represents the trade-off between a personality trait—the sense of humour—and the item difficulty—the humour information encoded in a stimulus—as a function. Let us now turn to the evaluation according to the Rasch model and the item characteristic curve (ICC) as a visualization of the probability that the mental processing of an item achieves the humour effect. Figure 3.6 shows this for all 13 items. The latent construct, respondents’ ability to perceive the humour in the items and to appraise its quality, is plotted on a 500-point scale. This is a mathematical transformation of the values 𝛽 for the item difficulty and 𝜉 for the person parameter in the model, which both lie arithmetically in the range from −2 and 2 and make the differences between the items and the participants

1.0

Characteristc–Curves for Humor–Stimuli 497

615

Probability to Response 0.4 0.6

0.8

311

0.0

0.2

Stück mit “G” Soziale Medien German Kinder Sprachkurs artgerechte Haltung Ortsname “Anus” Wortschatz Geschlechterkampf Autodiebstahl Zonen–Gaby Ortsnamen “Lust” Gender Heinsch

250

500 Latent Dimension “Humor–Competence”

Fig. 3.6  Item characteristic curves of all items on a 500 scale

750

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respectively appear very small. For better representability, these values are multiplied by the factor 100 and added with 500. They are measured at the level of the interval scale. The three vertical lines mark for the items “Stückmit G” (𝛽 = 311), “Ortsname Anus” (𝛽 = 497) and “Heinsch” (𝛽 = 615) a 50% chance of being perceived as humorous. The individual item difficulties and their humour classification can be seen in Fig. 3.7. The humour in “Stückmit G,” which was rated the highest, also proves to be the easiest to solve (𝛽 = 311). It is a kind of stand-up comedy by Heinz Erhardt, a German humourist in the middle of the twentieth century, wherein a dialogue is performed with only words that begin with the letter G. Its humour predominantly follows the theoretical concept of “release” in the participant’s rating. The Meme “Ortsname Anus” is in the medium difficulty range (𝛽 = 497) corresponding to the rating. It contains a photo of the place name sign of the French village “Anus.” Above it is the text “So the ass of the world is located in France.” The humour concept follows a linguistic play on words with homophones at the expense of the French. It has been preferably assigned to the category “hostility.” Difficulty of Humour in the Stimuli Heinsch

615, Incongruity

Gender

610, Incongruity

Ortsnamen "Lust"

592, Hostility 547, Hostility

Zonen−Gaby Autodiebstahl

533, Hostility

Wortschatz

528, Release

Geschlechterkampf

528, Hostility

Ortsname "Anus"

497, Hostility

artgerechte Haltung

479, Release

Sprachkurs

470, Release

German Kinder

403, Release

Soziale Medien

387, Release 311, Release

Stück mit "G"

250

300

350

400

450

500

550

600

650

Item−Difficulty for p = 0.5

Fig. 3.7  Ordered item difficulties with respective humour class of stimuli

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The short story by Thomas Heinsch “Wie die Mathematik entstand” (How Mathematics came into being), rated the worst, is identified as the most difficult item (𝛽 = 615). It is a tale about ants which pile up a heap of spruce needles next to their anthill in order to be able to account for the work done on it. For every dozen needles they used, they put one on a counting pile. After a year, when this pile became confusing, they started to put one needle on a new pile for every half dozen needles on the counting pile, and so on. At the end after n years there are n − 1 anthills and mathematics came into being. The story associates the well-­ organized work of ants with the counting problem of combinatorics and set theory. The humour arises from the nonsensical bisociation of the mindless but well-organized work of the ants with the highly abstract and logical concept of mathematics. It was most frequently assigned to the humour category “incongruity.” The Data suggest a correlation between humour type and item difficulty. Thus, the easiest items seem to be those whose humour is associated with the class “release.” The humour type “hostility” seems to be in the medium difficulty range. Items that play with bisociations on a purely cognitive level and follow the theoretical concept of incongruence seem to generate the most effort to be perceived as humorous and to elicit the associated response of mirth. If the items are grouped according to their humour classes, these can also be visualized in an ICC-plot (Fig. 3.8 left Summery: Rating of Humour Categories

0.8

Hostility Incongruity

0.67

458

683

0.4

0.6

0.6

0.8

Release

0.2

0.4

359

250

500

750

0.0 –0.2

0.2

0.04 Release Hostility Incongruity

0.0

Probability to Response

1.0

1.0

Characteristic Curves for Humour Categories

Latent Deimension "Humour Competence"

Fig. 3.8  Humour classes: item characteristic curves and ranked by mean

−0.19

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side). Likewise, the mean value of the scores of the items can be used to calculate the rating of the classes (Fig. 3.8 right side). Table 3.1 lists the ranked results from “easy” to “difficult.” Finally, I would like to take another look at the item difficulty. Table 3.2 shows them in ascending order, starting with the easiest item. Based on this, we can now carry out a detailed analysis of the individual stimuli in terms of their content, their media form and their humour-theoretical concept in order to assess their potential to achieve the intended effect on the recipient. In combination with the calculated item difficulty, threshold levels can thus be defined. This, in turn, can be used to classify the performance of the subjects as to whether they have a high, moderate, or only low ability to experience humour. The items “German Kinder” and “Sprachkurs” as well as “Zonen-­ Gaby” and “Ortsnamen Lust” have larger gaps between their difficulty Table 3.1  Difficulty and mean of humour classes Class

Release

Hostility

Incongruity

Difficulty Mean

359 0,67

458 0,04

683 −0,19

Table 3.2  Difficulty and mean of items Item

Difficulty

Class

Stückmit “G” Soziale Medien German Kinder Sprachkurs Artgerechte Haltung Ortsname “Anus” Geschlechterkampf Wortschatz Autodiebstahl Zonen-Gaby Ortsnamen “Lust” Gender Heinsch

311 387 403 470 479 497 528 528 533 547 593 610 615

Release Release Release Release Release Release Hostility Release Hostility Hostility Hostility Incongruity Incongruity

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parameters. It therefore makes sense to set the threshold levels within these distances. There are also structural modifications in the stimuli that make the class assignments more ambiguous. For example, in the item “Sprachkurs,” an element of mockery towards other people is added and the theoretical concept of Humour shifts towards “Hostility.” In the change from “Zonen-Gaby” to “Ortsnamen Lust,” this mocking element weakens and gives way to intellectual play with incongruities of the bisociations. As threshold levels, item difficulties of 450 and 590 can be established with a certain degree of evidence. This means, that for items with a difficulty below 450, the ability to experience humour must be low. For stimuli with a difficulty between 450 and 590, the humour competence should be moderately developed and people who received items above the threshold of 590 as humorous should have a high humour competence. After this standard setting, the subjects’ humour competence can be determined. Table 3.3 shows an example from the matrix of the determined person parameters, which was operationalized as an indicator for this. The column “Pers. Parameter” lists the person parameter 𝜉 of each subject determined by the Rasch model. In the column, “Result,” subjects were assigned to one of the levels of humour competence previously determined in the standard setting. In addition, the Rasch model can be used to calculate the probability of each subject being able to solve an item depending on his or her skills: in the present study the solving of the problem of judging it as humorous. In this table, the three items discussed in more detail, “Heinsch,” “Ortsname Anus,” and “Stückmit G” are listed as examples. Table 3.3  Extract from the data matrix of each subject Subject Pers. Paramter Result

Heinsch Ortsname “Anus” Stückmit “G”

22 25 26 28 29 31 34 37

16% 45% 36% 2% 11% 16% 28% 11%

448 596 557 218 407 448 521 407

Low High Moderate Low Low Low Moderate Low

38% 73% 65% 6% 29% 38% 56% 29%

80% 95% 92% 28% 72% 80% 89% 72%

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Discussion In conclusion I would like to point out conceptual, methodological, and empirical aspects that are worth discussing. First of all, this concerns the concept of humour itself. It is a multidimensional concept, as can be seen from the processing model I have proposed. The dimensions are found both on the subjective level as an ability and on the objective level as a form of the shaping or performance of the content of a perceived entity. Here, terminological work still remains necessary in order to precisely be able to specify the dimension that one wants to grasp and examine under the umbrella term of humour (Springer 2013, 29; Ruch 2001, 411). Davis and Hofmann (2023) are also aware of this in their paper and offer a glossary to their schema, which is freely available as an appendix to their text. I conceptualized humour as a competence—as a personality trait. Basically, the question arises whether such a view of humour is possible and to what extent it can be related to the construct “sense of humour” developed in psychology. Several works present inventories supposed to diagnose the sense of humour in subjects (Martin 2007, 191ff). The approach varies, but there are three main directions. One is based on self-­ reporting of attitudes towards humour, humorous situations and people. A second group refers to the ability to initiate and produce puns, jokes, cartoons and comedy. The third uses the rating of puns, jokes, and cartoons to measure people’s appreciation of humour. It is obvious that my approach to humour as a competence integrates the second approach theoretically and the third methodologically. Theoretically, however, I regard the skill not only as productive, but also as a receptive ability to recognize a punch line, the sense in the nonsense of a joke, a pun, a behaviour, an action or a situation, whether intended or unintended and to respond to it accordingly. This understanding integrates the dimensions of knowledge, attitudes, and person-facing skills examined in studies of the sense of humour, forming a comprehensive model of competence. It includes the domains of factual competence related to dealing with objects; social competence related to dealing with other people; and self-­ competence related to dealing with oneself when emotionally initiating

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mental processing in the pattern of humour. Feingold and Mazzella (1993) conceptualize wittiness in terms of the three factorial component properties of humour motivation, humour communication and humour knowledge. This construct parallels the three dimensions of competence addressed in Weinert’s definition. Humour knowledge refers to the dimension of knowledge as the ability to act cognitively, humour motivation can be interpreted as a value and attitude, as the willingness to act responsibly, and humour communication refers to the dimension of skills, the handling and shaping of things and people (Walzik 2012, 24). Methodologically, I reverted to the Rasch model and used stimuli whose humour-theoretical structure I collected from participants. This type of survey corresponds with the work on humour appreciation by Ruch in his 3WD questionnaire in which the humour structure of the stimuli is assigned to one of the three classes, incongruity-resolution, nonsense, or sexuality, which in turn correspond to the classes used in my questionnaire (Platt and Ruch 2014; Ruch 1992). I am not aware of any studies that comprehensively model the sense of humour as a competence and uses the Rasch model for measurement. Therefore, it would seem that it would be useful in this area to conduct studies using both the 3WD questionnaire and the Rasch model. Another point to consider concerns the Rasch model itself on the level of methodology. It processes unique data regarding the solution of items by participants. That is, one has to code in the form of 0 for not solved and 1 for solved correctly. In my study, I used an ordinal scale from 1 to 5. I recoded the options 5 and 4 as solved (humorous) and 3 to 1 (neutral and not humorous) as not solved with 0 for use in the Rasch model. Especially the neutral option can lead to bias in the results here, because its choice by participants is difficult to interpret. Did they not want to commit themselves? Or did it still mean a little bit humorous? For the evaluation, either a bipolar response format or one with gradations but without a middle option would be more useful. The visual anchoring I chose via emoticons also leaves room for interpretation in the response behaviour. Figure 3.9 presents the frequency distributions across all items, and Table 3.4 the relative frequency in relation to all valid cases for the choice of option “neutral.”

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3  The Rasch Model in Humour Research  Autodiebstahl

:|

:)

:))

25

40

Stück mit "G"

30 :(

:|

:)

:))

:((

Zonen−Gaby

:(

:|

:)

:))

20 10 0

0

0 :((

Gender

15

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5 0 :(

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5

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Ortsname "Anus" 25

20

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Heinsch

:((

Wortschatz

:(

:|

:)

:))

:((

:(

:|

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:))

25

:((

:(

:|

:)

:))

:(

:|

:)

:))

10 :((

Geschlechterkampf

:(

:|

:)

:))

:|

:)

:))

:|

:)

:))

40

German Kinder

20

15

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10 :((

:(

:|

:)

:))

0

0 5

5 0 :(

:(

30

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25 15 5 0 :((

:((

artgerechte Haltung 35

Ortsnamen "Lust"

:((

0

0 5

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15

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30

20

30

50

Soziale Medien

:((

:(

:|

:)

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:((

:(

:|

:)

:))

Fig. 3.9  Absolute frequencies of all items Table 3.4  Frequencies of the middle option for each item Stimuli

Frequency “:|”

Rel. Frequency “:|”

Valid Cases

Heinsch Gender Zonen-Gaby Wortschatz Ortsnamen “lust” Ortsname “Anus” Sprachkurs German Kinder Artgerechte Haltung Geschlechterkampf Autodiebstahl Soziale Medien Stückmit “G”

44 45 37 37 35 33 30 31 30 27 28 20 16

37% 37% 31% 30% 30% 27% 25% 25% 25% 23% 22% 16% 14%

120 122 120 123 118 123 119 123 118 120 125 128 115

But the question of the response format is even more fundamental, because from my data one cannot read out whether the humour attempt in the stimulus may be recognized and cognitively understood without

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enjoying it. That is a fact, which is taken into account in my model by the personal qualitative-moral evaluation system. At the empirical level, when interpreting the results with regard to the participants, it should be noted that these are students of German as a Foreign Language at the University of Munich as I mentioned above. The most varied influences of personality traits such as gender, age, income, social status or education and the assessment to humour and its different varieties have been documented in studies. For the present study, this means that the results on the correlation between item difficulty and assigned humour class can only be generalized, if at all, with regard to this group, which is characterized, for example, by a high level of cultural and social sensitivity. Especially, since information on language and cultural background was only collected voluntarily and not taken into account in the evaluation, it must be considered whether this had an influence on the processing of the items and whether the results can be attributed to cultural differences rather than a lack of humour competence. For example, if we look at subject 28 in Table 3.3, the probability of solving the selected items is very low. It is possible that there were too many language barriers or cultural differences that made it difficult to understand the humour and led to this low value in the person parameter. It may simply be that the result was distorted by these influences and therefore no conclusions about his or her sense of humour can be drawn from this result. Furthermore, one should consider that the Rasch model measures a latent construct that is multidimensional. The model does not determine the impact of each dimension on the result. Further investigations such as through self-reporting are necessary. On the other hand, the Rasch model offers data of the single items per participant, as shown in Table 3.3. Combined with the information on items provided by the 3WD questionnaires, one could certainly draw conclusions about the competence areas or dimensions of sense of humour. On the other hand, it could be very fruitful to use the Rasch model next to factor analytic approaches when selecting the best stimuli for a humour appreciation test like the 3WD questionnaire. A final strength of the model is that one can check its validity with respect to a test. That is, in proficiency tests, one can check whether tasks favour groups of people with certain characteristics (Strobl 2015, 2). This

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can also be applied to the study of the sense of humour when measured as a competence. The question is whether a specific type of humour is preferred by groups of people with certain characteristics. This analysis is omitted here, where I wanted to show how the Rasch model can be used for humour research. I began my study by considering how to avoid the subject-object trap when examining the nonsensical content or information in a joke, pun, cartoon, meme or scene. This is evident in surveys on appreciation, as individual responses can vary greatly due to subjective conditions. The Rasch model seems to be a method that can deal with this problem very well. It seems legitimate to me to consider humour primarily as a competence that is measured in dependence on the humour content as an item parameter. The potential of this approach should be quite visible in my study.

References Anz, Thomas. 1998. Literatur und Lust: Glück und Unglück beim Lesen. [Literature and Lust: Happiness and Unhappiness in Reading.] München: Beck. Attardo, Salvatore. 1998. The Analysis of Humorous Narratives. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 11 (3): 231–260. ———. 2008. A Primer of the Linguistics of Humor. In The Primer of Humor Research, ed. Victor Raskin, 101–155. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin. 1991. Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 293–347. Damasio, Antonio. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando Fla.: Harcourt. Davis, Jessica Milner, and Jennifer Hofmann. 2023. The Humor Transaction Schema: A Conceptual Framework for Researching the Nature and Effects of Humor. HUMOR 36 (2): 323–353. Feingold, Alan, and Ronald Mazzella. 1993. Preliminary Validation of a Multidimensional Model of Wittiness. Journal of Personality 61 (3): 439–456. Kebeck, Günther. 1997. Wahrnehmung: Theorien, Methoden und Forschungsergebnisse der Wahrnehmungspsychologie. [Perception: Theories, Methods and Research Results of Perception Psychology.] Weinheim: Juventa-Verl.

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Koestler, Arthur. 1967. The Act of Creation. New York: Macmillan. LeDoux, Joseph E. 2010. Das Netz der Gefühle: Wie Emotionen entstehen. [The Web of Feelings: How Emotions Arise.] München: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl. Leiner, Dominik. n.d. SoSci Survey. Der Online-Fragebogen. [SoSci Survey. The Online Questionnaire.] München: SoSci Survey GmbH.  Entnommen von. www.soscisurvey.de Mair, Patrick, Reinhold Hatzinger, and Marco J.  Maier. n.d. Extended Rasch Modelling: The R Package eRm (Version 1.0–2). Martin, Rod A. 2007. The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Platt, Tracey, and Willibald Ruch. 2014. 3 WD Humor Test. In Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 764–765. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483346182. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Reidel. Ruch, Willibald. 1992. Assessment of Appreciation of Humor: Studies with the 3 WD Humor Test. Advances in Personality Assessment 9: 27–75. ———. 2001. The Perception of Humor. Emotion, Qualia and Consciousness 410–425. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812810687_0032. Schachter, Stanley, and Jerome Singer. 1962. Cognitive, Social and Physioligical Determinants of Emotional State. Psychological Review 96: 379–407. Springer, Matthias. 2013 Humor aus dem Computer? Grundlagen einer Web-­ Applikation zum Test von Komik in narrativen Texten.[Humour from the Computer? Basics of a Web Application for Testing Comedy in Narrative Texts.] Peter Lang Edition Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Strobl, Carolin. 2015. Das Rasch-Modell. [The Rasch-Model.] München; Mering: Rainer Hampp Verlag. Suls, Jerry M. 1972. A Two-Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons: An Information-Processing Analysis. In The Psychology of Humor, ed. Jeffrey H.  Goldstein and Paul E.  McGhee, 81–100. San Diego: Academic Press. Walzik, Sebastian. 2012. Kompetenzorientiert prüfen. [Test Based on Competence.] Opladen; Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Weinert, Franz E. (2002). Vergleichende Leistungsmessung in Schulen—eine umstrittene Selbstverständlichkeit. In: Franz E.  Weinert (Hg.), Leistungsmessungen in Schulen. [“Comparative Performance Measurement in Schools—A Controversial Matter of Course.” In Achievement Measurements in Schools, edited by Franz E. Weinert, 17–32.] Weinheim [u.a.]: Beltz.

4 Humour and the “Mooreeffoc Effect”: Inversion and Subversion in Charles Dickens’ Holiday Romance Katie Wales

Introduction: The “Mooreeffoc Effect” In an essay on fairy stories (Tree and Leaf 1964/72, 52) Tolkien refers to the “Mooreeffoc effect,” as used by G.K. Chesterton (1906) to “denote the queerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle”—what stylisticians would presumably term “defamiliarization.” Chesterton added that Dickens’ writing (and the term comes from his work on Dickens) shows “this elvish kind of realism … everywhere”: it is no wonder then that Tolkien picked it up. But the word Mooreeffoc is actually found first in John Forster’s Life of Dickens (1872), where Dickens himself tells Forster how, as a boy sent to work at the age of ten, he would go to a coffee-shop in St Martin’s Lane:

This chapter is an expanded version of a paper presented in absentia at the Poetics and Linguistics Association annual conference in Aix-en-Provence, France, July 2022.

K. Wales (*) University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_4

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[I]n the door there was an oval glass plate, with COFFEE-ROOM painted on it, addressed towards the street. If I ever find myself in a very different kind of coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscription on glass, and read it backward on the wrong side MOOREEFFOC (as I often used to do then…) a shock goes through my blood. (1936, 333)

I am here using the term combining a Dickensian meaning close to the original meaning (but losing the personal traumatic connotation), and a Chestertonian meaning so (1) something “read backwards,” viewed “the other way round,” as in a mirror/looking glass: hence, an inversion of normal values and schemas; (2) the world seen “from a new angle of vision, of perspective”: leading from inversion to subversion. I am applying it to Dickens’ works, to demonstrate how, in humour, narrative and stylistic strategies create text-worlds where “normality” or expected conventions are upturned, with an emphasis on how this new perspective triggers humorous effects. The text-worlds in focus are his stories for children.

Holiday Romance: Structure In late middle age, in 1868, Dickens published Holiday Romance, four comic tales or “parts,” in an influential American children’s magazine, Our Young Folks, during his tour of America (November 1867–April 1868); and also at home in his own periodical for families, All the Year Round, in the first four issues of 1868. Dickens’ writings for children have generally been ignored by his critics—and by critics of children’s literature—these tales especially. He is better known perhaps for his Child’s History of England (1851–1853) (see further, Wales 2022). These comic tales have actually been published separately or altogether since 1874, four years after his death; and were re-edited in 1995 by Gillian Avery. In 1981 the writer Adrian Mitchell took a multi-modal approach for television in Theatre Box: You Must Believe All This. They do not deserve to be ignored. Not only are they delightfully amusing even to modern readers;

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but, most significantly, they are unusual in the field of children’s fiction even today in that they purport to be actually “written” by two boys and two girls, and hence are narrated by them: “aged eight”; “seven”; “nine”; and “half-past six.” The children are the “internal authors” then (Wydryzynska 2021, 232, citing Currie 2010), and hence their voices and focalizations are those of children: taking the concept of “childness” (Hollindale 1997) to an extreme. The world is seen from the Chestertonian “new angle”; and, structurally speaking, the unusual use of the child internal author/ narrator presents an “inversion,” as it were, of the expected “norm” of narration in fiction. Humour comes from both the narratives and the mode of discourse: what Attardo (2001, 100) calls “hyperdetermined humor [sic].” Part I is an “Introductory Romance from the Pen of William Tinkling Esquire” (aged 8), “married” to Nettie Ashford (aged half-past 6). In opening sentences which to me anticipates the colloquial style of Catcher in the Rye, the young narrator stresses very earnestly: This beginning-part is not made out of anybody’s head you know. It’s real. You must believe this beginning-part more than what comes after, else you won’t understand how what comes after came to be written. You must believe it all; but you must believe this most, please. I am the editor of it. (1936, 733)

Tired of being thwarted by parents and teachers, the children have decided that, during the next holidays, they will throw our thoughts into something educational for the grown-up people, hinting to them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning under a mask of romance (Alice Rainbird). (727)

Part II then is a “Romance” then “From the Pen of Miss Alice Rainbird (aged seven)”: a fairy story about Princess Alicia’s magic fishbone; Part III is a “Romance from the Pen of Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Redforth (aged 9)” about a pirate called Captain Boldheart; and Part IV is a “Romance from the Pen of Miss Nettie Ashford (aged half-past six).” This begins:

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There is a country, which I will show to you when I get into maps, where the children have everything their own way. It is a most delightful country to live in. (753)

These opening sentences give a flavour of the narratorial style; and also, significantly for my argument, illustrates the important “inversion” in this story and the others, namely children behaving as adults, precisely in order to teach them “how things ought to be.” In this story particularly, “The grown-up people are obliged to obey the children, and are never allowed to sit up to supper, except on their birthdays” (753); indeed, by the end of the story, as Nettie explains in her own way: The grown-up people (that would be in other countries) soon left off being allowed any holidays…; and the children (that would be in other countries) kept them at school as long as they ever lived, and made them do whatever they were told.” (759: parentheses in text)

The characters reverse the “normal” adult/child roles; power relations are upturned. The incongruity or discrepancy between the characters’ actions in the fictional world and readers’ expectations based on real-­ world knowledge has a defamiliarizing and comic effect. (See further Simpson 2000, 246–7 on script opposition and incongruity.)

Inversion and Subversion It is this romance, Part IV, and Part II, Alice Rainbird’s (aged 7) about a magic fishbone, that I focus on here; but in passing it can be noted that in Part I William Tinkling tries to free his “bride” from oppressive school-­ mistresses; and in Part III, i parody of an adventure yarn, Captain Boldheart captures his treacherous Latin grammar-master and hangs him from the yard-arm of his ship. (See further Wales 2023.) In the last romance, Part IV, Mrs. Orange is “sadly plagued by her numerous family”: “Two parents, two intimate friends of theirs, one godfather, two godmothers, and an aunt” (753). She decides they should all go to school

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at Mrs. Lemon’s. Their initial exchanges mimic the polite discourse of adults: this is not the normal register for children’s conversation: “The first question is, ma’am,” said Mrs. Orange, “I don’t bore you?” “Not in the least, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon. “Far from it, I assure you.” “…Terms moderate, I think?” “Very moderate, ma’am.” (754)

In the classroom, surreally stands a “pale, bald child, with red whiskers, in disgrace”: “Come here, White,” said Mrs. Lemon, “and tell the lady what you have been doing.” “Betting on horses,” said White sulkily. “Are you sorry for it, you naughty child?” said Mrs. Lemon. “No,” said White. “Sorry to lose, but shouldn’t be sorry to win.” (755)

Humour arises from the incongruity of the setting (schoolroom) and participant (adult male), and the topsy-turvy re-classification of a manly pursuit as a punishable activity. Later, Mr. Orange comes home from the city: “James love,” said Mrs. Orange, “you look tired. What has been doing [sic] in the city to-day?” “Trap, bat, and ball, my dear,” said Mr. Orange; “and it knocks a man up.” (756)

Again, there is a comic clash of mental schemas: the city broker playing a childish game: heightened by the style of the conversation between the participants. This mirrors that of “real-world” adults; and I am reminded of the common phenomenon of children role-playing, playing at being grown-ups, of being doctors and nurses, teachers, or shop-keepers. We can contrast this, however, with Dickens’ adult fiction where this kind of role-reversal has a more serious side: children forced to become care-­ givers, or growing up before their time as a result of being orphaned, for

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example: think of Little Nell or “The Marchioness” in The Old Curiosity Shop, or Little Dorrit. There is no such seriousness here. In Part 2, the story told by Alice Rainbird, Princess Alicia takes the leading role, looking after her 17 brothers and sisters and the baby, because the Queen is ill and her father the King impoverished. The narrative style, heavily co-ordinated, is appropriate to a child-narrator; but it also mirrors the continual activities that Princess Alicia must engage in, to look after the helpless family. Read aloud, it mimics her obvious breathlessness: The Princess Alicia kept the seventeen young princes and princesses quiet, and dressed and undressed and danced the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated the soup, and swept the hearth, and poured out his medicine, and nursed the queen, and did all that ever she could, and was as busy, busy, busy as busy could be (my italics). (741)

There is a wonderful surreal stream-of-consciousness moment, reflecting a child’s mind-style, as the little children “stared with their twice seventeen are thirty-four, put down four, and carry three, eyes” (742). Clearly there is an echo of fairy tales like Cinderella and indeed Alicia has a “Fairy Grandmarina,” who, however, is very dismissive of the King, who asks why the magic fishbone found in their salmon for supper can only be used once for a wish. She replies very forcefully: “Don’t catch people short, before they have done speaking. Just the way with you grown-up persons. You are always doing it.” [And stamping her foot:] “The reason for this, and the reason for that, indeed! You are always wanting the reason. No reason. There! Hoity Toity me! I am sick of your grown-up reasons.” (741)

One can imagine Dickens’ child readers enjoying this very much, especially if reading it aloud: aping the scolding speech acts of adults, turning the tables on them, as it were. In this story the fairy tale conventions are humorously subverted. Even Alicia’s prospective bridegroom, Prince Certainpersonio, is found “sitting by himself, eating barley-suger [sic], and waiting to be ninety” (745). It is this subversion, along with the use

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of the internal author and child-centred focalization, that distinguishes this “romance” from Thackeray’s modern fairytale, The Rose and the Ring, published in 1855, which has sometimes been published with Dickens’ fairytale. Whimsical, yes, and there is a magic rose and a magic ring, “favours” of the Fairy Blackstick, but it is a straightforward conventional third-person narration, stretching 150 pages longer than Holiday Romance. As a “Holiday Romance” the stories have that kind of freedom from adult-given rules and conventions that are associated with school holidays. Adults in these stories, apart from the Fairy Grandmarina, only have subservient rather than dominant roles. There is a kind of wish-­ fulfilment too: children getting revenge on grown-ups, even punishing them; their unconscious rebellious desires played out in the stories and reflecting or mirroring the desires of their readers.

Bakhtin and the Carnivalesque Bakhtin would argue that at various moments in history, various cultural events in time, such unconscious desires have in fact been acted upon and celebrated in carnivalesque ceremonies like “The Festival of Fools” in mid-winter, or the “Lord of Mis-rule”: where children play as adults and are crowned kings or bishops and kings are portrayed as Fools. Such “social inversions” or “role reversals” can be traced back to Roman times, when masters waited on slaves. In Bakhtin’s own words we find the equivalent of the “Mooreeffoc effect”: he describes the “peculiar logic of the inside out,” of the “turnabout” (1984, 11). Even closer to Dickens’ Mooreeffoc are the inversions of the Black Mass, saying The Lord’s Prayer backwards (Stewart 1979, 68). For LeCercle, carnival “is the embodiment of the negative prefix in ‘non-sense’”; “it says no, locally and temporarily, to order and hierarchy” (1994, 194). The nineteenth-century equivalent might be pantomime, also associated with mid-winter, with its role reversals of adults playing children, women playing men, men playing women, and where comic anarchy and irreverence reign (see also Wales 2023).

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Dickens, Carroll, and Lear But by the 1860s, when Holiday Romance first appeared, something else is happening. Lewis Carroll had published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865; his own “Looking Glass” world would not appear until 1871. Yet there are clear parallels between Carroll’s humorous work for children and Dickens’ Holiday Romance. I have not found Carroll’s name mentioned in Dickens’ letters, however; and it may only be a coincidence that Dickens has a heroine called “Alice,” who is the same age as Carroll’s “Alice” (they are both 7); and Dickens’ Alice has a doll called “The Duchess.” Carroll’s Alice in falling down a rabbit-hole underground discovers a world turned “upside down”; values are turned “the other way round.” As in Dickens the assumptions of “normal” everyday life are questioned or under-cut. The petty rules of institutions like education are subverted in mockery: so “Laughing and Grief ” replace Latin and Greek; “Reeling and Writhing” replace “Reading and Writing.” As it happens, Carroll had his own mooreeffoc experiences: he liked to play his music-­ boxes backwards for relaxation; and frequently wrote letters back to front (Stewart 1979, 102). All too often Alice’s Adventures is seen as a unique work by critics; but we can also note here Edward Lear’s enlarged edition (1861) of his Book of Nonsense of 1846, also written for children. In his limericks we also find the subversion of roles and norms of social behaviour. Old People in particular freely engage in childish activities with joyful abandon: like boiling eggs in shoes and walking on stilts wreathed with lilies. For Lytton Strachey, who wrote an article on Lear in 1888, “nonsense” is a humorous way of “setting things upside down” (335; see further Wales, in preparation). All three writers illustrate Gillian Beer’s view of the Alice Books as presenting “the world sideways on” (2016, 4): it is an “egalitarian zone,” she says, “in which everything becomes possible and nothing is unlikely.” I think myself that there is something going on here with all three ludic writers that reflects the mood of the times; and various critics have indeed noted a literary change mid-century, but for different reasons hypothesized. Children were no longer by this time seen as adults in

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miniature, and they were regarded as a reading public in their own right. And it is interesting that the 1860s saw the first publication of magazines specifically for children, especially in the US. And it is even more interesting, I think, that Our Young Folks, in which Holiday Romance appeared, encouraged real work by young authors, some of whom grew up to be famous writers, like Edith Wharton and Louise Alcott: perhaps this gave Dickens the idea of “young authors” for his stories. (Our Young Folks also published Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy-cat and other poems in 1870: Uglow 2017, 395.) Mid-century also there was increased resistance to the institution of the school with its stress on good manners (LeCercle 1994, 4, 113). Girls in particular were taught the values of “humility, resignation, filial piety” (Bratton 1981, 179), self-control, and refinement. Nonsense literature was perhaps seen as a “means to escape … from … [petty rules] of Victorian domesticism” (Tigges 1988, 42); or a rebellion against moralistic or evangelical literature for children. LeCercle (1994, 181) believes also that the nineteenth century also saw a greater appreciation of popular culture and the comic. J.O. Halliwell, a Shakespearean scholar, produced his famous edition of nursery rhymes and tales in 1842; and I have mentioned the huge popularity of pantomime in this century. One or more of these suppositions may well be true; but it may also be true that there has always been a strong tradition of nonsense writing in English; flourishing “under-ground,” so to speak, and then coming to the surface (Lurie 1991). So, Lear’s limericks do have a precedent of sorts; and there were popular verses and tales on the subject of The World Turned Upside Down or Topsy-Turviness in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and German Lugengeschichten. I am wondering too about a possible relation to the Gothic impulse: an expression of resistance against Enlightenment rationality; almost an alternative counter-cultural movement; a tradition of literary insubordination. Mullen would argue (2019, 6–7) that it has never really disappeared. Her study is of mid-twentieth-­ century culture, not mid-nineteenth. However, Dickens’ Holiday Romance lacks the darkness of the “uncanny,” which is a feature of Carroll and Lear.

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Conclusion While all three writers engage with different kinds of language play for defamiliarizing and humorous effect, what distinguishes Dickens primarily from Carroll is undoubtedly the unusual narrative device of having not only a supposed child’s point of view/ focalization; but having supposed children “take over” as “internal authors,” and so determine the style. So the stories are, as it were, “owned” by the characters; we are forced to think as they do, and to value the proposed ideas of childish behaviour, however fantastic or subversive. The “freedom” from a controlling adult or third-person narrator is reflected in the freedom from adult control in the stories themselves. Of course, at a higher level this freedom from adult control is an illusion: it is Dickens who is the real author. But he is looking back, I think, as an older man at his own childhood, when he himself, as he also told his biographer John Forster, loved to write fantasies; and he has published Holiday Romance in a journal where writing by real child authors was encouraged. In a letter to his American publisher J.T. Fields before his trans-­Atlantic visit (25 July 1867), Dickens writes that Holiday Romance “made me laugh to that extent that my people here (in Gad’s Hill, his home) thought I was out of my wits, until I gave it to them to read—when they did likewise” (Storey 1999, 402–3). Simpson (1998, 48) makes the important point that “no necessary and sufficient condition can be isolated which will guarantee that a text will have a humorous outcome … the reception as comic discourse depends largely upon the predisposition of the reader.” I would add that this reader must be historically and culturally situated. Nevertheless, the unusual mode of narration with its child-like style, and the centuries-old carnivalesque strategies of inversion and subversion, with their defamilarizing and incongruous effects, means that Holiday Romance still has humorous appeal to present-day readers of all ages.

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References Attardo, Salvatore. 2001. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Beer, Gillian. 2016. Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bratton, Jacqueline S. 1981. The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction. London: Croom Helm. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. 1906. Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. London: Methuen. Currie, Gregory. 2010. Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dickens, Charles. [1868] 1936 Holiday Romance. London: Hazell, Watson & Vinery. ———. 1995. Holiday Romance and Other Writings for Children. Edited by Gillian Avery. London: J. M. Kent. Forster, John. [1872] 1936. Life of Charles Dickens. London: Hazell, Watson & Vinery. Hollindale, Peter. 1997. Signs of Childness in Children’s Books. Stroud: Thimble Press. LeCercle, Jean Jacques. 1994. Philosophy of Nonsense: The Intuitions of Victorian Nonsense Literature. London: Routledge. Lurie, Alison. 1991. Not in Front of the Grown-ups: Subversive Children’s Literature. London: Sphere Books. Mitchell, Adrian. 1981. Theatre Box: You Must Believe All This. London: Thames Methuen. Mullen, Lisa. 2019. Mid-century Gothic. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Simpson, Paul. 1998. Odd Talk: Studying Discourses of Incongruity. In Exploring the Language of Drama, ed. Jonathan Culpeper, Mick Short, and Peter Verdonk, 34–53. London: Routledge. ———. 2000. Satirical Humour and Cultural Context. In Contextualised Stylistics: In Honour of Peter Verdonk, ed. Tony Bex, Michael Burke, and Peter Stockwell, 243–266. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Stewart, Susan. 1979. Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Storey, Graham, ed. 1999. The Pilgrim Edition of the Letters of Charles Dickens: vol. 11 (1865–7). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Strachey, Edward. 1888. Nonsense as a Fine Art. Quarterly Review 167: 335–365. Tigges, Wim. 1988. An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Tolkien, John Ronald R. 1964. Tree and Leaf. London: George Allen & Unwin. Uglow, Jenny. 2017. Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense. London: Faber & Faber. Wales, Katie. 2022. Charles Dickens, Children’s Author: Narrative as Rhetoric in A Child’s History of England. Language and Literature 31 (1): 85–98. ———. 2023. Changing Tastes: Reading the Cannibalese of Charles Dickens’ Holiday Romance and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture. In Reading Fictional Languages, ed. Israel Noletto, Jessica Norledge, and Peter Stockwell. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press. ———. (in preparation). Where Owls Nest in Beards: Making Sense of Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense. For volume edited by Joanna Gavins, and Michael Burke. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wydryzynska, Ella. 2021. ‘I Shouldn’t Even Be Telling You that I Shouldn’t Be Telling You the Story’: Pseudonymous Bosch and the Postmodern Narrator in Children’s Literature. Language and Literature 30 (3): 229–248.

5 The Uses of Humour in Barbara Kimenye’s Moses Series Danson Sylvester Kahyana

Introduction Barbara Kimenye was born Barbara Clarke Holdsworth “on 19th December 1929, in Halifax, West Yorkshire in Britain, to a white British mother and a West Indian father” (Adima 2023, 5). She became a Kimenye when she married “Bill Kimenye, the son of a Tanganyikan chief ” (Adima 2023, 5). She is a writer of several books, the first two, Kalasanda (1965) and Kalasanda Revisited (1966), being collections of “lighthearted short stories that examine the conflict between modern ways and the institutions of traditional rule and power” in Buganda Kingdom, Uganda (Gikandi and Mwangi 2007, 88). Her other books include the Moses Series (11 adventure stories), The Smugglers (1966), The Gemstone Affair (1978), The Scoop (1978), The Mating Game (1992), and

D. S. Kahyana (*) Department of Literature, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda The English Department, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_5

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The Money Game (1992), Kayo’s House (1995), The Beauty Queen (1997), and Prettyboy, Beware (1997). She is considered a Ugandan writer partly because she lived and worked in the country for many years, but also because she sets most of her work, especially Kalasanda, Kalasanda Revisited, and the Moses Series, in Uganda. Besides, she is reluctant to “to confirm or deny biographical details,” thereby leading to “the common assumption among African readers of her work […] that she is an indigenous Luganda-speaking Ganda” (Oldfield 2010, 200). The Moses Series is a set of 11 storybooks published between 1968 and 1987, highlighting delinquency by boys in a boarding school. All the books in the series have three boys as the leading characters: Sebastian Mulutu (fondly referred to as King Kong), Moses Kibaya (popularly known as Holy Moses), and Rukia, the Dorm 3 prefect. These three main characters, together with other boys at Mukibi Educational Institute for the Sons of African Gentlemen, are always involved in smoking, illicit consumption of alcohol, lying to authorities, deceitful games such as poker, among other deviant behaviour (Chabari 2009, 1). It is this deviant behaviour that sets the boys on a collision path with the school authorities so much that by the time the first storybook in the series, Moses, opens, its eponymous hero has been expelled from six schools—a dubious achievement that he is, however, quite proud of. One of the major stylistic landmarks of the Moses Series is the writer’s deployment of humour as she tracks the exploits of teenage boys in a boarding school in Uganda. Lee and Kleiner (2005, 180) define humour as “a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter.” However, it is important to note that “[t]hough laughter is not always synonymous with humour it is the major indicator, and, as such, studies of laughter must be considered in any study of humour” (Gibbon 1988, 202). In this chapter, I examine the different linguistic and literary resources that Kimenye uses to deploy humour in her Moses Series, and the uses to which she puts it. The focus of this chapter is Moses and Moses in Trouble. I have selected these two of the 11 storybooks in the Moses Series for two reasons. First, I find them the most humorous of the lot, and second, they generally represent the kind of adventures that the teenage characters in the series (Moses Kibaya also known as Holy Moses, Sebastian Mulutu also known

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as King Kong, and Rukia, among others) undertake; for this reason, focusing on these two gives me an opportunity to deepen my analysis of the uses of humour in the series without having to refer to all the 11 storybooks. In other words, I have chosen a case study design for this chapter, since I focus on individual representatives of a group and “a phenomenon” (the uses of humour in the Moses Series) (Algozzine and Hancock 2017, 15). I describe the cases in some detail with regard to their plots, themes, and characters, and how each of these contributes to, or enhance humour. Some of the linguistic features and rhetorical operations that I focus on in the chapter include the use of figurative language and satire. Data analysis involves examining the different ways in which humour is generated in the selected texts, and the uses to which it is put. I also deploy the analytical techniques of discourse and theme analyses. Interpretivism is also helpful in analysing the context of humour, since it focuses “primarily on understanding and accounting for the meaning of human experiences and actions” (Fossey et al. 2002, 720). The human experiences and actions here are those of the characters in the Moses Series, for instance the adventures of the boys (Moses Kibaya, Sebastian Mulutu, and Rukia, among others).

Literature Review Although Kimenye is a prolific Ugandan writer with over 20 titles of books to her name, there has been little critical engagement with her work. For Aaron Mushengyezi, a Ugandan academic, this state of affairs can be attributed to the fact that “children’s literature has not been an area that has been of interest to many academics at Makerere [as] it was not thought important to teach children’s literature” (cited in Oldfield 2010, 200). One of the earliest commentaries on Kimenye’s work, to my knowledge, is by Peter Nazareth. However, nowhere in the article does Nazareth mention the Moses Series, despite the fact that several storybooks in it had been published by the time his article came out in 1976. Nancy J. Schmidt dedicates considerably more space to Kimenye in her comparative study on children’s writing, but her focus is on the

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pedagogical import of her writing in relation to the colonial writers George Alfred Henty and Rene Guillot. She does note that there is a “large element of humor” in the Moses Series of adventure stories, but she does not discuss this technique in its own right, but as an occasion to find something negative about it, for instance the way it prevents the series and Kimenye’s novels in general “from having a strong didactic function” (Schmidt 1976, 79). In this chapter, I show that this is not always the case, as there are several instances when the use of humour actually enables the novelist to pass on a didactic message, for instance in Moses in Trouble where the teenagers’ amusing escapade in a kraal where they go to steal milk ends in chaos as Moses is gored over the fence by a strong bull. While it is true that the author’s description of the incident emphasizes the humorous, there is a moral message that the book subtly passes to the readers—that, however cunning you may be, bad habits like escaping from school and stealing could land you into trouble. Gitau’s (2002) study on how the reading of fiction influences students’ performance of English language does not include Kimenye in its scope, but the researcher makes a comment that is worth quoting: There is enjoyment, pleasure, and relaxation in reading a well-crafted story. For example, the Moses Series of books by Barbara Kimenye though perhaps not very strong on thematics nevertheless are great entertainers primarily because of the simplicity of their plots, humor and setting.

While this is a valid observation, the researcher does not elaborate her statement. For instance, she does not explain what makes the stories humorous, and the uses that this humour serves in the series (Gitau 2002). Like Gitau’s study, Chabari’s (2009) is also a dissertation undertaken for a Master’s degree. But unlike Gitau’s, this study solely focuses on four of Kimenye’s stories in the Moses Series—Moses (1968), Moses and the Penpal (1968), Moses on the Move (1971), and Moses in a Muddle (1976). Chabari (2009) identifies humour as one of the techniques that Kimenye uses to construct “negative boyhood masculinities characterized by stealing [and] sneaking out of the school as a result of the negligent watchman,” Mr Kigali (Chabari 2009, 83). Unfortunately, this is all he

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says about the uses of humour in the series, because it is what lies within his scope. Also, in her doctoral dissertation on transgressing different boundaries in postcolonial women’s narratives in Africa, Oldfield (2010) dedicates considerable space to Kimenye’s work, both the short stories (Kalasanda and Kalasanda Revisited) and the Moses Series. With regard to the topic at hand, she makes an important point that in the Moses Series, Kimenye’s “subtle humour ensures that Moses the transgressor actually becomes an endearing character, rather than the dislikeable one that traditional perceptions of transgressive children interpellate both European and African readers alike to expect” (Oldfield 2010, 204–205). In other words, humour is one of the strategies that the writer uses to “recruit” the reader on the side of the teenage transgressors. While this observation is insightful, it is the only one that Oldfield gives with regard to the use of humour in the Moses Series. In this chapter, I complement her effort by discussing several other uses that humour serves in the series. Like Oldfield, Adima (2022) sees Kimenye’s Moses Series, for instance Moses in Trouble (1968), as subtly commenting on important topics like the abuse of authority by parents and teachers, thereby “providing ironic yet humorous commentary on the post-independence state” (Adima 2022, 115). However, Adima (2022) does not explain what makes the novel humorous and what role this humour serves beyond serving as an occasion of critical commentary on the state of the Ugandan nation in the 1970s. In this chapter, I explain what makes the texts focused on humorous and the different roles that humour plays in the novels. In other words, I examine the grammar of humour, which Farb (1981, 769) defines as “the things that make us laugh,” and the place of this grammar in the texts.

Theoretical Frameworks Approaches to the study of humour, according to Victor Raskin, can be classified into: incongruity theories, hostility theories, and release theories. The first category claims that “humor arises from the perception of an incongruity between a set of expectations and what is actually

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perceived”; the second one claims that “one finds humorous a feeling of superiority over something, of overcoming something, or aggressing a target”; while the third one claims that humour “‘releases’ some form of psychic energy and/or frees the individual from some constraints” (Attardo 2008, 103). To underline the importance of these theoretical approaches to the study of humour, Triezenberg (2008, 524) observes that “what is and is not ‘funny’ depends on what theory of humor is being subscribed to.” An eclectic approach to the study of humour is helpful since the different theories help with different aspects of humour. However, I draw mostly on the aspect of incongruity, for I agree with the suggestion that the key element in all humour is incongruity,” which “arises when something out of keeping with the normal state of affairs occurs” (Mallan 1993, 3). This does not mean that all humour results from incongruity; as a matter of fact, Farber has identified several weaknesses of incongruity theory, for instance its “failure to account adequately for all of those instances of incongruity that are not funny such as brainteasers, logic problems, and puzzles” (Farber 2007, 68). In many respects, the teenagers that the reader meets in the Moses Series are tricksters who get out of difficult situations through cunning. For this reason, the figure of tricksters as theorized in oral literary studies is helpful. Tricksters are usually small, wily, and tricky animals who cheat and outdo the larger and more powerful beasts. They trick them in a pretended tug of war, cheat them in a race, deceive them into killing themselves or their own relations, gobble up their opponents’ food in pretended innocence, divert the punishment for their own misdeeds on to innocent parties, and perform a host of other ingenious tricks. (Finnegan 2012, 335)

While tricksters often get punished for the wrongs that they have done (transgressing against acceptable norms), they are creative and resourceful in amazing ways that the audience finds amusing. This is true of Moses and his friends as well: they dare the school authorities all the time. And while they usually get in trouble for one reason or another, and get

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punished (by the headteacher or the deputy headteacher), there is no doubt that their trickster-ness contributes to the humour of the Moses Series. Literary stylistics seeks to explain how different devices, for instance, irony, satire, and figurative language contribute to the generation of and our understanding of humour. Wales’s (2014) observation that the goal of stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake, but in order to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text; or in order to relate literary effects to linguistic “causes” where these are felt to be relevant is apposite here. Alleen K. Beckman suggests that there are three primary elements in humorous fiction for children: character, situation, and discourse (Mallan 1993). This is undoubtedly a simplification of the matter. I nevertheless structure this chapter following this insight. I explain how character(ization), situation, and discourse contribute to humour in the Moses Series, and the different uses the humour generated by these is put to.

Character(ization) and the Generation of Humour in the Moses Series The logical starting point to discuss humour in the Moses Series is to analyse the character of Moses, the eponymous hero of the texts, and how it contributes to humour in the series. He is presented as having a great sense of humour, to the extent that even when he finds himself in a difficult situation, he says a thing or two that leaves the reader amused. The first book in the series, Moses, tells the reader the number of schools he has been expelled from: I had just been expelled from my sixth school. They sent me back to Uncle Silasi’s house where I, again, met with the usual preaching mixed with abuse from him, and the usual floods of tears from his wife, Aunt Damali […] Honestly, I could not help being rather impressed when I looked back on all the things I had done in only fifteen years of life. What other boy, I wondered, could boast of having been expelled from six different Uganda

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schools? I mean, some chaps have an awful lot of difficulty getting themselves admitted to only one. (Kimenye 1968a, 1–2)

The above passage is amusing in a number of obvious and not so obvious ways. In the first place, Moses seems quite proud of his dubious achievement—being expelled from six schools when some students find it very difficult to be admitted to one. At play here is the device of irony: the reader expects Moses to be dejected because of the expulsion from one school or the other; on the contrary, he is quite proud of it, partly because of the opportunity it gives him to drop out of school (he finds school boring and regimented), in order to do “something exciting and interesting,” as “piloting a jet aircraft” in order to “to be Africa’s first man in space, more so that heights have never worried me. I was climbing trees before I was five years old” (Kimenye 1968b, 2). There are other amusing incongruities such as comparing piloting an aircraft to climbing a tree. Aunt Damali responds to Moses’ expulsion by shedding a flood of tears. The humour here is developed by the use of exaggeration (the flood of tears), but also by irony, since we expect her to act in a more reasonable or logical way rather than in hysteria. Besides, Moses fails to see, quite amusingly to the reader, why holding a midnight party in an educational institution and without clearance from the school; or inviting over girls from a convent school to the dangerous tryst constituted any abnormality. This is not the only time that the writer makes Moses entertain the reader by portraying him as ridiculously naive. When Mr Mukibi makes it compulsory for the boys to bathe every day upon him being faulted by the police doctor for ignoring the students’ hygiene, Moses responds humorously: The business of washing in the stream struck us all as going too far. I mean, what was the point of it? We always took plenty of baths when we were home during the holidays, so we were clean enough to last a whole term. As for washing our clothes, well, that was quite unnecessary at school. The three clean shirts we each bought from home were usually sufficient to see us through a term, and everybody knows that khakhi shorts never show dirt. (Kimenye 1968a, 87)

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This is akin to surreal comedy based on unrealistic, ridiculous situations and expressions. At play also here are three language-based devices to make the passage humorous—sarcasm (Kimenye is ridiculing Moses for seeing nothing wrong with spending a term without showering); exaggeration (it is quite unimaginable that someone can spend an entire term without bathing, and yet see nothing wrong with this); and irony (the notion that khakhi shorts never show dirt, as if washing is for the sake of hiding a visible blot). Identification with aspects of Moses’ character, for example, his resistance of regimented school life, albeit exaggerated, would resonate with experiences of many audience members who studied in boarding schools, thereby enhancing the humour. In the Moses Series, humour is also generated by means of the stock character—“a stereotyped character easily recognized by readers or audiences from recurrent appearances in literary or folk tradition, usually within a specific genre such as comedy or fairy tale,” for instance “the absent-minded professor, the country bumpkin, the damsel in distress, the old miser, the whore with a heart of gold, the bragging soldier, the villain of melodrama, the wicked stepmother [and] the jealous husband,” to mention but a few (Baldick 2001, 243). The most obvious stock character in most of the storybooks is Mr. Mukibi, the proprietor and headteacher of the school where Moses studies. He is portrayed as cruel, mean, and miserly, to the extent that he would rather order the students to prepare their meals than increase the salaries of the cooks—an act that causes severe malnutrition in the school. His actions are humorous for a number of reasons. First, he strikes us as having no clue about what a school as an educational institution means or is supposed to do as shown by the fact that he employs teachers who are not qualified for the job, as we learn from Moses: Mr Karanja was the only member of the staff who did not look shabby, undernourished and worried to death. It was not only that he was taller than the rest and carried himself more confidently. There was something about the way his hair was cut and the general neatness of his clothes. So far as I could see, his were the only shoes that did not need mending, and they were shinier than anybody else’s. (Kimenye 1968b, 24)

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Mr. Mukibi’s miserliness, then, invokes in the reader’s mind, the picture of the stereotyped miser, like Moliere’s Harpagon, which in itself is capable of causing laughter. The writer seems to suggest that Mr. Mukibi’s meanness is in some way implied by his physical features. This is how Moses describes him the first time he sees him on arrival at the school: This may sound a bit exaggerated, but you should have seen him! Let me describe him from the top downwards. He was bald, his eyes were hooded by creased, wrinkled lids, and his long, hooked nose was like a beak. What a masterpiece of physical this head was! It nodded precariously on the longest, scraggiest neck I had ever seen. His limbs were as awkward as pieces of string roughly fastened onto a potato, and he stood about six feet high. (Kimenye 1968a, 8)

In this extract, Kimenye employs caricature, which Abrams and Harpham (2012, 39) define as “a verbal description [that] exaggerates or distorts, for comic effect, a person’s distinctive physical features or personality traits.” As the first-person narrator of the storybook, Moses admits that he has exaggerated Mr. Mukibi’s looks for the sake of ridiculing him, which is why he sarcastically calls his head a masterpiece. The humour here serves not only to register Moses’ disdain for the headteacher and proprietor, but for the school as well, which he describes more or less in a similar vein. It is no wonder that when Mr. Karanja asks for suggestions on how the school can be made better, Moses thinks that the best thing to do is to “burn the place down and send us [the students] home!” (Kimenye 1968b, 42). It is through humour that Kimenye recruits the reader to be on the side of the students by making their transgressions, for instance, Moses’ and Mulutu’s plans to run away from the school, seem justifiable. In this way, it creates rapport between the narrator and the readers, whom she interpellates into confidants. For Chabari (2009, 78), the caricature of the school and of the teachers is Kimenye’s “attempt to privilege students’ perspectives” by depicting the institution and the authorities in charge of it as nothing but laughable.

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However, the use of caricature comes with some limitations, if not ethical issues. The description of Mr. Mukibi’s Institute, for instance, strikes the reader as overly negative, thereby showing Moses’ bias: he does not seem to see anything worth redeeming about the school, yet we are told it is overcrowded, meaning that patrons must see something quite good about it, even if this goodness lies in its being the last resort for distressed parents or guardians like Uncle Silasi and Aunt Damali, whose children (like Moses) are expelled from one school after another. The same is true for teachers: he is quite negative towards them, yet there must be some good in what they do, however limited they are. True, Miss Nagendo is depicted as being unreasonable to the point of using a thermometer that does not work and carrying out “the same medical routine for every ailment” (Kimenye 1968a, 42) be it influenza or a broken leg, but at least she accepts to mind the sanatorium, for whatever worth this facility is in the school, or her qualification in medical sciences is.

Situational Humour in the Series Mallan (1993, 12) suggests that “[s]ituational humor usually creates incongruity by introducing an element of absurdity into otherwise conventional circumstances.” In the Moses Series, there are several situations that provoke the audience to laughter. In Moses, for instance, every attempt by Moses and Mulutu to escape from school is hampered in one way or another. One of the drivers of the humour is Jeni, who turns out as the wife to one of the students, Makumbi. The first time the reader encounters her is when she thrusts “a bundle” into Moses’ hands before disappearing into the night. The “bundle” turns out to be Alfonsi, Makumbi’s son. This is amusing not only for the sudden realization that the “bundle” is actually a child, but also because we wonder how Moses and Mulutu will extricate themselves from this predicament (having a baby in their hands) in order for them to achieve their mission. The next time the pair tries to escape, they discover that there are people who have broken into Mr. Mukibi’s house. In dealing with the robbers (whose arrest they successfully lead to), their plan is discovered by Mr. Karanja. This recurrent feature of the failed planned escape becomes humorous

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due to the incongruousness between the seriousness of the pair’s commitment to escape and the ease with which these efforts suddenly collapse. In Moses in Trouble, one of the hilarious situations comes in the form of surrealist protest. “We collected all the cockroaches we found in the school meals, and sent them, with our headmaster’s compliments, by registered post to the Minister for Education” (Kimenye 1968b, 8). This action is difficult to imagine, so its oddness is what strikes the reader as amusing. On the other hand, the ingenuity or resourcefulness is striking. The use of humour here serves a corrective purpose, for as Webb (1981, 36) observes, one of the faults that can be corrected through ridicule is the incompetent execution of a particular role. It is clear from the above account that humour also serves a didactic purpose in the texts: it is one way through which the students get even with heavy-handed authorities (like Mr Mukibi) or incompetent ones (like the minister for education). Through their humorous actions, the students “kidnap power and force it, as if by accident, to examine its own vulgarity” (Mbembe 2001, 109). Mr. Mukibi is a powerful headteacher and proprietor, which is why his teachers fear him, but the students bring him down, in a way, by reporting the poor meals that he is giving them to the Ministry of Education. When the Police doctor diagnoses Moses with “acute malnutrition” later in the novel, Mr. Mukibi is forced to improve the meals of the school, even if just temporarily: he increases the cooks’ pay (thereby making them end their strike), and buys “up every goat in the village to feed the students” (Kimenye 1968a, 87). By ridiculing the Minister for Education with the embarrassing letter, the students are asking him or her to remember his or her core function, that is to say, ensuring that the institutions he or she licenses to operate are regularly inspected for compliance with the standards set for them. Through such humorous incidents, Kimenye’s book provides a powerful commentary on the quality of politicians in power: not only are they incompetent, but they are also laughable to the extent that teenage students can make fun of them the way they do. It is for this reason that I disagree with Schmidt (1976) when she argues: The large element of humor, especially in the Moses Series of adventure stories, and the restricted settings of Kimenye’s novels, prevent them from

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having a strong didactic function. Even though Kimenye’s novels are used as supplementary school readers, their function is more to make reading interesting than to teach truths about African life. (Schmidt 1976, 79)

In my view, Kimenye’s storybooks, particularly Moses in Trouble, do have a strong didactic message: they urge teenagers to be creative in the way they show dissent if they are to get quick results. Well, Moses and his friends do not get improved meals as quickly as they would love to, but this is not because their humour fails. Rather, it is because the headteacher uses his experience and position to fool the police doctor into believing that he is doing everything in his power to improve the welfare of the students. This is one of those moments in the texts when the trickster is tricked in turn.

Verbal Irony and Humour in the Series The dialogues between different characters in the Moses Series provide so many instances of humour that what I give here are just two examples. Perhaps no dialogue in the entire series is as hilarious as that between Moses and Mr Karanja, the deputy headteacher, when the latter finds out that the former, together with Mulutu, wants to escape from the school: “By the way, are your passports in order, and have you enough money for your security bonds?” I looked at him blankly. “Passports? Security bonds?” “Why, yes. I understand that the immigration authorities in the States are remarkably strict. But of course you and Mulutu will know all about that.” (Kimenye 1968b, 80)

The humour here lies in the sheer naivety that Moses and Mulutu, express in their escape plan, a naivety that the reader is bound to laugh at—planning a long journey without having passports. In other words, their escape plan has been more or less a big joke from the word go. In Moses in Trouble, there are several instances of verbal irony, but I will pick just two. When Moses and his friends decide to steal milk from a

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farm that neighbours the school, they mask their intention in an opaque language that makes it seem that what they are about to do is not really theft. Moses says they should “borrow” the milk; when Mulutu dismisses the idea, Rukia responds to him thus: “We could borrow some milk from this new dairy farmer. He’d never miss a couple of gallons—and we could pay him back by offering to help during our spare time” (Kimenye 1968a, 50). Despite their use of this civil language of “borrowing” and “paying back,” however, the students go straight to the farm, and at night, in order to milk the animals, thereby showing that it was never their intention to ask for permission to get some milk. Indeed, the clause “we could borrow some milk” shows that they are non-committal about paying back. The humour here lies in the double entendre the author employs to show how the boys mask their intention, which shows that they are aware of the moral oddness of their action. The other instance of verbal irony is Rukia’s view that milking a cow is “supposed to be the easiest thing in the world,” yet when Moses asks him if he knows how to do it, he replies in the negative (Kimenye 1968b, 59). Instead, it is Mutegubya, who had earlier declared that he “wouldn’t know one end of a cow from another if it weren’t for the horns” (Kimenye 1968a, 59), who turns out an expert milker in the end—“a born milker,” as Moses calls him (Kimenye 1968, 60). The humour here helps to mark out Rukia as a pompous young man, but, most importantly, it also serves to divert the reader’s attention from the characters’ moral culpability.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have explained different ways in which Kimenye creates humour in her Moses Series, and given an account of different uses that humour serves in the texts. However, it is worth noting that, as Mallan (1993, 8) observes, “[h]umour has a chameleon-like nature; it changes from one context to the next, from one moment to another.” Besides, humour tends to resist analysis, as it disappears the moment one tries to explain it, hence Critchley’s observation that “a joke explained is a joke killed” (cited in Seirlis 2011, 514). Despite these limitations, however, it

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is my hope that my effort in this chapter has contributed to the understanding of humour and style within the context of storybooks, and with the specific example of what makes Kimenye’s Moses Series humorous.

References Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Harpham. 2012. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage Learning. Adima, Anna. 2022. Anglophone Women’s Writing and Public Culture in Kenya and Uganda, 1959–1976. PhD diss., University of York. ———. 2023. Mixed-ish: Race, Class and Gender in 1950s–60s Kampala through a Life History of Barbara Kimenye. Journal of Eastern African Studies 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2022.2163469. Algozzine, Bob, and Dawson R. Hancock. 2017. Doing Case Study Research: A Practical Guide for Beginning Researchers. New York: Teachers College Press. Attardo, Salvatore. 2008. A Primer for the Linguistics of Humor. In The Primer of Humor Research, ed. Victor Raskin and Willibald Ruch, 101–156. BerlinYork: Mouton de Gruyter. Baldick, Chris. 2001. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chabari, Kimathi Emmanuel. 2009. There are Many Ways of Being a Boy: Barbara Kimenye’s Imagination of Boyhood Masculinities in Selected Storybooks from the Moses Series. MA diss., University of the Witwatersrand. Farb, Peter. 1981. Speaking Seriously about Humor. The Massachusetts Review 22 (4): 760–776. Farber, Jerry. 2007. Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Humor in Literature and the Other Arts. Journal of Aesthetic Education 41 (4): 67–86. Finnegan, Ruth. 2012. Oral Literature in Africa. Open Book Publishers. Fossey, Ellie, Carol Harvey, Fiona McDermott, and Larry Davidson. 2002. Understanding and Evaluating Qualitative Research. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 36 (6): 717–732. Gibbon, Claire. 1988. Children’s Humour: Its Nature and Role in Coping with Stress. Early Child Development and Care 39 (1): 201–220. Gikandi, Simon, and Evan Mwangi. 2007. The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Gitau, Kang’ethe B. 2002. Influence of the Reading of Fiction on Secondary School Performance of English in Mbitini Division of Makueni District. MA diss., University of Nairobi. Kimenye, Barbara. 1968a. Moses. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. ———. 1968b. Moses in Trouble. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. Lee, Yi-Ping, and Brian H.  Kleiner. 2005. How to Use Humour for Stress Management. Management Research News 28 (11/12): 179–186. Mallan, Kerry. 1993. Laugh Lines: Exploring Humour in Children’s Literature. Literature Support Series; Primary English Teaching Association, Australia. Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. University of California Press. Nazareth, Peter. 1976. The Social Responsibility of the East African Writer. The Iowa Review 7 (2): 249–263. Oldfield, Elizabeth F. 2010. Transgressing Boundaries: Gender Identity Culture and Other in Postcolonial Women’s Narratives in Africa. PhD Diss. University of Derby. Schmidt, Nancy J. 1976. The Writer as Teacher: A Comparison of the African Adventure Stories of GA Henty, Rene Guillot, and Barbara Kimenye. African Studies Review 19 (2): 69–80. Seirlis, Julia Katherine. 2011. Laughing All the Way to Freedom?: Contemporary Stand-up Comedy and Democracy in South Africa. Humor 24 (4): 513–530. Triezenberg, Katrina E. 2008. Humor in Literature. In The Primer of Humor Research, ed. Victor Raskin and Willibald Ruch, 523–542. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wales, Katie. 2014. A Dictionary of Stylistics. Routledge. Webb, Ronald G. 1981. Political Uses of Humor. ETC: A Review of General Semantics 38 (1): 35–50.

6 Ridicule and Scorn in David Sedaris’s “Standing By”: The Responsibility of Humour Lynn Blin

Introduction American writer and humorist David Sedaris stands apart from other writers in that he is as equally well known as a nonfiction essay writer, with writings based on his own life, as he is for bringing these stories before live audiences. Additionally, many of his admirers encounter him first, not on the page, but through his voice on the radio, or on stage. Sedaris was first discovered in 1992, when he recorded his diaries on the American public radio station, NPR. The first recording, his Santa Land Diaries, recounts his stint as Crumpet the elf at Macy’s department store. This recording not only paved Sedaris’s way to the fame that he still basks in, it also became a Christmas tradition on NPR and is re-recorded each year during the holiday season (Treisman et al. 2022). In many ways, Sedaris’s work could be classified as memoir, but some feel that the exaggeration needed to create laughter is so predominant in

L. Blin (*) Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_6

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his works, that it is difficult to include it in this literary genre. For example, in 2007, Alex Heard, writing in The New Republic, chastises Sedaris for classifying his work as nonfiction. Heard proceeded on a quest to double check the extent of Sedaris’s exaggeration, and while fully recognizing his comic talent, concludes: “I do think Sedaris exaggerates too much for a writer using the nonfiction label” (Heard 2007). Sedaris’s many awards (Humorist of the Year—Time magazine, 2001; two Grammy Award nominations for the Best Spoken Word Album in 2005; the Terry Southern Prize for Humor, the Thurber Prize for Humor, the Jonathon Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor) have more than validated the talent of both his comic pen and comic voice. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters which, the previous year, had awarded him the Medal for Spoken Language in Letters. He is the only author who can play to a packed house in Carnegie Hall. As his agent, Steven Barclay remarks: “There are lots of authors who sell lots of tickets, but someone who can regularly hold 2,000 to 3,000-seat theatres—it’s unheard of ” (St. John 2004). This latter fact underscores to what extent Sedaris is master of incorporating humour universals (Guidi 2017, 17–33) into his essays. Since even the readers who are introduced to him in another language find him funny, we can surmise that he has managed to clear the cultural hurdles that make humour across borders a challenge. Heard’s critique, as well as those from others who do not appreciate Sedaris using his mother’s alcoholism, his sister’s suicide, and every aspect of his father’s difficult personality as material for many of his essays, are equally interesting for scholars working on the ethics of laughter–what Alexandra Bowman, in her review of Sedaris’s show at the Kennedy Centre in October 2022, terms “the responsibility of comedy.” She found too many anecdotes “blind to social contexts and too many that framed women or people of color as the individuals we’re supposed to laugh at” (Bowman 2022). But, if such criticism can indeed be waged, it is valid only if Sedaris’s texts are taken at face value. It is upon examining “Standing By” as a literary text that another level of narrative is revealed. Beneath what Bowman considers to be Sedaris’s seemingly insensitive “comedic straight man voice,” resonates another voice which expresses what the French

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philosopher Cynthia Fleury, in her interview with Juliette Cerf (2015)  terms “individuation,” which is not to be confused with individualism: The subject as individualist is a fervent admirer of him/herself—self-­ centered, withdrawn, intoxicated with self; while the individuated subject poses a regard on the exterior world, establishes and ensures a basis, a foundation which enables him/her to engage in a relationship with the surrounding world. (Fleury 2015) (translation mine)

We will first examine “Standing By” as a humorous text, taking as a starting point Yus’s (2003) claim about the humour of jokes: If the joke ends up being funny, this effect will not arise because of its context-free inherent humorous quality. Rather, the responsibility for the enjoyment of humor is the addressee’s and requires a context-bound interaction between particular cognitive environments and the skilled humorist who manages to predict relevance-seeking cognitive operations in the addressee’s mind. (Yus 2003, 1335)

Humorous Intent Though, as Yus states, humour as such cannot take place without the partaking of the addressee, certain characteristics will be present to help identify the text as such. We must have criteria to help determine how the pragmatic processing of humour differs to non-humorous communication as defined by Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principles for conversation. On the one hand, we have the four maxims: (1) Quality (2) Relevance (3) Quantity and (4) Manner, and on the other we have what Brock has termed the Neo-Gricean Humour Maxim; “regard the ongoing communication as funny” (Brock 2009, 182). Brock refers to the collective sender, which is “institution based.” Though Brock is writing about TV comedies, the same can be said for the humorous text, where the publishing institution includes the publisher, the editor, the blurbs on the cover (when it is a book), and the cover itself. In “Standing By,” Sedaris’s name

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under the title is a first hint at this invitation to laugh. The editor’s decision to add the sub-title, “Fear, loathing and flying,” will for many American readers, suggest Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 gonzo journalism novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. (Thompson 2005) Since Hunter S. Thompson’s novel is also comic writing, this could be interpreted as intertextuality. The editor has also included a cartoon drawing of an anthropomorphic fighter plane baring its angry teeth as it soars amongst the clouds. Of course, this announced intention will not necessarily result in unanimous mirth and can very well end up generating failed humour. The subjective component involved in what we find humorous is so intricately linked to culture, age, personal history and habit, that unanimity, though aimed for, is never to be expected. For Bowman, quoted above, Sedaris’s political incorrectness in the show she saw at the Kennedy Centre is a clear indication of how generations react differently to humour. Sedaris, born in 1956, and Bowman, a Masters student at Georgetown University, have approaches to humour based on their age. We do not laugh at the same things or in the same way today as in years gone by. We do not laugh at the same things as our children or our parents. To better grasp what can be considered the superlative and universal feature of “Standing By,” I propose to examine how the essay corresponds to the precepts of the main theories on humour. I will then demonstrate how “Standing By” functions as a cohesive text and conclude with some concrete examples on how Sedaris supreme mastery of syntax enables him to deftly weave together conversational oral strategies into his intricately written text. We will discover how, from the title down to the very last words, Sedaris has been able to construct a text that evolves from the basic “Air travel is a headache” script to a much darker one—“the end of the American dream” script—to the even bleaker one of “civil war America,” where the motto could be “Which way I fly is Hell, Myself am Hell” (Milton 1962 [1667]). Despite the lewd, sometimes vulgar and scatological aspects, “Standing By” remains, 13 years after its first publication, not only just as funny but sadly prophetic of Trump’s America to become, an America being emptied of its dream, where the culprits are not necessarily those that The New Yorker readers expect to find.

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Sedaris’s first-person narrator in “Standing By” comes across as a sort of Everyman expressing the annoyance and entitlement many of us feel when we are put on standby. It is this repetitive expression of self-­ entitlement that provides the bulk of his humour. Throughout the essay, Sedaris introduces us to token annoyers which include the incompetent airline crew, the badly dressed and obviously working class “red neck” fellow passengers, and, of course, possible Republican voters. Sedaris’s trip took place in 2009, shortly after Barack Obama was elected President after eight years of the G.W. Bush presidency. This is significant for two reasons. Sedaris is not primarily a political satirist, but “Standing By” has a definite political bent to it that will be developed throughout the text. Because humour needs a target—the butt of the joke—–this will be clearly established from the start. The incompetence of the airline personnel and the motley group of travellers are firmly established as the target, THEM.  These fellow passengers become the token “Hell is others” characters, while the various representatives of the airline industry are the uncaring, unconcerned, incompetent tormenters of the above. We can assume that this situation will resonate with New Yorker readers. According to a Pew report, 77% of the New Yorker readers hold left of centre political views while 52% hold consistently liberal views (Wikipedia 2022). As David Sedaris is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, and his comic voice a recurring one, we can also assume that the majority of them will join him to become what Carrell has termed the community of laughers—the joyous band that makes up the laughing US pitted against THEM (Carrell 1997, 11). Throughout the essay, Sedaris shares with us his uncensored reflections on the motley group of fellow travellers, to ultimately reveal to us as he records their reflections, two very similar versions of entitlement. More interestingly, Sedaris himself evolves in the essay to be not only the spokesperson for what has gone wrong with America, but also an integral part of what has gone wrong.

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“ Standing by”: Superiority, Relief, Play-Mode, and Incongruity Theories of Humour Heaping ridicule and scorn on those we target as our inferiors and finding pleasure in it has been around since Aristophanes. The theorization of this pleasure was later developed by Thomas Hobbes into what has become the Superiority Theory of Humour. Laughter was described as “those grimaces” resulting from a feeling of “sudden glory” and a tactic used by those with little power (Hobbes 1651, 27). In “Standing By,” Sedaris, having no power to wield on the predicament, resorts to mockery and finds “sudden glory.” We, the readers, in vicariously reliving similar situations, also find the sudden glory and the mirth and exaltation that are products of humour. The pleasure found in the vulgarity of the essay can be explained by Freud’s Comic Relief theory corresponding to the human need to momentarily evade the constraining demands that society places on us (Freud 1905). The Play-Mode Theory is explained by Morreall, who maintains that laughter has nothing to do with emotions like hatred and fear, which are instigators of action, where we either “fight or take flight.” Because amusement is idle, as it does not originate in beliefs that cause us to act, we experience a cognitive shift and switch from a serious to an unserious perspective—a “play-mode,” which allows us to regard things as unthreatening (Morreall 2009, 36–37; 50–54). But, as Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of the New Yorker from 1997–2017, explains: “all humor contains a little frisson of danger— something that might happen wrong. And yet we like it when there’s protection. That’s what a zoo is.” In his TED talk, Mankoff also gives the analogy of a roller coaster. We like the danger, but we need the security that we’re not going to fall off (Mankoff 2013; https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=FKxaL8Iau8Q). The Incongruity Theory, which is at the basis of most humour and nearly all jokes, found its roots in James Beattie’s essay on laughter in 1776. Beattie wrote: Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, united in one complete object or

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assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar matter in which the mind takes hold of them. (Beattie 1776, 601)

Victor Raskin’s Script-based Semantic-based Theory of Humour (henceforth SSTH) (Raskin 1984) is an elaboration of Beattie and has been used to allow a semantic analysis of jokes. Raskin explained that jokes were made up of two scripts having two possible interpretations. One of these interpretations is the more salient of the two and is the one first perceived by the hearer. When the other interpretation is pushed forward in the punchline bringing a resolution to the problem, it results in sudden surprise and laughter. For example, if I say to you army knife, an image immediately comes to mind. But then I show you this (Fig. 6.1). The multi-tooled Swiss Army knife script which incorporates subscripts as usefulness and adaptability, is replaced by the multi-corkscrewed

Fig. 6.1  French Army Knife  (Michael Crawford 2010, https://www.cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-­gki9t8g2p/images/stencil/1280/products/5038/16551/NYC19214044. 1582214120.jpg?c=é

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knife thus incorporating scripts concerning French culture and their love of wine, and an inference of alcoholism. To find this funny, a knowledge of the importance of wine to French culture is necessary. You must be able to appreciate the hyperbole which caricatures the French as inveterate alcoholics. In short, you must accept what Grice termed non bona fide communication –which violates the Cooperative  Principle. You might not find this drawing funny if alcoholism has connotations of emotional suffering. In all cases, in order to find pleasure in humour, you must like being taken by surprise. Not only must you like being taken by surprise, but must also be a seeker of surprise. If in jokes, the incongruity is resolved in the punch line, for longer texts, such as “Standing By,” where humour is spread out throughout, another theory is needed, and this was provided by Attardo’s General Theory of Verbal Humour (henceforth GTVH), where incongruity and resolution of this incongruity was still the main instigator of laughter, but it needed further expansion to deal with referential humour. The basic characteristic and example of verbal humor is the pun: So, going back to the distinction between referential and verbal humor, the necessary and sufficient condition of a text to be humorous is the presence of a script opposition and overlap. The necessary conditions for a text to be a pun are: a) the presence of a script opposition and overlap, and b) the reference to a string of sounds, in the sense discussed above. (Attardo 2020, 179)

The humour in “Standing By” is basically referential, but two puns, one at the very beginning and one at the end, will be at the very heart of a clue to the direction in which the basic script “Airport-is-headache-hellis-­others” will evolve. The first one occurs in the title “Standing by,” which the reader first identifies as a simple verbal transformation of the noun phrase “standby,” for example, to be put on standby. As my analysis will demonstrate, the text will evolve from the basic airport-departure-holiday-leisure script to the airport-experience-as-a-battlefield script, and will be re-interpreted as a phrasal verb with its meaning “be prepared for action.” The second pun comes at the very end of the text, in answer to Sedaris’s question to a

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steward regarding how they get back at belligerent passengers. Another stewardess had already told him that they silently fart as they go up and down the aisles. The steward tells him to listen closely at the end of a flight. The essay ends with the flight crew coming to pick up any garbage saying: “Your trash. You’re trash. Your family’s trash.”

Cohesion in a Humorous Text Attardo considers the fact that long texts like essays and fiction would not have punchlines. He orders the humorous incidents into what he terms jab lines. A jab line designates a humorous incident that is in the text but not at the end. Lines which are related are called strands (generally three or more). In a longer text there may be groups of three or more strands, and these are called stacks. When regularities occur in a text they can further be ordered into combs (a series of jab lines), and whole groups of lines which occur at a considerable distance from one another are called a bridge (Attardo 2001, 30). I have here transcribed the text in Fig. 6.2 in a colour scheme to show how the funniness is indeed bridged. The yellow combs pertain to the mockery and scorn that Sedaris heaps upon his fellow voyagers and is present throughout the text but evolve into other scripts. This can be summed up as the “airport–on standby-as-­ headache-hell is others” script. The navy-blue strands correspond to obscenity or scatology. I did not include in this section the swear words of the two passengers Sedaris finds himself trapped in line with because they are comparatively tame to Sedaris’s nearly obsessive use of the F-word and other sexual allusions that punctuate his reflections. As the two passengers will evolve to be seen as victims of the waning American dream, their interventions are underlined in blue. Sedaris evolves in this essay from someone who considers himself “just being petty and judgmental” (2010, 34) to someone darker. Someone who gripes about a traveller referred to as “Freaky Mothafocka” because of the inscription on his t-shirt, and his family being ahead of him in line: “Where do they need to go, anyway? I asked myself. Wherever it is, would it have killed them to drive?” (Sedaris, 34). Sedaris shows himself to be

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It was one of those headaches that befall every airline passenger. A flight is delayed because of thunderstorms or backed-up traffic—or maybe it’s cancelled altogether. Maybe you board two hours late, or maybe you board on time, and spend the next two hours sitting on the runway. When it happens to you, it’s a national tragedy—why aren’t the papers reporting this, you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is. “They told us we’d leave at three instead of two-thirty, so I went to get a frosted-pecan wrap, and when I came back they changed the time to four, on account of the plane we’d be riding on hadn’t left Pittsburgh yet. Then I was, like, ‘Why didn’t you tell us that an hour ago?’ and they were, like, ‘Ma’am, just stand away from the counter, please.’ ” Because I’m in the air so often, I hear this sort of thing a lot. In line for a coffee. In line for a newspaper or a gunpowder test on the handle of my public-radio tote bag: everywhere I go, someone in an eight-dollar T-shirt is whipping out a cell phone and delivering the fine print of his or her delay. One can’t help but listen in, but then my focus shifts and I find myself staring. I should be used to the way Americans dress when travelling, yet still it manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge, saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!”On Halloween, when I see the ticket agents dressed as hags and mummies, I no longer think, Nice costume, but, Now we have to tag our own luggage?I mean that I mistake them for us.The scariness, of course, cuts both ways. I was on a plane in the spring of 2003 when the flight attendant asked us to pray for our troops in Iraq. It was a prickly time, but, brand-new war or no brand-new war, you don’t ever want to hear the word “pray” from a flight attendant.You don’t want to hear the phrase “I’ll be right back,” either. That’s code for “Go fuck yourself,” according to a woman who used to fly for Northwest and taught me several terms specific to her profession. “You know how a plastic bottle of water will get all crinkly during a flight?” she asked. “Well, it happens to people, too, to our insides. That’s why we get all gassy. “All right,” I said. “So what me and the other gals would sometimes do is fart while we walked up and down the aisle. No one could hear it on account of the engine noise, but, anyway, that’s what we called ‘crop dusting.’ “ When I asked another flight attendant, this one male, how he dealt with a plane full of belligerent passengers, he said, “Oh, we have our ways. The next time you’re flying and it comes time to land, listen closely as we make our final pass down the aisle. “In the summer of 2009, I was trying to get from North Dakota to Oregon. There were thunderstorms in Colorado, so we were two hours late leaving Fargo. This caused me to miss my connecting flight, and upon my arrival in Denver I was directed to the customer-service line. It was a long one—thirty, maybe thirty-five people, all of them cranky and exhausted. In front of me stood a woman in her mid-seventies, accompanying two beautifully dressed children, a boy and a girl. “The airlines complain that nobody’s travelling, and then you arrive to find your flight’s been oversold!” the woman griped. “I’m trying to get me and my grandkids to San Francisco, and now they’re telling us there’s nothing until tomorrow afternoon. “At this, her cell phone rang. The woman raised it to her ear and a great many silver bracelets clattered down her arm. “Frank? Is that you? What did you find out? “The person on the other end fed her information, and as she struggled to open her pocketbook I held out my pad and pen. “A nice young man just gave me something to write with, so go ahead,” the woman said. “I’m ready.” Then she said, “What? Well, I could have told you that.” She handed me back my pad and pen, and, rolling her eyes, whispered, “Thanks anyway.” After hanging up, she turned to the kids. “Your old grandmother is so sorry for putting you through this. But she’s going to make it up to you, she swears. “They were like children from a catalogue. The little girl’s skirt was a red-and-white check, and matched the ribbon that banded her straw hat. Her brother was wearing a shirt and tie. It was a clip-on, but, still, it made him and his sister the best-dressed people in line, much better than the family ten or so places ahead of them. That group consisted of a couple in their mid-fifties and three teen-agers, two of whom were obviously brothers. The third teen-ager, a girl, was holding a very young baby. I suppose it could have been a loaner, but the way she engaged with it—the obvious pride and pleasure she was radiating—led me to believe that the child was hers. Its father, I guessed, was the kid standing next to her, the taller and more visually dynamic of the brothers. The young man’s hair was almost orange, and drooped from his head in thin, lank braids. At the end of each one, just above the rubber band, was a colored bead the size of a marble. Stevie Wonder wore his hair like that in the late seventies, but he’s black. And blind. Then, too, Stevie Wonder didn’t have acne on his neck, and wear baggy denim shorts that fell midway between his knees and his ankles. Topping it off was the kid’s T-shirt. I couldn’t see the front of it, but printed in large letters across the back were the words “Freaky Mothafocka.”I didn’t know where to start with that one. Let’s see, I’m flying on a plane with my parents and my infant son, so should I wear the T-shirt that says “Orgasm Donor,” “I’m No Gynecologist but I’m Willing to Take a Look,” or, no, seeing as I’ll have the beaded cornrows, I think I should go with “Freaky Mothafocka.”As the kid reached over and took the baby from the teen-age girl, the woman in front of me winced. “Typical,” she groaned. “I beg your pardon.”She gestured toward the Freaky Mothafocka. “The only ones having babies are the ones who shouldn’t be having them.” Her gaze shifted to the adults. “And look at the stupid grandparents, proud as punch. “It was one of those situations I often find myself in while travelling. Something’s said by a stranger I’ve been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, “Listen. I’m with you on most of this, but before we continue I need to know whom you voted for in the last election. “If the grandmother’s criticism was coming from the same place as mine, if she was just being petty and judgmental, we could go on all day, perhaps even form a friendship. If, on the other hand, it was tied to a conservative agenda, I was going to have to switch tracks, and side with the Freaky Mothafocka, who was, after all, just a kid. He may have looked like a Dr. Seuss character, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t love his baby—a baby, I told myself, who just might grow up to be a Supreme Court Justice, or the President of the United States. Or, at least, I don’t know, someone with a job. Of course, you can’t just ask people whom they voted for. Sometimes you can tell by looking, but the grandmother with the many bracelets could have gone either way. In the end, I decided to walk the center line. What gets me is that “they couldn’t even spell ‘motherfucker’ right,” I whispered. “I mean, what kind of example is that setting for our young people?”After that, she didn’t want to talk anymore, not even when the line advanced, and Mothafocka and company moved to one of the counter positions. Including the baby, there were six in their party, so I knew it was going to take forever. Where do they need to go, anyway? I asked myself. Wherever it is, would it have killed them to drive? Fly enough, and you learn to go brain-dead when you have to. It’s sort of like time travel. One minute you’re bending to unlace your shoes, and the next thing you know you’re paying fourteen dollars for a fruit cup, wondering, How did I get here? No sooner had I alienated the grandmother in Denver than I was trapped by the man behind me, who caught my eye and, without invitation, proceeded to complain. He had been passed over for a standby seat earlier that morning and was not happy about it. “The gal at the gate said she’d call my name when it came time to board, but, hell, she didn’t call me.”I tried to look sympathetic. “I should have taken her name,” the man continued. “I should have reported her. Hell, I should have punched her is what I should have done! “I hear you,” I said. Directly behind him was a bald guy with a silver mustache, one of those elaborate jobs which wanders awhile before eventually morphing into sideburns. The thing was as curved and bushy as a squirrel’s tail, and the man shook crumbs from it as the fellow who’d lost his standby seat turned to engage him. “Goddam airline. It’s no wonder they’re all going down the toilet. “None of them want to work, that’s the problem,” the bald man with the mustache said. “All any of them care about is their next goddam coffee break.” He looked at the counter agents with disdain, and then turned his eye on the Freaky Mothafocka. “And that one must be heading back to the circus.”“Pathetic,” the man behind me said. He himself was wearing pleated khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt. A baseball cap hung from his waistband, and his sneakers, which were white, appeared to be brand new. Like a lot of men you see these days, he looked like a boy, suddenly, shockingly, set into an adult body. “We got a kid looks like him back in the town I come from, and every time I see him I just thank God he isn’t mine. “As the two started in on rap music and baggy trousers, I zoned out, and thought about my last layover in Denver. I was on the people mover, jogging toward my connection at the end of Concourse C, when the voice over the P.A. system asked Adolf Hitler to pick up a white courtesy phone. Did I hear that correctly? I remember thinking. It’s hard to imagine anyone calling their son Adolf Hitler, so the person must have changed it from something less provocative, a category that includes pretty much everything. Weirder still was hearing the name in the same sentence as the word “courtesy.” I imagined a man picking up the receiver, his voice made soft by surprise, and the possibility of bad news. “Yes, hello, this is Adolf Hitler. “Thinking of it made me laugh, and that brought me back to the present, and the fellow behind me in the khaki shorts. “Isn’t it amazing how quickly one man can completely screw up a country,” he was saying. “You got that right,” Mr. Mustache agreed. “It’s a goddam mess is what it is.”I assumed they were talking about George Bush but gradually realized it was Barack Obama, who had, at that point, been in office for less than six months.The man with the mustache mentioned a G.M. dealership in his home town. “They were doing fine, but now the federal government’s telling them they have to close. Like this is Russia or something, a Communist country! “The man in the khaki shorts joined in, and I wished I’d paid closer attention to the auto-bailout stuff. It had been on the radio and in all the papers, but because I don’t drive, and I always thought that car dealerships were ugly, I’d either turned the page or let my mind wander, which was unfortunate, as I’d have loved to have turned around and given those two what for. Then again, even if I were informed, what’s the likelihood of changing anyone’s opinion, especially a couple of strangers’? If my own little mind is nailed shut, why wouldn’t theirs be? “We’ve got to take our country back,” the man with the mustache said. “That’s the long and short of it, and if votes won’t do the trick then maybe we need to use force. “What struck me with him, and with many of the conservatives I’d heard since the election, was his overblown, almost egocentric take on political outrage, his certainty that no one else had quite experienced it before. What, then, had I felt during the Bush-Cheney years? Was that somehow secondary? “Don’t tell me I don’t know how to hate,” I wanted to say. Then I stopped and asked myself, Do you really want that to be your message? Think you can out-hate me, asshole? I was fucking hating people before you were even born! We’re forever blaming the airline industry for turning us into monsters: it’s the fault of the ticket agents, the baggage handlers, the slowpokes at the newsstands and the fast-food restaurants. But what if this is who we truly are, and the airport’s just a forum that allows us to be our real selves, not just hateful but gloriously so? Would Adolf Hitler please meet his party at Baggage Claim 4. Repeat. Adolf Hitler can meet his party at Baggage Claim. . It’s a depressing thought, and one that proved hard to shake. It was with me when I boarded my flight to Portland and it was still on my mind several hours later, when we were told to put our tray tables away and prepare for landing. Then the flight attendants, garbage bags in hand, glided down the aisle, looking each one of us square in the face and whispering, without discrimination, “Your trash. You’re trash. Your family’s trash.” ♦

Fig. 6.2  Jab lines, bridges, strands, combs: yellow: mockery and scorn; navy blue: obscenity; blue: the end of the American Dream; fuchsia: war; white: serious relief

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someone whom we can infer to be regretful of the days of yore, when air travel was restricted to the economically fortunate. He will later emerge as someone who is much more problematic and to become himself a token of a “woke America” who has little conscience of the plight of the working class. This theme is pursued during his encounter with two fellow passengers who start to complain about how Obama was “screwing up the country” and mention a GM plant that is closing down: They were doing fine, but now the federal government’s telling them they have to close. Like this is Russia or something, a Communist country!” The man in the khaki shorts joined in, and I wished I’d paid closer attention to the auto-bailout stuff. It had been on the radio and in all the papers, but because I don’t drive, and I always thought that car dealerships were ugly, I’d either turned the page or let my mind wander, which was unfortunate, as I’d have loved to have turned around and given those two what for. Then again, even if I were informed, what’s the likelihood of changing anyone’s opinion, especially a couple of strangers‘? If my own little mind is nailed shut, why wouldn’t theirs be? “We’ve got to take our country back,” the man with the mustache said. “That’s the long and short of it, and if votes won’t do the trick then maybe we need to use force”(35)

The disappearance of the middle class was given as a reason for the election of Trump which would take place eight years later. Sedaris regrets not paying attention, not because he has any empathy with those who will be without a job, but because he cannot “turn around and give […] those two what for.” This is the “airport-end of American dream” script and is illustrated in bright blue. This further evolves into the “airport-battleground-civil war script.” This war script appears in fuchsia on the diagram. We note that this is a substantial leap from the basic script of “airport-holiday escape-leisure-­ pleasure” script. Note also that for “Standing By” to stand out as a humorous text, the script of “Airport-headache-hell is others” script would not be sufficient to instigate enough surprise necessary to incite laughter. It could almost be taken as the basic script for many travellers because of the frequency of delayed flights, the increased inconvenience of security checks, the decreased leg room in economy class, and the coagulated food served in plastic containers that is served as culinary fare.

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The white spaces (except for that at the bottom of the chart) correspond to what Attardo has dubbed serious relief portions of the text: By serious relief (obviously calqued on “comic relief ”) I mean any stretch of text in an otherwise line-rich context that contains few or no jab lines. Segments of serious relief are often used for “morals” or to develop “depth” in the characters of the show. (Attardo 2001, 89)

The vast section of serious relief is devoted to Sedaris’s encounter with an elegant grandmother. This encounter serves two purposes in the text. Other than the obvious “judging a book by its cover” inference (e.g., the woman is dressed not like the motley troop who make up Sedaris’s other encounters but in elegant attire), it prepares us for Sedaris’s use of meta-­ humour, that is humour about humour, which gives way to failed humour. What emerges in this first analysis is a tightly coherent text. We will now examine how exactly these different scripts come together as an invitation to laughter. In their article on “Jokes as text type” Attardo and Chabanne explain how coherence in jokes leads to content that underlies the surface of the text: Cohesion is given to the text by grammatical dependencies that mutually connect the surface components (for example syntax); coherence is the configuration of cognitive content that underlies the surface text (that is its meaning). The processing of the joke, that ultimately finds a coherence in an otherwise apparently incoherent surface data (the text) is a good example of hypotheses put forward by a hearer to interpret a text on the principle of assumed coherence. The joke is a typical example of the distance between the surface structure and the inferential processing necessary to the understanding of the text. (Attardo and Chabanne 1992, 173)

As I will try to demonstrate below, when this is adapted to a longer text, the coherence of the surface text will be re-interpreted, not to simply another opposing script but to more than one, leading to a deeper interpretation than the surface text may on the first encounter suggest. We will now examine how the cohesive dimension of the text leads to this coherence and laughter.

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Knowledge Resources and Laughter Attardo (2001) developed six Knowledge Resources (henceforth KR) which are meant to account for funniness: (1) script opposition, which I have modified in “Standing By” to “script evolution”; (2) logical mechanism is how the incongruity is resolved. In “Standing By” I have opted for “ongoing resolution” leading to the evolving of the initial Hell is others—to “Where I fly is Hell. Myself am Hell”; (3) situation: being put on standby; (4) target: Incompetent airline crew, fellow passengers ultimately to become the narrator himself and presumably the readers along with him; (5) narrative strategy: anecdotal, including puns, lexemes, retorts, and, putdowns—all categories of verbal humour (Dynel 2009, 1286–1296); (6) language: from informal, colloquial all the way to vulgar skillfully woven into complex syntax. The difficulty with these knowledge resources is that, except for script opposition, target, and specific narrative strategies for humour, the other three could be adapted to serious texts as well. It is for this reason that Canestrari (2010) added a seventh KR to these six existing KRs. She terms it the Meta-Knowledge Resource (henceforth Meta KR): “the signals that refer to the speaker’s intention of being humorous and to the hearer’s recognition of such intention” (Canestrari 2010: 330; see also Canestrari 2010: 339, 341, 343). And Tsakona (2020) added an eighth, called Context (henceforth COKR), which accounts for the socio-cultural context in which the text is received, and how the presuppositions and interpretations of socio-­ cultural stereotypes of humour and their ideological assumptions all influence how, why, when and to whom the funniness will be received.

 onversational Strategies and Written C Strategies: Involvement and Integration of the Reader We have looked at the communal institutional sender, and Sedaris’s construction of a cohesive humorous text, with scripts being picked up but emerging as something new each time. Now we must look at what makes

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this funny. To do this we will examine how Sedaris blends adaptations of conversational strategies into his written text to keep the reader with him. One of the main conversational aspects of the text is the profusion of utterances which are either direct quotes or reflections in Sedaris’s mind that are without inverted commas but would be if said aloud. As the essay progresses, these thoughts are ironically echoed in the direct quotes of the fellow passengers Sedaris has been disparaging throughout. Of the 2437 words in “Standing By,” 796 words (e.g., 39% of the text) are devoted to the spoken word. The use of colloquial language, swear words, anecdotes, puns, idiomatic expressions, and thus sets up a register. The importance of what I have termed Sedaris’s comic ear–that is, his innate sense of how to organize syntax for the necessary rhythm, pace, intonation scheme, and general prosody is what replaces the stand-up comedian’s facial expressions, body movement, pauses, use of smiles and laughter. This ear for spoken syntax is present from the opening paragraphs of the text: It was one of those headaches that befall every airline passenger. A flight is delayed because of thunderstorms or backed-up traffic—or maybe it’s cancelled altogether. Maybe you board two hours late, or maybe you board on time, and spend the next two hours sitting on the runway. When it happens to you, it’s a national tragedy—why aren’t the papers reporting this, you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is. “They told us we’d leave at three instead of two-thirty, so I went to get a frosted-pecan wrap, and when I came back they changed the time to four, on account of the plane we’d be riding on hadn’t left Pittsburgh yet. Then I was, like, “Why didn’t you tell us that an hour ago?” and they were, like, “Ma’am, just stand away from the counter, please.” Because I’m in the air so often, I hear this sort of thing a lot. In line for a coffee. In line for a newspaper or a gunpowder test on the handle of my public-radio tote bag: everywhere I go, someone in an eight-dollar T-shirt is whipping out a cell phone and delivering the fine print of his or her delay. One can’t help but listen in, but then my focus shifts and I find myself staring. I should be used to the way Americans dress when travelling, yet still it manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge, saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!” On Halloween, when I see the ticket

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agents dressed as hags and mummies, I no longer think, Nice costume, but, Now we have to tag our own luggage? I mean that I mistake them for us. (Italics them and us in the original) The scariness, of course, cuts both ways. I was on a plane in the spring of 2003 when the flight attendant asked us to pray for our troops in Iraq. It was a prickly time, but, brand-new war or no brand-new war, you don’t ever want to hear the word “pray” from a flight attendant. You don’t want to hear the phrase “I’ll be right back,” either. That’s code for “Go fuck yourself,” according to a woman who used to fly for Northwest and taught me several terms specific to her profession. (Sedaris 2010, 33)

I have used various formats, such as bolding, italics, and underlining, to illustrate how registers, and stylistic features combine in this opening. The interesting aspect of this opening passage is that the two Americas are already etched in—the well-dressed educated Sedaris, and the others represented by “someone in an eight-dollar T-shirt,” and the war theme via the inferred reference to the American invasion of Iraq after 9/11. The “end of the American dream script” comes further down in the essay, following the long serious relief passage. After the serious relief section of the text Sedaris’s disparaging remarks will be echoed by the three passengers. I have underlined what Tannen has termed oral strategies that can be found in written texts. Tannen incorporated Ochs’s (1979) and Chafe’s (1982) findings concerning the difference between strategies used in unplanned spontaneous conversation and expository prose to show how a combination of the two set up a violation of expectation which creates an effect of a greater imageability sense of richness of experience (Tannen 1982, 12–14). Tannen points out that using strategies that belong to oral narrative is crucial to storytelling because success depends on the participation of the interlocutor who will constantly be inferring meaning. In a joke, resolution of the incongruity has to be instantaneous to create mirth; in a story, the inference for meaning, as we saw above will be ongoing. As Tannen (1982, 1) specifies, while written strategies, because of the slowness of the reading process, imply the integration of the reader (Chafe 1982), verbal strategies imply the involvement of the reader:

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Integration (and its opposite, FRAGMENTATION) is a surface feature of linguistic structure. Involvement (and its opposite, DETACHMENT) is a deeper dimension, reflecting what Goffman 1979 has described in face-to-­ face interaction as FOOTING, i.e. The speaker’s stance toward the audience (and I would add, toward the material or content). (Tannen 1982, 2)

Here are the seven oral strategies that can be found in literary texts: 1. Morphosyntactic structures learned early in life: This implies well-formed sentences constructed with the basic Subject Verb Object structure. To the contrary, in the Sedaris opening above we discover sentences that are stylistically rich in image and in information packaging, which characterize literary texts: Inversion in “Only when it happens to you do you …” enabling the end focus on “what a dull story it is; the more formal pronoun “One” is preferred to the more informal “you” in the syntactically rich “One can’t help but listen.” Informal speech can thus be complex, colourful, and imaginative. This is one way in which the syntax itself gives us access to the theme of “civil war”—the educated, world-is-at-my-doorstep” Sedaris,” for example, the collective US making up the laughers, and the THEM—making up the target. Note as well the exophoric “I take them for us,” which, as we have seen, encapsulates the final moral of this story. 2. Reliance on immediate context to express relationships between propositions: In the imagined conversation above, the coordination of “I was like why … and she was like “Ma’am just step away …,” the announced shared context of “one of those headaches that befall …,” presupposes the airline crew ignoring you. The reliance on this immediate context explains the coordination of an interrogative structure with the unlike syntactic structure of a polite command. The basic rules of grammar in regarding coordinated structures is that you coordinate like or similar syntactic structures. 3. Preference for deictic modifiers: There are, in fact very few deictic modifiers in the text, but there are two in the opening paragraph. “It was one of those headaches that befall every airline passenger” and “I hear this sort of thing.” In using the deictic “those” to modify the metaphorical “headache” being put on standby represents, Sedaris expects

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the reader to interpret it as a metaphor that is familiar to us as travellers. It establishes a complicity, and the griping tone that is to be the predominant one in the text. 4. A preponderance of repair mechanisms: Repair mechanisms are discursive devices which the utterer uses to correct him/herself, either to clarify or to shift the focus away from themselves, to another, or vice versa, from another to themselves. They are also used to tone down or, alternatively, “to give more force to an utterance” (Jefferson 1974; Williams 1984; Schegloff et al. 1977; Schegloff 1979). In spontaneous conversation, this gives way to broken syntax, marked by a pause. But hedges can also be considered as a form of repair as they pertain to the commitment and/or the certainty the utterer has regarding their utterance (Williams 1984, 71–72). In “Standing By,” there are no hesitations marked by “errrr” or “umm,” or a “you know” But we do have utterances repaired by stance adverbials, the already mentioned above is one example. As Biber et al. explain “like,” used as a stance adverbial, suggests that the proposition is imprecise. It expresses the attitude of the speaker or writers and is more common in conversation (Biber et al. 2002, 384). “Then I was, like, ‘Why didn’t you tell us that an hour ago?’ and they were, like, ‘Ma’am, just stand away from the counter, please.’” 5. Avoidance of relative clauses: In “Standing By, “out of 153 sentences, there are only 20  relative clauses,  10  of which are introduced by “who", or "whom” 3 introduced by “which,” 4 introduced by “that,” and 3 introduced by ø. Relative clauses make up only 13.7% of the text. By comparison a sampling of the same number of words in a scholarly article written by Dynel  (2013), relative clauses make up 48% of the 68 sentences, 81% of which were introduced by the more formal “which,” the other 19% by who or whose. There were none introduced by “that,” and none introduced by ø. I have omitted from this survey all cases of postmodification by non-finite participial  clauses  or prepositional phrases,  because, as Biber points out, though the former can be paraphrased by a relative clause, they always have a subject gap position and the latter are widely preferred to the relative clause structure (Biber 2002, 291–292, 295). 

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6. Use of parallelism—repetition of phonemes (Sacks and Shegloff’s “sound touch-offs”): Parallel structures are associated with repetition in speaking brought on partially by the reduced planning time in spontaneous conversation. In the opening passage, there are these parallel structures: (a) Maybe you board two hours late, or maybe you board on time, (b) In line for a coffee. In line for a newspaper or a gunpowder test on the handle of my public-radio tote bag. (c) … you don’t ever want to hear the word “pray” from a flight attendant. You don’t want to hear the phrase “I’ll be right back,” either. Tannen comments: But what seems most significant is that syntactic parallelism establishes a mesmerizing rhythm which sweeps the hearer along; hence it is perfectly geared to knowing through involvement […] which underlies both oral performance and conversation. (Tannen 1982, 7) 7. Tendency to begin narrative in past tense and switch to present: Sedaris does indeed begin the narrative in the past “It was one of those headaches,” and continues in the present, “that befall every traveler.” This sets the story in motion. However, the written strategy of using the past tense is preferred for the rest of the essay. These oral strategies do indeed enable the involvement of the reader, but I would also add the choice of the second person pronoun “you” as an oral strategy. Though it does have a generalizing effect, Kacandes (1993, 139) contends that the reader feels that an irresistible invitation has been extended to them when “you” is used in a narrative. Ryan (2020, 138) argues that when we hear “you,” we understand “me.” Sorlin indicates five different ascriptions to “you,” depending on the narrative, but sometimes also evolving within the same narrative. She contends however that “potentially the reader can self-ascribe the property of being addressee even if it is not the case” (2022, 20). Because “you” or “yourself ” is featured seven times in this opening passage, and twice with the F-word, it merits a comment on this possible ambiguity of the ascription of “you.” An ambiguity which Sedaris exploits in the closing sentence of the essay: “Your trash. You’re trash. Your

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family’s trash” (35).1 On the one hand because it is addressed to Sedaris as well as the other passengers on the plane, it contributes to the selfdisparaging humour that has emerged with the evolving subscripts. But if the reader feels he/she is being addressed, the humour that  we are meant to find in the pun might be seriously diminished. Our love of the surprise effect of humour must outweigh any shock or moral judgement to find this funny. To conclude on these oral strategies, we see how Sedaris has established a register which will come across as a relaxed storytelling mode so as to establish a maximum of complicity with his readers. In the final part below, I would like to demonstrate how Sedaris builds surprise into his syntax. Due to constraints pertaining to space, I will be limiting my analysis to the same opening passage. We will see how Sedaris structures his sentences to render the greatest impact and a maximum of surprise.

Sedaris’s Surprise Syntax The oral strategies detailed above are enhanced by colloquial language and stylistic elements such a metaphor, hyperbole, and understatement. Of the ten types of semantic and pragmatic humour detailed by Dynel (2009) we find six: (1) witticisms: the comparison of the typical tourist and someone washing shoe polish off a pig, and the vulgar interpretation of “I’ll be right back”; (2) irony: taking the dullness of being on standby and turning it into a humorous anecdote; (3) allusions, distortions, and quotations: the Twin Towers attack via the gun powder check on his tote bag, and the allusion to the 2003 war in Iraq, and if we include the title, a distortion of the title of Hunter’s book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; (4) register clash: the colloquial informality of the language and the complexity of the syntax; (5) putdowns: the entire passage can be read as a   In the YouTube recording of “Standing By”YouTube https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XjUe7o4wWXk” this last sentence is reduced to a single “Your trash,” leaving the audience with a pun that is expected to be grasped aurally. For the written version, Sedaris has chosen the repetition which establishes a rhythm and a drum-beat pace as well as the visual recognition of the pun. 1

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series of putdowns, be it to the flight crew, or the fellow passengers; and (6) anecdote: the series of anecdotes in this passage will be completed by a whole other series of anecdotes throughout the text. Though not present in this opening passage, puns, self-deprecating humour, lexemes in which Dynel includes neologisms will be found later in the essay. Thus, we can conclude that the intention to create laughter is omnipresent in “Standing By.” Violations of expectations in syntax, punctuation choices, hyperbole, and metaphor combine to create surprise for the reader and introduce subscripts. In short if the incongruity that is essential in most humour is not to be found in punch lines, it is discovered in the very syntactic and semantic construction of the text. Here are some examples. In the first paragraph, we spontaneously read “headache” as a metaphor for nuisance; “national tragedy” and “why aren’t the papers reporting this” as hyperboles. The verb “befall” can also be considered hyperbolic as it is especially used to express something dire that has happened to someone. It also belongs to formal language. Although, there is nothing ironic in “what a dull story it is,” we note that Sedaris captures “dull” discourse to perfection via the enumeration of the standard events that delay your flight and the boring detail of going to get a frosted pecan wrap. The second paragraph beginning, “In line for coffee. In line for newspaper or a gunpowder test,” does in fact include fragments (underlined) disguised as sentences in that, though they are only prepositional phrases, they begin with capital letters with one ending with a period, the other with a colon. This second fragment contains a coordinate structure “for a coffee” where the noun phrase “a coffee” is coordinated by the conjunction “or” with the noun phrase “a gunpowder test ….” The standard grammatical explanation for the use of “or” (Biber et al. 2002, 79) is to introduce an alternative or a choice. “Or” along with “and” is a central coordinator, linking syntactically identical elements with minimal hierarchization of the two terms. X is distinct from Y; X precedes Y: X can contain information which is indispensable for the understanding of Y (Lapaire and Rotgé 1991, 314). Coordination with “or” enables the non-repetition of identical elements (Greenbaum and Quirk 1990, 89). The interesting thing to note here is that what could have been an ordinary enumeration is more than

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that. Sedaris could have chosen a more canonic coordination, taking advantage of the possibility for compactness that coordination allows. For example: Everywhere I go, in line for a coffee, or a newspaper, or a gunpowder test on my N.P.R. tote-bag, someone in an eight-dollar t-shirt is whipping out his cell phone and delivering the fine print of his or her delay.

Sedaris’s choice is more interesting because in coordinating the purchase (newspaper), and the security check, which by the way had become more invasive and time consuming after 9/11, he does more than express a simple alternative, he expresses an attitude. By placing the gunpowder test at the end of a sentence-like structure punctuated by a colon, Sedaris enables the more dramatic activity to create surprise profiting from end focus. He doesn’t simply say “in line for a security check”; he transforms it into a much more grandiose event, enabling the inference that he and any passenger whosoever can be considered possible terrorists. This inference would have been present in the simple enumeration, but it would have been deficit in impact. In coordinating the banality of the purchase of a newspaper with the gunpowder test, though the syntactic elements are identical noun phrases, and the most spectacular one is at the end of the enumeration, it would no longer be at the end of the sentence and would thus lose its end focus. Sedaris’s choice enables an incongruous coordination. The use of a colon builds up expectation more than a simple period would (Greenbaum and Quirk 1990, 463–465). Semantically speaking, there is an incongruity between the routine implied by the enumeration conveyed by the coordination with “or,” and the stylistic flourish of the narrator’s imaginative choice of expression which accumulates via the description of the token traveller, not simply badly dressed but “someone in an eight-dollar t-shirt” who is “whipping out his telephone” and “delivering the fine print of his or her delay.” The choice of the colloquial phrasal verb “whipping out” which belongs to the vernacular of teen lingo is very oral indeed. It is a phrasal verb which Biber et al. classify along with prepositional verbs and phrasal prepositional verbs as characteristic of conversation and fiction (Biber et al. 2002, 457).

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There are 19 other instances of phrasal verbs2 and phrasal prepositional verbs in “Standing By.” Because of the propensity for phrasal verbs to be idiomatic, for instance, fixed expressions, with meaning that cannot be determined from the individual parts, and, are a structure “especially frequent in conversation and fiction (with) the most common ones expressing physical activity” (Biber et al. 2002, 457), we take note of an additional verbal strategy characterizing the text. If we take the phrasal verb “Whip out” in order to understand that it means to take something out quickly we have to push aside the salient meaning of the verb “whip” which is to beat someone or something and transpose the speed of the whip when it is being used to beat to the action of our hand and take it out of our pocket. We replace one script with another. Sedaris ends this introduction with an even more outrageous comparison with the improbable “someone washing shoe polish off a pig,” and concluding with the vocabulary of a formal agreement, “fine print,” instead of the more prosaic “boring details” introduced by the verb “delivering” which, according to definitions proposed in both the Macmillan and the Oxford Dictionary, when used in this sense, is reserved for more official types of oral presentation, such as “speeches” (Oxford) or “formal talks” (MacMillan). This same discrepancy is present in the following sentence: You don’t want to hear the phrase “I’ll be right back,” either. That’s code for “Go fuck yourself,” according to a woman who used to fly for Northwest and taught me several terms specific to her profession.

Here again the humour comes from the enormous incongruence between what we expect as the possible decoding of “I’ll be right back” and what actually occurs. The politeness of “I’ll be right back,” and the discrepancy in the actual decoding of the message is so incongruous that it will be met with an array of reaction that will vary from delightful surprise to profound shock. We may note that having our expectations  Prepositions can also function as adverbial particles in phrasal verbs. A prepositional verb is always followed by a noun. A phrasal verb does not need an object. For example: “He spent his whole weekend just hanging about.” This implies idling one’s time away. “Idling away” is a phrasal verb because it can take a direct object that can either come after the particle, for example, “He idles away his time,” or come in between the verb and the particle, for example, “He idles his time away.” 2

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defied is in itself the prime expectation of lovers of humour. The greater the defiance, the richer the mirth. If, on the other hand, surprises are not your cup of tea, the greater the defiance, the deeper the disapproval. To be noted as well in the above passage is the upbeat compound adjective “brand-new” modifying the decidedly less upbeat “war”; as well as the monumentally understated attributive adjective “prickly” modifying “time” which refers back to the American invasion of Iraq. This is not exactly like a script opposition that we are called to resolve, but the propensity of Sedaris to so deftly choose incongruent attributive adjectives gives the reader a variation on the surprise which incites laughter. Near the very end of the essay, Sedaris writes about waiting for a flight and hearing an Adolf Hitler being called to the courtesy phone: Weirder still was hearing the name in the same sentence as the word “courtesy.” I imagined a man picking up the receiver, his voice made soft by surprise, and the possibility of bad news. “Yes, hello, this is Adolf Hitler.” (35)

Again, we have the nearly shocking discrepancy between Hitler and “courtesy” and Hitler and “a voice made soft by surprise.” Michael Billig has said that laughing with Hitler is unacceptable because: The image of the laughing Hitler, is [...] the most disturbing image of all—-more disturbing than Hitler the lunatic or the monster. The image contradicts ideological assumptions about the goodness and positive benefits of laughter. (Billig 2005, iBOOK)

Has Sedaris gone too far here?

Conclusion The way Sedaris has made his scripts evolve in “Standing By,” from the title down to the very last words, makes it clear that he includes himself in the vast web of humanity. He is more than just really funny. He takes

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the responsibility of humour seriously. I will leave the final words to the philosopher Cynthia Fleury: The power of humor enables us to seize the absurdity of the real as well as our own inadequacy and deficiency. As we discover the absolute inanity, vanity, and stupidity of the subject, we concomitantly are able to do something with it. This is vital to the process of individuation, which is first and foremost a consciousness of what is lacking in ourselves; while individualism, on the other hand, with its infatuation with one’s so-called almightiness culminates in the forgetting of one’s deficiency. Individuation is one of the trials of the real, a road to truth. It is an utterance that is self-obligatory, and not one which obliges, thus rendering the subject true to him/herself—irreplaceable. It is a word given, an effort the individual must make to be one with the word he utters. (Fleury in Cerf 2015) (translation mine)

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Wikipedia. 2022. The New Yorker. Accessed July 5, 2022. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/The-­New-­Yorker. Williams, Jessica. 1984. Repairs in Conversation: A Demonstration of Competence. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 1 (1): 61–74. https:// Repository.Upenn.Edu/Wpel/Vol1/Iss1/5. Yus, Francisco. 2003. Humor and the Search for Relevance. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (9): 1295–1331.

7 Satire, Humour, Language and Style in Nigerian Literature Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju

O sacred weapon! Left for truth’s defense Sole dread of folly vice and Insolence. —Alexander Pope (1684–1744; Dialogue)

Introduction: Satire, the Elusive “Genre” Satire’s classification as a specific form or genre has sometimes been questioned. Griffin (1994, 3) prefers to refer to the phenomenon as a mode or “process,” due to its multivalency. Fowler (1982, 110) had also considered the taxonomy of satire problematic because of its diversity, and,

A sketchy 1992 publication titled “Satire Horatian and Juvenalian … and the Nigerian Experience” (Lagos: Guardian Literary Series) forms the background to this chapter.

T. Oloruntoba-Oju (*) Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_7

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more recently, Simpson (2003, 76) notes that since satire “has the capacity to subsume and assimilate other discourse genres,” it may not be appropriate to refer to it as a genre. Satire is thus more often than not “defined by its incorporation of other genres and viewpoints into a singular poetic form (lanx satura)” (Norgard 2015, 101). The problem of the linguistic analysis of satire in literature therefore begins with the identification or location of the genre of literature itself, since the term, literature, usually refers to longer pieces of text, while linguistic analysis is more attuned to shorter stretches of language. Thus, for example, between Raskin (1985), Attardo and Raskin (1991), and Attardo (2020) on the one hand, and Chlopicki (1997) on the other hand, occurs the argument whether a linguistic based analysis, in this case the Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH) and the General Verbal Theory of Humour, works well with longer narratives—notwithstanding the inclusion a “narrative structure” node within both SSTH and GVTH. Attardo appears sceptical, while Chlopicki appears optimistic. The relativity of “length” and fluidity of genres (poetic prose/prosaic poem/dramatic poetry, etc.) would often add to the complexity of this issue. In short, satire as a genre demonstrates the intersection between the literary, the linguistic and the stylistic, and the complexity of locating it with exactitude within these frames. A subset of this issue is whether the analysis can relate to entire stories or narratives or only to segments or extracts therein. The apparent resolution of this issue is that longer stretches would only multiply the number of script oppositions or contradictory notions identified in the relevant texts. Another problem, however, relates to the relationship between satire and another genre that is often co-constituted with satire, which is humour. The issue here is that, although satire is often constituted as humorous, it is not always humorous in itself. And yet another issue is whether specific humour segments within a literary text relate holistically to the text, with import for the entire story, or constitute isolated, albeit humorous, inserts within the story, and how the analysis of such isolated segments might be approached. Notwithstanding these complexities, the term “genre” is always useful to capture a category such as satire, even if, like most other forms, it absorbs various other forms into its gut. I approach the issue of stylistic analysis of satire in this chapter by first laying out the particularities of the

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genre and highlighting how it intersects with the cognate genres noted above, and with the phenomenon of style and stylistics. Vigouroux (2015, 245) has noted that the term, genre, correlates with notions of identity, given a particular groupment of recognisable features; it also reflects the power of contextualization, recontextualization and translocation from setting to setting. I therefore attempt to demonstrate, through an analysis of selected Nigerian texts, the intersection between the literary, the linguistic and the stylistic in satirical discourse. I also make the point that the work of the stylistician is half established by the fundamental nature of the genre, and that a unified levels of linguistic analysis (ULLA) approach (Oloruntoba-Oju [1992] 1998a, and 2023, in this volume) helps to bring out the satire, the humour, and the language, in both long and short stretches of language. I intend to demonstrate that satirical humour or humorous satire derives from a great variety of linguistic sources other than the celebrated ones of irony, parody and incongruity.

Satire’s Classical and Analytical Antecedents The word “satire” is Latinate in lineage: first satura, meaning ‘medley’ or ‘mixture,’ then satira or lanx satura, which means “a full dish of various kinds of fruits.” Details of the word’s morphological and semantic life are relatively obscure and are sometimes mired in controversy (see Hendrickson, 1911; Ullman 1913), which is quite unnecessary for our purpose here.1 However, satirical usages have been part of folk culture in many early communities in which the arts flourished. This included Africa. There was, of course, in Western civilization, the inevitable Greek culture where satirical origins were specifically located within Grecian fertility rites. It was also in Greece (seventh century BC) that satire recorded its first famous practitioner and claimed its first recorded victims. The satirist was Archilochus, and the victims were his cheating bride-to-be and his prospective father-in-law. It is not clear exactly how  Much of the world’s knowledge of the origins of this term came from the work of Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (Quintillian), famed Roman educator and rhetorician, who was born in AD 35 (see Clarke 2023). 1

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Archilochus framed the killer words—the style may therefore remain forever elusive—however, the framing was so potent that, being publicly read, both bride and father committed suicide. Foremost Roman rhetorician, Quintillian, firmly established satire as a Roman phenomenon: satura tota nostra est (“satire is wholly our own”), so his claim went. The Greek seemed to have had no specific term for the usage now called satura by the Roman, the theory linking satire with Greek satyr (a mythical being) having been debunked. Quintillian’s claim therefore appeared legitimate. However, Quintillian was referring mainly to the poetic practice of Gaius Luicilius, a contemporary of his, whose poetic words were to influence Horace, one of the key figures in the development of satire. Satire was therefore a poem mainly—a poem of a specific sort: Samuel Johnson called it “a poem in which wickedness and folly is censured”: After Quintillian, the term became appropriated for every literary expression that contained satirical properties, even if not poetic. Satire was also later to become known as a Juvenalian, Horatian and Menippean phenomenon—after its most renowned Roman practitioners. We have noted above that the writings of Lucilius influenced Horace. Horace in turn influenced Persius who was: “the acknowledged master of Juvenal” (see Brand and Osgood 2004 for a comprehensive comparison). These three men constituted a satirical trinity of sorts in those initial times, and the difference in their praxis was expressed in the following term. “In Horace, satire smiles, in Persius, it looks severe, in Juvenal commanding.” Menippus was Greek and his art was focused on specific character types such as pedants, bigots, cranks, among others (Frye 1957). Although his art was said to have influenced the Roman trio of Horace, Persius and Juvenal, the latter, especially Horace and Juvenal, were to surpass him in global prominence. It is not clear why Persius himself became less prominent over time, after the brilliant initial showing noted above. We can only speculate that, perhaps the practice of Persius was not much different from Juvenal’s2 and it thus fizzled out somewhat under the heat of the latter’s fierce, “commanding” influence. Be that it may, it is to Horatian and Juvenalian models critics have largely turned in the appreciation of later satirical practices.  Many commonalities have indeed been exhibited in the satires of Persius and Juvenal (see Barchiesi and Cucchiarelli, 207, cited in Norgard (2015, 11). See also Uden (2015). 2

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The Objects of Satire and the Locus of Analysis The foregoing establishes that satire is a genre whose objects form a mandatory level of appraisal or analysis. The term “object” here is rather polysemous, sometimes referring to the satirical or humorous situation/text itself (Davis and Hofmann 2023), sometimes to the target of the satire (Elliot 2023), sometimes to the purpose, and sometimes to a fusion of these elements (Silver 2019). The term is used in this chapter in the latter sense, and or interchangeably between the different senses noted here. The uncontroverted object of satire has always been to censor; in this, Horace, Juvenal, Persius and Menippus are united. Specifically, satire was, as John Milton put it, to “strike high and adventure dangerously at the most eminent vices among the greatest person” (see Samuel 1972, 116). The function of satire is therefore to attack, and even rail at, folly and vices. Satire never approves. It is “born of the instinct to protest. It is protest become art” (Jack 1962, 17). Horace and Juvenal were different only in the manner of this protestation. It will continue to be debated which the better satirical form is. Early European critics and satirists were torn between Horace and Juvenal. For example, famed English critic, Samuel Johnson, shunned satire as being more injurious than it is corrective, but was all for direct Juvenalian if satire must be practised at all. He considered Horace to be not so satirical as Juvenal. Also, according to him, “a smooth silver knife will never penetrate to the core of vice; but it must be the rough edge of more powerful metal wielded with a strong hand” (see Weinbrot 2014). English writer, Joseph Hall, had, in the same vein, issued perhaps one of the most succinct metaphors for satire, poetically rendered as that: “The Sartre must the Porcupine/That shoots sharpe quils out in each angry line/ And wounds the blushing cheeke/ and fiery eye/Of him that heares, and readeth guiltily.” However, early French critics, especially Andre Dacier, mostly favoured Horace and his “pleasant” satires. The same goes for notable English satirists such as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Dryden, all of whom lived in the Augustan age (eighteenth century) described as “the golden age of satire,” and who often wrote pleasant

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satires themselves.3 Whether Horatian or Juvenalian, satire’s sting is often sharp and deep; its targets are often obvious. Even when spiced with humour in the Horatian manner, satire pleases only the ring-side observer or addressee, and not the target. However, an equally complex debate within our context is how satire constitutes style or what are the stylistic properties of satire and how do we analyse them.

Satire as Style The above briefly sketched antecedents frame the character, and characterization, of satire as a genre, and they provide a framework, prima-facie, for the stylistic analysis of satire in relation to humour. The stylistician’s analytical work on satirical style would indeed appear neatly cut out for them ab initio, since satire is a specific genre, mode or process, with well-­ established sub-genres such as Horatian and Juvenalian satires; the stylistician’s task may sometimes appear to be no more complex than to find linguistic markers to support the assignment of specific satirical texts to these established modes. Satire is an expression or text in which ridicule, contempt or other forms of criticism are prominent, hence linguistic elements that foreground, signal or accentuate these ends constitute bonafide target of humour stylistics. This definition avoids the Johnsonian restriction of satire to the poetic genre, and other definitions that bind satire to a specific form, length or structure of expression.4 To emphasize this, we might elaborate that satire is an expression in any form and of any length, in which criticism, ridicule or contempt is a prominent objective. Satirical style is thus in our view marked by the following interacting and textually attestable components (Fig. 7.1): The diagram above describes two interacting satirical components, a Base Component that comprises a situational encoding of all particulars relating to the satire, and which relates with an Output (decoding)  Bex (2006), cited by Simpson and Bousfield (2017), has cast some doubt on the assumption that that the satire of this age was all humorous. 4  Danesi, for example, describes satire as a “[literary] dramatic, or cinematic work in which vices … are held up to ridicule and contempt” (cited in Nuessel 2005, 74). 3

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Fig. 7.1  Satire’s base and output components

Component through a sociocultural ambience (SCA), as well as language, literature and world competence (LL&WC) that act as a common ground between both components. Within the Output component, the receiver may or may not be the target. Their reactions are different, and where the target wields power, the reaction may be deadly, as Alexander Pope once testified.5 The arrows dispense with the traditional air tight distinction between res and verba or content and form, since both flow from within the BASE and intermingle ceaselessly. Some of the particulars of the interacting components include the following: BASE COMPONENT • encoder • ideology of morality and society and a corresponding object(ive) (to cavil at evil, folly, foibles and sundry behavioural inadequacies), • incongruity • a target human or situation/circumstance  Compare: “It stands on record that in Richard’s Times / A man was hanged for very honest Rhymes” (Alexander Pope, The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated). 5

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• a sociocultural ambience • a literary ambience • language and world competence or world knowledge (incl. Satirical and humour competence) • a technique—of rhetorical input and linguistic patterning (at all levels of linguistic analysis)

• • • • • • • •

often, but not always, includes strategies of humour humour catalysis (see Oloruntoba-Oju 2023, this volume) linguistic foregrounding linguistic incongruity inversion specific satire/humour specie semantic script oppositions6 verbal irony, pun, parody, satirical tone, and so on

OUTPUT knowledge) • a decoder

COMPONENT

(expression+receiver+language/world

• receiver/target (mixed decoding: amusement/lesson learnt; scorn/ vengeance) • sociocultural ambience plus language, literature and world competence/knowledge The simplicity of the above, where a satirical base comprises the issues involved and committed encoding modalities, and interacts with an output component largely consisting of receiver/target modalities, would seem to mask the complex discourse that has gone into the definitions and dimensions of satire over time. For example, Simpson’s (2003) proposes a triadic model comprising a satirist, an addressee and a satirical target, with complex interactional possibilities both between themselves on the one hand, and the social, cultural and political items of discourse on the other. The model also involves an irony triad involving a “prime” situation or event, which is usually “cast in cognitive terms as essentially  The concept of semantic script opposition derives from Raskin’s (1985) Semantic Script Theory of Humour (SSTH) which is however expanded here to cover every conceptual “script” instantiated or attested at any and every level of linguistic analysis. 6

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a type of textual monitoring” (89) and a “dialectic” through which ideas or expectations clash. The dialectic itself is a triad comprising, in Popperian manner, a thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. It involves a contra-­ expectation leading to a clash and ultimately to an “irony of conferral” in which “uptake” (following Austin 1962) is achieved (153). The irony of conferral is triggered by “a collision between sets of universal validity claims” (96). Satire is in short seen as operating through a schematic that Simpson refers to as “irony-within-irony.” (90) The model appears to closely follow a humour appreciation model in which incongruity results from colliding expectations and counter-expectation, through the inevitable “garden-path reasoning” leading to some form of explosion and resolution through laughter or other manifestations of amusement. Irony is generally perceived as a mismatch between what is said and what is meant. In advancing verbal irony as the principal tool of satire, along with cognate processes such as pun, sarcasm, parody, Simpson (2003) is also concerned to distinguish these processes from satire. For example, parody is distinguished from satire in the sense that the former may not necessarily involve criticism, while the latter is definitively scathing. Irony itself is defined by Simpson and his collaborators as “the perception of a conceptual paradox … between two dimensions of the same discursive event” (Simpson, Mayr and Satham 2018). As noted earlier, one genre that is also co-constitutive with satire is humour. Indeed, the stylistics of satire is complicated by the latter’s close connection to humour, being itself a distinct genre. Both humour and satire are bound together by their perlocutionary profiles, since both of them are often defined and measured as much by their functions and effects as by their forms. While humour may not necessarily involve satire and vice-versa, distinguishing both when they are fused is almost always an analytical impossibility. And while stylistics itself is held to simply “[apply] to text a variety of models of language, linguistics and pragmatics” (Simpson 2003, viii), the “battery of approaches … have often led to theoretical confusion in practical stylistics”, therefore calling for “a cautious path through the bramble” (Osundare 1982/2003, 13) especially when it comes to humour stylistics.

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Humour Stylistics and the Satirical Base Humour stylistics in the current context is largely concerned with the Base Component of satire, with a focus on the aspects of linguistic encoding. Satire, like other discourse forms, employs a great variety of rhetorical and linguistic apparatuses to achieve its objectives, and it is often a disservice to seek to fit usages into preconceived forms. In keeping the model of stylistic appraisal of satire simple, as proposed above, one is also being mindful of the trap, or charge, of, as phrased by Fish (1980), stylisticians interposing a formidable or “bulky apparatus” between their descriptive and interpretive acts, “which obscures the absence of any connection” between them. (87) It seems to me that the simpler and more straightforward the model, the better. The objective should always be to describe linguistic occurrences in satire and humour in situ, where and as it occurs, with linguistic models serving as a guide rather than as a straitjacket. Even without the complication of elaborate or formidable linguistic apparatuses (models), it is still stylistically engaging, and useful, to examine satirical texts for evident linguistic usages that can be described in situ at various levels of linguistic analysis in relation to the elusive genre of satire. In the sections that follow, I look briefly at some of the satirical elements in the works of three prominent Nigerian writers: Wole Soyinka, poet, playwright, political activist and Nobel laureate, Niyi Osundare (poet, academic professor and international laureate), and Olatunji Dare (journalist, columnist and academic professor). Much of the work on satire in Nigeria has been focused on these writers, though largely from the literary perspective (see Darah 1988; Oloruntoba-Oju, 1992; Adeoti and Elegbeleye 2005; Akingbe 2011, among others). A notable exception is the focus on the late novelist, Timothy Aluko, who was also reputed as a master satirist (Olaniyan 1988). I first look at the literary and sociocultural ambience of the respective satires of the three selected authors, then focus on the language elements that seem to accentuate the satire and the humour in individual texts, both at discrete point levels and in terms of linguistic patterns.

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 atire in Soyinka: The Literary S and the Linguistic Wole Soyinka’s writing contains a rich satirical store. Satirical usage is pervasive in the African social, literary and sundry cultural contexts. Osundare (1991, 5) described critical engagements as “the burden of African letters” due to the continent’s peculiar socio-political situation. G.G. Darah notes that within African literary contexts, satire is seen as a form in the defence of “communal norms and virtues.” (Darah 2005, 23) This unanimity is echoed by Wa Thiong’O (1972, 55) when he notes that satire’s province is the entire society, and criticism is its purpose, “through painful, sometimes malicious, laughter.” (55) This sociocultural ambience resides within the satirical base noted above, to form part of Satire’s encoding and decoding within the Nigerian context. Soyinka’s satirical act stands out within this context due to his masterful command of both the Horatian and Juvenalian varieties. The former is mostly expressed in his fictive output and the latter in his non-fictive output. In his non-fictive writings, Soyinka often descends heavily and directly on real life targets with sundry lexes of abuse (“an intellectual deviant,” “a dangerous misfit,” “male chauvinist pig,” etc.), with no irony, no pun and no fun intended (see Oloruntoba-Oju 2015). The targets of these porcupine invectives belong in the best tradition of Juvenalian satire, with the high and mighty. Soyinka’s The Man Died, an epochal treatise on the Nigerian crisis, contains several paragraphs of sustained raillery. What is less known outside certain academic circles is that Soyinka has also abused his literary critics just as much as they have abused him, and this adversative writing, or “literary Darwinism,” has delighted many a ring-side reader. Apart from what Soyinka’s non-fictional texts tell us of their respective subject matters, they also contain good material for studies in invective as art7 (see Oloruntoba-Oju 1998b). Apart from The Man Died, some of Soyinka’s essays in literary criticism and social commentary constitute a veritable corpus of delightful invective, including, among others, his: “Aesthetic Illusions,” “Who is Afraid of Elesin  Invective is a form that is often employed in direct satire and is associated with Juvenalian satire. It may indeed be said that all satire is a form of invective which may be rendered directly or indirectly. 7

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Oba?” “Barthes, leftocracy and other mythologies,” “The Aesthetics of Chichidodo”, “The wasted generation: The real wasters,” “The limits of bigotry.” Although there are other users of invective, Soyinka’s output in this has been singular. (Oloruntoba-Oju 2015).

Mixed Decoding It is not customary to regard Soyinka’s serious plays (especially the tragedies) as satire, perhaps because Humour-laughter is sometimes regarded as a non-negotiable ingredient of satire. However, some of the tragedies employ satirical symbols. For example, in his A Dance of the Forest, the newly independent country, Nigeria is characterized as “a gathering of tribes” while the birth of the new nation is symbolized as a half-child. Also, Soyinka’s Madmen and Specialists, a play on war and “the bestialities war” rails at the executors of the war while also satirizing the level of depravity and apathy into which their victims have fallen. The victims, represented by MENDICANTS in the play, dice away their maimed and mangled body parts in a gruesome display of brutalized and resigned consciousness. The Old Man in the play himself plunges into great levels of depravity in his messianic but ultimately ego-serving extreme, while his son, Bero, the main perpetrator of evil, and the other war-mongers, represent the Faustian man who has lost touch with humanity, and gone beyond salvation or retrieval. All is therefore lost, for society. The high point of the satire occurs in the contrived consummation of the cannibal instinct. The war-mongers, being in essence cannibals, are tricked by Old Man into consuming human flesh from the bodies of some of the victims of the war, and Old Man asks, “Why not?”: 1. All intelligent animals kill only for food. You are intelligent animals. Eat, eat. Eat. Eat. In this high point Soyinka is perhaps indebted to Swift, the great English satirist, whose ‘modest proposal’ in A Modest Proposal is also to convert “wasting humanity” (especially uncatered for children) to culinary delicacies, thereby “preventing the children of poor people in Ireland

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from being a burden to their parents or country (while) making them beneficial to the public.” However, while Old Man’s morbid explosion in (1) is undoubtedly satirical in its castigation, there may be divided opinion as to whether there is humorous content in it as well. The receiver/ decoder variability ensures that some decoders would be familiar with this literary ambience, but it would also accommodate a “mixed decoding” in which some may perceive humour, even if wry or morbid humour, in sequences such as the above, while others may wince at the prospect.8

The Horatian Catalogue in Soyinka As noted earlier, Soyinka’s fictive satires are largely Horatian, in as much as they are often less direct and they “smile” more broadly, as it were. His early “satirical sketches” include Before the Blackout and Before the Blowout, as well as short dramas such as Childe Internationale and the Jero Plays. The latter star the delightful Christian rogue, Brother Jeroboam, his hapless attendant, Chume, and an uncritical congregation. The plays laugh not only at charlatans but also at gullibility. The linguistic particulars of the laughter and the satire can always be laid out in actual textual encounters. Others include plays such as A Play of Giants, in which a caricature is made of African dictators such as Idi Amin, Bokassa and Banda, as well as Opera Wonyosi, which is an adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. Apart from also caricaturing African dictatorships, the opera takes several satirical swipes at the Nigerian society. The savagery or barbarism that seems to characterize the entire society is captured by the wave of public executions, to which the old and the young troop as if to a picnic, complete with lollipop and all. While the short excursion into Soyinka’s satire above gives a literary glimpse of the genre in his repertoire, this chapter is more concerned with a linguistic engagement with the corpus, as shown in the sections below.

 Simpson and Bousfield (2017) again quote Bex’s (2009) contention that even Swift’s modest proposal may only induce a “despairing sneer.” 8

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L inguistic Engagement with Horatian Snippets from Drama One question is: how does a linguistic engagement with humour and satire work, beyond single expressions, to accommodate discourses? The following example, taken from Soyinka’s The Road (1965), can be used to illustrate such engagements at relevant levels of linguistic analysis. 2. PARTICULARS JOE: Did he come in here? SAMSON: Nobody came in here? PARTICULARS JOE: Are you sure you know who I mean? Sort of tall but a little on the short side. Tribal marks, but beginning to wear off… SAMSON: Who are you chasing today? Within the Base Component of satire we establish a situational, literary and sociocultural ambience, in relation to language elements, to analyse the above snippet. Particulars Joe is a police officer. To establish Joe’s character as a bribe-taking, easy-go-lucky officer, Soyinka employs two linguistic-pragmatic instruments. One of them is naming. Within the sociocultural ambience that constitute the text’s world, the name “Particulars Joe” activates a common ground recognition. The police officer manning check points and is more interested in collecting small bribes from motorists to supplement his salary than in maintaining a free flow of the traffic is a well-recognized stereotype. The refrain of such officers, and first line of intimidation of the hapless drivers, is wey your particulars? (“Where are your vehicle papers?”). The name “Particulars Joe” therefore serves as humour catalysis, setting the stage for comic expectations anchored on the stereotype. The second instrument is linguistic-stylistic coding or enhancement, the deployment of additional linguistic elements to reinforce this stereotype. Here, language is used as a means of self-portrait, and ultimately self-condemnation. In “Did he come in here”? the referent of the pronoun “he” is vague. Although “he” ordinarily refers to a male subject, in this case it is not an adequate signifier, and there is no further indication as to the other features that may help to identify the object. Samson, the

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respondent, does not bother to ask who “he” is. His response, “nobody” is ambiguous between two possible pragmatic referents: a certain person whose name or alias is “nobody,” or a null referent, reference to a non-­ existent object. Particulars Joe adopts the latter sense of nobody in order to continue the deceitful game. Again, sentences in the snippet give only vague and even contradictory references, employing opposing semantic scripts (“sort of tall but a little on the short side”/ “[prominent]tribal marks but fading”). The subject of these references cannot be identified, and the explosion of humour here is based on the fact that they are not meant to identify anybody. Particulars Joe is merely plying his trade as a bribe taker in uniform. Samson’s response shows that he understands Joe’s trickery. “Who are you chasing today?” is not necessarily a request for information, but pragmatically an indication that Joe is caught in his game. The answer to Samson’s question is therefore, conceptually or indirectly “Nobody,” which coheres lexically with his earlier statement. The addressees (audience members) must be steeped within these sociocultural and linguistic ambiences for a successful decoding of the satire and the humour, to understand that this is not just play or drama, but also satire, and that it is not just satire, but a humorous one. The notion of the ideal speaker/hearer (Chomsky/ Riffaterre), and of humour competence, is apposite here. A similar analysis of the input of language to humour in literary texts is undertaken below with Soyinka’s musical, titled EtikeRevoWetin (n.d.), which also contains a rich store of linguistic elements that act as humour catalysis. Here, I draw attention to those elements in which the satire is yoked with end rhymes. The title of the musical, EtikeRevoWetin, is itself a parody of a political statement by the then President of Nigeria, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who declared that he was embarking on an “ethical revolution”—EtikeRevoWetin is therefore a purposive morphophonemic corruption meaning “ethical revo what!” Soyinka in the song hits out at government propaganda, at the suffering in the land, and at corruption in high places. Rendered in rhyming couplets that easily recalls Alexander Pope’s (1711/1962) “Essay on Criticism,” every couplet titillates with criticism disguised in humour. For ease of appreciation, I have indicated some of

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the thematic scripts that go along with the exhibited couplets in the song. Examples include the following: Script of appearance versus reality. Reality versus propaganda 3. Me I think I get cancer for me eye (“I think I have cancer in my eye”) I dey see double that’s the reason why (“I am seeing double that is why”) Script of hunger in the land versus opulence in the land 4. …but now to eat na half my budget (“but now to feed is half of my budget”) food dey cost like golden nugget (“food costs now like golden nugget”) Script of corruption in high places versus corruption/lopsidedness in the system of justice 5. You thief 1Kobo dey put you for prison (“you steal one kobo they put you in prison”) you thief 10 million na patriotism, (“you steal 10 million, that is patriotism”) 6. dem go give you chieftaincy and national honor, (“they will give a chieftaincy title and national honour) you thief even bigger den go say na rumor (“you steal bigger they say it’s a rumour”) The power of rhyming has been well established in the literature, especially the fact that rhyming often links with the associated meaning or semantic element (Attardo 2020, 194). The same can be said of the rhyming couplets of (4), (5) and (6) above. Both the satire and the humour in the expressions are intensified by the rhyme; upon each rhyme comes a semantic opposition and clash of expectations, leading to a realization of the satire (criticism) and a comic explosion. The more antithetical the rhyming pair is semantically, the louder the explosion.

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Test of Linguistic Input The actual sequence of the realizations above may not be certain, that is, whether the humour precedes the satire or vice-versa,9 or uptake is simultaneously secured; however, the fact that the realizations do occur at the rhyming point or on the basis of the linguistic input can be subjected to a test of linguistic input. Regarding the test of linguistic input to comic aesthetics, Oloruntoba-Oju (1988, cited in Oloruntoba-Oju [1992] 1998a) had proposed substitution, deconstruction and reconstruction manoeuvres to ascertain the contribution of specific linguistic elements to humour. Such tests would usually indicate that the humour is lost and the sense of satire barely retained when elements such as the language rhymes are removed. Cohn (2014, 64) also suggests movement and deletion tests to ascertain the input of specific elements to the comic. The use of Pidgin English by Soyinka in EtikeRevoWetin is also impactful in this regard. It draws attention to satirical and comic elements in the song. Such marginal languages are often identified with resistance, parody or satire and as the language of the masses, downtrodden or oppressed (Watkins 2010), on whose behalf the author ostensibly sings. This also helps to focus the satirical theme and the associated humour. Will it be the same if the pidgin is substituted with, say, standard English? A substitution test suggests that the outcome may be different, especially for the humour. What is clear is that at every point of note in the expression of satire and of humour, the imprint of language is unmistakable.

 atirical Base and Linguistic Output S in “Telephone Conversation” In Soyinka’s famous poem, “Telephone Conversation” (1963), the satirical BASE comprises a deep and international moral crisis involving racism, and the poet’s commitment to lashing out at the situational and relevant targets. The target is therefore not only the racist British landlady at the other end of the receiver, but the entire system of racism based on colour.  Perhaps the most famous reference to this issue comes from the Ig Nobel Prize committee which honours achievements that “first make people laugh, then make people think.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize) 9

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The BASE component of this satire also comprises the linguistic machinery through which the criticism is conveyed. As described below, the linguistics of humour permeates the entire structure of Soyinka’s poetry, marshalling phonological, graphological morphological, lexical, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels of language to achieve the satire. Excerpts from the poem are presented below: 5. Excerpts from Telephone Conversation […]. “Madam”, I warned, “I hate a wasted journey - I am African.” Silence. […] “HOW DARK?”...I had not misheard.…”ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?” […] Considerate she was, varying the emphasis. “ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came “You mean- like plain or milk chocolate?”[…] I chose. “West African sepia”_ and as afterthought. “Down in my passport.” […] Hard on the mouthpiece “WHAT’S THAT?” conceding “DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.” “THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?”

 raphological, Semantic and Syntactic Variation G as Humour Enhancers In the snippet above, we see, quite conspicuously, the graphological foregrounding, through the capitalization of various elements, that seems designed to expose the folly of colour racism (“ARE YOU DARK, OR VERY LIGHT … HOW DARK,” etc.). We also see a juxtaposition, and opposition, of semantic scripts, in terms of colours and spectral visual acuity (“dark/light”; “West African sepia”/“brunette”), and in the form or compositional states (e.g., concrete vs. liquid) “plain or milk chocolate.” For the poem’s addressee, this juxtaposition of a great variety of colours is meant to ridicule the landlady’s racism. The semantic variation is patterned and meant to make a mockery of the landlady’s apparent colour

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squeamishness. To the lady herself as the target of the satire, the poet’s oppositive lexis is re-directing, deflecting her focus on colour, by proposing vague and contextually improbable shades (“West African sepia”/“brunette”/“peroxide blonde”/“raven black”). This conveys a reluctance to abide by, but instead a readiness to defy and ridicule, the lady’s racist categories. As noted earlier, all satire is an indirect form of invective. What the poet is really saying is: “isn’t this all so stupid!?” Much of the satire, and the humour, is also achieved through syntactic sequencing and foregrounding. For example, from the very start, the presupposition of “I hate a wasted journey: I am African” creates a puzzle and a bated expectation (is it that Africans specifically hate wasted journeys?), which is resolved in the sequential realization of further aspects of the satirical base, when it becomes clear that this is really about racism, thereby creating a new tension and an expectation of conflict. This puzzle also serves ultimately as a catalyst of the satire and the humour. The next sequence: ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK / ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT? is not only graphologically marked, by capitalization, but also syntactically varied. Emphasis is achieved, but the variation also foregrounds the folly of the fuss, as the hearer searches in vain for the difference between both sentences. The question-and-answer structure and the repetitions heighten the effect of mockery. The hoopla over “what” and “that,” which is syntactically foregrounded, heightens the sense of satire or of marvel and mockery over the what and the that, and what this is all about: “WHAT’S THAT?” […]. “DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” […]. …like brunette… “THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?”

The rest of the poem, seen below, shows a “racy” sequence. This is achieved through short clauses and sentences and that foreground the relevant language elements while heightening the suspense, the play, the ridicule, and the humour: “Not altogether.

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Facially, I am brunette, but madam you should see The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet. Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, causedFoolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned My bottom raven black- One moment madam! - sensing Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap About my ears- “Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather See for yourself?”

Notice also the thought-flow control, exercised through punctuations and line breaks (e.g., “Friction, caused-/Foolishly madam- by sitting down, has turned/My bottom […]”), which also helps to foreground and focus the language elements that accentuate the ridicule. Apart from the raciness contrived by syntactic means, colour oppositions (brunette/blonde/black; plain/milk chocolate), and partonomic oppositions (palm/soles/bottom) also come into play in this sequence. These semantic oppositions again accentuate the satire/ridicule. There are conspicuous incongruities as well, flagged by sequences such as “Considerate she was, varying the emphasis” where irony (in reality she is not “considerate” and her “emphasis” offers no difference) is accentuated by syntactic inversion. The irony of “foolishly sitting turning the bottom raven black” should not be lost on the receiver or on the target. The “foolishness” should rather reflect on the satirical target. Structural and lexical repetitions (dark/light, light/dark; that/what, what/that, that/dark, dark/black; madam you should see/foolishly madam/One moment madam/About my ears “Madam” […]) heighten the satirical focus and the attendant humour. The entire sequence occurs within a sociocultural ambience involving international racism, which, coupled with our world knowledge, makes a satirical reading plausible. However, the sense that language is being deliberately manipulated to accentuate ridicule and fun, hence the satire, is inescapable. The satire and humour jabs are all provided by the foregrounding of language elements at various levels of linguistic analysis.

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Satire in Osundare “Farmer-born peasant-bred,” so Osundare describes himself in the preface to one of his poetry volumes, The Eye of the Earth (1986), as well as in one of the poems in the volume. It is not surprising therefore that much of his satire derives from the indigenous earth. The targets of this poet’s satire are usually not specific personalities but character types, institutions, principles, ideas and sundry situations that contradict his vision of egalitarianism and of an oppression free humanity. Oppressors, oppression, instruments of oppression and so on—are held up through literal and allegorical effigies and given a resounding satirical bashing. Although the targets are usually not named, the allusion to them is often so strong that they are easily recognized. Another of Osundare’s poetry collections, Village Voices (2004), exemplify the poet’s employment of invective as satirical weapon to cavil at those who scorch the earth, as it were, and destroy its natural richness. The immediate targets in this collection are sycophants who constitute the strongest fort of oppressors. The modern sycophant, presumably including certain writers, musicians, government officials and so on, are characterized as the palace praise-singer who really is the traditional brother at arms of modern sycophants. Osundare denigrates their slavishness. With Osundare, however, I identify a specific species of satire and humour, which is body satire/humour.

Species of Satire/Humour: Body Satire/Body Humour Humorous satirical references to body parts abound in the works of African authors. This appears to follow a tradition of body satire/humour in African local lores, of which Yoruba (Nigerian) sayings contain quite a number. While traditional African values ordinarily rejects invectives on the anatomy or physiology (which the Yorubas of Nigeria call èébú ara, literally “abuse/invective of the body”), traditional rhetoric is replete with humorous sayings about the body, always with the proviso that they will not be rendered to the face of the concerned disabled (“one does not

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count the toes of a person with nine to their face”). Yoruba body based satirical sayings or lores relate often to humans but sometimes to animals. I give an example each of both formats below: 6. Wọ́n ní kí a wá ẹni t’ó lẹ́hìn fi ọmọ fuń, abuké bọ s’ódèe […](“They say let’s find someone with a [strong] back to give our daughter to in my marriage; the hunchback comes out [offers himself ] […]”) 7. Adìyẹ n sunkún àìléyín, erin n sunkún àìrétè bo tirẹ ̀[The chicken weeps for having no teeth, the elephant mourns for having no lips to cover its.]

The humour of (6) relies on the polysemous and ultimately ambiguous character of the term, ẹ́hìn (which means the physiological “back” but could also refer metaphorically to financial back, among others). The applicable rhetorical term is pun (on the word), but as noted earlier, punning is achieved through a variety of linguistic means. The incidence of the hunchback coming forward, apparently taking the lexical item in its denotative meaning, also appears incongruous, and this seems syntactically accentuated as well. Syntactically, the first part of the sentence sets up an expectation (hence humour catalysis or potential), while the second part both fulfils and does not fulfil the expectation. This opposition of scripts occurs at multiple levels—lexically and semantically between “back” (denotative/literal) and “back” (connotative/metaphorical/non-­ literal), and conceptually between fulfilment and non-fulfilment of expectations. The addressee assesses the satire within the sociocultural ambience and the code of moralities, where it is realized that the target is not the hunchback, but the apparently ambitious, impatient or naive individual, and the pursuance of not so realistic goals. The target is similarly indirect in (7) where, again relating to the sociocultural ambience and code of moralities within the BASE component, the target is neither the chicken nor the elephant but the uncontented individual, or one who cries over split milk, or the inevitable/unchangeable. Syntactic opposition also occurs with (7), where the subject of the first clause is weeping over what it does not have and the subject of the second over having that same thing but in over-abundance. The semantic opposition is between having and not having, or having one and not the

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other. Some incongruity may also be perceived between the different physical sizes of the subjects of each clause, the chicken and the elephant. However, despite the dissimilarity in sizes, it seems that they both have the same “size” of “problem,” or perhaps an oversized notion of the problem, hence a script opposition between similarity and disimilarity. Another possible source of incongruity is syntactically instantiated by the apparent presupposition triggered by the statement that the elephant has no lips to cover its own teeth, which seems to suggest that the chicken has lips but the elephant does not. In fact, it is the other way round—the elephant does have lips, only that they are not adequate for the desired end, but the chicken has no lips either, only beaks. There seems no end to the comic explosions that linguistic manipulations (in this case the language reveals but also conceals). Again, the target of the satire, and the fun, is indirect, not the metaphorical surrogates personified by the hapless chicken and elephant. Satirical denigration through body signification or de-signification is a recurring element in the history of satire. Persius, who was earlier referred to, was well known for his body metaphors employed for satirical purposes. Images such as “the ejaculating eye,” “steamed ear,” “orgasmic eye” and so on suffused his rhetoric (see Weiss 2022). In modern times, the body has been established as a rich source of metaphors and imageries, some of which are denigrating, depending on the context. In deploying body metaphors, Osundare’s poems dwell much on negative phallic signification or negative lexical references to the phallus, perhaps because of the central position of the phallic image in indigenous signification systems. The satirical BASE in these poems involves this indigenous signification. In the poem, “Not in my season of songs” an unnamed target is not only represented as sigidi (“effigy”), which is a traditional imagery for stupidity and robotism, the poem also cavils at: 8. “… your swollen testicles/which crook your legs/like miserable bows.”

Two body part lexes are juxtaposed here, thereby setting up a comparison. The negativity is accentuated by the fact that there are no relieving lexes in the three-layered syntactic presentation. Thus, testicles, legs and bows share negative adjectives, “swollen,” “crooked,” “miserable.” “Crook”

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is double laden, therefore “swollen,” with nominal and verbal characteristics of being both crooked itself and an instrument for crooking respectively. “Swollen” in the first line prepares the ground, or the legs, for “crooking” in the second line. However, the expectation of a concrete visual, physical or tactile adjective in the third line is thwarted. The poet seems to avoid the choice of “crooked” or “bent” in this third line apparently since a bow normally looks crooked or bent—the poet opts instead for a non-tactile but still negative lexis, in this case “miserable.” The metonymic principle accentuates the satire and the humour, with the target’s entire personality represented by his diseased testicles. The linguistic principle is conspicuous, since the testicles are not necessarily diseased physically but the language makes them so. Here, Osundare, matches both Juvenal and Horace, respectively through a direct but humorous invective. The poem “Sleeping at five and twenty,” which is a strong allusion to Nigeria as a sleeping ‘giant’ after 25 years of independence (then—1960–1985), again metonymically targets the representative village boy’s fully grown genitals which should normally be evidence of maturity but which are diseased and inactive: 9. Heavy gourdlets swing between your legs/maidens tease your limp stump.

Also, in “The Prisoners Song,” Tanmola’s disgrace is represented in two parallel syntactic units, with matching negative lexes to execute the body satire and humour: 10. Your budding penis/peeping out of your tattered shorts

The description of Tanmola’s adult penis as “budding” sets off a couple of incongruities. On the one hand, “budding” semantically indicates a sign of life and promise of growth ordinarily, but in this case, it is actually a sign of stunted growth or decay. On the other hand, “budding” and “peeping out” are closely connected semantically, since a budding plant may be said to be “peeping out” of the soil. However, the adult but only “budding” penis “peeping out” of tattered shorts is not a very good sight to behold. This linguistically induced incongruity leads to an explosion of laughter, in addition to a ridiculing of the target.

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Also, in “The Stars Did it,” the picture of penury in Akilapa’s family is vividly represented as a starved and burdened womb, while other satirical targets in Osundare’s poetry include fake revolutionaries who are ‘throwers of dumb bombs” (i.e., explosive’ but ineffectual revolutionary rhetoric), and “promise peddlers.” Body lexes are also brought in through spatial (supine) lexification of the body as “prostrating apostates,” and through negative labial attribution in “The Politician’s two Mouths,” or through diminutive attribution to intimate anatomy in lines such as 11: 11. “Your eunuch drum a dumb stool/For harem buttocks”

Sometimes the target in Osundare is also draped in negative indigenous body metaphors drawn from traditional lore: 12. “Alas a thin membrane covers the belly /We cannot see the inside of a lying wolf ”

12 presents a certain irony, which is instantiated by the opposition of “thin membrane” to the opacity of the inside of the lying fellow. The idea here is that “that which we should ordinarily see ironically cannot be seen.” Eliciting many samples from the works of authors as done above enables the stylistician to observe the frequency of stylistic patterns in an author’s corpus. Since recurrence is a marker of stylistic tendency,10 recurring features can be safely assigned as the style of the relevant author, or at least as one of the author’s stylistic techniques.

The Example of Olatunji Dare Elsewhere, I had referred to Olatunji Dare as “a profound thinker and exotic encoder,” and that: “to him belongs the honour of placing satire as a literary genre on the map of popular Nigerian awareness.” Furthermore, “many took Dare’s satire literally and proceeded to read his profoundest  Oloruntoba-Oju (1998c), summing up literary precedents, observed that textual distinctiveness, recurrence (habituality) and aesthetic appeal are the three pillars of stylistic attribution in literature. 10

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condemnation as approbation. Others levelled charges of equivocation and evasion, these being considered a lily-livered option for writers who fear consequences.” (Oloruntoba-Oju [1992] 2014). Dare’s satirical output is also vast, especially because satirical writing is for him the rule rather than the exception. The rhetorical richness of his satire also makes it a stylistician’s delight. Oloruntoba-Oju ([1992] 2014) offered a rhetorical guide, more or less, to this satirical output. Where Osundare’s satire can be described as Juvenalian or part Juvenalian and part Horatian, Dare’s satirical genius is almost exclusively Horatian.

Rhetorical Labels As noted earlier by Oloruntoba-Oju, cited above, Dare’s satirical writings help to demonstrate the ease with which rhetorical labels such as pun and so on can be slapped on satirical/humorous writing. Although these labels do offer an instant, go to, tool of analysis, they are hardly fully satisfactory. Some of the labels earlier identified by this writer followed an alphabetical listing based on classical rhetorical terms. Examples include the following: • Anastrophe—reversal of clausal components: “Lucky is the family which can find money for anything other than food.” • Carnard—a little falsity, sometimes behaving like an exaggeration: “… a litre of petrol costs much less than the same measure of Cocacola, with the result that those who could not serve coke at their parties gave petrol instead. Fire broke out at many a social gathering… • Catachresis—deliberate misapplication of words: “[Dissatisfied with] mere public execution of condemned armed robbers … some thoughtful citizens have … proposed embellishments.” In the segment below, I bring out a specific species of humour that is quite striking, as it is not often found in Dare’s writing, but is here occasioned by the nature and sociocultural ambience of the discourse—the wry and unpleasant type—what is sometimes called morbid humour. Dare’s relatively recent article titled, “Murder in the Consulate” (Dare 2021) can be used to exemplify this.

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“Murder in the Consulate” describes the events surrounding the disappearance and subsequent killing of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabia Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018. Overall, the tone is serious and informative, reflecting the gravity of the subject matter and aiming to provide a detailed account of the events surrounding the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and draw attention to related issues, such as the murder of Dele Giwa, a prominent Nigerian journalist and editor. The writing style combines factual reporting with the author’s perspective and opinion. While the matter is grave, still the satirist inserts humour lects that draws some form of amusement even if morbid. Examples include the following: 13. “macro surgery”

– description of the butchering of Kashoggi: the term “surgery” is semantically anomalous, since surgery is ordinarily a healing act within the sociocultural ambience; the term here tends to euphemise the sordid act and it rings incongruous. 14. “butcher’s trade”

– “butcher’s trade” seems semantically anomalous; there is irony in the reference to this trade, which is otherwise legitimate, but here with a semantic extension that is hideous – the gruesome act of dismembering Khashoggi’s body, is quite different from a butcher’s trade. 15. “mother of all smoking guns”

– Here we have an intertextual reference to Iraq’s “mother of all battles” in which the then boastful Saddam Hussein fell; to the ideal decoder knowledgeable about this reference, it may draw some humour. As has been variously noted, intertextuality facilitates humour by constructing a

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relation with preceding texts (see Filani and William 2023, this volume, and Tsakona and Chovanec 2020, for a review of this trajectory. 16. “a passport to their wedded future”

– Kashoggi went to the embassy to obtain a passport for himself and his bride-to-be, only to meet a tragic fate. The unusual usage, “a passport to their wedded future,” a future that no longer exists, seems painfully ironic and a nit bit humorous. 17. “Freelance Executioners”

This is some sort of euphemism for hired assassins. Semantically, it is anomalous, since “freelancing” often connotes independence and sometimes altruism; the executioners here were not freelancers but paid agents). Another view is to consider usages such as the above in terms of the pragmatics of manner, as enunciated by Paul Grice. Any language use in which the maxims of conversation appear violated has a potential for miscommunication or humour. Consider the following from the same article: 18. “Khashoggi did not show up that day, or the next, or the day after. It would turn out that he had set out on a one-way trip, a mission of no return”

The satirist here waxes poetic by means of parallel (syntactic) clauses (“that day, or the next, or the day after”), then deploys a sequence that may be described as semantically anomalous if considered literally, or a violation of the Gricean maxims of quality (be truthful) or of manner (be clear)—clearly Kashoggi did not set out consciously on a one-way trip; he was ambushed. The statement can only therefore be read as a metaphor, and it gives the sense of irony, which may in turn sound humorous in a wry or morbid sort of way.

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In all, the satire is indirect, approaching its object by way of indirect lexical referencing. Still, some targets are directly named along the line—the Prince of Saudi Arabia, the former President of the United States, Donald Trump and the present POTUS, Joe Biden. Here, Dare apparently could not help but lob the occasional Juvenalia at the targets through lexical diminutives, such as the reference to Trump as “the former guy,” or invectives such as “his [Biden’s] execrable predecessor.” In 19a–e below, direct and indirect forms of satirical attack occur, especially through suggestive syntax with the pragmatic implicature of immorality and or inhumanity.  19a. “The whole thing was a sham through and through, and Trump the former guy knew it.” b. “Trump does not do empathy.” c. “Why allow the killing of one journalist get in the way of such good business?” d. “But as to practical consequences, Biden and “the former guy” are on the same page, even if not in moral terms.”

The satire of 19c is specifically structured to instantiate humour through a violation of the Gricean maxim of manner, and an indirect, ironical, questioning of the “morality” of the two POTUS’s (which Wole Soyinka would describe, as he does in his Madmen and Specialists (1973), as: the end justifying the meanness). However, the other examples also make individual if not conspicuous claims to humorousness, even if a wry or morbid humour.  There are opposing scripts that tend to cause amusement as well, for example the prayer/curse opposition: 20. “May the principal suspect and his collaborators live to witness that day”

Reference here is to the day when the evil doers in the Kashoggi affair would be exposed and punished. The expression is a curse couched as a prayer or supplication to a deity or to good fortune. The structure of this supplication is syntactically marked, beginning with the customary modal “may.” The structure is formulaic with “may” often followed by a pronoun (“May you/we … prosper/be well/find your desires met,” etc.).

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The same structure may be employed for a curse (e.g., “may the evil doers never thrive”), and this ambivalence of the structure, which may trigger a script opposition between benevolence and malevolence, creates some comic reaction within the context. A “prayer” for long life for an adversary to witness retribution does not appear very much like a good wish, as the linguistic structure of prayer would suggest. The expectation of good wishes is violated. It may well be advanced that when a “prayer” is for retribution to befall a target, then it is decidedly a curse. Overall, the satirical tone, conveying a sense of mockery, criticism and condemnation, can be perceived in many of the examples cited above. Again, the recurrence of satirical patterns in the works of Olatunji Dare, like those of Wole Soyinka and Olatunji Dare, qualifies them, from the evidence of a stylistic appraisal, for the attribute of masters of the satirical form.

Conclusion As the brief analyses above show, it is certainly engaging stylistically to consider elements of language as linguistic input to satire and humour, and to attempt to pinpoint which elements seem to contribute to every point of satirical and comic appreciation within the relevant texts. Satire’s humour, like all humour, clearly rides on the wings of language, whether it is generalised linguistic humour, body humour, wry or morbid humour, as in some of the foregoing examples, and whether it is personal, social or political satire. Satire’s analytical antecedents suggest that the genre is functionally oriented towards targeted criticism and oriented towards humour concepts such as incongruity and forms such as irony, pun, parody and the like. It is however presumptuous to hope to fit every marked rhetorical or linguistic usage deployed for satire or for humour, or both, into established rhetorical or linguistic slots or models. The elastic creativity of writers and sundry encoders will always outpace any attempt to enforce a strict linguistic model of coding on speech or writing outputs. As noted by Simpson and Bousfield (2017) “all kinds of suitable models may be pressed into service depending on the type of literary text under

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scrutiny.” The foregoing analysis shows that irony and pun cannot tell the entire story or satire or of humour, but that an elastic model must attempt to account for language occurrences in satire or humour in situ, as encountered in the analytical process, and in terms of its actual or potential perlocutions. This means accounting for linguistic input at both discrete levels and in terms of patterns or groupment of relevant features. The united levels of linguistic analysis (ULLA) approach proposed in the foregoing is both eclectic and accommodating of linguistic input into satire and the comic. Satire and humour derive from a variety of linguistic and sociocultural sources, with the satirical/comic BASE and elements of the BASE components feeding interactively into the OUTPUT component. To reduce the stylistic analysis of satire and humour to the rhetorical elements of irony, parody or incongruity is, in my view, to impoverish stylistic or linguistic analysis. Satire as style implies the investigation of recurrent patterns in the output of relevant encoders or authors. The writers briefly investigated in the foregoing, Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare and Olatunji Dare, certainly live up to their billing as socio-political satirists, in “striking high and adventuring dangerously at the most eminent vices among the greatest persons.” Satire is service to the community, even when sometimes hazardous to the satirist as service provider. They perform this service through the instrumentation of language, deploying an incrediblly vast variety of linguistic elements appraised at all levels of linguistic analysis.

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Attardo, Salvatore, and Victor Raskin. 1991. Script Theory Revis(it)ed: Joke Similarity and Joke Representation Model. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (3/4): 347–411. Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bex, Tony. 2006. Book Review: On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 15 (1): 118–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947006060558 Brand, Susanna, and Josiah Osgood. 2004. Juvenal and Persius. Blackwell Publishing Co. Chlopicki, Wladyslaw. 1997. An Approach to the Analysis of Verbal Humour in Short Stories. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 10 (3): 333–347. ———. 2017. Humor and Narrative. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 143–157. Routledge. Clarke, Martin Lowther. 2023. Quintilian. Encyclopedia Britannica. https:// www.britannica.com/biography/Quintilian. Cohn, Neil. 2014. Building a Better ‘Comic Theory’: Shortcomings of Theoretical Research on Comics and How to Overcome Them. Studies in Comics 51: 57–75. Darah, Geoffrey G. 1988. Literary Development in Nigeria. In Perspectives on Nigerian Literature: 1700 to the Present, Vol. 1, ed. Yemi Ogunbiyi, 1–9. Lagos: Guardian Publications. ———. 2005. Battles of Songs: Udje Tradition of the Urhobo. Lagos: Malt House Press. Dare, Olatunji. 2021 (March 2). Murder in the Consulate. https://thenationonlineng.net/murder-­in-­the-­consulate/ Davis, Jessica Milner, and Jennifer Hofmann. 2023. The Humor Transaction Schema: A Conceptual Framework for Researching the Nature and Effects of Humor. Humor 36 (2): 323–353. Elliot, Robert C. 2023. Satire. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/satire Filani, Ibukun and Catherine Olutoyin William. 2023. A Preliminary Sketch of Intertextuality in Stand-up Comedy. In Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, ed. Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju. Palgrave Macmillan. (This volume) Fish, Stanley. 1980. What is Stylistics and why are they Saying such Terrible Things about it? In Is There a Text in this Class? 69–96. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Fowler, Alastair. 1982. Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Frye, Northrop. 1957. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton University Press. http://northropfrye-­theanatomyofcriticism.blogspot.com/2009/02/ fourth-­essay-­rhetorical-­criticism.html Griffin, Dustin H. 1994. Satire: A Critical Reintroduction. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Hendrickson, G.L. 1911. Satura—The Genesis of a Literary Form. Classical Philology 2: 129–143. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/ pdf/10.1086/359514. Jack, Ian. 1962. Pope. British Council and the National Book League. Norgard, Amy Lynn. 2015. The Senses and Synaesthesia in Horace’s Satires. Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nuessel, Frank. 2005. Paul Simpson (2003). On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a stylistic Model of Satirical Humour. Journal of Literary Semantics 34 (1): 74–78. Olaniyan, Teju. 1988. Timothy Aluko. In Perspectives on Nigerian Literature: 1700 to the Present Vol. 2, ed. Yemi Ogunbiyi, 48–53. Lagos: The Guardian Publications. Oloruntoba-Oju, Taiwo. 1988. “Testing Linguistic Input to Comic Aesthetics.” Ms. ———. 1992. Satire Horatian and Juvenalian … and the Nigerian Experience. Guardian Literary Series 2030. Lagos: The Guardian. ———. 1998a. Rhetorical and Linguistics Games in Comic Aesthetics. In Language, ed. E.L. Eipstein and R. Kole, 153–168. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. (Reprinted from Language and Style: An International Journal 25(3) Summer 1992, 259–269). ———. 1998b. Towards a Semiosis of Invective. Ilorin Journal of Language and Literature 3: 14–25. ———. 1998c. Language and Style in Nigerian Drama and Theatre. Ibadan: BEN-EL Books. ———. 2014. Prose Satire in the Print Media: The Example of Olatunji Dare. In Public Intellectuals, the Public Sphere and the Public Spirit: Essays in Honour of Olatunji Dare, ed. Wale Adebanwi, 139–146. Ibadan: University Press Ltd.. Reprinted from Guardian Literary Series, Lagos: The Guardian, 1992. ———. 2015. Invective in Western and Nigerian Literary Criticism. The Nasarawa Journal of the Humanities 5 (2): 109–135.

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———. 2023. “Shamuz, Shamuz, everything is with Shamuz”: Making Sense of Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry. In Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, ed. Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju. Palgrave Macmillan. (This volume). Osundare, Niyi. 1984. Village Voices. Ibadan: Evans Brother. ———. 1986. The Eye of the Earth. Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books. ———. 1990. Squaring up to Africa’s Future: A Writer’s Reflection. Lecture Series, University of Oklahoma, Norman, U.S.A. ———. 1998. Squaring up to Africa’s future: A writer’s reflection on the predicament of a continent. In Remaking Africa: Challenges of the Twenty-First Century, ed. O. Oladipo, 228–235. Ibadan: Hope. (Earlier presented as part of the Black Literature Lecture Series, University of Oklahoma, Norman, U.S.A., 1991.) ———. 2003. Cautious Paths through the Bramble: A Critical Classification of Style Theories and Concepts. Ibadan: Hope Library of Liberal Arts. (From First Ibadan Annual African Literature Conference, University of Ibadan, 1982.) Pope, Alexander. 1684–1744. One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight. Dialogue II. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. https://quod.lib.umich. edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-­idx?cc=ecco;c=ecco;idno=004809310.0001.000;n ode=004809310.0001.000:2;seq=13;page=root;view=text ———. 1962. An Essay on Criticism. In English Critical Texts, ed. D.J. Enright and Ernst de Chickera. London: Oxford University Press. (First published in 1711 - https://www.britannica.com/topic/An-Essay-on-Criticism.) Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Reidel. Samuel, Irene. 1972. Milton on Comedy and Satire. Huntington Library Quarterly 35 (2): 107–130. https://doi.org/10.2307/3817020. https://www. jstor.org/stable/3817020. Silver, Sean. 2019. Satirical Objects. In The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-­ Century Satire, ed. Paddy Bullard. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfor dhb/9780198727835.013.28. Simpson, Paul. 2003. On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour. Journal of Literary Semantics 34 (1): 74–78. Simpson, Paul, and Derek Bousfield. 2017. Humour and Stylistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. Salvatore Attardo, 1st ed., 158–173. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162. Simpson, Paul, Andrea Mayr, and Simon Statham. 2018. The Discourse of Humour and Irony. In Language and Power: A Resource Book for Students, 2nd ed., 84–87. London: Routledge.

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Soyinka, Wole. 1963. Telephone Conversation. In Modern Poetry from Africa, ed. Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, 111. Accra: Penguin African Library. ———. 1965. The Road. Oxford University Press. ———. 1973. Madmen and Specialist. Eyre Methuen. ———. n.d. EtikeRevoWetin. https://groups.google.com/g/usaafricadialogue/c/ VDvlupi_H4o/m/mBOroXXcBQA. Tsakona, Villy, and Jan Chovanec. 2020. Revisiting Intertextuality and Humour: Fresh Perspectives on a Classic Topic. The European Journal of Humour Research 8 (3): 1–15. www.europeanjournalofhumour.org. Uden, James. 2015. The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome. Oxford University Press. https://books.google.com.ng/books?id Ullman, B.L. 1913. Satura and Satire. Classical Philology 8 (2): 172–194. Vigouroux, Cécile B. 2015. Genre, heteroglossic performances, and new identity: stand-up comedy in modern French society. Language in Society 44 (2): 243–272. Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi. 1972. Homecoming. London: Heinemann. Watkins, Angela. 2010. Language variety in literature. In Encyclopaedia of Identity: Volume I, edited by Ronald L. Jackson, 425–429. California: Sage. Weinbrot, Howard D. 2014. Horace and Juvenal in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century. In Alexander Pope and the Tradition of Formal Verse Satire, 3–44. Princeton University Press. Weiss, Scott. 2022. Bodily Metaphors and Failed Resolution in Persius’s First Satire. Arethusa 55 (1): 67–94. Project Muse. https://doi.org/10.1353/ are.2022.0003.

Part II Language, Humour, Society and Media in Africa

8 The Linguistic Style of Nigerian Mediated Comedies in English Ibukun Filani

Introduction This chapter examines the significance of linguistic code choice to the performance of humour in Nigerian popular culture comedy genres. The study draws samples of linguistic choices as a stylization technique from mediated comedy skits, especially the online comedy skits on Nigerian social media spaces. It presents a socio-historic perspective to the language use in Nigerian comedies by examining the linguistic choices in comedy genres like situational comedy and stand-up comedy which have been in existence before the age of social media cultural production. The aim is to point out how the linguistic practices that are facilitated by Nigerian multilingual situation constitute strategies for grounding humorous intention in the country. Nigeria is a multilingual country

I. Filani (*) Department of English Language and Linguistics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_8

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with over 400 indigenous languages. Three languages are classified as major (Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo), while the remaining hundreds are regarded as minor. There is also the English language, which was first introduced into the country by Christian missionaries and then enshrined into the country’s sociolinguistic scene through the agency of colonization and post-independence government policies (Banjo 1996; Adegbite 2010). Today in Nigeria, English is the most important language, as it is privileged above the indigenous languages in the constitution and through government policies. Because of its role as the primary language of education, government administration, judiciary and media, it has become a signifier for elitism, education and competence. According to Awonusi (2007), the language has acquired a hegemonic status in Nigeria as it is the superordinate code with unlimited power, control and influence over all other linguistic codes in the country.

Code, Style and Meaning in Nigeria Linguistic code selection refers to the language variety that speakers use to communicate their messages, and this choice could be the standard form of a language or any of its social varieties or regional dialects (Odebunmi 2010). In a multilingual setting like Nigeria, code selection is a complex task that entails communicators negotiating their choice among the several available codes and their varieties. However, such choice would be determined by the speech situation (e.g., topic, listeners, location), the speaker’s linguistic competence and their intentions (i.e., what they want to achieve through their contributions) (Odebunmi 2010). In their analysis of English varieties, Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) note that language varieties are based on the continuum of region, education and social standing, subject matter, medium, attitude and interference. Given the unique features of English in Nigeria that result from its contact with Nigerian languages and cultures, scholars of the English language in Nigeria have attempted several classifications of its different varieties in the country (e.g., Banjo 1996; Adegbite 2010). By and large, linguistic codes that have been identified from the contact of English with Nigerian languages include Nigerian Pidgin, Broken English,

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Nigerian English Varieties I, II, III and IV. Scholars use the parameter of grammatical correctness, education and approximation to Standard British English to arrive at these varieties. Other parameters include the  geographical perspective leading to ethnic-based Englishes, like Hausa English, Yoruba English and Igbo English, and social perspective which gives rise to standard (educated/sophisticated variety) and nonstandard (local/interference variety) (Adegbite 2010). Some scholars use “Nigerian Pidgin” and “Broken English” interchangeably (see Gaudio 2011), while others refer to Nigerian Pidgin as Nigerian Pidgin English (e.g., Jowitt 2019). It is important to note that these two linguistic codes are not the same language even though they are both connected to English. Broken English refers to the variety of English spoken by people who have no knowledge of its grammatical rules. It is typified by mere stringing of English words together in utterances. It is what Banjo (1996) calls Variety I. On the other hand, Nigerian Pidgin is not a dialect of English but a creole derived from the contact of English and Portuguese with Nigerian languages in the coastal region of the country. According to Jowitt (2019, 10), Nigerian Pidgin “has a mainly English lexical superstratum, while various indigenous languages account for the grammatical substratum.” Nevertheless, it is assumed that the two distinct codes are the same. Likewise, numerous Nigerians, “especially the more educated,” understand pidgin “but prefer not to speak it because of its demotic, anti-bourgeois connotations,” as they consider it “a debased form of English” or Broken English (Jowitt 2019, 10). Banjo (1995, 1996) discusses the differences in Nigerian English varieties vis-à-vis their social values, as they typify the lectal range of English speakers in the country. In other words, according to Banjo (1996), the differences between Varieties III and I mark the acrolectal, mesolectal and basilectal varieties, respectively. Variety III is presumed to be standard Nigerian English, since it has the same grammatical features with Standard British English and it is acquired through education. Variety II exhibits systematic learning of English as it is spoken by people with secondary education. It represents the speech pattern of most Nigerian bilingual speakers of English, and to some extent, it has the phonological, grammatical and vocabulary feature of Variety I.  Variety II is close to British English in syntax but it is with strongly marked phonological and

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lexical features. Variety I is Broken English and it is spoken by people who have picked up the language as a result of the exigencies of their occupations. It is marked by wholesale transfer from the speakers’ mother tongue and there is the generalization of grammatical rules of English. On Variety IV, Banjo (1996) notes that it is spoken by Nigerians who acquired the language in the native speakers’ countries, and thus, it does not have a direct influence on the Nigerian sociolinguistic scene. Within multilingual contexts and even in monolingual ones where linguistic forms are realized in several variant forms, linguistic code choice has social significances and interactional meanings. Several studies, like Bell (2014), Odebunmi (2010), Rampton (2009), Coupland (2001) and Gumperz (1982), have highlighted that when a speaker makes a choice of particular linguistic form, which could be a linguistic variable in a monolingual setting or a language in a multilingual setting, s/he is signalling a meaning that cannot be conveyed through linguistic structures or vocabularies in the language. For instance, one of the interpretations assigned to code switching by Gumperz (1982) and Odebunmi (2010) is that it marks out the speaker’s intention to achieve a personal goal in an interaction. Such a code could mean that the speaker is instantiating a “we” or “they” code. Furthermore, as indicated by Rampton’s (2009) notion of language crossing, which underscores social structures underlying code switching, and by Coupland’s (2001) concept of stylization of and through dialect, which underscores styling as a discursive social action, linguistic code selection can be interpreted as a speaker’s main action. In other words, it is not just a contextualization cue that indicates interactional meanings. It could be a “reflexive communicative action in which speakers produce specially marked and often exaggerated representations of languages, dialects and styles” (Rampton 2009, 149). It is in this perspective that this chapter examines linguistic code choice in Nigerian comedies. Two theoretical views are important for the present analysis and they both suggest that through linguistic code selection, a language user is actively putting up a voice through which s/he constructs an identity in relation to the audience. The first is performance, which Bauman (2012, 99) describes as “situated discursive practice.” Coupland (2001) applies this perspective to stylizing and notes that stylizing involves performances

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of both ingroup and outgroup identities. In other words, when speakers stylize their language, they are creatively selecting from a pre-existing repertoire of culturally significant linguistic codes. Such styling entails a construction of a social image for the purpose of the performance. Bell’s (2014) theory on style is the second model. Among other things, Bell (2014) describes style as what an individual speaker does with a language in relation to self and others. The author also notes that style is designed primarily for and in response to an audience. Style is therefore facilitated by audience design. However, before a linguistic pattern or variable becomes a marker for a style, some social significance would have been attached to it in the speech community. According to Bell (2014), the significance is based on how linguistic forms index social values and language attitudes. For instance, a particular pronunciation pattern or lexical choice might be a marker of not only being educated but also of being educated in a particular region, as it is the case of the English language in Nigeria. The work of Bell (2014) offers a window for explaining social meanings attached to languages as well as varieties of a language within a multilingual nation. The same principles can be applied to linguistic code choice in multilingual speech communities like Nigeria, especially in mediated creative productions where linguistic choices play a central role. This is because individuals engaged in such productions could instantiate linguistic forms and code selection as a strategy for realizing their communicative goals. It should be noted that Bell (2014) and Coupland (2001) are analyses of linguistic code selection involving stylistically significant linguistic variables on radio and television. This chapter aims to apply these principles to Internet skits in Nigeria. Before going further, it is important to comment on how the Nigerian multilingual situation provides the groundwork for the symbolic value and indexicality of linguistic varieties in the country. Such values and shibboleths can be traced to the sociolinguistic significance of English in Nigeria and the hierarchical recognition of languages in the country through the agencies of religion,  government policies and education. Banjo (1996) notes that due to the roles of the Christian missionaries that first taught English in the southern part of the country in the precolonial era, and the colonial officers that employed Nigerians who could

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communicate in English in their civil service, English became enshrined in the sociolinguistic scene of the country as a signifier of elitism, education and competency. Similarly, in the postcolonial era, Nigeria has continued to maintain the status quo of elevating English above indigenous languages. Since it is the most important language in the country’s educational system, ability to speak it creates the assumption of being competent, skilful and brilliant. An assumption that can be logically derived from the symbolic value and indexicality of English in Nigeria is that anyone who does not speak the language or speaks the language poorly is not as brilliant, skilful, cultured and refined as those who speak it. Therefore, with the lack of competence in standard English, one can be stereotyped as stupid, dull, mediocre and lazy. The existence of multiple languages in Nigeria is another basis for social values and indexicality of ethnolinguistic-based identities in the country. Obeng and Adegbija (1999) assert that Nigerians have strong emotional attachment to their languages and ethnic groups, such that political participation and access to socioeconomic opportunities are defined along ethnolinguistic lines. The authors also note that Nigerians have evolved stereotypes across ethnic lines. For instance, the Ebira are stereotyped as noisy; the Hausa as self-loving, domineering and hating Western education; the Yoruba as gullible, unreliable and betrayers; the Igbo as lovers of money and the Idoma as being promiscuous (Obeng and Adegbija 1999, 361). Another dimension is the hierarchical classification of Nigerian languages that presupposes the inequality of rights, prestige, status and acceptance of the ethnolinguistic groups in the Nigerian polity (Awonusi 2007). The linguistic hierarchization breeds a situation of conflict among Nigerians (Ogunsiji 2001). The choice of just three languages as major ones creates fear of being marginalized socially, economically and politically in the speakers of the minor ones. While there is struggle for supremacy between speakers of the three major languages, there is reprisal scuffle to push back the dominance of major ethnolinguistic groups from the speakers of the minor languages. This study is interested in how such stereotyping and the symbolic value of English serve as the basis for grounding humorous intention and the construction of the comedic image in Nigeria. This will further help in understanding the peculiarities of humour performance in the Nigerian postcolonial context.

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 omedic Image in Nigerian Mediated Comedy C Genres in English Mintz (1985) argues that the comic persona is presented to the audience as an individual with a marginal sociocultural status. He notes that the comedian is defective in character traits and is exempted from expectation of normal behaviour. One way by which such a marginal image could be constructed in creative works is through the speech and interactional contributions of the comic character. In her review of American literary works, Watkins (2010) notes that a primary way by which writers define a character’s identity is by using the linguistic variety that marks out the character’s social category. Thus, assigning a particular language variety to a character is a technique for authenticating the character’s voice within the fictional work as well as in the cultural context. Watkins (2010) observes that a language variety, especially those regarded as substandard in the culture, like slang and regional accents, is usually used for satire, mimicry and parody as they foreground stereotypes for constructing marginal identities. Given these observations, non-centric linguistic varieties which are usually defined as nonstandard dialects have become significant markers for grounding the identity of marginal characters within narrative works. This chapter argues that the same principle applies in the Nigerian comedy industry, especially those sectors in which language of expression is derived from the English-Nigerian languages contact situation. Since English is Nigeria’s lingua franca, many mediated Nigerian cultural productions are performed in the language so as to reach a wide range of people in the multi-ethnic nation. Situational comedies with a nation-wide outreach are usually in English or have a character whose lines are performed in a code related to English (e.g., Broken English and Nigerian Pidgin). Apart from other theatrical techniques like costuming, the comic characters in them are foregrounded through the code choice of the  nonstandard variety of English, like Broken English, ethnic coloured interference English or the selection of Nigerian Pidgin. Specifically, the comic character image is contextualized as an individual who cannot speak standard English. Since Nigeria’s independence in

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1960, the comic characters in sitcoms like Icheoku, New Masquerade, Jenifa’s Diary and Professor JohnBull have always been portrayed as individuals who do not speak standard English. Icheoku was set in the Nigerian colonial era when the sociolinguistic status of English was still a foreign language in most parts of the country, while New Masquerade was set in post-independence Nigeria when English has made an in-road into the country as a second language.1 Both sitcoms were broadcast on the Nigerian Television Authority network stations from the 1980s to the early 1990s. Humour in the first sitcom centred on Icheoku’s (mis)translation of the British district officer’s statements. As a court clerk, Icheoku conveyed whatever was said in Igbo by his kinsmen to English for the district officer who did not comprehend Igbo. He also translated the English utterances of the white man to Igbo for the benefits of his kinsmen. New Masquerade’s main comic character is Chief Zebrudaya who had been to a world war and worked as a security guard in a colonial hospital (Teilanyo 2009). What tied these two characters together was the variety of English with which their roles were performed as they were depicted as subordinate Igbo-English bilinguals with very limited knowledge of the English language (Teilanyo 2003). The following quotation from Teilanyo (2009, 77) offers a clearer perspective on the English varieties of these comic characters: The English of the court clerk and Chief Zebrudaya may be situated somewhere between Variety I and Variety II (but more of the former) … of Banjo’s … model of variety differentiation in Nigerian English. In grammar, they are obviously basilectal, but they appear to have acquired some highfalutin but contextually inappropriate vocabulary, which they parade with gusto, having acquired it from white people as domestic workers, colonial civil servants, or veterans of the world wars through the West African Volunteer Force. It is the variety whose users can express themselves somewhat intelligibly, but with abundance of ungrammaticalities. Its  The reference to English here as a foreign language is in the sense of its sociolinguistic significance in the country. English in Nigeria in the colonial era was classified as a Foreign language in the country, while in the postcolonial era, it has become a second language. The difference lies in how the language is perceived in terms of its features and the basis of its grammatical correctness (see Banjo 1996; Adegbite 2010). 1

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speakers are unable to distinguish between English-based pidgin and English proper, as they swerve between the two, producing basically Broken English.

More recent Nigerian sitcoms produced in the twenty-first century, like Professor Johnbull and Jenifer’s Diary, also have their central comic characters marked out by their unique linguistic styles. Jenifer, the central character of Jenifer’s Diary, also has her image fashioned after Chief Zebrudaya’s in terms of her language style choice. However, as a Yoruba-English bilingual, her English variety is characterized by wholesale transfer of Yoruba phonology, ignorance of English lexis and grammar, and code switching into her first language. In Professor Johnbull, several of the characters play comic roles and central to their roles is the use of language to foreground comedic character traits. The leading character is Professor Johnbull, a widower and retired academic who lives with his son and daughter. There is also a housemaid (Caro). While Professor Johnbull speaks standard English in an elevated style with grandiloquent jargon, Caro is semi-­literate who barely understands the professor and who speaks Broken English. In many interactions, Johnbull’s statements are incomprehensible to other characters because they could barely understand his verbosity and bombastic style. Stand-up comedy is another genre where the influence of English and the multilingual situation of Nigeria has been a primary determining factor for selecting the language for performing the comic image. Although it practically differs from situational comedy in terms of its engagement with the audience, it adopts the same instrument for communicating the comedic voice to the audience. Nigerian stand-up comics use Nigerian Pidgin to communicate humour to the audience. Adetunji (2013) discusses the stand-up comics’ choice of Nigerian Pidgin as an affiliative resource for talking with the audience rather than to them. This is because performing in an indigenous language or English would limit access to the comedy routine to only those who understand the language. Another dimension of the code choice in stand-up venues is the mimicry of Nigerian ethnic English varieties, especially when they instantiate ethnic-­ based humour. However, some comics like MC Tagwaye, whose ethnic origin is Igbo, have perfected the use of ethnic-based Englishes as the linguistic code for performance. MC Tagwaye performs his routines in an

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English variety of the Hausa extraction. He mimics Hausa accent in English, and mostly of the former Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari. The thesis being proposed in this chapter is that, because of the cultural assumption that the comic image is a marginal identity, Nigerian comics have strategically chosen a linguistic code which in their socio-­ political context indexes the marginal social class. This does not mean that the interactional dimension of linguistic code choice, as pointed out by Adetunji (2013), is being rejected. However, because of its social, political and economic significance, English is associated with elitism and it attracts a positive attitude more than any other language in the country (see Babajide 2001). Linguistic codes such as Broken English and Nigerian Pidgin are commonly viewed as poor forms of English (Banjo 1996; Jowitt 2019), and as spoken by the uneducated commoners; therefore, they become ready candidates for indicating a marginal identity. In the Nigerian context, one of the ways by which such an identity is marked is through lack of competence in Standard English. The examples of comedy genres that have been cited in this review indicate that the Nigerian comedic voice is generally constructed with the linguistic code of Nigerian Pidgin and Broken English. However, the dimensions in which comedic image is contextualized through language differ. While in stand-up comedy, it is through the use of Nigerian Pidgin, in sitcoms, it largely depends on how the comedic character trait is contextualized vis-à-vis competence in English. For instance, the comic image in earlier sitcoms like Icheoku and New Masquerade is foregrounded through the stylistic choice of Broken English and also re-enacted in recent ones like Professor Johnbull and Jenifer’s Diary. However, the more recent sitcoms add another dimension to the creation of the comic character by introducing comic characters like Professor Johnbull who speak Standard English albeit inappropriately with a pompous attitude marked by verbosity and bombastic vocabulary. In the later instance, humour is built around the character whose style is incongruous with the situational context of speech. What is important is that individuals involved in the production of comedies in Nigeria (e.g., script writers, movie directors  etc.) deliberately create the image of the comic through a language variety that reflects the Nigerian struggle to surmount the challenges imposed by English. By attributing a low-status linguistic variety which is defined by first language interference

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and extensive violation of grammatical rules to comedic image in broadcast entertainments, the producers and directors create a stock and static character which is easily reduplicated within the cultural productions in the popular culture scene. These characters are satirical realizations of the problem brought by the implantation of English in Nigeria. They are instances of stereotypical representations of what Nigerians face with the imposition of English, on the one hand, and the language-based categorization of social classes in Nigeria, on the other. Another theoretical dimension that offers explanation on the use of Nigerian Pidgin and Broken English is Bauman’s (2008) philology of the vernacular. Among other things, Bauman (2008, 32–33) defines the vernacular as “a communicative modality characterized by communicative resources and practices that are acquired informally.” Compared with a code like Standard English, the use of Broken English and Nigerian Pidgin readily characterizes the utterances of comic characters as informal, locally grounded and vernacular oratory. The use of Broken English and Nigerian Pidgin further gives indexical evidence to the image of the comic as a marginal one in the mediated texts, thereby authenticating the indexical associations of the codes as non-elitist linguistic varieties.

Stylization in Nigerian Online Comedies Studies like Yeku (2016) and Chukwumah (2018) on Nigerian online humour performances have lamented the absence of standard English in humorous narratives. The first focuses on the creation of a trickster character, while the second explores the agency of mobile digital technology in the creation and spread of comedy skits in Nigeria. Yeku (2016) conceptualizes comic characters in online spaces as cyberpops, which is a rearticulation of Nigerian comic heroes and tricksters in the oral literatures. On the other hand, Chukwumah (2018) uses the term comicast which is a blend from comedy and broadcast to refer to the different forms of comedy skits generated and propagated through digital technology. What is important for this chapter is the author’s position that the ungrammatical utterances and stylistic infelicities in the skits are setbacks

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on the textuality of the narratives (see Chukwumah 2018, 40). The chapter argues that the grammatical infelicities in the skits reflect the linguistic realities of English in Nigeria as they indicate the lectal range of Nigerian English speakers. What is more is that such “sub-standard” Englishes are deliberately instantiated as a humour-producing strategy by Nigerian comedians. Besides, many Nigerian comedians are educated and are capable of speaking the standard variety of English. However, because they are performing a marginal identity, they deliberately select a code which foregrounds a marginal social status. This section exemplifies the linguistic code selection of Broken English in Nigerian online comedy skits. It views such a  linguistic variety as a humour-producing strategy and as an index for grounding the comedic image in the narratives. To exemplify, this chapter focuses on the skits produced by Ug Toons, Omo Ibadan and Kiekie. The utterances which represent the humorous peaks of the comic characters in these skits are presented and then analysed to show how Nigerian comedians deliberately violate the grammar of English in their bid to perform humour. The first set of examples is drawn from UG Toons which is a comedy animation series (UG Toons 2022). The cartoon is centred on a trickster character called Oworitakpo. It is the character who produces the humorous peak of the skits through his utterances and actions. The following utterances are made by the character: 1. Mama Kofi is like that your food will be delicious oh. The smell is dislocating my nostrils. 2. Abomination or is it abomicountry that I will call it? 3. This poverty will collapse your generation o! 4. Who is disturbing the tranquiliantic peace of my tranquillity? 5. This biscuit is sweet sha. This is what we call palatable pastry taste of tastebud alarmination. 6. Why do you like disturbing the peaceful moment of my peace of mind like this? 7. How does that one concern my concernment? 8. Don’t let thinking to frustrate your frustration o! 9. Wastement of wastages. 10. Teacher: What is tap water called?

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Oworitakpo: Teacher that is intimidation to my personal integrity. Teacher: The act of eating too much is what? Oworitakpo: And I said it is eatility. Teacher: I asked what is tap water called? Oworitakpo: It is called tapology. Another comedy character on Nigerian social media platforms is Kiekie whose comedy skits are short clips built on a single interactional event like goods and services encounters, job interviews, romantic dates and everyday non-institutional talks. The next set of examples are taken from Kiekie’s skits2 (Kiekie TV 2021, 2022) 1. My chest comes back to collect money and child. Aya mi pada wa gbowo [I boldly returned to collect money] 2. Koye mi. It’s not reading in my head. [I don’t understand] 3. Let me step the ground abi I’m dead ni! [Let me touch the ground or am I dead?] 4. Yoruba will say that when goodness tayed, idiots will forget. Ti ore ba pe, ashiere a gbagbe. [A fool forgets a favour after a long time] 5. I have seen customer. Mo ti ri customer. [I now have a customer] 6. That’s where we played to grow. Ibi ti a ti sere dagba ni yen. [That’s our playing ground while we were growing up] 7. Its spoil ni it didn’t spoilage. Oba ni ko ba je. [It’s gone bad but it can be rectified] 8. That’s how she became the child of one night. Omoorukan. [Omoorukan is the Yoruba word for orphan] 9. Who did I wake up to see this morning? Tani mo ji ri leni na?[Who was the first person I saw after waking up this morning?] The last comicast being examined is Omo Ibadan, whose social media handles is tagged Lizzy Jay. The comicast is based on a young Yoruba  Kiekie’s comicasts are based on manipulated English translation of Yoruba proverbs and idioms. The humour comes from untranslatability of the idioms and proverbs to English. To aid understanding of readers who are not familiar with Yoruba, a description of the idioms or proverbs are given in square brackets. The examples used from the three comedians are derived from different series of their skits which they upload on their YouTube channel. 2

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rustic lady from the city of Ibadan. While the two previous examples of comedy skits are produced in English, Lizzy Jay produces her comedy skits in the Yoruba language. However, what makes her skits to fit into the thesis of this chapter is that she performs an image of an Ibadan girl who speaks only the Ibadan dialect of Yoruba, and whenever she speaks English, she articulates English words with her Ibadan dialect accent and as if the English alphabet is actually a Yoruba one. The following excerpt is taken from one of her skits (Lizzy Jay 2020) where she assumes the role of an English language teacher to a girl whose English competence is far better than hers. Lizzy Jay: See, when I teach you, ko mogbo, ko ma listen ni o. Cause me, I don’t like unlisten children o. Mi fe o. Ko maa gbo n timo n so fun o. N ti a se leni ni wodpronas. What I called it? [When I teach you, you must listen. Because I don’t like children who don’t listen. I don’t like it. You must listen to what I am telling you. What we will do today is word pronunciation. What did I call it?] Pupil:

Aunty, are you going to teach me in English or are you going to teach me in Yoruba? Please, stick to English. Lizzy Jay: Ah! English naa ni. Is English I teach you. English naa ni mo n ko o. Abi ewo wa ni kini? Igberaga po! [It’s English. I am teaching you English. I am teaching you in English. I don’t know what you are saying. You are too proud!] She goes on to pronounce the wordlist she has written on her board while the pupil rejects her pronunciation and gives her the right one. Lizzy Jay: Correlate (which she pronounced as kokoro alate) Pupil: CORRELATE Lizzy Jay: Ki n se collalate o. ko n se collalate. Collalate yato. Kokoro alate le le. Is kokoro alate. [It’s not correlate. It’s not correlate. Correlate is different. This is kokoroalate]

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Pupil: CORRELATE Lizzy Jay: Immune (which she pronounced as Imule) Pupil: IMMUNE. Lizzy Jay: ko kin se imu. Imu nose ist different, ist difference from imule. Imule re. Imule called it! [This is not nose. Imu is nose and is different, it’s different from Imule. This is Imule. Imule, call it! (Imule is Yoruba word for oath taking)] What is common in the examples is the deliberate violation of the English language rules of grammaticalness and appropriateness. It can be suggested that violation of grammatical rules is not because of lack of competence of the comic characters, but a stylization technique for grounding the comic roles and images in the mediated texts. Following Bell (2014), ungrammatical utterances in English in the context of mediated comedy is a form of audience design. The comics’ language use is a strategy for foregrounding their image in the mediated texts. Since the comics’ image is construed as a marginal character with some deficiencies, it is not out of place to represent and contextualize it as a character that is incapable of producing grammatical and appropriate utterances. The following paragraphs examine how the examples from these three comedy skits amount to humour in the Nigerian context. First, we will describe these deliberate violations of English grammar as instances of language play. Since comedy is a form of entertainment that privileges non-serious communication, actors could easily flout any grammatical demands to achieve their aims. According to Cook (2000), the term language play subsumes all forms of dissociated activities which express disconnection from reality, disruption and subversion of social structures and the introduction of random elements. One of the ways by which a disconnect with and disruption of reality could be indicated is through flouting of conventional rules in language and of interaction. Play in language includes children verse, fiction, insult, jokes, puns and riddles (Cook 2000). Language play could be viewed as a phenomenon within a language but what we have in the Nigerian comedy context is the type of play that occurs as a result of the user’s knowledge of more

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than one language. Crystal (1998) asserts that regional dialects of English are a rich source of conversational language play. This is because the awareness of dialect differences serves as the basis for imitating regional varieties of language. Crystal (1998, 19) asserts “word-play often relies on accent differences between social groups” and that “a word spoken in one accent is interpreted as if it belongs to another, resulting in an incongruous effect or an unexpected meaning—or both.” As Vandergriff (2010) exemplifies, language play can take place at all levels of language, phonology, morphology, grammar, semantics and pragmatics. Although this chapter does not cover the extensive realizations of language play in Nigerian comedies, it suggests that it is possible, at least theoretically, to find its diverse forms in the country’s comedy performances. Thus, we might find some form of phonological play (e.g., Omo Ibadan’s pronunciation of English words), morphological play (Oworitakpo’s use of bombastic words and coinages), meaning play which entails pragmatics and semantics (e.g., Oworitakpo’s coinages, Kiekie’s transliteration of Yoruba proverbs and metaphors into English) and interlingual play (e.g., Kiekie’s transliteration of Yoruba proverbs and metaphors into English). These plays only work if the audience recognize them as expressions violating English grammar. In addition, it can be suggested that the audience also needs to recognize the kind of identity work being performed by the comic. We will suggest that there are several dimensions to the identity construction. The first is on sustaining shared identity relating to the experiences with English and its role in the country. In the second sense, we will view the comedic narrative itself as a deliberate construction of identity in that the ungrammatical expressions in them constitute a discursive strategy for establishing and reinforcing the characterization of comic image. It is also possible to view it as a grounding of ethnic identities as in the case of Omo Ibadan, in the context where interethnic tension is rife. For the last instance, Omo Ibadan could be seen as a performer foregrounding an ethnic-based stereotype of Yoruba speakers and inviting other Nigerians from other ethnic groups to laugh at her own ethnic nationality. Her comicasts are not just a performance of the shared experience of Nigerians as regards their struggles with an imposed language, but a selfdeprecation of her ethnic identity. Language play is realized differently in the samples taken from the three comics. In Oworitakpo’s lines, language play is instantiated through deliberate coinages of words and phrasal units which violate English grammar but are

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still fashioned after the principles of word formation in the language. For example, his coinages like westement, tranquiliantic, alarmination, eatility and tapology are derived by following affixation rules in English. Although these are easily recognized as words which do not exist in English, they sound very much like words in the language since audiences can easily recognize the affixes in them and the root words from which they are derived. Secondly, it is easy to pick out some nonstandard phrasal units and strings like dislocating my nostrils, collapse your generation, disturbing the tranquiliantic peace of my tranquillity, call palatable pastry taste of tastebud alarmination, disturbing the peaceful moment of my peace of mind, and concern my concernment. While it seems that these strings are in line with the syntax of English sentences, they are likely to draw attention as expressions which do not exist in the language. Both the lexical coinages and the strings which appear to be aphorisms in English are based on the knowledge of English grammar. However, these expressions are likely to raise the curiosity of any competent users of the language. Such users will easily flag them as ungrammatical and laugh at how the comic character deliberately creates his own linguistic reality in the language without regard for the conventional rules of English. The examples from Kiekie’s comicast are unique and different from that of Oworitakpo. Kiekie’s humour-producing strategy is based on the technique of transliteration of Yoruba idioms and proverbs to English. It seems Kiekie’s aim for her direct word for word translation is meant to evoke laughter from the audience watching her skits. Here, humour evolves from the mismatch of the meaning in the source language with the meaning in the target language. For instance, in xvi, the Yoruba sentence Ibiti a ti sere dagbani yen is translated into English as That’s where we played to grow. Sequentially, there is a one on one matching between the words from the two languages involved as tabulated below. Source language

Target language

Ibi [place, a common noun] ti [perfective aspect marker] a [collective we] sere [play] dagba [to grow] ni [preposition show direction] Yen [demonstrative pronoun]

Where We Played Grow To That

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We can map the same pattern for other examples from the comic character. What Kiekie does is to generate an inappropriate translation of her source language text (proverbs, sentences, idioms) in English by adopting a direct translation of word meanings. Such transliteration is expected to project incongruity which would be realized as differing meanings from the two texts. The point here is that Kiekie uses the technique of translation as humour-producing mechanism. The last example from Lizzy Jay is based on the characterization of the comic as an individual who presumes that she understands English. What further makes her mimicry of English teacher funny is the fact that her appearance portrayed her as a rustic and uneducated lady. Omo Ibadan creatively distorts the English language expressions. She caricatures, through the distortion of English phonology, typical classroom teacher in Nigeria. Thus, her performances constitute a form of satire of the Nigerian classroom teachers’ situations (poor and inadequate subject knowledge, renumeration, facilities, etc.). As seen in example xx, Omo Ibadan’s comical representation of a classroom teacher satirizes the inadequate knowledge of some teachers in the Nigerian elementary and secondary schools. In xx, she attempts to teach pronunciation of some English words to her pupil. However, she falls short in her knowledge of English pronunciation. It should be noted that to aid the audience interpretation, she has written on the board the correct spelling of the topic of the day (English Pronunciation) and of the words she would use to demonstrate the pronunciations. However, she is incapable of giving at least a pronunciation that indicates that she has been trained to teach English. Going by Banjo’s (1996) classification of Nigerian English varieties, her pronunciation typifies that of an uneducated individual who has picked the language due to the exigency of her work, that entails interacting with people who speak Standard English. Furthermore, it is worrisome that an English teacher will have to communicate to the pupil in the mother tongue in a context where English is the language of instruction. This further reveals that the character is only masquerading as a teacher of English. As we see in the example, her instructions to the pupil are conveyed in Yoruba with bits of code switching to English. It is also interesting to note that several of her switches contain ungrammatical expressions or non-English coinages; for example, I don’t like unlisten children. Her pronunciations of English are exemplified as follows:

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Teach [tis] Children [shidrens] English [iglis] Correlate [kokoro alate]; [kololate] Immune [Imule] Her linguistic code choice (Yoruba) and her pronunciation of English utterances can be explained as stylizations which foreground the pronunciation problems of Yoruba speakers of English due to the interference of their first language. Her performance can therefore be described as a mockery of Yoruba speakers of English, especially of those with strong Yoruba accent in their spoken English. Thus, we see the comic instantiating language play based on Yoruba phonology interference in English. As language play intended pronunciation of English, Omo Ibadan stretches the intuitions of the audience on links between English sounds and spelling, on the one hand, and between English spellings and Yoruba sounds, on the other. The comic is seen playing with the pronunciation of two languages and keeping the audience fascinated by how she interconnects the pronunciation of the two languages with the spelling of one. Of course, her pronunciations would be interpreted as mispronunciations, since audience members are not likely to link Yoruba pronunciation with English spellings and alphabets.

Discussion and Conclusion According to Adesoye (2018), comedic artists are compelled to engage every form of language tool at their disposal. Their engagement involves manipulating all levels of language. As it pertains to English in Nigeria, comicast producers in the country manipulate and play with the language at all levels as exemplified in the sampled data. Their desire to evoke humour through deliberate violation of English grammar is a strategy which foregrounds their comedic intention. This is because the Nigerian sociolinguistic scene creates the groundwork and context for the symbolic value and indexicality of sub-standard English varieties in the country. Also, since the comics’ identity is a marginal one in the society,

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it is logical that comics would select a linguistic code which indexes a marginal identity for its users. Within the Nigerian sociolinguistic context, English varieties which are characterized by wholesale transfer of first language patterns and ungrammaticality are codes that fit the marginal identity. It is therefore not surprising that the linguistic code for the comedy voice in Nigerian mediated comedy genres is Broken English. The use of Broken English in online comedy skits (and Nigerian Pidgin in the comedy genre in general) can be described as an audience design, since it is a stylistically significant code selection. Another dimension of identity work emanating from the use of sub-­ standard English relates to how such linguistic code choice limits access to understanding the humour in the skits. The audience members must be competent enough to identify the ungrammatical expressions in the comicast, especially those with characters like Oworitakpo and Kiekie who present only their humorous peaks in nonstandard English. These two characters do have conversations with other characters in good standard English in the narratives. If audience cannot recognize the coinages and transliterations as inappropriate English expressions, they will not comprehend the humour being projected through the code choice. Consequently, these comedies constitute an upscaled elite entertainment that depends on good knowledge of English and understanding of the peculiarities of English in Nigeria. It is obvious that using such code necessarily cuts off Nigerians who do not speak or understand English. Conversely, Omo Ibadan’s comedy requires, at least, minimal knowledge of Yoruba and/or the common stereotyping of Yoruba speakers as unintelligent as stated by Obeng and Adegbija (1999), for the audience to fully comprehend her humour. It therefore might be inaccessible to Nigerians with no knowledge of Yoruba. This study has presented a preliminary observation on the stylistic choice of substandard English varieties in Nigerian online comedies. It has argued that the use of ungrammatical expressions in the comedies is facilitated by the country’s sociolinguistic reality, where English language plays a dominant role. Most importantly, it suggests that the comic image is constructed as a marginal identity through the deliberate violation of English grammar rules. Such image construction aligns with the indexical circle generated by the function of the language in the country.

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Anyone who does not speak the standard variety of the language is construed as uneducated and below the bourgeois social class. Thus, it has considered such linguistic choice in online comedies as stylization technique and the vernacular of comedy in Nigeria. It seems that ignorance of the English language grammar is not the reason why ungrammatical expressions abound in the comedies. Rather, the abundance of the violations is a conscious attempt to ridicule speakers of the lower varieties of English in Nigeria while at the same time foregrounding the Nigerian experience with a postcolonial language. Furthermore, Kiekie’s and Omo Ibadan’s comicasts provide an interesting dimension through which translation is used as a strategy for humorous grounding. Both examples show that humour in the text is conveyed through the verbal channel and not through other physical representations, for example, dressing. Their comicasts, therefore, offer rich data from which the significance of translation to humorous grounding can be examined, and not the translation of humour from one language to another, which has been the focus within humour research (see Attardo 2020). As it has been noted that the language play involving violation of English grammar is more extensive than what has been highlighted in this chapter, it is hoped that future studies will explore its other dimensions.

References Adegbite, Adewale B. 2010. English Language: Usage, Use and Misuses(s) in a Non-host Second Language Context. Ile-Ife: OAU Press. Adesoye, Eunice Ronke. 2018. Phonological Distortion as a Humorous Strategy in Folarin Falana’s Comedy Skits. European Journal of Humour Research 6 (4): 60–74. Adetunji, Akin. 2013. The Interactional Context of Humour in Nigerian Stand-up Comedy. Pragmatics 23 (1): 1–22. Attardo, Salvatore. 2020. The Linguistics of Humour: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. Awonusi, Segun. 2007. Linguistic Hegemony and the Plight of Minority Languages in Nigeria. Paper delivered at the International Conference on Minority Languages, 5th–6th July, Pecs, Hungary.

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Babajide, Adeyemi O. 2001. Language Attitude Patterns of Nigerians. In Language Attitude and Language Conflict in West Africa, ed. Herbert Igboanusi, 1–13. Ibadan: Enicrownfit. Banjo, Ayo. 1995. On Codifying Nigerian English: Research so Far. In New Englishes: A West African Perspective, ed. Ayo Bamgbose, Ayo Banjo, and Andrew Thomas, 203–231. Ibadan: Monsuro. ———. 1996. An Overview of the English Language in Nigeria. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. Bauman, Richard. 2008. The Philology of the Vernacular. Journal of Folklore Research 45 (1): 29–36. ———. 2012. Performance. In A Companion to Folklore, ed. Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem, 94–118. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Bell, Allan. 2014. The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. Chukwumah, Ignatius. 2018. Nigeria’s 2015 Presidential Elections and the Rise of ‘Comicast.’. In Joke Performance in Africa: Mode, Media and Meaning, ed. Ignatius Chukwumah, 38–60. New York: Routledge. Cook, Guy. 2000. Language Play, Language Learning. New  York: Oxford University Press. Coupland, Nikolas. 2001. Stylization in Radio Talk. Language in Society 30 (3): 345–375. Crystal, David. 1998. Language Play. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Gaudio, Rudolf. 2011. The Blackness of Broken English. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21 (2): 230–246. Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jowitt, David. 2019. Nigerian English. Boston/Berlin: de Gruyter. Mintz, Lawrence E. 1985. Stand-up Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation. American Quarterly 37 (1): 71–80. Obeng, Samuel Gyasi, and Efurosibina E. Adegbija. 1999. Sub-Saharan Africa. In Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, ed. Joshua A.  Fishman, 353–368. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Odebunmi, Akin. 2010. Code Selection at First Meetings: A Pragmatic Analysis of Doctor-Client Conversations in Nigeria. Interaction and Linguistic Structures 48: 1–44. Ogunsiji, Ayotunde. 2001. Utilitarian Dimensions of Language in Nigeria. In Language Attitude and Language Conflict in West Africa, ed. Herbert Igboanusi, 152–164. Ibadan: Enicrownfit.

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Quirk, Randolph, and Sidney Greenbaum. 1973. A University Grammar of English. London: Longman. Rampton, Ben. 2009. Interaction Ritual and not Just Artful Performance in Crossing and Stylization. Language in Society 38 (2): 149–176. Teilanyo, D. 2003. The Use of Bombast in Nigeria: The Examples of Icheoku and Masquerade. Africa Today 50 (1): 77–104. ———. 2009. Literary Usage of English as a Second Language in Nigeria: A Study of Icheoku and Masquerade. Africa Today 55 (4): 72–121. Vandergriff, Ilona. 2010. Humour and Play in CMC. In Handbook of Research on Discourse Behaviour and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, ed. Rotimi Taiwo, 235–251. Hershey: IGI Global. Watkins, A. 2010. Language Variety in Literature. In Encyclopaedia of Identity: Volume I, ed. Ronald L. Jackson, 425–429. California: Sage. Yeku, James. 2016. Akpos don Come Again: Nigerian Cyberpop Hero as Trickster. Journal of African Cultural Studies 28 (3): 245–261.

Video Sources Kiekie TV (2021, June 19). Condom Kiekie MsPepo OberryHovah [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7_WrKmjGUc Kiekie TV (2022, Feb. 16). Breakfast side effect Kiekie Daniel Abua [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9eoa7dzk4w Kiekie TV (2022, June 9). No dey ask road for Lagos Kiekie Tania Kemzmama [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7db0MpOq48 Kiekie TV (2021, July 28). Road rage Kiekie NonsMiraj MsPepo. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU8A0wxZQho Lizzy Jay (2020, July 14). Coaching Senta with my stubborn kid. very hilarious. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBhT6twN53Y UG Toons. (2022, Aug. 5). The journey. [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAjOUG1ralI

9 Humour and Language in the Era of Crisis: A Socio-pragmatic Analysis of Cameroonian Women’s Humour Styles During the Anglophone Crisis Comfort Beyang Oben Ojongnkpot

Introduction There has been burgeoning interest in humour studies, based on its role in tempering down adverse experiences. Little wonder, some have described it as a contributor to social wellness (Oosthuizen 2021). Apart from being central to human communication, humour is an antidote to stress and tension and “distracts us from our problems and promotes a lighter perspective” (Weber et al. 2021, p. 3). Humour provides a psychological First Aid and trauma-focused therapy that helps those in grief to thrive. The kind of humour dealt with here is that which Mullan and Beal (2021) refer to as “humour used in the uncomfortable moments … whereby data relied primarily on discursive strategies” (p. 61). The importance of humour is further underscored by Sezgin and Yolcu (2021) who, C. B. O. Ojongnkpot (*) Department of English and Cultural Studies, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_9

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at the background of examining the principles of positive psychology on the life of the Turkish society, embarked on a descriptive analysis method, which aimed at finding out the role Twitter-­generated content of humour on the incidents considered as a “social crises” in Turkey in the past decades. Indeed, humour has been described variously; it is a “discursive resource that helps people cope with difficult situations” (Pujol-Cols & LazzaroSalazar 2018). According to Lazzaro-­Salazar, positive psychologists, like Mayer & Mayer (2021) and Oosthuizen (2021), have stressed the role of humour in the furtherance of positive psychology in individuals, which has been manifested in different situations of crisis. Crisis has to do with a moment of apparent impossibility of finding a solution to a problematic situation (Sezgin and Yolcu (2021), citing Yazicioglu (2001)). This implies that crisis emanates from a broad base with the prime intent of disrupting the natural order of society. Thus, Sezgin & Tugba reiterate that social crisis is “more about social change and development, including cultural and socio-psychological elements” (p. 89). Hence, the psychological import of humour in times of crises is worth exploring, given that people are prone to resort to humour as a way of coping with stress and trauma that arises from crisis situations. That is why these authors hold that “Humour can be seen as a tool used to get rid of tension caused by the crisis processes with its social impact, humour mediates the opposition of society to political decision-makers” (Sezgin and Yolcu 2021, p. 94). The Anglophone crisis is one of Cameroon’s humanitarian crises that emerged from education and legal grievances in 2016. It has been described as Africa’s newest struggle for liberation (Bang and Balgah 2022). This crisis has been a complex secessionist political conflict that has left denizens in tension and confusion, which has resulted in both physical and psychological challenges.1 The crisis was characterized by  The crisis is rooted in the truncated history of colonial Cameroon, which was colonized by the Germans on the 14th of July, 1884. However, after the First World War, at the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919, German Kamerun was entrusted upon, Britain and France to be administered along its bi-lingual heritage, 20% and 80%, respectively (Bang & Balgah, 2014). While the North West and South West Regions occupied the Anglophone (Southern Cameroon) section, the rest of the French (La Republique) occupied the other eight regions. The French (Francophone) section got independence on January 01, 1960, as La Republique du Cameroon. The English-speaking section (Anglophone), who today occupy North West and South West Regions (Southern Cameroons), voted to reunite with the former German Kamerun (French Section) to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon consisting of East Cameroon and West Cameroon (Ngoh 2001). 1

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many stressors, which emanated from the grief of losing loved ones, especially in situations where people were denied the opportunities of carrying out normal daily activities in the midst of mass extra-judicial killings and even denial of the opportunity of giving loved ones proper burial rites or even organizing proper burials as some bodies cannot even be taken to their homesteads. Walsh et al. (2020) state that grief in such situations “can be complicated with regrets that it is too late to repair wounded bonds” (p. 5). Such constraints of disrupted connections and sense of permanent loss among loved ones, coupled with movement restrictions such as lockdown (“Ghost towns”), result in a life characterized by trauma and stress. In fact, the vulnerability and emptiness of life that has been caused during the crisis has been quite alarming. Language has been the chief tool of surmounting such hurdles, since people use language to communicate desires and feelings to one another, and for building and maintaining relationships, it is even more impactful when infused with humour. Arifullah (2014) states that people like hearing humour, as their refreshment from stressful daily routines, to make more joyful lives, and of course, it can make them stay young as well as healthy (p. 50). Walsh et al. (2020) stress this further as follows: In traumatic experiences … when helplessness and confusion are common, we have an urgent need to turn to one another for support, comfort, and safety … We are relational beings. Recognition of our essential interdependence is vital for our well-being and resilience. In turning to others for help, we can pay it back and pay it forward. Mobilizing kin and social support is crucial to build family and community resource teams. As a society, we are all going through this together. We need and depend on each other for our lives and our future. (p. 1)

Socio-pragmatics and Humour In simple terms, pragmatics is language in use and contexts in which it is used. In the realm of pragmatics, there are factors such as implicature and inferences. In such a way, it studies language that is not directly spoken (Pullin 2011). On her part, Barnabeu (2023) states that pragmatic

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language use refers to social language skills that are used in daily interactive exchanges, which involve both verbal and non-verbal usage. Hoicka (2014) maintains that socio-pragmatics deals with the understanding of the pragmatics involved in jokes. He continues that humour occupies a prominent role in highlighting a central aspect of pragmatics, whereby it enables the understanding of discursive behaviours in specific contexts and intentions that go beyond literal meaning. In the same vein, Ojongnkpot (2020) holds that language use in daily life has meaning that is context-dependent, which induces people to encounter difficulties in language use. As for Haugh (2021), socio-pragmatics deals with how language communicates multiple meanings in context, how it influences our daily interactions and relationships with others. Thus, socio-pragmatics has to do with communicative behaviours based on socio-cultural means through which pieces of discourses made in specific contexts are understood, depending on the situation of use. Thus, discursive behaviours uttered by women in this chapter are considered independent of literal meaning because the utterances made are judged from the perspective of intention to evoke humour, rather than the meaning of words per se. It is in this wise that Hoicka states: “Humour involves creating implausible or ambiguous literal meanings, which can be interpreted as amusing. There are other situations in which literal meanings are not always enough on their own, and for which pragmatic interpretations can help. These include pretence, irony, and metaphor.” However, Hoika insinuates that using pragmatics to overcome literal ambiguity via humour could be more socially and emotionally rewarding, than using pragmatics to understand pretence, irony, or metaphor. (2014, p. 46)

It is therefore no surprise that the women of the South West Region of Cameroon found a way of surmounting their grief hurdles through humour-tinted language. This was enhanced through their social networks, which have become vital to sustaining individuals. People have used humour intentionally and professionally to turn around adverse situations. However, creating fun is not always deliberate; it usually also emerges naturally and inadvertently. Such support is

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primordial in mitigating the risk of physical and mental breakdown, in order to enhance wellbeing and resilience. It is in the same line that Dyer (2020) states that “a sense of humour probably developed in tandem with this irritable excess of cognitive awareness, not as a bonus, but as an evolutionary necessity … because a joke is not really a joke unless someone laughs in response” (p. 46). He therefore continues that man is Homo humorous, which means that any human being who stays void of humour is hardly human. He cites the British as being famous for a sense of humour, which remains an evolutionary necessity.

Theoretical Perspectives and Analytical Tools The Nature of Humour Many attempts have been made at explaining the nature of humour. Based on philosophical, physiological and psychological considerations, humour has been seen as a ridicule of human faults, a way of underscoring superiority, a way of denigrating people or to debase (Propp 1966). In other definitions, Crawford (1994) sees humour as a positive cognitive or affective reaction of listeners, when witnessing someone else’s verbal or non-verbal humorous behaviour; Romero and Cruthirds (2006) consider humour as amusing communications that create a positive cognitive and emotional reaction in a person or group; Meyer (2000) sees humour simply as a cognitive state of mirth, while Hurren (2006) states that humour is a verbal and non-verbal message that evokes amusement and positive feelings by the receiver. For Michalos (2014), it is a social phenomenon that is reflected in playful interaction and mirthful communication. Steir-Livny (2021) considers humour, especially Black Humour, as a defence mechanism, as he relates that: “Freud (1960) coined the psychological term ‘defense mechanism’ to characterize a group of mental processes, which help the mind struggle with anxiety. These mechanisms are directed at protecting the ego and shielding it from inner or outer pressures in the form of thoughts, memories or feelings that cause anxiety or threaten the ego. Defense mechanisms are usually unconscious; in

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most cases the individual is not aware that this mechanism has been activated” (Freud 1960, p. 34, cited in Steir-Livny 2021, p. 176). It is the reason why Freud (1905) believes that humour helps to release fear and anxiety as well as bar the way to intimidating perspective. Thus, “humour serves as a catharsis for pessimistic energy” (Freud 1905, p. 67). This chapter considers humour as a feeling that emanates from a social setting following verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviours that produce a positive cognitive or affective feeling capable of mitigating grief, stress and anxiety. Indeed, humour differs across different contexts. Going by Wilson et al. (1977), humour helps people to better adapt to severe conditions. Turner (1986) defines humour as perceiving what is amusing or comical. As for Bremmer and Roodenburg (1997), humour is a message transmitted through different media such as written, spoken and signed, which evokes a smile, or laughter. On his part, Attardo (2020) underscores the importance of humour as being all-encompassing, such that it results in amusement, light-heartedness or smiles. Vandaele (2010) considers humour as a form of social play. Indeed, it is worthy to note that humour has linguistic, social, psychological, ideological and historical undertones. Sharma (2022) believes that humour is important as a reaction to an eccentric or light-hearted event intended to cause laughter and avoid taking the self too seriously. He continues that when there is humour in communication, physical conflict and verbal arguments are avoided. In that way, while tension is relieved, bonds are fostered, which engender joy and wellness. Consequently, laughing during tense atmospheres, like the one created by the crisis, helps folks to empathize with one another and create stronger team dynamics (Sharma 2022, p.  2). Hence, language stands the chance of leveraging the needs and conditions of humans as it suits all situations. The impact of humour in language is that some harsh realities, such as in the crisis under discussion, are tempered down, which in turn engenders resilience and wellness for solidarity and peer-support. Consequently, this chapter investigates humour in language (linguistic and non-linguistic) by women during the era of the ongoing crisis.

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Meyer’s (2000) Relief/Release Theory As noted earlier, the study adopted Meyer’s (2000) Relief/Release Theory, which considers humour to be a homeostatic mechanism by which psychological tension is reduced, as it serves to temper down tension caused by anxiety. So, according to this theory, humour helps to overcome certain socio-politico-cultural inhibitions. This theory finds a place in this study as it deals with how the women of the South West Region of Cameroon use language, both verbal and non-verbal, to temper down both psychological and physical tensions caused by the ongoing Anglophone crisis in that country.

Marteinson’s (2006) Ontic-Epistemic Theory Also deployed here is Marteinson’s (2006) Ontic-epistemic Theory of Humor (OETC), which considers laughter as a reaction to psychological tension or a momentary epistemological difficulty. This theory underscores the fact that people accept “as real, both normative immaterial precepts, such as social identity, and neological factual precepts, but also that the individual subject normally blends the two together.” In this situation, Marteinson uses the term “Relativisation,” which means that social reality can appear to contradict other elements of social reality. Marteinson considers laughter as a platform that “serves to reset and re-­ boot the faculty of social perception, which has been rendered non-­ functional by the comic situation, which anesthesizes the mind with euphoria.”

Austin and Searle’s Speech Act Theory Given the above philosophical background, Austin’s (1975) Speech Act Theory provides an additional tool for analysing humour. The hallmark of this theory is that language should be considered more as a social construct, rather than a scientific tool; hence, the emphasis on the functional aspect of language, which hinges on the  utterance, rather than

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the  sentence. Austin, thus, concludes that people do things by saying, which results in his concept of speech acts, which hinges on the understanding that language is used for many purposes, of which one of such is to effect change. Speech act deals with communication, wherein an expression does not only present information, but also performs an action. It is in this light that Austin (1975) talks of “doing things with words,” which he summarized in the words, “performative utterances.” Thus, in the analysis of humorous language use, indirect speech acts are likely to be identified more often as a source of humour than direct ones because they harbour the potential of miscommunication. Austin categorizes his acts into locutionary (a sentence made with a particular sense and reference), illocutionary (the speaker’s intended act to perform in the course of uttering a sentence) and perlocutionary (the actual act performed as a result of uttering a sentence) acts. From the foregone, the locutionary act is the actual utterance, the illocutionary carries a certain force, which could otherwise be referred to as the function of the utterance, and the perlocutionary force is the effect that is aroused in the listener. One of Austin’s former students, Searle (1979), took interest in one of the aforementioned acts and developed a taxonomy of (assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations). It should be noted that Searle’s illocutionary acts are further subcategorized into direct and indirect speech acts. This means that there are situations, where the speaker means just what he says, and in others, the speaker may mean more than what he says. This study’s focus is on the analysis of structural and contextual speech behaviours that engender humour. This enabled us to determine how humorous aspects are made by women and their impact on individuals and the community at large.

Methodology As also noted above, the chapter adopts an Experimental Research Design. N=60 women drawn from all walks of life with an age range of 18–70 years were purposively drawn from the six divisions of the South West Region of Cameroon. Employing structured interviews, participant observation and focus-group discussion, the study also analyses data

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comprising narratives, story-telling, songs, dance, simulations, riddles and proverbs, as employed by the women under consideration.

 ameroonian Grief, Cameroonian Women C and Cameroonian Humour: Findings and Discussion The Cameroonian Anglophone crisis impacted all, but it impacted women the most, affecting not only their social networks and attachments, but also their psychological/cognitive wellbeing. Starting with a Lawyers’ strike in the English-speaking part of Cameroon, the crisis ultimately inflicted physical and psychological trauma and high death tolls especially in the Anglophone North West and South West of the country. Women were the chief mourners, though the crisis was such that activities like funerals and burials were characterized by reduced chances of bidding farewell to the deceased as culture demanded. The women had to take on the dual role of mourner and comforter, and they resorted to the use of humour to achieve this in their numerous meetings and gatherings.

Humour Styles Based on the above, numerous Cameroonian women of the South West Region, which was the area most devastated by the crisis, devised creative stylistic communicative behaviours characterized by humour in order to assuage grief, anxieties, stressors and trauma in individuals. In diverse events such as funerals, condolence visits, statutory monthly meetings, activities such as Njangi (thrift and loans), cooperative work, they engaged deliberately in humorous communicative behaviours that could be appraised at both linguistic and non-linguistic levels. In the section below, focus is on two linguistic humour styles, which are the deployment of illocutionary acts to enhance incongruity and humour, and the deployment of traditional rhetorical elements for the same purpose.

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Linguistic Humour Styles Humour Narratives and Illocutionary (Speech) Acts The women employed narratives aimed at making their peers see that down moments could be enlivened or resolved. Within the narratives are embedded rhetorical elements such as parody and bawdiness, as well as illocutionary (speech) acts that amplify incongruity in the texts. The analysis below focuses on the illocutionary acts: Speeches at monthly meetings: Participant 09: I want to welcome you in this meeting of today.  I trust that you have served your husbands food of the stomach and the lower parts (giggling) Illocutionary act/commissive Participant 44: Yes, Ma, hunger of the lower parts is more serious than hunger of the stomach (laughter). Illocutionary Act/assertive Participant 56: Can you show us how to feed the husband through the lower parts (a lot of laughter and noise). Illocutionary act/request In this excerpt from one of the statutory sessions of one of the women’s monthly meetings, the president/chair of the meeting begins her speech with humorous aspects that touch on obscenity. The insinuation of two types of feeding, stomach and lower parts, causes laughter. In this way, the women forget the woes of war and derive pleasure from the use of obscene language. We notice that there is indirect use of language. The commissive by Participant 09 introduces an obscenity, and it is clear that it is not necessarily a commissive—the speaker does not necessarily mean to commit to the truth or otherwise of the utterance, but to generate

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humour and relieve stress. The participants key in by the appropriate response in laughter. Bawdiness is also introduced to enhance the humour, and in some cases, bawdiness is the humour. The utterances above therefore demonstrate how speech acts work in an indirect way to generate humour. The illocutionary act by Participant 56 exemplifies the same principle as the utterance analysed above. This utterance is humorous because it springs a number of incongruities. Although it is posed as a request, it is really a request that cannot be implemented; its purpose is therefore not to make a request per se but to generate humour.

Rhetorical Acts and Humour Story-Telling The women in this study also employ story-telling as a humour style. Storytelling usually makes it possible for the audience to listen with open hearts, in order to purge pain and suffering of their families. It also facilitates mutual support and encourages active efforts for positive adaptation. The story-telling recorded in this study exhibit incongruity and parody, and are constructed with illocutionary acts that enhance the humour. Participant 46: Once upon a time, there lived a polygamous family. Up till now there live polygamous families. That was how it started [Laughter]. The husband loved the wife who bore three children more than the one who bore just one girl. Stupid! [Laughter.] The husband showered more love on the lady who had three boys. Idiot. Then the wife who had just one girl got ill and died. Shit! [Laughter.] The child she left behind became so marginalized that she did all the household chores. What do you expect? [Laughter.] Whenever she went to the stream to fetch water, she would sing a song that invoked her late mother who then made her prosperous. Thank God for mothers. [Laughter.]

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Arrah, Arrah me bangah! Arrah. “Arrah, here am Metugahayipnguhotop!Arrah “I fetch water, but I drink mud” Mebenkuhnkeh yuk, oh, Arrah “I fetch wood, but I die of cold”

I”

Hmmmm. What a Pity! Humour is achieved here not by the story per se, but by the inserts of the story-teller which are comical within the context. The inserts (highlighted) express a range of speech acts, especially assertives (“Up till now there live polygamous families. That was how it started”) and expressives (“Stupid,” “Shit!.” “Thank God.”) The parody of “there lived” in “there live” [still] is humour-laden. Aspects of the story may well echo the marital issues of some women. In addition to that the speaker also plays into the maternal instincts of the women. These strategies allow an uptake for the humour.

Proverbs, Riddles, Jokes and Songs In these meetings, the women employ wise sayings aimed at driving home a message. Again, the lewd expression is omnipresent, as in the example below: Participant 5: when you accept to sleep with a super lecherous man, he can destroy your hip-bone. This seem to be not so much a proverb as a “pseudoproverbial” (Oloruntoba-Oju 2014), one of those new African proverbial expressions that only mimic the structure of traditional proverbial, but do not approximate their philosophical depth. However, more importantly, this statement is an assertive act, in which there is a build-up of incongruity. The incongruity here manifests as a conflict between expectation and outcome. A broken hip-bone is somehow not one of those outcomes that might be expected from a liaison with a lecherous man, more so since he might be more prone to broken hip-bone than anyone else.

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Cameroonian riddles and jokes are also employed by the women as communicative styles aimed at making the atmosphere lighter. The riddles and jokes do serve interactional functions and draw out camaraderie as the women ask one another the meaning of the riddle. The riddle given by Participant 32 below is quite puzzling, bawdy: Participant 32: there are two friends who are so close, but when they visit a friend, one of them is always left at the threshold of the house. Who are these friends? The equally bawdy answer sends the gathering to erupt in laughter - the two close friends are the external man parts, while the visited friend is the woman part.  Traditional Cameroonian dirges sung in the event of the demise of members of the community honour the departed and also accord consolation to the bereaved. Different songs were sung at funerals to praise, rebuke and condemn. Such moments were to highlight moral values. Even though dirges are supposed to be solemn, they still habour the occasional expression of humour. Most of the time they were done indirectly as the songs also exhibit elements of incongruity and parody and Lexical punning. The various narratives were loaded with humorous instances of all types that ranged from obscene language, incongruity, paradox, lexical punning and other verbal forms, aimed at making participants laugh, either intentionally or otherwise. The narratives did not only focus on humour, but also underscored societal values. There are situations in which the humour was implicit and others, explicit. The participants were seen to not only communicate, but in various instances, they performed acts that follow Austin’s classification and impact textual humour.

Linguistic, Paralinguistic and Non-linguistic Many of the songs used during these events and the accompanying movements or gestures demonstrate the employment of a combination of the linguistic, the paralinguistic and non-linguistic as humour communication styles. These consisted of gesticulations, dance styles and simulations, which were performed intentionally to arouse laughter and reduce

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stress. These were demonstrated during statutory meeting days, which could comprise birth ceremonies, funerals or other events. The ladies were observed to have danced and sung songs that mimicked certain actions, such as love making, labour in the course of child-birth, community activities that had been carried out by the bereaved. Songs aimed at giving lessons on how to get pregnant, in order to procreate. The interesting aspect is that there were moments when such behaviours were carried out in the presence of the male folk and some of the songs targeted the men, either directly or indirectly to husbands. Women simulate the penis by rolling their dresses into a pointed bundle as observed in the following song: Solo: Chorus: Solo: Chorus: Solo: Chorus: Solo: Chorus: Solo: Chorus: Solo: Chorus:

Chop grass, oh, oh, “eat herbs/vegetable” Oh, oh, njamajama “yes, herbs/vegetable” Chop green, oh “eat green herbs/vegetable” Oh, oh, Njamajama “herbs/vegetable” Chop Okonghobong. “eat fluted pomkims” Njama oh, oh, njamjama “yes, herbs/vegetable” Go for lamba, work njamajama, jamajama “go to a swamp and cultivate vegetable” Chop njamanjama, you born fine pikin, Njamajama “Eat fresh vegetables, to give birth to pretty child” Fine pikin, na masa get am. “A good child is a husband’s child” Njamajama “vegetable” wohwoh  pickin, na woman get  am “And a bad child is a wife’s child” Njamanjama “vegetable”

Each line of the song above is pregnant with meaning: though the song seems to talk of njamaja “vegetable,” the simulations or body movement of the participants drove home the message that vegetable there referred to the private part, while the act of eating had to do with love making. In the fourth line, the locutionary act (commissive) gets the listeners (especially the men) to go to a swampy portion of land (lamba) and cultivate njamajama “vegetable,” which according to the ladies, actually referred to the private part of a young and fresh woman who can easily get pregnant.

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The height of the humour is in lines 5 and 6, where the ladies assert that a good child is the husband’s, while a bad one belongs to a wife. This just goes to parody the situation in life, where husbands usually take the wives to task when a child is a never do well. There is no gainsaying the fact that such humorous communicative behaviours as relived above impacted not only individuals, but also the community as a whole, during the era of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon. It is important to note that the impact was physical and psychological. Physically, there was improved social cohesion and solidarity/connectivity, where individuals were re-energized with a marked degree of solidarity, which engendered physical wellness and sense of resilience. It was observed that there was a demonstration of positive attitudes and willingness to engage with the wider community, irrespective of the woes and strife that characterized the era. Psychologically, participants’ expressions were seen to demonstrate reduced stress/pain relief, tension/anxiety with improved mental wellbeing, which gave them a sense of resilience, which is a kind of “bouncing back,” like a spring, to our pre-crisis norm (Walsh 2020). This has to do with re-constructing “a new sense of normalcy as we recalibrate our lives to face unanticipated challenges ahead.” This is in line with Walsh (2020) who holds that individuals within the community are able to endure suffering and loss in the time of crisis when they live a communal life punctuated with the language of humour.

Conclusion This study began with questions regarding the communicative styles employed by Cameroonian women during the Anglophone crisis and what impact they have on the individuals involved and the community at large. The foregoing has demonstrated that different humour styles were employed by women in Cameroon during the era of the Anglophone crisis. The styles centred on the employment of sundry illocutionary and perlocutionary acts to create or enhance humour, the objective of which was to assuage the pain of the Anglophone crisis. The latter draws

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attention once again to theories of humour as release or as an effective therapy in assuaging pain, relieving stress and improving individual mental wellness. One key observation in the study is that different approaches to humour and different analytic methodologies yield different perspectives of humour. Regarding the speech acts approach, it has been shown how the basic types of speech acts (illocutionary and perlocutionary) contribute as components of humour styles to relieving tension and promoting rapport in the course of Cameroonian women meetings during the crisis. This has an effect on both the individual women and the community at large. Humour therefore becomes a marker of solidarity. In other words, theories of humour should also take into account that humour is not only an act of superiority or release but also an act of solidarity. It is hoped that other researchers would carry out the same study in the North West Region of Cameroon and elsewhere, even with a larger body of data, in order to broaden this perspective. Given the therapeutic function of humour, as also highlighted above, research on how to integrate humour into mental health care in Cameroon, will be a positive development as well.

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10 Humour and the Many Worlds of Nigerian Political Cartoons Oyinkan Medubi

Introduction Sociolinguistics is the study of language in relation to society. As noted by Haarmann (1991), language is a social phenomenon which serves interactional needs for its speakers, and its social nature causes variations within the speech community, thus enhancing its heterogeneity. Sociolinguistics investigates how the social structures impact the structures found in language as used by the speakers. In other words, users of language, being products and members of the society who make up a speech community, are seen as the repertoires of the language of that speech community. An established field related to sociolinguistics is cognitive linguistics which examines how the mind of language users interacts with the language structures and the world view of a speech community.

O. Medubi (*) Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_10

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Langacker (1992, 484) remarks that “the central inadequacy of generative theory lies in the absence of any cogent view of linguistic semantics,” hence the “development of more natural, revealing approaches to the study of language structure.” This new approach, which developed in the 1970s, is recognized as cognitive linguistics. Ruiz (2009, 67) confirms this when he states that the emergence of Cognitive Linguistics took place in California at the end of the 70s, as an alternative option to Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, seen by Lakoff (1990, 43) as “a grammar of formal systems” which transformed symbols by means of rules. This new approach gave semantics a special significance since it was thought that the main function of language was to mean; additionally, it was claimed that this cognitive function of language should be studied in relationship to the social dimension of linguistic communication.

Thus, developments in cognitive principles recognize the importance of social structures, which range from the necessary encyclopaedic knowledge to the description of meaning. This point is further stressed by Langacker (1992, 484), who hints that knowledge of social structures and encyclopaedic knowledge are inseparable from world knowledge. This experientialist perspective is what Lakoff (1987) later came to emphasize as being crucial to the encoding and decoding of meaning by language users. In particular, she noted the connection between language, thought and experience in her works. Concerning this connection, Ruiz (2009, 69) writes: For these scholars, experience is understood in an ample way as it includes perception, sensorimotor aspects, emotional, historical, social, and linguistic dimensions, and above all, the inner structure of the human body— genetically and experientially acquired—, and the nature of its interactions in both the physical, socio-cultural, political, and economical environments.

Every language user is privy to this experiential knowledge, thus acknowledging that every language has its own subjective reality or world view. This is why world views are more subjective than objective.

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Political cartoonists manage to show how characters’ actions and reactions, representing real people in a defined space or society, portray the society’s subjective reality or world view. Often, this is done by employing both pictorial and verbal elements which combine to constitute the “language structure” that portrays the intended meaning.

Political Cartoons A cartoon is described as a “pictorial parody” (New Encyclopaedia Britannica, The 1992, 554). It is a drawing which provides a specific viewpoint of its subject matter in a humorous way, usually through caricature, which acts as a satiric tool. Caricature in a cartoon is a visual art form built on the distortion of subjects’ features. The Britannica further defines a caricature as: the distorted presentation of a person, type or action. Commonly, a salient feature or characteristic of the subject is seized upon and exaggerated, or features of animals, birds or vegetables are substituted for parts of the human being, or analogy is made to animal actions. (1992, 554)

Through an exploitation of such visual devices, often coupled with accompanying verbal resources, cartoons narrate event structures, satirize human follies and foibles, criticize political misdemeanours, and generally provide a reflective mirror for the society, while generating laughter. These distortions, along with pointed or tacit verbal messages, provide the overall meaning structure of the cartoon that results in humour. Humour in cartoons, jokes, advertisements, and other language events has been perceived through many theories, such as relief or superiority theories, though essentially psychological. However, when other theories, such as incongruity, hyperbole, or metaphor, have been applied in linguistics, they have yielded non-literal meanings or irony. These are further discussed below. The purpose of humour in political cartoons, while serving other uses, is mainly to provide a frame by which the subject may be exposed to general censure. When political cartoons bring into censure certain

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subjects, whose actions or behaviours are deemed to be less than exemplary, or target certain sociopolitical wrongs, satire may result. According to Knieper (2021, n. p.) “(A) Political cartoon is a drawing (often including caricature) made for the purpose of conveying editorial commentary on politics, politicians, and current events.” Thus, a political cartoon, also known as editorial cartoon, has the advantage of being able to criticize anyone without attracting as much censure as a written editorial piece might. “They are a primarily opinion-oriented medium and can generally be found on the editorial pages of newspapers and other journalistic outlets, whether in print or electronic form” (Knieper 2021, n.p.), hence the name “editorial cartoons.” The poignancy of the satires and criticisms in political cartoons lies in the cartoon’s ability to address sociopolitical matters rather more directly than other art expressions such as cartoon gags or strips. Unlike cartoon strips or gags, political cartoons appear in newspapers as single or multiple panels that accompany editorials. The main attraction of a political cartoon lies in its ability to make its meaning open-ended, because it is capable of generating more than one meaning and can pass more than one message. This is why the form can get away with brutal sociopolitical truths in its messages while seeming to entertain; hence, its ability to “hide” certain messages, particularly in societies with unfriendly governmental attitudes. According to Huenig (2002), one way a cartoon hides its messages is by presenting them in compressed forms and in contrasting scenarios, one of which represents the social reality while the other represents the abnormal reality. The contrast of both scenarios delivers the invective, or point of abuse, of the cartoon which can be a combination of pictorial and verbal cues. Hence, to efficiently unpack the messages in a political cartoon, a reader must be privy to all the required information to decipher the cues. A reader of a cartoon is only able to obtain as much as his cartoon literacy abilities would allow him or her. In essence, political cartoons present messages in humorous ways. Often, humour is a function of the interaction of the two contrasting scenarios which may reside in the pictorial element only or in a combination of both visual and verbal elements. This relationship is illustrated in the following figure (Fig. 10.1).

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Pictorial Elements

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Verbal Elements Fig. 10.1  Interaction of pictorial and verbal elements in cartoons

From the figure above, the bi-directionality of the arrows shows that information from both the pictorial and verbal elements interact together to create the scenarios which readers read into the cartoons. It is thus deducible that a cartoon can be merely regarded as a humorous piece, while it may also contain, within its message, a scathing criticism of the society. It stands to reason then that a cartoonist can only build as much invective into his cartoon as his or her encoding ability allows him. Conversely, it is to be surmised that what a reader is able to obtain from a cartoon depends on his or her decoding ability. Both abilities are however subject to their knowledge of the sociocultural milieu. The aim in this work is mainly to attempt to explicate the means by which linguistic resources contribute to the perception of humour in Nigerian newspaper cartoons. The main objectives are to attempt to show how readers are able to integrate both the pictorial and the verbal cues, particularly in the Nigerian sociocultural situation, to derive humour, and what linguistic devices contribute to the perception of this humour. Our contention is that the interaction between subjects and structures within cartoons results in the creation of myriads of worlds but the appropriate meaning is perspectivized for the readers through the social experiences shared with the cartoonist. The preferred tool for achieving

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the objectives is the Parallel Worlds Linguistics (PWL) tool, derived from the Many Worlds Interpretation theory of Hugh Everett. To this end, a consideration of humour and some of its affordances is briefly undertaken below, before a discussion of PWL.

Humour Generally, people have tended to see humour as that which is “funny,” causes laughter, makes one to break out in guffaws or at least a smile, eases tension in a gathering, or simply draws mirth. As Abdalian (2006, 3) notes, “Humour is a daily occurrence in all of our lives.” However, he also notes that “humor varies widely from person to person, and perhaps even more widely from culture to culture.” In other words, humour has often been said to be in the ears of the beholder. Studies in humour are said to have begun as far back as the Greek times of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero who all occupied themselves with finding out its situational or cognitive constitution (Abdalian 2006). What comes next is a brief review of some of the existing theories in the perception of humour, followed by a proposed approach by which Nigerian cartoons may be interpreted.

Humour Theories According to Krikmann (2006, 28), “Most of the humour theories ever proposed are actually mixed theories, and many contemporary researchers believe that humour in its totality is too huge and multiform a phenomenon to be incorporated into a single integrated theory.” Nevertheless, among the theories, as listed by Krikmann (2006, 27–28), are incongruity or inconsistency, or contradiction, or bisociation…; superiority, or disparagement, or criticism, or hostility…; and release, or relief, or relaxation, also known as psychoanalytic theories. From this list, the theory of incongruity appears to focus more on examining linguistic resources employed in creating and understanding the humour process. It attempts

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to examine the cognitive frameworks involved in joking texts and humour detection, particularly from a linguistic angle. Among the frameworks presented, Raskin’s Semantic-Script Theory of Humour (henceforth SSTH) or script theory, as well as Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) theory, specifically addresses linguistic humour events. In Raskin’s words, ‘Scripts are (…) formal semantic entities, resulting from an established procedure of semantic analysis of a text and its linguistic context, and they form the basis of the first formal theory of contextual semantics. The contextual nature of the script-based semantic theory makes it also the first semantic theory which can be fruitfully applied to humor research. The result of the application is the script-based semantic theory of humor.’ The SSTH approach, according to Attardo (2017, 4), has the ability to “predict whether a given joke text has the potential to be perceived as humorous by speakers” and thus provides a map for analysing verbal, as against referential, jokes. As noted by Attardo (2017, 3) the text must of course fulfil the conditions set out by Raskin as follows: 1. The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts. 2. The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite in a special sense. (Raskin 1985, 99; also see Raskin 1987 for an elaboration of this trajectory) As explained by Abdalian (2006, 19), “each script is a recognizable or typical narrative whose whole is implied by its beginning.” Krikmann (2006, 32) explains that Raskin’s notion of scripts involves some kind of binary opposition: Some of the jokes’ script oppositions are usual antonymous (contradictory or contrary) oppositions … Each joke describes some “real” situation and evokes another, “unreal” situation. They can be manifested as oppositions between the 1) actual and non-actual, non-existing situation, 2) expected and abnormal, unexpected states of affairs, 3) possible, plausible and impossible, less plausible situation (…). And the scripts evoked by jokes often involve some binary categories which are essential to human life, like real/unreal, true/false, good/bad, death/life, obscene/decent, rich/poor, etc.

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(…). Many jokes contain special semantic script-switch triggers that ­highlight the need for substituting scripts, the two main types of such triggers are ambiguity and contradiction.

As Krikmann (2006, 32) notes, the notion of oppositions in jokes, which appear to be triggered by violations of the Gricean cooperative principle of quality from the “bona-fide,” straight, or serious meaning, only appear to echo antonyms of words. Abdalian (2006, 23) also states that the SSTH is not only generalized on the concept of scripts, but a joke may trigger more than two opposing scripts. However, as Attardo (2017, 5) also states, the SSTH suffers a little from a number of problems such as the fact that: the SSTH did not distinguish between referential and verbal humor, unsurprisingly, because they are semantically indistinguishable; second and most significantly, the SSTH could not account for the fact that some jokes are perceived as being more similar to one another.

Attardo and Raskin’s General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) is thus an attempt to correct some of these problems, using the SSTH as a springboard for propounding a more efficient theory on verbal humour. As Attardo (2017, 5) surmises: The GTVH accounts for these facts by postulating six knowledge resources (parameters or options to be selected): the script opposition, from the original SSTH; the logical mechanism, which handles the resolution of the incongruity introduced in the script opposition; the situation, essentially the environment in which the narrative takes place; the target, that is, the butt of the joke; the narrative strategy, which is how the text is organized (for example, many jokes have series structure in which, after two occurrences of an event, a third occurrence is different); and finally the language, the linguistic choices with which the previous components are verbalized.

Other theories proposed to explain the phenomenon of verbal elements in humour include Surprise Disambiguation (SD) theory (Schultz 1974, reported in Abdalian 2006, 25), for building cognitive schemas in jokes. “This model is a formalization of Raskin’s ideas about the two scripts and

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the resolving punchline and the cognitive situation that must be present for a humor act to occur” (Abdalian 2006, 26). The cognitive apparatus, according to Attardo (2017, 6), is a “fairly recent” addition to the tools of analysis of verbal humour. In particular, mention is made of the cognitive effect of metaphor and metonymy in the treatment of humour, especially when it is taken literally. In cartoons, this becomes even more illustrative. For example, a cartoon can portray the head of the government as a large head nearly covering the table at which other members of his cabinet are seated. This would thus give new meaning to the verbal accompaniment, “I am the head of this government.” The metonymic caricature not only points to the direct distribution and assertion of authority but also to the indirect acceptance of the faults of the government. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1987, 73), metaphor is “a means of understanding one domain of experience in terms of the conceptual structure of another domain.” The created mental domains in metaphors (or metonymies) provide the schemas by which access is gained to cognitively unpack the subject matter. In the example, “I am the head of this government,” the domains of embodiment and governance interact to create the humorous message: which is that of an egoistic leader insisting on being recognized. As Gibbs (2000, 348) says, “mental spaces are conceptual structures that people construct as they think and use language.” Metaphors empirically enable language users to combine and integrate concepts or attributes from different sources to create new meaning. The sources then become the vehicles conveying attributes that are mapped unto target concepts. As Chandler (1991, 228) explains: a speaker applies a source concept (the vehicle) to the characterization of a target concept (the topic or tenor) in linguistic or nonlinguistic contexts in which some of the attributes of the source concept are incompatible with the target concept. The incompatibility of those attributes creates a rhetorical tension which itself contributes to the resulting novel interpretation of the combined concepts.

Thus, metaphor is not only a system of expression but a system of thought that pervades human languages. A study of the metaphor system of a

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language can provide an avenue for the elucidation of the experiential system of its speakers. Through methods of metaphor analysis such as Lakoff’s (1987) Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) or Fauconnier and Turner’s (1999) Multi-space Blending theory, researchers are able to surmise that metaphors are not only experiential but are built on the thought system of the language users. While the metaphor theory has thus been shown to explain to a very appreciable level the way metaphors pervade the human thought system, Nigeria included (Medubi, 2003), there is still a need to map the mental process by which language users leap from constructed spaces, or bridges, to arrive at the particular meanings of words and other linguistic outputs. The Parallel Worlds Linguistics (PWL) theory, adapted from Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) theory, has been proposed by Medubi (2015) as a tool for bridging this gap. The tool attempts to show how people construct worlds in language events. PWL lends itself as a cognitive tool for unpacking how language captures man’s activities, including accounting for the verbal resources of humour in social actions.

Parallel Worlds Linguistics (PWL) To understand PWL, however, there is a need to first understand the MWI theory. According to Medubi (2015, 80–81), who cited Tyson (2008, n.p.), Hugh Everett’s MWI theory of 1957 has been applied in computer programming and technology, physics, mathematics, cosmology, psychology, and philosophy. Of the theory, Tyson (2008, n.p., cited in Medubi 2015, 80–81) explains thus: every time there is an interaction between two entities, many “worlds” are created through “splits”, with each split being a world. Interactions cause “splits” – a split of a viewer interacts with another split of the object, resulting in multiples of splits – which can assume any number of possible positions. As a matter of fact, the splits of a single interaction, say observing a clock, are said to be literally incalculable but running parallel to each other. Hence, the awesome amount of interactions of elements and entities in the world has caused to be in existence an endless and infinite number of splits or worlds. (Tyson 2008, n.p.)

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These splits, called superpositions, according to Vaidman (2008, n.p., also cited in Medubi 2015, 80–81), make up worlds. A world, he states: is the totality of (macroscopic) objects: stars, cities, people, grains of sand, etc., in a definite classically described state. … physicists divided the universe into two different worlds. One was the indeterministic microscopic world, where elementary particles fly around. Two was the deterministic macroscopic world, which is the world of our experience, where objects are large, where cause and effect are linked; in physics, this is called the “classical” world. The quantum world builds the classical world.

Building on the notion that each time there is an interaction between two entities, myriads of worlds are said to come into a parallel existence, the idea was conceived that each time there is a linguistic interaction, parallel meanings come into existence, hence the Parallel Worlds Linguistics (PWL) theory. Medubi (2015, 77–78), explains PWL thus: The parallel worlds linguistics … can serve as a system of enquiry into how parallel worlds come into being in interactions, from which the intended classical worlds (or meanings) emerge. The appeal of this approach to the humanities can be mounted on the pedestal of how it attempts to account for man’s understanding; how this understanding leads to choices.

PWL explains that messages are conceptualized in a language event by the interactants’ word choices. These word choices lead to the existence of myriads of worlds which exist in parallel multiverses. However, these multiverses, though existing in parallels, resolve into a classical state through the application of certain principles. That classical state becomes the perspectivized world. Like the MWI theory, the PWL theory acknowledges that many other meanings are actually brought into existence when an interaction occurs. Since only one meaning is needed by a hearer, the other meanings remain as quantum multiverses of unused states, just like the myriads of the unobserved states of Schrodinger’s cat. The quantum of the unobserved superpositions of Schrodinger’s cat, hypothetically placed, unobserved, in a box, serves as an illustration. The

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cat can be observed to be in only one position when the box is opened, although it is surmised that the cat would have assumed different positions in the interval. In other words, the observed position of the cat by a sentient being at a certain time, in a particular context and a defined experience, is the classical position, while all the unobserved ones remain in parallel existence. However, all of the previous unobserved positions of the cat, while it is in the box, contribute to the state in which it is found upon observation. In other words, they constitute the unused, quantum worlds. In a linguistic interaction, meanings also exist as parallel multiverses, but resolve into a classical state that is perspectivized by both the speaker and hearer, that is, “upon observation.” This observation corresponds to the readers’ shared social history or time, experience, and environment or context. These are the elements of decoherence. Perhaps, this can be illustrated with the natural phenomenon where one may construe many more meanings to an utterance long after the coding time. These elements of history or time, experience, and environment or context, that constitute decoherence postulates, are illustrated forthwith using a cartoon sample for each. History defines time of occurrence. “According to the MWI, a world defined at some moment of time corresponds to a unique world at a time in the past, but to a multitude of worlds at a time in the future” (Vaidman 2008, cited in Medubi 2015, 80–81). History describes a unique memory about the current state of an entity, place, or object and also incorporates previous knowledge of the characteristics and behaviour patterns of the target while implying some future time. Naturally, its affordances result in an increase in the entropy of the quantum worlds of events and also increases the probability of the emerging classical state. In a second language situation, this is more relevant because the cultural nuances and schemas within conceptualization systems constitute added values. Cultural schemas are defined by cognitive anthropologists as “networks of strongly connected cognitive elements that represent the generic concept stored in memory” (Wolf and Polzenhagen 2009, 31) and they cite Sharifian (2008, 194–198) who distinguishes several types of cultural schemas such as “event schemas, role schemas, image schemas,

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proposition schemas and emotion schemas.” Sharifian (2008, 119) refers to them as “thematic associations.” The human cognitive system, according to Sharifian (2008, 118), involves conceptualization, that is, how people make sense of and organize their experiences. The units of organization are categories, schemas, and models, which are activated based on certain associations. The use of concepts is said to be governed by the associations evoked by that concept, which emerge at the cultural level. These evocations have their roots in cultural schemas and categories that have become conventionalized because “it is often possible to perceive a collective cognition emerging from the interactions between the members of a cultural group” (Sharifian 2008, 118). This is what he refers to as “cultural conceptualisation” (Sharifian 2008, 118). The point being made is that every event causes splits or worlds to come into existence but the historical significance contributes to bringing out the classical world through the cultural conceptualizations. In an English as a second language situation, there is a higher probability of evoking more splits or superpositions that become worlds as a result of the contact between the L1 and the L2 situations which invoke different cultural schemas. When applied to the study of humour in cartoons, the PWL concept builds the notion that linguistic resources result in myriads of superpositions which synthesize the incongruous elements to bring out the collisions that elicit laughter. In the cartoon below (Cartoon 10.1), the infinite number of superpositions created can go in all possible directions. The event of the cartoon depicts a number of people trying to move a large, broken-down lorry or truck, which is a metaphor for the nation marked “Nigeria.” In the metaphor, the driver can be said to be the president, while the lorry pushers are the assistants. By the process of inference, conceptual metaphor analysis procedures would derive the metaphors, LORRY AS COUNTRY, DRIVER AS PRESIDENT, and LORRY PUSHERS AS ASSISTANTS.  The model of nation building provides the frame of activity which is pushing, with the underlying notion of TRUCK PUSHING AS NATION BUILDING, while PUSHING THE VEHICLE FORWARD IS MAKING PROGRESS

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Cartoon 10.1  The Punch (2019)

forms the thought system. Hence, nation building is metaphorized as moving a vehicle in a certain direction, presumably forward. The verbal cues, “push the vehicle forward at once,” addressed to the “new team,” as well as the pictorial cue where the driver and the steering wheel are both facing the back of the lorry and the road, set the interaction that leads to the underlying meaning, PUSHING THE VEHICLE FORWARD WHILE FACING BACKWARD IS NOT MOVING FORWARD. The acts of the confused assistants, some of whom are pushing the vehicle forward while some are pushing it backward, bring out the metaphor, THE VEHICLE IS NOT MOVING FORWARD BECAUSE THE DRIVER IS CONFUSING EVERYONE. This translates to the metaphor: THE COUNTRY IS NOT MAKING PROGRESS BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT IS CONFUSING THE CITIZENS. Furthermore, the model of nation building, often based on the credo WORKING TOGETHER MAKES FOR FASTER PROGRESS, is reversed in this cartoon because the driver-president is sending a confused message. This leads to a counterfactual metaphor: WORKING IN DISCORDANCE BRINGS FASTER PROGRESS. This leads to the humour of the cartoon. However, even with this understanding of the underlying thought, it is still not clear how the cartoon reader is able to make the necessary

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inferential leap into the projected humour of the verbal and pictorial elements of the cartoon. An attempt will be made to explain this, using the PWL theory. In the PWL theory, an incalculable quantum of possible superpositions, splits or worlds emerges from the cartoon upon observation by a sentient being. Some of these splits include those where the vehicle’s driver moves it forward or where he moves it backward; where the steering wheel faces the front or where it faces the back; where the assistants help to push the vehicle forward or where they push it backward; where the assistants are pushing the vehicle forward but the driver is steering it backward; or where the assistants are pushing it backward and the driver is steering it forward, and so on. In short, every scenario that can be imagined in relation to the constituents within the cartoon becomes a possibility when the viewer interacts with the cartoon. These states continue in parallel existence but are, however, perspectivized, that is, reduced into a classical state, by the application of the decoherence principles of history or time, experience, and environment or contextuality. Applying the element of history or time reveals the fact that a figure called “Muhammadu Buhari” existed and he was the democratically elected president of Nigeria from 2015 to 2023. His time in office also witnessed a great deal of social upheaval such as national security failures and policy contradictions and somersaults which caused a lot of social dissonance and political dismemberment of the society. The pictorial cues delineating the figure in the cartoon also bear fidelity to what is known of the live figure of the said president. Through the same element of history, the reader recollects that the president’s leadership style also stood in conflict with what is known of the rules of logic and reason. While calling for the general unity of the country already divided ethnically and by religion, the policies of the government were said to have embraced partisanship. The period was also said to have witnessed the worst social discord, chaos, and confusion in the nation’s history since the civil war, and the state suffered a further retardation in its political culture considering it never really took off even from the time of independence in 1960. The confusion of the assistants pushing the truck is further underscored by the emergent cognition of the society concerning the

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democratic process which, in truth, had not been very well grasped by that period, even though the system of governance had been tried and dropped three times since independence. Since the country had been under military rule for over 30 years (including one regime presided over by the driver-president, Muhammadu Buhari himself as an army general), not many of the participants understood the democratic process. Hence, the period under Buhari witnessed more trial and error, push and shove, and so on, between the government and the governed, leading to more chaos than usual. Thus, the period alluded to in the cartoon embraces the country’s fourth attempt at democracy and thus pointedly showcases the people’s partial knowledge of the democratic process. This explains the people’s docility and attempt to obey the command given in the cartoon, despite not having understood the command. It also explains the allowance granted a “dictatorial” president whose commanding tone in the verbal cue, “at once,” forms part of the decohered state. All of the facts exist as superpositions which exist in parallel worlds but which become classical when the elements are applied to them. In the cartoon above, the classical world that results from the application of the history element, as an example, comes down to the counterfactual fact that moving the country backward is moving it forward. This arises from the historically poor absorption of the democratic culture by those involved in the management of the lorry and country. The second item in the decoherence principle of PWL is experience. The accumulation of experiences within a particular environment over time increases the level of probability. In other words, the more the experiences an individual accumulates, the more the meaning potentials increase. Meaning is not just objective but experiential, mostly reflected through cultural knowledge. Bickel (2000, 165) recognizes that linguistic signs and the habitus of sociocultural practice combine together to channel and guide cognition “into a heightened attention to specific experiences and actions.” According to Ruiz (2009, 70), experientialism is not objective but is dependent on, and influenced by, the ability to manipulate and move objects on the mind, the culture, and one’s interaction with the environment. Human thoughts, as an instance, are conceived as being based on

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bodily experiences and imagination, among other things, and experience forms the basis for the construction and deconstruction of concepts. Hence, conceptualization, as a mental process that is interwoven with bodily experiences, image schemas, metonymies, and metaphors, provides experiential perspectives of the human thought. This is done mainly by mapping structures from physical domains to abstract ones using linguistic resources such as ironies, incongruities, or stereotypes. These tend to define the human cognitive systems. Thus, understanding conceptualizations such as metaphors requires knowledge of categories, schemas, models, and even frames. Cartoon 10.2 is another cartoon which illustrates the proposal by a certain political leader to celebrate Nigeria’s 60th independence

Cartoon 10.2  The Guardian 7/10/2020

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anniversary, normally conceived as a diamond jubilee, with actual diamonds. Hence, a normal scenario of DIAMOND JUBILEE AS NATIONAL JOYFUL CELEBRATION is conceived here as a time of serious expenditure for the self. The metaphor derived from the male figure’s utterance, DIAMOND JUBILEE AS PERSONAL DIAMOND CELEBRATION, reduces the concept of simple joy to an absurdity in the Nigerian situation. The model of celebration affords the frame of shopping which is taken to an absurd level in the cartoon situation, CELEBRATING A DIAMOND JUBILEE ENTAILS BUYING DIAMONDS. Among the myriads of superpositions activated in this cartoon are those built on the linguistic resources afforded by the word “diamond” anniversary being about celebrating a landmark year or not; a “diamond” anniversary being joyful or not; being about buying “diamonds” or not; and so on. Other quantum superpositions or splits or worlds include working hard to organize the celebration of the nation’s anniversary or not; working hard to spend the nation’s money or not spending the nation’s money; using one’s own money on oneself or not; using the nation’s money on oneself or not; using the nation’s money for the nation or not, and so on. They also involve building the nation with her resources or not building the nation with her resources; spending extravagantly for the anniversary or not spending extravagantly, and so on. These superpositions are said to exist as parallel states which can be assumed not to meet. However, a classical state, which is the most probable state where  the resolution of these parallel states occurs, evolves through the process of decoherence. The pattern of behaviour that emerges as the classical state through probability is defined by the cultural history of the event. For instance, it is a historical fact that Nigeria celebrated the 60th anniversary of its independence from Britain in 2020. It is also a known fact that many politicians seized the opportunity to celebrate their political positions rather than the country. More cogently, it was a time when a great deal of money was spent with very little to show for it. Above all, it is part of the people’s social experience that Nigerian leaders are known for using state funds more for personal indulgences than actual nation building projects. Hence, the classical meaning that is

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derived through these elements is that a diamond anniversary is not about celebrating a particular landmark year through achievements but through self-indulgence. This counterfactual fact constitutes the humour of the cartoon, CELEBRATING THE COUNTRY’S DIAMOND JUBILEE ENTAILS BUYING DIAMONDS FOR ONESELF. This decohered state carries the cartoonist’s invective, as he/she tacitly compares a normal scenario where the phrase “celebrating an anniversary” might revolve around the significances associated with the conventions of a numeral. The people’s experiences determine the resolution of this Nigerian cartoon as one based on associations connected to a loss of direction in the nation’s political leadership. Finally, environment or contextuality refers to information regarding the circumstances and situation of events or talks. In a cartoon, the environment is the summation of all the background knowledge taken for granted by the participants within the structure and between the cartoonist and the reader. Such knowledge concerns the location, participants, temporal matters, culture, and all required previous knowledge (Medubi 2015, 95). In the following cartoon, Cartoon 10.3, conceptualizations are built on the existing schemas and models of Nigerians to portray the cartoonist’s intent. Such contextuality highlights the essences of a democratic dispensation which rigorously demarcates the electorate from the contestant. Where the normal scenario demands that the contestant be part of the people he or she wants to serve, the contestant in this case is far removed from the electorate and their problems. The underlying conceptualization draws attention to an ironical situation. In a normal scenario, being voted for in an election is a call to service. However, in the abnormal scenario of this cartoon, being voted for is a call to self indulgence and pleasure . On the one hand, the candidate who is voted for is rewarded with privileges, leading to the underlying metaphor TO BE VOTED FOR IS TO BE REWARDED WITH UNLIMITED PRIVILEGES. On the other hand, the masses, who vote for the candidate, are rewarded with “poverty,” leading to the thinking, TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE IS TO BE REWARDED WITH POVERTY. This counterfactual situation draws attention to the defeat of the purpose of voting in Nigeria as candidates do not take the call in

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… TWO SIDES TO A COIN! Cartoon 10.3  Vanguard (5/3/2019)

order to serve the state and reduce its problems but to increase the problems of the voters. Hence, the “two sides to a coin.” The model of public service, THE POLITICIAN AS A PUBLIC SERVANT, provides the frame of activity, which tends towards load carrying: POLITICIAN AS THE PEOPLE’S LOAD CARRIER. It invokes the normal understanding that PUBLIC SERVANTS CARRY THE PROBLEMS OF THE MASSES. However, the reverse is the case here, as the politician is being carried around in a jet while the masses are left to carry the problems of the state since the funds that should alleviate the poverty level of the people are used to purchase the jet, leading to the metaphor, THE MASSES AS CARRIERS OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE STATE. This translates to double jeopardy as the masses are also indirectly carrying the politicians (who are using state money for their comfort) in addition to carrying the nation’s problems. Superpositions in the cartoon include all kinds of possibilities, such as the strong carrying the big burdens or not carrying any burden; the weak carrying heavy burdens or not carrying any burden; political leaders labouring under the weight of nation building or not labouring under the weight of nation building; the masses labouring under the weight of nation building or not; and so on. The classical world that emerges from

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these superpositions is again determined by the history, the cultural experiences, as well as the contextual knowledge. For instance, knowledge of the Nigerian political environment is not only germane but crucial for a good resolution of this cartoon. In the Nigerian environment, the political class is known for its indifference to the development of the nation and the people they purport to serve. Hence, it is not uncommon to find that many state governors go around in private jets bought and maintained with state funds while the masses labour under deprivation. That classical world, where the Nigerian political class is not interested in solving the people’s problems, emerges as a result of the contrast of and conflict between the “two sides of a coin.” In addition to the first two postulates, contextual knowledge is thus required to decohere the superpositions into the perspectivized, classical state where the invective and the humour are found. The perspectivized invective that the cartoon above points to is that Nigeria’s political leaders are callous and irresponsible. The humour that emanates from the cues thus integrates with this sense of irresponsibility when the politician, who is not assisting the masses to carry their burden, is asking them for permission to continue his permissive lifestyle. The superpositions generated by both the verbal and pictorial conceptualizations in cartoons result in myriads of multiverses, which, when dissolved into the classical state through the application of the elements of history, experience, and context, reveal the invectives. The invectives suggested by the chosen cartoons constitute an indictment of the political culture in Nigeria where the leaders are either selfish or inept or callous and where the people are shown to be docile and obedient. Through the cartoonist’s eye, we see a world where the Nigerian people appear to blame the politicians for using state resources to fund their lavish lifestyles rather than solve national problems, while the politicians tacitly believe the people’s docility enables the politicians’ predatory tendencies. These perspectivized meanings from the cartoons constitute the Nigerian deterministic world of governance.

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Implications and Conclusion This study has attempted to show that unpacking conceptual metaphors in cartoons requires not just understanding the underlying thoughts but understanding how leaps are made between concepts within those thought systems. The PWL, taken from MWI of Hugh Everett, has been applied to show that language users, especially cartoon readers, construct worlds when interacting with objects. This theory has been applied to political cartoons taken from Nigerian newspapers in order to attempt to elucidate how verbal humours can be resolved. Applying the postulates of the Parallel Worlds Linguistics approach, we have tried to show that the splits or superpositions that occur as a result of interactions between cartoons and readers resolve into the classical states that constitute counterfactual situations. These situations in turn constitute the perspectivized worlds where the humour is observed. The observable humour in political cartoon interactions, as the above illustrations have attempted to establish, is initiated by the interaction of verbal and pictorial texts that are not previously compatible. The resulting contrast thus sets up the absurdity in the counterfactual situation which leads the perceiving reader to the humorous intent of the cartoon. The perception of worlds in political cartoons is thus a cognitive experience, since worlds result from interactions between objects. The world that is perspectivized depends on factors that are essentially cognate such as a sentient being’s time-bound events and occurrences, personal and social experiences, and recognition of contextualized phenomena. Therefore, through the PWL theory, it is observed that verbal humour exploits the resources of linguistic tools through superpositions that come into being from interactions. From this study, we can thus infer that the Parallel Worlds Linguistics approach can portray how readers of political cartoons are able to arrive at the classical, perspectivized world, the humour and hence the invective. The overall invective of the selected cartoons in this study is that Nigerian politicians are selfish and self-­ centred, her leaders are ignorant, and the people docilely bear their

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burdens. This work thus contends that humour is perceived in political cartoons because language users are able to derive the classical world from the cartoon’s myriads of superpositions through shared knowledge.

References Abdalian, Andrew. 2006. Why’s That Funny?? An Extension to the Semantic Script Theory of Humor. https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/ assets/documents/linguistics/2006_abdalian_andrew.pdf 17/9/20 Attardo, Salvatore. 2017. Humor in Language. https://web.stanford.edu/class/ linguist197a/attardehumorinlanguage.pdf 17/9/20 Bickel, Balthasar. 2000. Grammar and Social Practice: On the Role of ‘Culture’ in Linguistic Relativity. In Evidence of Linguistic Relativity, ed. Susanne Niemeier and Rene Dirven, 161–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Chandler, Steven R. 1991. Metaphor Comprehension: A Connectionist Approach to Implications for the Mental Lexicon. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 6 (4): 227–258. Fauconnier, G. and Turner, M. 1999. Metonymy and Conceptual Integration. In Metonymy in Language and Thought, ed. K.  Panther and G.  Radden, 77–90. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gibbs, Raymond W.J.R. 2000. Making Good Psychology out of Blending Theory. Cognitive Linguistics 11 (3/4): 347–358. Haarmann, H. 1991. Basic Aspects of Language in Human Relations: Toward a General Theoretical Framework. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Huenig, Wolfgang K. 2002. British and German Cartoons as Weapons in World War 1. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Knieper, Thomas. 2021. Political Cartoon. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. https://www.britannica.com Krikmann, Arvo. 2006. Contemporary Linguistic Theories of Humor. Folklore Estonia 33 www.researchgate.net; https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol33/ kriku.pdf 17/9/20 Lakoff, George. 1987. Image Metaphors. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 2 (3): 219–222. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1987. The Metaphorical Logic of Rape. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 2 (1): 73–79.

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Langacker, Ronald W. 1992. The Symbolic Nature of Cognitive Grammar: The Meaning of of and of of-periphrasis. In Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution, ed. Martin Puetz, 483–502. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Medubi, Oyinkan. 2003. Language and Ideology in Nigerian Cartoons. In Cognitive Models in Language and Thought: Ideology, Metaphors and Meanings, ed. Rene Dirven, Roslyn Frank, and Martin Puetz, 159–198. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 2015. The ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ Theory of Quantum Physics and Meaning Explication in a Second Language Context. MARANG: Journal of Language and Literature 26: 77–99. New Encyclopaedia Britannica, The. 1992 15. University of Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. ———. 1987. Linguistic Heuristic of Humor: A Script-based Semantic Approach. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 65: 11–25. Amsterdam: Mouton deGruyter. Ruiz, Javier Herrero. 2009. Understanding Tropes: At the Crossroads between Pragmatics and Cognition. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Gmbh. Sharifian, Farzad. 2008. Distributed, Emergent Cultural Cognition, Conceptualization and Language. In Body, Language and Mind. Vol. 2: Sociocultural Situatedness, ed. Roslyn M. Frank, Rene Dirven, Tom Ziemke, and Enrique Bernandez, 109–136. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Tyson, P. 2008. Interview with Peter Byrne. The Many Worlds Theory Today. Accessed October 22, 2012. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/many-­ worlds-­theory-­today.html Vaidman, Lev. 2008. Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). Retrieved October 23, 2012 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-­manyworlds/ Wolf, Hans-Georg, and Frank Polzenhagen. 2009. World Englishes—A Cognitive Sociolinguistic Approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

11 Toward the Analysis of Online Supplication and Interactional Stance-Taking Ibukun Osuolale Ajayi

Introduction One of the areas of social life in which language is prominently functional is online supplication or begging. In this act, language is used to communicate the needs or requests of faceless individuals or groups making the supplication and to persuade others to provide assistance or support. This can take the form of written messages, videos, images, or other forms of digital communication. As observed by Okpeadua (2012), begging, as a human behavior and activity, is almost entirely language dependent. The development and rehearsal of these social behavior skills are assisted by linguistic resources in the human mind and are expressed through various verbal and non-verbal linguistic strategies that define and depict the discourse. Online beggars exploit the Internet to solicit money or other forms of assistance from random Internet users. Their methods often involve I. Osuolale Ajayi (*) Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_11

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making appeals to emotions and using persuasive language in order to convince potential benefactors to give them money or other forms of assistance. These Internet “panhandlers” are often adept at manipulating people’s emotions and can change their sense of reasoning, causing them to give money even when they would not have done so otherwise. These faceless individuals or groups are often using online platforms to reach a larger audience, which can make them more effective in their efforts to solicit financial assistance. In this chapter, the theory of stance-taking proposed by Du Bois (2007) is used as a framework to analyze the linguistic styles or choices evident in the communication of intention by both the beggars and the respondents. Du Bois’ stance-taking theory suggests that individuals adopt different positions or stances in order to achieve their goals or to influence others. In the context of online begging, this means that individuals who beg for money or assistance on the Internet may take different positions or adopt different strategies in order to manipulate and coerce others into granting their request. This could include using emotional appeals, playing on the sympathies of others, or using persuasive language or tactics to convince others to give them money or other forms of assistance. This study examines how online beggars use linguistic styles to convey their need for help and how respondents use language to convey their willingness or reluctance to provide assistance. Du Bois’ (2007) theory of stance-taking is a potent tool for identifying the linguistic markers of stance-taking and how they are used to communicate meaning and elicit humor in a given context. It is noteworthy that the  available body of literature indicates abysmally scanty studies on online supplications or begging. As rightly noted by Okpeadua (2012, 15), previous studies in the domains of health, psychology, sociology, journalism, and discourse analysis have described the phenomenon as a straightforward act of requesting by impoverished people who are frequently thought to have poor language skills. Those studies have underrepresented and limited our understanding of this pragmatic occurrence in the society by failing to appropriately account for the context-­driven and implicit communicative acts undertaken by (online) beggars. Therefore, adopting Du Bois’ (2007) stance-taking theory as the theoretical framework, this study examines essential stance-taking

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activities in online supplications with the aim of identifying and discussing linguistic strategies or choices evident in the communication of intention by both the beggars and the respondents and how humor is generated in the linguistic choices.

Concept of Online Supplication and Begging Begging is a common occurrence that has existed for a long time in Nigeria, but different people have different attitudes toward this trend. According to Olaosun (2009, 4), begging is “an age old and universal phenomenon.” He further notes that there are several attitudes attributed to begging within the Nigerian context; these attitudes are in three ways: latent, manifest, and indifferent. As suggested by Olaosun (2009), latent attitudes are those that are hidden or not easily visible; manifest attitudes are those that are openly displayed; and indifferent attitudes are those that are neither positive nor negative and may involve a lack of concern or apathy toward the issue. Begging therefore has been initiated as a social practice since the existence of human society. It is viewed as one of the oldest challenges for human society. International Labor Organization (ILO) (2004) defines begging as “a range of activities whereby an individual asks a stranger for money on the basis of being poor or needing charitable donations for health or religious reasons.” This act often involves the emotions of the one asking or begging. This disposition further betrays a low sense of personal dignity, honor, self-esteem/respect on the part of those involved (Okpeadua 2012, 2). Currently, with the advent of technology, begging, or asking for money or other forms of assistance, has become a widespread phenomenon on social media platforms, particularly in urban areas. This can take many forms, such as social media posts asking for donations, online crowdfunding campaigns, or even live streaming of people asking for money. This trend is particularly prevalent among individuals living in urban areas, where access to social media is more common and people may be more likely to seek assistance from online communities. Additionally, the use of social media platforms has made it easier for people to reach a

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larger audience and to share their stories and reasons for needing assistance. Online supplication, also known as cyberbegging or e-begging (Alshareef 2023), is the online version of traditional begging, asking strangers for money to meet immediate and other needs or wants (money, food, and shelter). Internet begging differs from street begging in that it can be practiced with relative anonymity, thereby eliminating or reducing the shame and disgrace apparent of begging in public. Ndeche (2017) observes that social media is breeding a new generation of beggars who cannot go to their family members or personal friends for help, but lurk around celebrities’ and random Internet users’ pages requesting for financial assistance. As a result of such behavior, laziness and cyberbullying are encouraged.

 heoretical Framework: Du Bois’ (2007) Theory T of Stance-Taking Prior to delving deeper into the notion of stance-taking, it is crucial to foreground the concept of “stance.” Du Bois (2007, 163) defines a stance as “a public act by social actor, achieved dialogically through overt communicative means, simultaneously evaluating objects, positioning subjects and aligning with other subjects, with respect to any salient dimensions of the sociocultural field.” Du Bois considers stance as a communicative act which is achieved through dialogue, and involves the evaluation of objects, positioning of the subject, and alignment with other subjects in relation to the sociocultural field. In other words, it is a way for individuals to express their attitudes and beliefs through communication and to position themselves in relation to others and to the societal context in which they are operating. Stance-taking is always related to various kinds of relationships expressed in discourse. Du Bois (2007) argues that at its most basic level, stance-taking is about the evaluation of entities in the discourse by a speaker (or subject, as he refers to them). Alignments and disalignments are created between (canonically two) speakers as they display similarity

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and difference with respect to these evaluations. Kiesling et  al. (2018) note that the advantage of this stance model is that there is a specific basis on which to ground inter-utterance alignments, namely, the structure of individual utterances of evaluation. This model is not one based on a single speaker, but is inherently dialogic in the sense that it requires more than one utterance to really know what is going on with respect to stance-taking. Du Bois (2007) suggests that alignments can be discovered through an analysis of the poetic structure of two evaluations. For example, “I love that game!” might be followed by “I love it too,” which has a similar structure and proposition. On the other hand, the second response might be “I hate that game,” in which the contrast between love and hate shows the disalignment. Not all alignments and disalignments are so straightforward, but the comparison is useful.

Stance Triangle Framework and Humor As its name suggests, “triangle” stance-taking is a tri-act. It is a visual geometric model that represents interrelation between three elements of stance-taking proposed by Du Bois (2007). This model emphasizes the dialogic and intersubjective nature of stance-taking in the interaction (Damari 2009). Du Bois (2007) further outlines that it is a model for attending to the structured interrelation among the acts and entities which comprise stance and allow the analysts to draw inferences by triangulating from the explicit components of stance to the implicit (Du Bois 2007, 165). This means that this model can be used as a framework for explaining and understanding the socio-cognitive relations among stance elements and entities and the way the relations are built through explicit and implicit information in dialogical interaction. The following figure illustrates stance triangle. The stance triangle, in Fig. 11.1, consists of three different entities in the stance act, which are Subject 1, Subject 2, and Object. The terms Subject 1 and Subject 2 refer to the co-participants, while Object is a term indicating the focus of the interaction, such as a person or an event. The act of stance-taking simply begins when Speaker 1 takes a stance by

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Fig. 11.1  Du Bois’ (2007) Stance triangle

introducing a stance object in an utterance and concurrently evaluates it. The next act occurs when Subject 2 evaluates the same object that Subject 1 has evaluated; positions himself in relation to it; and thereby aligns with Subject 1. This indicates that stance-taking act is intersubjective. Besides, stance triangle also comprises three different elements, including positioning, evaluation, and alignment. According to Du Bois (2007, 143), positioning is the “act of situating a social actor with respect to responsibility for stance and for invoking sociocultural value.” This implies that the focus of “positioning” is the stance-takers themselves. This act is usually formed by epistemic and interpersonal stance features. The second element is evaluation, which is also known as assessment (Goodwin 2006), and appraisal (Martin 2000). In contrast to positioning, evaluation is a stance element which “orients to an object of stance and characterizes it as having some specific quality or value” (Du Bois 2007, 143). This makes it obvious that the “evaluation” act focuses on the object of interaction, not subjects/stance-takers.

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The last element of stance-taking is alignment. Alignment is defined as “the act of calibrating the relationship between two stances, and by implication between two stance-takers” (Du Bois 2007, 144). This shows that this stance-taking aspect is different from the other two in which it is more interactional. By taking an act of alignment, the speaker essentially engages with the stances of other speakers. When a speaker, for instance, says “I agree,” the speaker aligns himself to prior speakers. However, the act of alignment in interaction is not always explicitly expressed as indicated in the example. Some speakers are prone to use gestures like thumb­up, a nod or a headshake, or stance markers like “yes” or “no,” or any other forms that index the degree of alignment (Du Bois 2007). The overall discussion on stance triangle suggests that it is an appropriate model to understand the dialogical nature of stance-taking in interaction. Although this model has distinctive elements of stance, such as positioning, evaluation, and alignment, they are principally not separated from one another. These three stance-taking aspects can be considered as subsidiary acts of a single stance act. Therefore, in taking a stance, the stance-taker positions as subject, evaluates an object, and aligns him or herself with other subjects. This model is applied as the framework to explore the communicative intentions of online beggars and respondents in online media platforms, as evident in their linguistic choices. Also, the theory of stance taking is related to some traditional theories of humor: incongruity and superiority theories. Incongruity theory of humor believes that humor is achieved when two contrasting ideas are placed side by side or used together in a sentence. Incongruity theory, according to Attardo (1994, 48), is “based on the mismatch between two ideas in the broadest possible sense.” Thus, when two divergent ideas are expressed via language in a discourse, there is a high possibility that the discourse would be humorous. This means that when speakers, in taking their different positions, do not align on a particular object, humor can be achieved. Another theory of humor that is relevant to stance is superiority theory. According to this theory, humor is achievable when someone is denigrated or ridiculed. Morreall (2009, 7) opines that when something evokes laughter, it is by revealing someone’s inferiority to the person laughing. This theory is sociological as it uncovers the interpersonal

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context of humor. The theory, however, becomes linguistic when one investigates how language is used to make someone the butt of a joke. That is, it can be deployed to the study of how language reveals or is used to encode social stratification or class. The stance of online respondents to supplications is indicative of elements of superiority theory, and this study reveals how the linguistic choices of the interlocutors in the discourse express superiority and, by extension, create humor.

Analysis Stance-taking in online supplications is mainly realized by turn-taking of requests and series of responses ranging from evasion, denial, to mockery. This analysis focuses on the two interactional and intersubjective stance-­ taking activities, namely, positioning and alignment in online supplications, employing Du Bois’ (2007) stance triangle theory as the theoretical framework for investigating the linguistic styles and indicators of humor used in the seven randomly selected data. It should be noted that the data selected for the study were retrieved from online public domains.

 nline Supplicants’ Positioning O in the Requesting Turns Positioning by Establishing Agendas In the ordinary course of events, by making requests for financial assistance from random Internet users, online supplicants establish the topical domain and the request agendas, expecting that the respondents provide an appropriate response with related content. Through establishing agendas, online supplicants can set up an inconvenient or difficult position for respondents with different preferences, and the respondents can adjust the language in time for positioning the discourse. Establishing agendas therefore plays a crucial role in delimiting the scale and scope of the responses of respondents.

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Establishing Topical Agendas In the excerpts, online supplicants set up a topical domain by making certain requests, which generate several responses from social media users. By setting topical agenda for responses, online supplicants can position respondents within the boundary to the agenda and expect them (respondents) to act in a certain way. For instance, in excerpt 1, the stance-taker (online supplicant), employing persuasive language and convincing word choices, raises the topical agenda of requesting for money from random Internet users to buy breakfast. To make the request more persuasive and authentic, the stance-taker quotes his plea for financial help with his picture. This phatic act could influence the positioning of potential helpers by appealing to their emotions and, ultimately, granting the stance-taker’s request. This is similar to the Instagram post in excerpt 4: pls Nigerian help me and my mom with any amount we are dying and starving here pls (followed by crying and folded hands emojis). In this excerpt, the supplicant uses language to reflect her distress situation. By making reference to imminent death due to lack of food, the stance-taker (the subject 1) resorts to the use of threat to ward off formidable apathy and harassment from the respondents. The utterance “we are dying and starving here pls” above is a beggars’ appeal; a passionate plea for assistance to survive. Beyond this general (denotative) meaning though, the utterance pragmatically connotes threat. The supplicant implies that her addressee reserves the ability and the choice to determine her survival and that of her mother or at least influence the outcome in their life-threatening condition. This is one tactic deployed by the stance-taker to establish the topical agenda and, ultimately, coerce and intimidate her respondents into helping her—an act of emotionally manipulating them. Establishing topical agenda to influence the stance of the respondents is also evident in excerpt 2. In the excerpt, which reads: “Abeg I need 15k. I’m stranded in Bethlehem. I go follow wrong star,” the stance-taker sets the topical domain of requesting for a precise amount of money (fifteen thousand naira) and providing validations for such request. The producer of the post also displays his rhetic skills by employing, in passing, a biblical allusion, making reference to entities such as Bethlehem, a city in

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Palestine and the biblical birthplace of Jesus, and the star, which is believed to have accompanied Jesus’ birth. This biblical allusion, which has humorous effect on the respondents/readers, may however not be true in this instance. In excerpt 3: “I don’t have Christmas chicken. Somebody should buy for me,” followed by her bank account information, the topical agenda is established within the context of Christmas festivity. The stance-taker seeks to take advantage of the festive period to request for financial help from social media users. By taking an attitudinal stance, the online supplicant expresses a position and attempts to influence the respondents’ position to align with hers, so that it can often be difficult to dispute or negate her request. Similarly, in excerpt 5: “Please can someone help me with 1k? I’m hungry. I just want to eat,” the stance-taker establishes the topical domain of asking for a specific sum of money, in this case one thousand naira. She further posts her account details to establish a sense of need or urgency in order to convince people to give her money. By using language to ascertain her need and credibility, the online supplicant takes a stance of vulnerability and appeals to the empathy of potential donors.

Establishing Action Agendas In addition to establishing the topical content for an appropriate response, online supplicants can seek to influence the positioning of respondents or potential benefactors by setting up agenda of action that they are expected to perform. These online supplicants seek sympathy from their respondents and in the bid to reduce the psycho-social distance between them and potential benefactors, they engage in a pragmatic deployment of linguistic positioning. In the excerpts, the linguistic acts of these online supplicants convey implicit acts of argument, commitment, vindication, or justification used in countering their benefactors’ possible resistance to their appeal. For instance, in excerpt 1, the stance-taker commits himself by promising to return the favor (“I will surprise you”) to anyone who comes to his aid—a strategy deployed to intimidate respondents and influence their positioning. Similarly, in order to generate, from the respondents, the action of

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granting his plea, the online supplicant in excerpt 2 provides justification for his supplication, claiming to be stranded in a faraway city. This argument by the post producer engages the respondents in a mental exercise in reasoning with him to execute the expected action. Such an argument is also evident in excerpt 3, in which the online supplicant claims to be in a difficult situation simply because she could not afford to buy a Christmas chicken. This claim is extended as a financial status report which sounds like complaints, but functions more or less as a justification for taking to the media, begging. In excerpt 5, the stance-taker establishes action agenda for her respondents in the form of an interrogative statement: “Please can someone help me with 1k?” However, the question is not (mis)interpreted by any of the respondents as an utterance that requires them to answer by speech as may be expected in a question and answer session. As observed in the comments section underneath the “supplication” post, the illocutionary force on the respondents and the subsequent uptakes (perlocutionary effects) that followed indicate that the respondents understand the “interrogatives” as imperatives and feel obliged to either align or disalign with the action agenda set up by the online supplicant accordingly. Online beggars also appeal to the sensibility of the respondents by observing and respecting the religious tone and biases of those they seek help from and align with them through the use of prayers to imply brotherhood with these potential benefactors. Online supplicants seem to be aware of the much regard people have for God and their belief in prayers, which is why they employ the strategy of praying for others as a means of requesting for financial assistance. This is evident in excerpts 5 and 6: “thank you and may God bless you” and “do help me and the Lord shall bless your household,” respectively. A dominant feature in these excerpts is the allusion to God (or Lord). Online supplicants frequently make reference to God to imply their belief in a supreme being. This strategy is unsurprising as Nigeria is apparently a highly religious society. These supplicants therefore concentrate on scriptural injunctions that present them to the respondents as a divinely approved responsibility which attracts God’s favor for benefactors. By setting up action agendas which the respondents are expected to fulfill, online supplicants can have an impact on how the respondents position themselves in response to

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their (supplicants’) requests. The respondents have the liberty to construct a stance, nevertheless, that either aligns or disaligns with the stance established by the online supplicants. The producer of the Instagram post in excerpt 7: “how I wish the father of my son is still alive (dysphoric emoji) I will not have been doing this please help me out 1500 or any amount to feed my son” displays her rhetic skills by making reference, in an indirect manner, to some definite unpleasant incident in the past. Allusion to this event, which may or may not be true, can generate for prospective benefactors a short story of the beggar’s life. For instance, the reference to “the demise of the father of her son” in excerpt 7 could drum in a message, through inference, that the beggar was once “a wife to a man” but now a widow, thus the reason for her taking to the social media seeking for financial help. As also evident in excerpt 6, in which the producer of the post seeks financial help to pay his school fees, online beggars often use persuasive language and storytelling to evoke sympathy and encourage donations from their audience. They may make reference, in an indirect or subtle manner, to a specific past event or circumstance that has led them to their current situation of financial hardship. This technique is known as pathos, and it is used to appeal to the emotions of the audience in order to gain their support.

Respondents’ Alignment in the Responding Turns In online supplications, alignment is accomplished to respectively position the interlocutors in the light of the supplication initiated in the social media post. Moreover, through (dis)alignment, interlocutors respond with an agreement- or disagreement-inclined action that relates to the expectations raised by the supplication post. In the selected excerpts, it is observed that there are more cases of divergent alignment (disalignment) between the stance of the online supplicants and that of the respondents, which consequently creates a convergent alignment between the stance of majority of the commentators.

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Evading Evading is a linguistic act deployed by some of the respondents to express divergent alignment to the stance of the online supplicants. Through evading, the respondents lay aside or avoid dealing with the attitudes, evaluations, or opinions raised in the supplication posts. In one of the responses to excerpt 2, a respondent comments: “You too like play Adisa” (followed by some euphoric emojis). In this comment, instead of a direct (dis)agreement, the respondent plays down the financial request made by the online supplicant in his post: “Abeg, I need 15k. I’m stranded in Bethlehem. I go follow wrong star” by describing the supplicant as being playful/mischievous and therefore should not be taken seriously. This act indicates the respondent’s evasion of divergent alignment toward the position set up by the supplicant. Evading as a strategy to express disalignment with the stance produced in excerpt 2 is also evident in the response: “dey play [keep playing],” accompanied by some euphoric emojis. The phrase “dey play” is one of the newly coined slangy expressions among Nigerian youth. The catchphrase is used to inform others that they need to work harder, stop dilly-dallying, and stop being unserious with life. This comment also trivializes the financial help being sought by the online supplicant; it is humorous because it is covertly incongruous with the desired expectation (acceding or granting the request) of supplications, based on societal common ground of the situation. Also, the respondents implicitly deride the object of the discourse by not taking the request seriously. This may, however, be because some of the respondents seem to have a prior relationship with the supplicant. “OYO is your case” is another response that connotes evasion of divergent alignment among the respondents. “OYO” is a popular slang and acronym that stands for “on your own.” This reaction informs the supplicant about the fact that no one is willing to come to his aid and therefore negates the positioning of the online supplicant who is requesting for financial assistance from random Internet users. Also, the stance of the subject who said “OYO is your case” is similar to one of the comments to the post in excerpt 5 in which the supplicant asks for a thousand naira on the grounds that she is starving and needs the

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money to buy food. The comment reads: “nobody can, my dear.” With this comment, the respondent evades the financial request advanced by the supplicant. The respondent avoids offering help to the supplicant by claiming that no one else is willing to provide assistance; therefore uses this as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for her own actions and to absolve herself of any guilt or obligation to help. This type of behavior can be seen as dismissive, as it suggests that the respondent is unwilling to offer any kind of assistance despite the fact that the supplicant has provided justification for making such request. The expression “nobody can, my dear” is incongruous in sense, because the endearment nominal phrase “my dear” is used in conversations between interlocutors who share personal space. However, in this context, the respondent is in a public space relationship but uses an expression usually bound to personal space. It can therefore be said that the usage is stylistic as it is used to evade the request politely.

Challenging Challenging is another linguistic act deployed by the respondents to display divergent alignment by expressing doubt toward the attitudes, evaluations, or opinions in the post made by the online supplicant, thereby indicating that the supplication is problematic. In one of the responses to excerpt 1, which reads: “Someone should dm me and pay for my breakfast/I will surprise you,” the respondent challenges the stance of the post producer (supplicant) by posing a direct question to him: “do you forbid buying breakfast for someone?”—an act that threatens the face of the online supplicant and puts him in a problematic position. Similarly, in excerpt 2, one of the respondents challenges the online supplicant by asking “wetin you dey find” (what are you looking for?)—this reaction conveys a divergent or incongruous alignment with the stance of the supplicant who seeks to influence the positioning of the respondents to gift him the sum of fifteen thousand naira. A similar question—“shei you dey whine me nii?” (are you kidding me?)—is raised by one of the respondents to the supplication in excerpt 3: “I don’t have Christmas Chicken. Somebody should buy for me (followed by the supplicant’s bank account

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information).” This comment conveys disbelief toward the attitude expressed in the supplication; this therefore instigates a disalignment with the positioning of the online supplicant. One of the respondents to the post in excerpt 4: “Pls, Nigerian help me and my mom with any amount we are dying and starving here, pls” challenges the beggar’s request with the comment: “and you have money to subscribe to come and be doing Instagram.” This comment is similar to one of the respondents’ comments in excerpt 5 “you dey hungry and you get Sub to enter IG (followed by laughing emojis).” These statements suggest that the respondents uphold a divergent alignment with the cyberbeggars. The respondents are suggesting that the beggars have enough money to pay for a subscription to the social media platform Instagram, but not enough money to buy food. This implies that the respondents may not believe that the beggars are truly in need of assistance or that they may have other resources available to them. The respondents are also questioning the beggars’ priorities and suggesting that they should prioritize basic needs like food over non-essential items like a social media subscription, hence the latter part of the comment to the post in excerpt 4: “I have one word for you. (YOU ARE NOT DOING WELL). you are a bad child.” The divergent linguistic styles of the respondents are humorous as they contradict the expected communal common ground expectation to supplications in the human society. It is mostly preached universally that people should show act of kindness and also empathize with people in need, but in Nigerian online supplication discourses, as evident in the foregoing, respondents perform acts that are incongruous with the supplications.

Mocking The linguistic act of mocking is also deployed by the respondents to express divergent alignment with the positioning and stance of online supplicants. This act is achieved by making fun of the attitudes, evaluations, or opinions embedded in the supplications and thereby disparaging or belittling the supplications and considering the supplicants as petty and unserious. That is, the supplicants are made the butt of their

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humorous expressions. One of the respondents to the supplication in excerpt 2 pretends to express sympathy with the supplicant who demands for fifteen thousand naira and goes further to berate the supplicant for following the wrong star, which supposedly could have been “Herod star”—a biblical allusion to King Herod, the king who initiated a murder of all the infants in Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of baby Jesus. The respondent’s sarcasm is heightened when she flouts the maxim of relevance by posting letter “k” fifteen times as her response to granting the request of the supplicant who has demanded for “15k” (a Nigerian slangy expression which means fifteen thousand naira). This act consequently puts the supplicant in a problematic position and emphasizes an incongruous alignment between the supplicant and the respondent. Another respondent comments on the same extract by code switching between Yoruba and English: “se e ni kuda. E lo overdraft feature” (Do you have Kuda account? Use overdraft feature). Kuda is a Fintech company that provides banking services to many Nigerians. There is a shared situational knowledge among Nigerians about Kuda’s overdraft service which allows its customers to have access to short-term loans. The commentator, rather than aligning to the positioning established by the supplicant, proffers Kuda’s overdraft service as a solution to the supplicant’s plight— an act which creates a divergent alignment with the stance of the supplicant. Another comment, which displays divergent alignment (of stance) by making fun of the positioning of the supplicant, posted by one of the respondents to excerpt 2 is “the star of Mercedes Benz can lead astray if one is not careful.” It can be inferred that the respondent throws a subtle jibe at the supplicant by claiming that he (the supplicant) was led astray by following the star located at the center of Mercedes Benz logo. The linguistic act of mocking to express divergent alignment with the positioning of online supplicants is also evident in one of the comments to the supplication in excerpt 4. The comment reads “I knew about this song cuz (because) you like singing it. All over! All over!” With this comment, the respondent compares the beggar’s request for assistance to a song that is repetitive and annoying, suggesting that the beggar’s request is not genuine and that she is too fond of begging. This implies that the respondent

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sees the supplicant’s request as a nuisance and holds a negative attitude toward cyberbeggars in general.

Counter-Ordering Counter-ordering is a linguistic act deployed by some of the respondents to express divergent alignment with the stance of the online supplicants. Through counter-ordering, the respondents express an order which contradicts and revokes the attitude, evaluation, and positioning that surround the request being made by online supplicants. Customarily, by seeking financial assistance from random Internet users, online supplicants place an order which they hope to be fulfilled by potential benefactors. In the selected supplications and their responses, some respondents, however, counter such order made by the supplicants, which resulted in establishing a divergent alignment (disalignment) with the positioning/ stance of the supplicants. For instance, a respondent’s comment to excerpt 2 reads: “Follow the new moon. Panic not.” This comment presents a sharp, witty clapback to the supplicant’s fifteen-thousand-naira request. One could deduce the respondent’s apathy toward the positioning of the supplicant, and thus, unwillingness to establish a convergent alignment with the supplicant by granting his request. Rather than coming to his (supplicant’s) aid, the commentator admonishes him to stay calm, retrace his steps, and “follow the new moon.” Similarly, another respondent presents a sharp, witty clapback as his comment on the same supplication: “Apply for their citizenship, it is good for you.” In his bid to influence the positioning of potential benefactors and appeal to their emotions, the supplicant justifies his stance by claiming to be stranded in a strange land (Bethlehem) and therefore needs financial assistance to find his way back home. This particular respondent however does not find the stance justification convincing; he then presents a cold response or a funny retort which disaligns with the positioning of the supplicant, ordering him to dwell in and become a citizen of the foreign land, rather than trying to locate his home country. Furthermore, in one of the responses to excerpt 3 in which the online supplicant begs for financial assistance to buy Christmas chicken, a

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respondent provides a counter-order by commenting: “Snap ur [your] ATM front and back and send for me … I get guy wet fit help me do u transfer [I have a guy that can help me to transfer money to you] … U [you] can also send d [the] ATM pin so u see d alert faster.” While the supplicant expects the respondents to act in a certain way by granting her request of financial assistance, this particular respondent counters this positioning by also expecting the supplicant to carry out some demands. The respondent makes some mischievous requests of the supplicant by ordering her to provide information about her debit card before he can fulfill her demands—a request that ultimately aims to swindle the supplicant of her assets. The respondent further establishes a divergent alignment with the supplicant’s positioning by undermining her request and considering it as petty via the comment: “we dey use fish do Christmas here … u dey find chicken [we are celebrating Christmas by eating fish and you are there looking for chicken] keep playing.” The phrase “keep playing” is a direct translation of the popular Nigerian slangy expression “dey play.” The respondent sarcastically employs this linguistic item to describe the supplicant’s stance as unserious and insignificant. The linguistic act of counter-­ordering is also deployed by one of the respondents to the post in excerpt 7 (“how I wish the father of my son is still alive (dysphoric emoji) i will not have been doing this please help me out 1500 or any amount to feed my son” ) to express divergent alignment with the stance of the online supplicant. The comment, which reads: “you have a phone to come and beg go sell the phone and use it for food u people like begging too much,” contradicts and dismisses the beggar’s request for money to feed her son. Instead of offering financial assistance, the respondent suggests that the beggar should sell her phone in order to buy food. This statement contradicts the beggar’s request for money as it implies that she has an alternative means of obtaining the necessary funds. Additionally, it dismisses the beggar’s plea for help by suggesting that she is capable of finding a solution to her plight on her own. It can be deduced from this comment that the respondent may not have a lot of empathy for the beggar’s situation and may not be willing to offer any financial assistance.

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Insulting Insulting is another linguistic act deployed by the respondents to express divergent alignment (disalignment) with the positioning and stance of the online supplicants. This is not surprising, as social media users sometimes express hostility and superiority toward individuals who use the Internet to request financial assistance. This can take the form of direct attacks, such as insulting or threatening language, or more subtle forms of aggression, such as ignoring or blocking requests for assistance. Some people may view these requests as annoying or unnecessary, while others may see them as a form of fraud or scam. For instance, a respondent’s comment to excerpt 4 reads: “I have one word for you. (YOU ARE NOT DOING WELL). You are a bad child.” With this comment, the respondent is being critical and judgmental of the cyberbeggar, tagging her “a bad child.” The respondent implies that the beggar is not being truthful about her financial situation because she is able to afford an Internet subscription. This statement is an attack on the beggar’s positive face, which is the social identity that people want to preserve in their interactions with others. The comment is a negative and harsh statement that does not take into account the complexity of the supplicant’s situation. Similarly, as a reaction to the supplication post in excerpt 5: “Please can someone help me with 1k? I’m hungry. I just want to eat,” a respondent writes: “u are everywhere begging.” As a reaction to the same post, another commentator writes: “Instagram begger [sic] (followed by laughing emojis).” These comments express derogatory and disrespectful statements about the online supplicant, implying that the person is constantly asking for financial assistance and can be found on every social media post. The respondents’ comments are humorous because they disparage the supplicants and the objects of the discourse. Their linguistic choices are humorous, as they have been situated in the Nigerian sociocultural context. It should be noted that the stylistic usage of the language use of the respondents may be considered as dehumanizing and hurtful in the western society, but in the Nigerian context, people are aware that a lot of beggars use online platforms to lie about their financial situation and seek help on blogs with heavy traffic. This common ground about beggars has

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created harmful stereotypes and discrimination against individuals who are truly experiencing penury. The linguistic act of insulting is also employed by one of the respondents to the post in excerpt 6 to outrightly express a divergent alignment with the proposition of the cyberbeggar. The respondent, in her comment: “you know you are lying, why are you a bloody liar … you should be asking for forgiveness from God by now for the souls that you have hurt not to continue on your evil acts,” threatens the positive face of the supplicant by expressing a strong disagreement toward the supplicant’s request. By ascribing derogatory terms to the object of stance cyberbeggar, “a bloody liar,” and his actions, “your evil acts,” the respondent believes the beggar is not in genuine need and is instead trying to defraud innocent people of their possessions. The respondent’s language and attitude convey a lack of empathy or compassion toward the beggar and a mistrust of his motives. One of the reactions to the supplication post in excerpt 7 also directly attacks the cyberbeggar by employing an insulting and disrespectful expression. The latter part of the comment reads: “you have a phone to come and beg go sell the phone and use it for food u people like begging too much.” The commentator expresses a negative attitude toward online supplicants and uses insulting language to express her feelings. With her comment, she implies that online supplicants enjoy begging, suggesting that these cyberbeggars are choosing to beg rather than finding a job or other means of support. This shows that in the Nigerian online supplication context, supplicants are not taken seriously, rather the respondents using different linguistic choices and taking different stances, crack jokes about the object and the first stance-taker (the supplicant) because they doubt the authenticity of the requests.

Conclusion With the application of Du Bois’ (2007) stance triangle theory—a framework for analyzing language use in social interactions—this study has examined two essential stance-taking activities, positioning and alignment, in online supplications, or requests for assistance. Specifically, the study has looked at how individuals position themselves and align with

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others in their supplications and responses in order to achieve their communicative intentions. In the requesting turns, the online supplicants, or cyberbeggars, are inclined to establish topical and action agendas with the intention to influence the stance of respondents or potential benefactors to grant their request for financial assistance. Persuasive linguistic acts, convincing word choices and allusions to religious entities, current event or personal hardship are common linguistic styles deployed by online supplicants to establish topical agendas in their stances. Implicit linguistic acts of argument, commitment, vindication, and justification are also deployed to set up action agendas. The ultimate goal of these strategies as deployed by these supplicants is to influence the perception of the potential benefactors and increase the likelihood that they will grant their (supplicants’) request for financial assistance. As regards the responding turns, respondents often establish a divergent alignment with the stance of online supplicants, expressing indifference, hostility, and sarcasm in their comments. Indifference is characterized by a lack of concern or interest in the plight of the online beggars; hostility is characterized by negative feelings or aggression toward the beggars; while sarcasm is marked by making comments that mock the attitudes, evaluations, and opinions embedded in the supplications, thereby undermining the supplicants’ requests. Linguistic acts of evading, challenging, counter-ordering, mocking, and insulting are the common acts deployed by the respondents to express divergent alignment with the stance of the online supplicants. This revealed that it is the stance of the respondents that is mostly humorous as they express disalignment and superiority to the supplicants. Accordingly, the stances established by interlocutors in online supplications  intertwine through interaction, thereby rendering stance-taking as an intersubjective activity.

References Alshareef, Abdulrahman M. 2023. A Machine Learning Supervised Model to Detect Cyber-begging in Social Media. In Emerging Technologies in Data Mining and Information Security, ed. Paramartha Dutta, Satyajit Chakrabarti,

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Abhishek Bhattacharya, Soumi Dutta, and Celia Shahnaz. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4052-1_23. Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humor. Mouton de Gruyter. Damari, Rebecca Rubin. 2009. Stancetaking as Identity Work: Attributed, Accreted, and Adjusted Stances Taken by an Intercultural Couple. Discourse and Society 3: 18–37. Du Bois, John. 2007. The Stance Triangle. In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. Robert Englebretson, 139–182. John Benjamins. Goodwin, Marjorie. 2006. The Hidden Life of Girls: Games of Stance, Status, and Exclusion. Oxford: Blackwell. International Labour Organization (ILO) 2004. A Rapid Assessment of Bonded Labour in Domestic Work and Begging in Pakistan. Collective for Social Science Research, Karachi. Geneva, Switzerland. Kiesling, Scott F., Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Jim Fitzpatrick, Xiaochuang Han, and Jacob Eisenstein. 2018. Interactional Stancetaking in Online Forums. Association for Computational Linguistics 44 (4): 683–718. Martin, Jeannett. 2000. Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English. In Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, ed. Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson, 142–175. Oxford University Press. Morreall, John. 2009. Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor. Wiley-Blackwell. Ndeche, Chidirim. 2017. Is Cyber-begging Becoming a Culture? Guardian Nigeria. August 11. Accessed April 11, 2023. https://guardian.ng/life/lifefeatures/is-cyber-begging-becoming-a-culture/ Okpeadua, Sony. 2012. Pragmatic Acts in Alms Begging in Lagos State, Nigeria. PhD thesis, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State. Olaosun, Ibrahim. 2009. Panhandlers as Rhetors: Discourse Practices of Peripatetic Beggars in Southwestern Nigeria. California Linguistic Notes 32 (2): 1–18.

12 A Preliminary Sketch on Intertextuality in Nigerian Stand-Up Comedy Ibukun Filani and Catherine Olutoyin Williams

Introduction This study examines intertextuality in Nigerian stand-up comedy (NSC) and account for its discourse significance in the performance genre. All texts involve intertextuality, as De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981) point This chapter was initially presented at the Pragmatics Association of Nigeria Second National Conference held at Bowen University, Iwo, Nigeria in 2019. This revision was carried out during a fellowship grant awarded by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to the corresponding author. The authors are grateful to the foundation for the grant, without which access to the library materials consulted to rewrite the paper would not have been possible.

I. Filani (*) Department of English Language and Linguistics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] C. O. Williams Department of English Studies, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_12

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out that the utilization of a text depends on the knowledge of previously encountered texts. Jokes and other humorous texts are all based on intertextuality (Tsakona 2018; Attardo and Chabanne 1992). Comprehending humour might be an improbable task if the recipient is unknowledgeable of the dependency of the joke-text on prior texts or discourses. A humorous text therefore could be a symbolic boundary marker since interpreting intertextuality relies on cultural or any form of background knowledge being appropriated through a joke (Kuipers 2009). For this reason, jokes create communication gap and power imbalance between ingroup (those who have access to knowledge appropriated in jokes) and outgroup (those who do not have knowledge of the background knowledge) identity categories (Tsakona 2018; Kuipers 2009). Successful joking therefore establishes a fraternized bond since it reinforces a sense of belonging and the social realities of the structured world of the users. This might account for why performance humour genres like sitcoms and stand-up comedy play a significant role in popular culture. This chapter is concerned with patterns of intertextuality in NSC, which is one of the prominent forms of entertainment in Nigerian popular culture context. As a pragmatic component of humour, “intertextuality must be incorporated in an exhaustive theory of humour” (Attardo 1994, 180; 2001, 61). However, formulating a theory of humour is beyond the scope of this study which presents a descriptive analysis of intertextuality in NSC as an example of how it is appropriated in a unique genre of performance humour. In this sense, we view intertextuality as a strategy which enables stand-up comedians to generate humorous grounding, contextualize their performance, establish and enhance shared identity and situate their routines in a socio-historical context (Glick 2007; Filani 2016, 2020; Aarons and Mierowsky 2017). In other words, we will argue that intertextuality is a discursive strategy with which stand-up comedy is turned into “an intensely political act” (Waisanen 2011, 140). The data used for illustration in the analysis were derived from recorded videos of NSC performances. Using purposive sampling, targeted routines were transcribed and excerpts from them were presented as samples in the analysis. We also derived an excerpt from Adetunji (2013). Because the language of comedy performance in Nigeria is Pidgin (NP), which could be code mixed with English, translations of the excerpts are given

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where necessary. The remaining part of this chapter is divided into four sections. The next section examines intertextuality in humour, while the following one is a review of studies on stand-up comedy. The fourth part of the chapter is dedicated to the analysis after which we present the conclusion of the investigation.

On Intertextuality and Humour Intertextuality refers to the ways in which utterances and texts are connected with each other. Remarking that an utterance, which embodies the voice of not only its speaker, exists in a network of preceding and succeeding ones, Bakhtin (1986) uses the notions of dialogism and polyphony to indicate the interconnectedness of texts and utterances. However, it was Kristeva (1980) who coined the term. Intertextuality theory is about how language users frame their utterances with varying degrees of otherness and our-own-ness, attachment and detachment (Fairclough 1992, 101–103). As a discursive strategy, interlocutors use it for reproducing, reframing and re-interpreting texts. Auer (2009, 92) identifies two dimensions from Bakhtin’s ideas: the first “includes sequentiality in the sense of conversational analysis,” while the second “refers to distant text relationship across situations.” These two dimensions are realized in jokes, as Attardo and Chabanne (1992, 174) posit, “intertextuality is relevant for co-textual reference (for instance, in an anthology of jokes), situational copresence (for example, jokes inspired from the first told as a party), imitation, parody, stereotypes.” We will argue that these dimensions of intertextuality are also realized in stand-up comedy when the humourists use their narratives to refer to other texts or quote any other individuals. In any case, stand-up comedy emerges from reusing or adaptation of various genres as per Greenbaum’s (1999) conceptualization of its rhetorical style as dialogical. Tsakona (2018) posits that intertextuality infiltrates every verbal communication. Since the network of intertextual links indicates how utterances/texts respond to other utterances/texts, both the text producer and recipient(s) need to make specific assumptions concerning each other’s background knowledge on how the text at hand connects with other

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texts. In other words, intertextuality demands that communicators must trace the link between the text at hand and pre-existing or upcoming ones (Bakhtin 1986; Tsakona 2018). This observation raises the question of agency in intertextuality, whether it is a conscious manipulation by text producers or whether texts intertwine autonomously, without the authors being aware of pre-existing forms, text types or contents.1 However, whether intertextuality is intentionally crafted into a text, as it is in some genres like news discourse, or it autonomously exists in a text as in everyday phatic communication, the addressees need to deploy their knowledge of pre-existing texts in comprehending instances of intertextuality. Fairclough (1992) treats intertextuality as a discursive practice that permeates genres and underscores the role of discourse in signification and social life. In this sense, analysis of intertextuality involves mapping texts on to social contexts. This process involves showing how texts draw upon orders of discourse, depend on situational/societal use, transform and transcend social and historical resources. Fairclough (1992) identifies two ways in which a text may share intertextual links with other texts: manifest intertextuality and constitutive intertextuality. In manifest intertextuality, other texts are drawn upon in a text, while in constitutive intertextuality, different discourse types, genres and/or styles are adapted in a text. Slembrouck (2011, 195) describes constitutive intertextuality as “how a discourse type is constituted through a combination of elements of orders of discourse.” An important aspect of Fairclough’s conceptualization of intertextuality is how textual links mirror social and discursive practices, and how they necessitate the processes of text (re)production, (re)interpretation and transformation. For instance, intertextuality may be used to establish a relationship of power and ideology among participants through its underlining presuppositions (which may not constitute a common ground), direct negation (e.g., the use of negative marker “not” and morphemes like im-, il-, etc.) or indirect negation like semantic negation and its meta-discourse function through the use of strategies like edging (Fairclough 1992, 118–136).  We are grateful to the reviewer who pointed out this observation.

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Fairclough’s (1992) approach to intertextuality points out the relationship between text production (or textual strategy), on the one hand, and power, hegemony and ideology, on the other. It implies that there are social structures and negotiations of power and identities which determine the (re)production of texts and the individuals who can appropriate the texts. As a strategy for doing a text again, intertextuality places the text at hand in the previous situational and socio-historical contexts on the one hand, and on the other hand, inserts the previous situational and socio-historical contexts into the text at hand. Therefore, “intertextuality generates representations which may bring recipients ideologically closer to the producer’s perspective … Recipients’ efforts to reach coherent interpretations of texts lead them to acquiesce to, rather than reject, the texts’ evaluations and presupposition” (Tsakona 2018, 2). Stand-up comedians do not deploy intertextuality for hegemonic and ideological positioning between themselves and their audiences, since they “speak with, rather than to” them (Adetunji 2013, 6; italics ours). The intertextual references in their routines are meant to signal a common ground between themselves and their audience. However, if the routines are contextualized into previous situational, historical, social and political contexts, which the performance references, stand-up comedy may generate hegemonic and ideological effects. It is possible, in interactional/conversational humour, for a speaker to use intertextuality to map a boundary between those who are in the know and those who do not have the needed background knowledge of the specific areas referenced through intertextual allusion (Tsakona 2018; Mazurek-Przybylska 2016). However, stand-up comedians operate in a precarious performance context where they need to constantly win and sustain the attention of their audience and, at the same time, set-up relevant background knowledge for their audiences through their utterances and embodied acts (Glick 2007). Therefore, stand-up comedians are not likely to perform jokes with intertextual links that would not be recognized by their audiences. Filani’s (2017) notion of “joking context” in stand-up comedy can be evoked to explain the intertextual dimension in stand-up comedy. The thesis posits two levels of situation in stand-up performance. The first is the speech situation between the comedian and the audience, while the second locates the characters in the comic narrative and the kind of

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activity they are engaged in. Whenever comedians situate their discourse types and the characters in their narratives within a socio-historical situation that predates their performance, they instantiate intertextuality between what they perform and that situation. Stand-up comedians’ narratives are filled with characters that index real life social actors and activities/situations/events in the macro context. The comedians intentionally create these narratives, systematically embed constitutive intertextuality and polyphonic meanings for the audience to uncover. Most, if not all, forms of humour depend on intertextuality. Therefore, it is not strange that intertextuality has consistently appeared in literatures on jokes and humour (e.g., Attardo 1994, 2001). Some forms of humour, like textual allusion, distortions and quotations, cartoons and parody, entirely depend on intertextual play (see Mazurek-Przybylska 2016). Humorous literatures, film/cinema and news media share a common feature—an element of humorous imitation that involves intertextual play and comical allusion. Such intertextual allusions “poke fun at the ways and follies of society by criticizing political figures, social characters, cultural references, situations and events of everyday life” (Ermida 2012, 185). Tsakona (2018) identifies several ways in which humour entails intertextuality. First, the concept of script opposition, a sine qua non for humour, necessarily entails that humorous texts must make intertextual reference to other (con)texts. According to Tsakona (2018), humour recipients evoke a specific script, a previous experience and knowledge of the world, to make sense of the humour. However, when the text at hand seems to be at odds with the evoked script, a switch is made to another script for interpretation. Humorous effect is generated due to the evocation of two overlapping and contrasting scripts for the interpretation of a single text. Script opposition, therefore, is only established because reference is made to previous (con)texts which serve as the presupposition for uncovering humour. Intertextuality, therefore, determines what is incongruous in a given humorous stimulus. Second, the similarity in jokes can be explained in terms of intertextuality. “Jokes are based on recurring themes, script oppositions, characters, settings, targets, stereotypes, and generic/organizational features that enable individuals to make sense of them and to create more of them”

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(Tsakona 2018, 3). In addition, other forms of humorous effects, like parody, mimicry and satire, require that recipients identify the individual or text being referenced. In Tsakona’s (2018) view, parody is built on intertextuality and can only be understood if one identifies the original text being referred to. In some humour performance context (e.g., conversational joking, cartoons), intertextuality renders the joke a form of sophisticated humour, especially when the recipient does not have the background knowledge to process the text. “Sophisticated humour” is used here, not to mean complexity in processing of jokes (see Attardo 1994, 216), but to refer to instances when joke recipients lack the required linguistic and cultural knowledge to comprehend humour that is based on intertextual reference. Norrick (1989, 1993), cited in Tsakona (2018), notes that intertextuality in jokes is a test for shared knowledge which is meant to foreground common interest between the joke teller and the recipients. According to Kuipers (2009), shared knowledge is derived from culture and other forms of knowledge sources, some of which may be unevenly distributed in the society. Therefore, humour based on intertextuality might function as a symbolic boundary across social divides— between those who have access to the “shared” knowledge and those that do not. In other words, humour based on intertextuality may place a recipient in an “inferior position” (Mazurek-Przybylska 2016, 91) or map the recipient as an outsider since intertextuality makes the “exclusive function” of humour to become prominent (Tsakona 2018, 3). As we have noted in the previous section, stand-up performance requires that the comedians win the approval of their audience; therefore, they are likely to use intertextual links which their audiences can easily recognize.

Stand-up Comedy and Its Humour Stand-up comedy is a genre of popular culture. Sociological and anthropological studies have conceptualized its narratives as commentaries on the society and culture (Mintz 1985; Adejunmobi 2013). Within linguistics, scholars have adopted diverse approaches to tackle different theoretical issues on language use and performance aspects of humour in stand-up context. Rutter (1997, 2000) and Scarpetta and Spagnolli (2009) adopt

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conversational analysis to examine the interactional structure of stand-up communication. Their studies point out that the sequential organization of stand-up comedy relies on the structure of joke sequence and the sequence of the sections of the stand-up event. Given the successive organization of the sections, the stand-up event is a progression from the point where the compere introduces a comedian, continues with the entrance and exit of the comedian, and ends at the point where the compere introduces another comedian or closes the show. We must note that the compere’s function is also comedic and that the comedians also perform opening and closing sequences in addition to the body of series of jokes in between. Adetunji (2013) provides an analysis of pragmatic strategies of stand­up comedy in the Nigerian multilingual ESL context and notes that comedians instantiate code selection, self-deprecation, shared experiences and formulas, among others, as strategies through which they co-­ construct humour with their audiences. Filani (2015a and 2015b) are discourse theoretical approaches to stand-up performance, the first describes stand-up as an activity type, while the second conceptualizes the discourse types in stand-up performance. Other studies such as Filani and Ajayi (2019), Filani (2020) and Raheem (2018) are critical discourse analyses on how NSC tracks popular thinking and offers subversive commentaries on cultural and political issues in Nigeria. Furthermore, Filani (2016) examines how Nigerian stand-up comedians appropriate mimicry acts. While the study notes how mimicry amounts to intertextuality, it does not offer an elaborate view on the significance of intertextuality in stand-up routines. Therefore, the need for the present investigation arises. It is important to also note that a couple of studies have underscored the place of shared knowledge within the performance sphere (e.g., Yus 2016; Adetunji 2013; Filani 2017; Sunday and Filani 2018). Yus (2016) approaches shared knowledge within the relevance theoretic framework, noting that not all instances of humorous effects in stand-up venues can be reduced to the incongruity-resolution interpretation of jokes. Yus (2016) contends that there are humorous effects resulting from joy of manifestness, the sudden realizations that assumptions that are initially thought to be private and personal are actually public, cultural and

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collective. “The joy of manifest lies in cultural representations which are simply strengthened or contradicted by the comedian’s monologue” (Yus 2016, 177). According to Sunday and Filani (2018), mutual manifestness of cultural representations promotes negotiation of the comedians’ interactional and background identities and expands the common ground between the performer and audience. Thus, the foregrounding of cultural and societal issues in comedy venues adds to an overall improvement of the audience’s encyclopaedic knowledge of how their social environment is organized and of the rules concerning social behaviour (Yus 2004). The interactional context of stand-up performance exists for entertainment. As such, the monologues of the performers are constructed with discourse strategies and pragmatic features that facilitate the realization of the perlocutionary effect of laughter (see Adetunji 2013; Yus 2004; Filani 2017). Ruiz-Gurillo (2013, 114–115) makes an important distinction between humour markers and humour indicators, which comedians enmesh into other pragmatic and discourse strategies like topics, targets, character footing, anecdotes, self-deprecation and taboo among others, so as to trigger laughter and applause from the audience. Humour markers are “elements that contribute towards inferring humour such as intonation, pauses, gestures, discourse markers and evidentials,” while indicators are elements “that could turn into a humorous cue in a specific context (e.g., polysemy, phraseology, hyperbole, smile, etc.)” (Ruiz-­ Gurillo and Linares-Bernabeu 2019, 6; see also Filani 2018; Ogoanah and Ojo 2018).

 atterns of Intertextuality in Nigerian P Stand-up Comedy Since the goal of this study is a descriptive analysis of intertextuality in stand-up comedy, we will begin our analysis with an example of a humorous sequence where a Nigerian comic explicitly deploys intertextuality through a direct reference to the Bible. With this example, we will argue that intertextuality is not just an act of humorous grounding but a deliberate strategy foregrounding the normative social structures of the

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cultural community of people attending comedy venues. In this way, comedians use intertextuality to (re)negotiate power, hegemony and ideology which defines their culture and society. The first example is drawn from the routine of Okey Bakassi (real name—Okechukwu Anthony Onyegbule) which was performed in an event organized by NigerianAmericans in Chicago. In this particular routine, Okey was performing observational comedy on cultural themes like parenting and marital relationship. He also used the same performance to rhetorically dismantle traditional hegemonic structures when he performed a sequence which toppled male-female hierarchical relational frame. It is in this sequence that we find the example of intertextuality drawing on the sacred text. In order to achieve the goal of his critical routine, he makes an intertextual reference to the narrative on the fall of man. His recontextualization of a Biblical narrative is imperative for the intention underlying his entertainment. It also raises a question on the culture-based discourse practice that inspires his intertextual reference. Here we see the comic juxtaposing two different contexts in time, the contemporary Nigerian couple with the first human couple, Adam and Eve, and asking the audience to use how he framed each character in his own version of the Biblical narrative to “critique” contemporary Nigerian couples. The joke sequence is presented as Excerpt 1 below: Excerpt 1 [Okey Bakassi] (DKS Films 2019) 1 Alright, I also like the fact that em Iyke did not forget to give madam an award (AL) (CL).2 2 That is uncommon wisdom. I like it when men remember to honour their wives, 3 because, you know women, they are the most powerful people God created. 4 Is anybody going to doubt that? Most times when I say it, men attempted to argue. 5 Women are the most intelligent of all of God’s creatures, is anybody in doubt? (AC).  Audience Laughs (AL); Audience Claps (AC); Comedian laughs (CL); Italics in square bracket indicates comedian’s movement on stage while words in square brackets are translation of preceding words in Nigerian Pidgin. 2

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6 I know the men are quiet! (AC) No, don’t take my word for it, it’s in the Bible, is in the Bible. 7 I’m not going to tell you anything that is not in the Bible. They are the most intelligent. 8 Look, if you go to the book of Genesis, the evidence is there. You know God set up a garden 9 and planted a tree that brings forth the fruit of knowledge and gave instruction to man not to touch, 10 and Adam, as the fool wey him be [that he is], did not touch. The tree was there 11 if you eat this fruit your eyes will open. Adam is not interested in opening eyes. 12 He sees the tree and [comedian walks away from the centre of the stage] not until Eve came 13 and em, women in their quest, curiosity for knowledge became the first to eat out of that fruit. 14 And by so doing, they were the first to open eye. 15 Is it not simple logic? (AL) They were the first to know, because they were full of knowledge. 16 And you know the funny thing is that there was no time, watch, calendar at the time, 17 so we don’t even know how long, Eve (AL) enjoyed the fruit before he introduced it to Adam (AL). 18 Her eyes could have been opened for like six years, 19 and Adam was busy fooling around everywhere (AL). 20 until one day Eve decided, oya [come on] come Oya cooomuuu, mugu [come, fool], monkey (AL), 21 come come, let me open your eye (AL). Oya [Right now]Taste small apple (AL) 22 and it probably wasn’t, you know it didn’t digest before God showed up [AL]. 23 That is why men have Adam’s apple (intensified AL). 24 It was still somewhere here [touches the throat] (AL), he has not even swallowed the first piece (AL). 25 so the knowledge had not fully set in, it wasn’t fully activated (AL) before God came. 26 That was how man became the first of God’s creation to fail an exam. 27 You know the first person to fail an exam wasn’t Eve, it was Adam.

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28 A simple question of Geography, question of location, Adam, Adam, where are you (AL), 29 Simple answer, I’m in the bush (AL) or I’m in the garden (AL). 30 But instead of giving a geography answer to a geography question, 31 he gave a fashion design answer. Adam Adam where are you? He said I’m naked (AL). 32 Now what is the relationship of your state of dressing and your location? (AL) 33 You know that was what annoyed God, (AL) and God looked at him 34 and said how can somebody I made in my image be this dumb? (AL) 35 That was why man was thoroughly punished for an offence a woman committed, you know?

Okey begins the excerpt by instantiating the discourse marker alright to indicate that he is commencing a new joke sequence; then performs an illocutionary act that suggests the sociocultural issue he wants to critique. In line 1, he re-incorporated an activity that has already taken place in the venue of the performance, Iyke giving his wife an award, thereby “playing with the audience’s short-term memory store of assumptions,” which is a strategy for building up humorous effects (Yus 2016, 181). Re-incorporation is also a form of intertextuality since it is a reference to a text produced by another speaker. What is relevant for our analysis is Okey’s description of a man’s affection for his wife as uncommon wisdom. In our view, such portrayal setups presuppositional assumption about the roles of women in marriages and how women could be subjugated in the culture. If being affectionate to one’s wife is uncommon, then it is very common not to appreciate or celebrate women’s role in marriage. Thus, what Okey is doing in the first two lines is to push to the audience the responsibility of deriving the necessary premise on which his distorted version of the fall of man narrative would be relevant for dismantling the sociocultural framing of women as inferior to man. For instance, few of the counter-cultural premises that could be recovered during or after the performance of this sequence include women are not weaker vessels, women are more powerful or intelligent than men, and, men are not as wise as they have been presumed. In our view, humorous effect in this excerpt results from a number of factors, with the primary one being the incongruity from the comedian’s distortion of a cultural text narrative and

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the implied premises resulting from such distortion. We shall now turn to the significance of Okey’s recontextualization of the Biblical narrative. According to Vigouroux (2015, 245), the evocation of a genre in another one “pertains to the issues of identity and power, as it asserts the performer’s authority to decontextualise discourse and recontextualise it in another setting.” Fairclough (1992) notes that such recontextualization of texts and appropriation of genres has more than textual or stylistic significance. We see in Okey’s routine a phenomenon of mixing comedic intention with another socially recognized communicative text, a sacred narrative that serves as the basis of sociocultural practices. Briggs and Bauman (1992, 147) remark that not only do genres “provide powerful means of shaping discourse into ordered, unified and bounded texts” they “also bear social, ideological, and political-economic connections.” Evoking a genre therefore implies creating indexical connections beyond the setting of the intertextual reference. We perceive that Okey’s appropriation of the Biblical narrative pertains crucially to his discursive construction of a gender-based ideology, which is not in consonance with cultural distinctiveness of gender categories that he and his audience have acquired. It also relates to power, the comic authority he possesses as a performer. In our view, the dimension to his comic authority in this joke sequence is complex for two reasons. First is his own gender identity as a male comedian performing a routine that elevates women above men. Second is that the performance is taking place in an unfamiliar geo-­ cultural context to a multicultural audience made up of Nigerian- and other African-Americans as well as white Americans. Given the second perspective, it might be argued that Okey’s joke sequence is influenced by his awareness of the cultural consciousness on gender equality in the United States (in relation to Nigeria), however, we opine that his assigning a superior position to women is not connected to the location of the performance because of his intertextual reference to the Bible. This takes us to the role of culture-based discourse practices. Because Nigerians are highly religious, reference to sacred texts like the Bible and the Quran is usually used as the basis for reinforcing authority, affirming what is true and morally right. It is not therefore surprising for Okey to make a sacred text appropriation while using his routine to dismantle the subservient identity that is attached to women. We view his

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intertextual reference to the fall of man as a strategy for evoking an authority position that will validate his stance on women’s status. By recontextualizing the Bible in comedy contexts, Okey attempts to evoke from his audience the attitude and reaction they would have directed at clergies who quote scriptural references to support their sermons. Sacred texts like the Bible are invested with great authority, and when intertextual links are created to them, the speaker deploys “the most powerful strategy for creating textual authority” (Briggs and Bauman 1992, 147). In Okey’s case, a cultural authority is being created and this authority is projected as more powerful than the repeated practices of their tradition. This is because, Okey, as a stand-up comedian is endowed “with an insulated means of argument” that challenges “the dominant view of the social order” (Greenbaum 1999, 33). Merging his institutional power as a comic with the authority evoked through Biblical reference generates a higher level of resistance to the traditional hegemonic structure. Consequently, we will describe excerpt one as an example of what Fairclough (1992) terms interdiscursivity since the audience encounters both the comedian’s voice and the voice of God, if we take a basic tenet that it is God who is speaking through the Bible or the voice of a preacher who needs references to the Bible to make valid assumptions. We posit that the joke sequence realizes hybridization as the sequence is a blend of two different registers. One of these is the comedy language to make the audience laugh, while the second is the voice of God which validates his configuration of women’s position as the most powerful people God created and the most intelligent of all of God’s creatures. A position that places women above men. We see the comedian dropping the comic voice after he has used it to make the propositions that contradict cultural perspectives, to pick up the God voice from line 6 onwards by saying No don’t take my word for it, it’s in the Bible. … However, since he is fully aware that the God voice is a traditional authority for subjugating women and placing them below men (or their husbands), he returns to the comic voice in order to distort the Biblical narrative, thereby again dismantling another normative agent—the God voice, which is the authority behind the narrative he distorted. Okey’s interdiscursivity which used the Bible as the primary source of his stance and which also distorted the order of events in the Biblical account of the fall of man generates two cultural

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significances, resisting the authority of the voice in the Bible and resisting the cultural framing of women as inferior to men. Another dimension to Okey’s humour is his creative distortion of the narrative in the third chapter of Genesis (first book of the Bible). It seems he is aware that his audience is familiar with the Biblical story and that a modification of a well-known story could facilitate the realization of his primary intention in the performance sphere, the instantiation of incongruity for the realization of humour. Thus, for Okey, Adam always ran from the tree of knowledge because he was not interested in becoming wise, while his wife, Eve, because of her curiosity for knowledge became the first human to become wise by eating out of the forbidden tree. Furthermore, in his distortion, man was not punished for his disobedience but for his inability to give the right answer to a question. As the comedian puts it, Adam gave a fashion design answer to a geography question. Our next example is from the performance of Youngest Landlord (YL) (real name—Uwugbowen Lovely Ogun) in one of the editions of Nite of a Thousand Laughs, a national comedy road show staged on public holidays across major cities in the country. While the intertextuality in excerpt 1 is based on the comedian’s reference to a non-comedic text, YL creates intertextual links with the performances of other comedians. Excerpt 2 [Youngest Landlord] (Williams 2010) 1 Some comedian dem go come stage 2 dey say my papa poor, my mama poor 3 Is not good, you understand, 4 because comedy now he dey take another level, 5 You understand. So it’s not about coming on stage, 6 start come dey insult your father on stage 7 Is very bad, say my papa poor, my papa poor, 8 dey make audience happy 9 And you dey insult your father (AL) 10 No be lie, many comedian wey dem papa no poor, 11 dem they talk am say my papa poor my papa poor

Some comedians would come on stage They would say their fathers and mothers are poor comedy performance has attained a higher standard

beginning to insult your father on the stage it’s unfair to insult your father by claiming he is poor so as to make your audience happy And you are insulting your father It’s not a lie, many comedians whose father is not poor Would claim on stage that their father is poor (continued)

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(continued) 12 just to make the audience laugh 13 That’s why I love myself, I’m so different 14 My father was not poor before I started comedy 15 My papa no poor, only say 16 na only him get 12 chargers he no get handset (AL) 17 Na only my papa buy moto the we dem dey build house 18 He first buy 4 tyres we no know say na moto he dey buy (AL) 19 Before we know he buy boot we no know (AL) 20 As we dey look the next two years, nah in he buy engine 21 Only he come construct the motor, motor come 22 become the combination of different different spare parts 23 Benz windscreen, trailer tyre (AL) 24 engine na watin dem dey take grind garri (AL) 25 Watin pain me, the seat na our parlour chair (AL)

my father is not poor, only that… he is the only one with 12 phone chargers without a phone. Only my father bought a car as if he was building a house He initially bought 4 tyres, we did not know he was buying a car Shortly after, he bought the boot, we still didn’t know within the next two years he bought the engine Only my father constructed his car, which emerged as the combination of spare parts of different car brands the engine was what was used for grinding cassava what was most annoying to me was that the seats were our parlour chairs

Intertextuality in excerpt 2 differs from its realization in excerpt 1. Here, the comedian deploys one of the favourite lines of Nigerian comedians for building humour, which is also a rhetorical strategy for humour associated with stand-up comedians across the world. We see YL referring to his colleagues’ deliberate deployment of self-deprecation which they usually operationalize through the theme of socio-economic status. The poor-family-background script is usually incorporated into Nigerian stand-up comedians’ routines, with which they disparage the socio-­ economic status of their parentage. They illustrate it with their narrations about growing up in the ghetto without basic social amenities, clothing and food. It is this routinized script that YL uses as the set-up for his own humour. YL strategy is to distance himself from what is seen as the trend in Nigerian humour performance and then realign himself with it so as to create humour. In lines 1–14, he explicitly referenced and rejected the use of disparaging remarks on one’s parents. His critique of other

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comedians’ style of humour serves as a situational assumption that would frame his audience interpretation of the subsequent lines. Then from line 15, he creates a cognitive dissonance with the interpretation which the audience would have derived from lines 1–14. Technically, what YL seems to have achieved with his intertextual reference to the routines of other comedians is to lead the audience in the garden path phenomenon and then perform humorous peaks that are at odds with the propositions he has initiated in lines 1–14. Therefore, his audience are made to realize an incongruity which leads them to uncovering his intended humorous effects. The humorous peaks between lines 16 and 25 are propositions that implied that YL’s father was indeed an abjectly poor individual. For instance, the comedian asserts in line 16 that his father has 12 mobile phone chargers without having a phone. With this, he expects the audience to deploy their knowledge of the use of mobile telephones in the country. One of the possible interpretations is that his father engages in a phone-charging service for a fee— a business venture that became popular in Nigeria with the advent of GSM technology. It is an entrepreneurship many unemployed Nigerian youths engage in, and it is relatively unlucrative as only minimal fees can be charged for the service. Invariably, the comedian is implicitly saying that his father is abjectly poor. Similarly, his narration of his father constructing his car in bits by combining the parts of different car brands is to implicitly suggest to his audience that his father is poor. This is because he is implying that his father, as a poor man, would have browsed for the cheapest car brand spare parts in the market and then reconstruct them in building his own, if at all the task of single-handedly constructing a car were possible. We must note that the excerpt begins with reported speech, which in itself is a linguistic act of double voicing. Consequently, it could be seen as a form of interdiscursivity. However, this particular use does not amount to double voicing or interdiscursivity because the comedian did not deploy it in the satiric or ironic sense, but as a strategy with which he builds his own form of humour. Typical use of reported speech that will amount to double voicing, in our view, should necessarily contain a critical undertone which will be suggested through sarcasm, irony or satire. It will also involve recontextualizing a quoted proposition from a different discourse genre in the comedy venue. If it is an act of double voicing, the excerpt would have been critical of other comedians.

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Fiske (1987, 108) cited in Mazurek-Przybylska 2016, 82) makes a distinction between vertical and horizontal intertextuality. Horizontal intertextuality occurs when different texts are linked together through genre, content or characters, while vertical intertextuality involves explicit references within a text (secondary) to (an)other texts (primary). In our view, horizontal textuality occurs within the same text type or genre (as we see in excerpt 2), while the vertical one occurs across text types, genres and discourse boundaries (as we see in excerpt 1). This distinction has implication for the nature of jokes being performed in terms of their similarity, which will map out text type or genre. As we have noted, jokes are based on recurring themes, script oppositions, characters, settings, targets, stereotypes and text-based structural features. It is these features that enable individuals to make sense of and create more of them. It is also on the basis of such features that joke cycles are created. According to Attardo (2001, 69), “a joke cycle is a set of jokes that are related. The prevalent relationship seems to be that of thematic links between the jokes.” If recipients are not familiar with the features that constitute a joke circle, they will not be able to interpret its humour. In our view, jokes having horizontal intertextuality constitute a joke circle. In NSC, a distinct humour-producing feature is the self-denigrating strategy operationalized with the poor-family-background script as we have seen in YL’s routine. Another example is found in Gordon’s comedy (real name—Godwin Komone) which is presented in excerpt 3 below. Excerpt 3 [Gordons] (Williams 2009) 1 Now anywhere you see poverty 2 Jump am pass (laughs) 3 We were so poor, 4 even poor people dey call us poor (AL)

Henceforth, whenever you see poverty Jump over it. even the poor people were calling us poor

For Gordons, his experience of poverty makes it imperative for him to advise his audience to avoid it. The indirect illocutionary act in Gordons’ imperative instruction to his audience is that poverty is unpalatable. For these lines, Gordons adopts the principles of scalar humour (see Bergen and Binsted 2004) to draw an implicature based on relationship between

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the state of being poor and being called poor by someone who is actually poor. Here, there is a performance of sarcasm and irony given that the relationship between being poor and then being tagged poverty ridden by the poor is actually non-sequitur. While it might be argued that Gordons is just emphasizing that being poor is undesirable, pragmatically, what he instantiated is a scale of poverty based on how he has planned the degree and sequence of informativeness of the routine. Thus, Gordons implies that, while he was growing up, his family experienced the worst kind of poverty. Another perspective to why we have described YL’s use of the poverty script as intertextual reference lies in the time when joined the comedy industry.3 Gordons is one of the comedians identified by Nwankwo (2021) as belonging to the category of individuals who became active on the comedy stage between 1995 and 2010. This is the period when stand­up comedy emerged in Nigeria as a unique genre of entertainment. It is reported on Gordons’ Wikipedia page that he has been active since 2005.4 However, YL broke into the comedy industry in 2009 after winning the AY open mic challenge,5 a comedy concert organized by Ayo Makun, one of Gordons’ contemporaries in the industry. It can be deduced that YL would have consciously observed the strategies that the first set of Nigerian stand-up comedians used in order to generate humorous effects within the country and then applied them in his own routines as our examples of poverty script show. Apart from the poverty script, the use of stereotypes especially those based on gender and ethnicity constitutes another feature of the Nigerian stand-up comedy joke circles. Stereotypes are social imageries. Attardo (1994) suggests that they constitute a nimble tool for humourists. Gruner (1997: 99) observes that “a stereotype is merely a very handy kind of shorthand to provide the essential framework for understanding the content of a joke.” Since conveying stereotypes presupposes knowledge of  The performance from which we derived Gordons’ excerpt was made available in Volume 17 of Nite of a thousand laughs, while YL first appeared in Volume 21 of the same comedy concert. This primarily presupposes that the text of Gordons was performed before that of YL. 4  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordons_(comedian). 5  https://www.fatsoma.com/e/natrgmjq/testimony-night-w-youngest-landlord; https://entertainmentexperts.tiktn.com/e/past/1828-Testimony-Night-with-Youngest-Landlord3

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cultural framing, they are pragmatic phenomenons that speakers use in positioning self and other in socially meaningful manners. According to Adetunji (2013), Nigerian stand-up comedians use stereotypes “to categorize all sorts of people, institutions, and ethnic groups.” Our goal is not to analyse the use of stereotypes in Nigerian comedy genre but to foreground that the repeated use of the same type of stereotypical frames maps the stand-up jokes into the same joke circles, be it gender, ethnicity or any other social category. Therefore, with the repeated use of the same scripts, the comedians create horizontal intertextual links within the genre and between each other’s performances. In our view, it shows that these comedians are insiders and they know what works well for comedy in the Nigerian context. As Attardo (1994) opines, stereotypical frames also serve as the basis of the entity that fills the target slot in jokes. A primary way by which stereotypes are foregrounded is through cultural representations and social categorizations. Stand-up comedy is made possible by the comedians’ acts that foreground cultural representations. Inherently connected to cultural representations are scripts, which are cognitive structures derived from empirical observations of the world and sociocultural experiences. Attardo (1994, 198) defines a script as “an organized chunk of information about something. It provides information on how things are done, organized, etc.” When stand-up comedians perform cultural representations, they play with the cognitive structures on human experiences which their audiences have acquired (Yus 2016; Sunday and Filani 2018). Instances of repeatedly used scripts in NSC jokes are found when comedians perform gender-based jokes as seen in Okey’s routine presented above. We must note that positive portrayal of being female in excerpt 1 is an exception as Nigerian stand-up comedians seem to perform more of gendered jokes that degrade women. However, such jokes are not exclusive to male comedians as the few female comedians in NSC industry also perform female-denigrating jokes. For instance in AY Comedian (2015, 2017), Helen Paul,6 in her bid to criticize the social structure that permits only  The routine we are referring to here has been repeated in variant forms by the comedian in many comedy venues in Nigeria and the UK. However, the central idea of enhancing appearance through branding/packaging is constant in all. 6

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men to ask women out for a date, advises women to be using wisdom, she then translates and performs using wisdom as packaging and branding, which entails wearing wigs, high heels and padding of cloth pieces into the lingerie. Here, we see the comedian instantiating a script, a woman’s appearance is deceptive, and the script opposition, real beauty versus false beauty. To further explicate the instantiated script, we shall quote extensively Adejunmobi’s (2013, 186) analysis of the skit: The female comedian Helen Paul speaks, for example, in one skit of the tiring work that must be done in order to appear as a “fine girl” in order to make the point that fine girls are not all that they appear to be. Wearing a deadpan expression, and dressed in a manner that recalls fashionable undergraduates in Nigerian universities, she starts off complaining about all the work involved in being a fine girl. The result, she says, is that she regularly suffers from chest pains. These chest pains are apparently due to the fact that, as she puts it, “we women like to pad up sometimes.” And as she says this, she pulls a strategically placed handkerchief from what appears to be a prominent bust … implying that her attractive figure is completely contrived … In other words, says Helen Paul, being considered a fine girl is simply a matter of performing using appropriate props. This skit literally involves an unmasking of what is to all intents and purposes an invisible masquerade if I might be permitted to use this oxymoron.

Several male comedians too appropriate the notion that a female’s physical appearance is deceptive as seen in the following excerpts: Excerpt 4 [Eneche] (Williams 2009) 1 I’ve discovered that girls, if dem dey grow

I have discovered that as ladies grow old 2 Their age dey depreciate (AL); their ages depreciate; 3 No, you go dey appreciate reach one level, your age appreciates to a particular level, 4 You go stagnate, later you just… then you/your age stagnates 5 [drops his head steadily] till man comes 6 Most times when girls celebrate their birthdays, 7 They don’t put their real age on the birthday cake.

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Excerpt 5 [I Go Dye] (Source: Adetunji (2013, 12)) 1 A lot of guys lie, same thing with girls, 2 But na girls lie pass, anyway 3 Girls and guys who lie pass? 4 Make I break am down for you 5 Guys own na word of mouth, na im 6 Girls own, everything for una body na lie 7 Hair (Audience: lie) 8 Finger nail (Audience: lie) 9 Eye lash (Audience: lie) 10 Eye brow (Audience: lie) 11 Lips (Audience: lie) 12 Height (Audience: lie) 13 [touches both parts of his chest] (Audience: lie)

Girls lie more Who lie more between girls and guys? Let me break it down for you Guys lie by bragging… it is for girls, everything on your body is a lie

The thematic focus of Eneche’s routine where excerpt 5 is taken is women and their age. The comedian explicitly describes women as individuals who would not reveal their actual age. Of particular interest in the example are the lexical choices the comedian used in describing women’s age—depreciate, appreciate and stagnate. There is a rhyme scheme from these lexical choices which reinforces the idea the comic is projecting. It is also worthy of note that in the clauses where these words appeared, the comedian was narrating in NP. His use of these English lexical items in NP clauses amounts to metaphorical and discourse-­ related code mixing, which is aimed at representing women as manipulative and insincere humans. The comedian’s language mixing is intentionally designed so that the audience can easily connect his discourse representation of women with the collective and cultural script that feminine appearance is deceptive. According to Odebunmi (2010), this kind of language mixing indicates that the speaker is pursuing a strategic agenda which includes elaboration of a message, conveyance of attitudes and symbolization of identity. Eneche’s language mixing is grounded in his intention of creating humorous effects from the same kind of script as Helen Paul’s skit. Similar script and/or strategy is found in excerpt 5, where I Go Dye (real name—Francis Agoda) uses elicitation to initiate an intended response, thereby co-producing the female appearance is false

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script with his audience. The audience’s responses to the comedian’s eliciting turns foreground that the script, women are deceptive, is not just created for humour performance but is grounded in the cultural representation that the individuals in the comedy show have acquired. In our view, horizontal intertextuality pragmatically functions as a grounding device that helps the comedians point the audience to the relevant background knowledge for interpreting their jokes. Although it entails references to situations and practices outside the immediate context of the comedy event, the fact that the different narratives could be linked to the same stereotype indicates that the same cognitive structure underlines the routines. From Helen Paul’s packaging to Eneche’s false declaration of age by women and I Go Dye’s the physical appearance of women is false, the same theme is being foregrounded, that women, and in this case Nigerian women, may be seen to be deceptive. Before concluding this analysis, we must note that our first example on intertextuality is just one of the many instances of double voicing and interdiscursivity in NSC.  Other examples of interdiscursivity include comedians’ jokes on Nigerian political and socio-economic realities, which are instantiated through allusion, mimicry and parody. All of these are vehicles for bringing satire into the context of humour performance. Common targets of such intertextual humour include Nigerian Pentecostal pastors, politicians, sportsmen and popular culture celebrities. In line with this, Filani (2016)7 examines the use of mimicry in NSC. For instance, as Filani (2016) discusses, Nigerian comedians usually deploy the sermonizing styles of Nigerian Pentecostal preachers and some comedians like AY (Ayo Makun) became renowned for mimicking the mannerism of two popular Nigerian pastors, Chris Okotie and Chris Oyakilome. In these enactments, the comedians’ performances entail an imitative exercise which appropriates an already existing text or action (Ermida 2012; Mazurek-Przybylska 2016). Their parodies are performances of distorted repetitions of an already existing text or previous communicative act.  Filani (2016) fully discusses different dimensions of mimicry in NSC. Therefore, in this study, we will not cover intertextuality that involves mimicry. Instances of mimicry acts are parodies since they entail imitative reproduction of existing texts and actions. 7

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To conclude this analysis, we will examine an instance of innuendo, which is also realized through intertextual reference to the lifestyle of a popular Nigerian hip-hop artist. In the routine, the comedian, I Go Dye uses allusion to hint at Tu Face’s (real name—Innocent Ujah Idibia) multiple romantic relationships at the same time. We present part of the routine as excerpt 6. Excerpt 6 [I Go Dye] (Williams 2009) 1 I dey tell our Nigerian artists, please, 2 if you know say you be artist, you dey come sing 3 Na only comedian no dey pull shirt for stage 4 D-Banj go sing D-Banj he go pull shirt 5 I no dey vex for that one, na some artist 6 You no get better boxers, you go dey sing, 7 your boxers go come come out, 8 he go be like bedspread (AL). 9 You no dey watch R-Kelly? 10 When R-Kelly dey sing like this, 11 if he throw way singlet, pam, people go rush am. 12 When you see boxers, God of Nazareth, 13 boxers be like face towel (AL). 14 If he throw way the boxers people go rush am, 15 because them know say na money. 16 How many Nigerian artist go fit throw way boxers? 17 Ekwe fit throw way boxers? (AL) 18 Ok, if D-Banj throw way boxers, people go rush am. 19 But if Tu Face throw way boxers, 20 girls go give am chance 21 because Tu Face boxers fit give girl belle (AL).

I am appealing to Nigerian artists If you know you are an artist and you do sing it’s only comedians that do not pull off their shirts on stage D-Banj would sing and then pull off his shirt I have no issues with him, it some artists You know you do not have neat boxers, you are performing then you are displaying your boxers Which look like bed linen Don’t you watch R-Kelly? When R-Kelly is performing If he throws his singlet to the audience, they would rush at it

His boxers are like face towel If he throws his boxers the audience would rush at it Because they know that it is expensive How many Nigerian artists could throw their boxers at their audience? Can Ekwe throw his boxers? Ok, if D-Banj throws his boxers, the audience would rush at it. But if Tu Face throw his boxers at the audience the ladies would avoid it Because Tu Face boxers could impregnate a lady

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I Go Dye creates humour through allusions to the performance styles of both Nigerian (D-Banj and Tu Face) and international (R-Kelly) musicians. The comedian’s references seem to be hypothetical situation because of the use of the conditional clause (e.g., If he throw way the boxers people go rush am…). In our view, the comedian uses the grammatical frame of conditional clause as an allusive reference to target Tu Face’s recklessness in impregnating several women he dated. Literally, the hypothetical situation suggests that the act being referenced has not been carried out, hence, there is no basis for any kind of intertextual reference. However, given his intention to target Tu Face because of his unchecked virility,8 we are of the view that the hypothetical reference is a form of allusion. This is why he uses an underwear worn by men, boxers, as the entity being thrown in the conditional clause. It should be noted that there is a semantic relationship between boxers, a type of men’s brief, and the phallus. To achieve his aim of targeting Tu Face, the comedian builds the set-up of his bit by making allusion to Nigerian artistes’ performances in general and then comparing such performances with that of stand-up comedians. His point of comparison is how performers (stand-up comedians versus musicians) instantiate intimate interactional relationships with their audiences. A musician could pull-off his shirt, vest or singlet and throw it at the audience—an act that indicates how intense the performance is and how much the musician appreciates the audience. However, such acts are not found in stand-up performance, as the interactional context of stand-up comedy requires only affiliative responses from the audience, while the stand-up could expand the success of joke by performing more punchlines (see Scarpetta and Spagnolli 2009). Through this comparison, I Go Dye strategically compares two corresponding concepts and invites the audience to deduce an implicature that borders on the appropriateness of the act of throwing boxers by a performer. Another dimension in the comparison is the one based on the difference between an American artist (R-Kelly) throwing singlet and then displaying the underwear, boxers and when the same acts are carried out by Nigerian  There are several reports of the musician’s romance in Nigeria’s digital space, however these two web pages give an idea on his involvement with more than one woman around the same time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2Baba; https://guardian.ng/life/2face-idibia-reveals-having-manybaby-mamas-almost-sent-him-into-depression/ 8

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artistes (D-Banj and Tu Face). Here, apart from comparison, the comedian foregrounds shared experiences in terms of cultural knowledge about the credibility of the musicians’ styles and experience with American goods vis-à-vis locally produced ones. Here, I Go Dye foregrounds a shared feeling that what is American is better than what is locally produced. Then he excuses the possibility of D-Banj, a Nigerian artiste, throwing boxers, and how such act would be welcomed by the audience before narrowing down to his target—Tu Face. The peak of his humour, the last two lines of the excerpt, foregrounds what will happen, if Tu Face throw way boxers in his performance. What makes it highly effective is that the lines make allusive reference to the life style of the musician who has had multiple romantic relationships in which several of the women involved have been impregnated by him more than once. In the excerpt, when Tu Face throw way boxers, we have to note that only ladies would avoid them because they could get pregnant if they come in contact with Tu Face’s underwear. Thus, through this allusion, I Go Dye creates an intertextual9 link to Tu Face’s romance and constructs the musician’s masculinity as phallocentric. Furthermore, an interesting dimension is the exaggeration in the lines—the idea that a man’s underwear could get a lady pregnant.

Conclusion Our analysis has focused on only one of the textual and performance strategies of stand-up comedians with examples from Nigeria. Double (2000, 16) argues that, to become a professional comedian, learners can “emulate the older traditions of stand-up” since “comedians had no special regard for originality, and stealing material was (and … still is) standard practice.” From Double’s point of view, it can be deduced that intertextuality in the performances of different comedians is an expected textual and discourse strategy. One of the initial motivating factors for  This last example only realizes intertextuality in the sense that I Go Dye joke on Tu Face is a reference to another situation or discourse; intertextuality here is not based on the reference to a previous text or utterance but on the idea that humour generally involves allusion to non-humorous situations and references. 9

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this study is joke similarities in the routines of different comedians and the repetition of the same bits by the same comedian across different performance venues. Our analysis suggests that Nigerian comedians are inclined to re-use what works in the performance venue as a form of creative adaptation. The horizontal intertextuality shows that although different jokes could be narrowed down to the same cultural representations, the scripts and stereotypes underlying them are not reproduced with the same humorous narrative. At the textual level, this helps to map these jokes into the same joke circles. At the pragmatic level, it suggests that the comedians use intertextuality to foreground common ground. This also indicates that a comedian has an in-group identity with the audience. The example of interdiscursivity shows that we can use stand-up comedy to track popular thinking and discourse practices in a society. The repeated use of the same features in a text type or genre could be an indicator of what is acceptable in a cultural context. Likewise, using the linguistic act of double voicing that involves recontextualizing a sacred text could indicate the cultural value of the text, especially if the text is evoked for affirming authoritative positions. Whether intertextuality in humorous texts is realized as co-textual reference, situational copresence or through strategies such as imitation, stereotypes or allusion, the fact that there is appropriation and recontextualization points to more than the intention to generate humorous effects. It shows that there are ideological undertones embedded within the linguistic generation and/or interpretation of the joke texts. At best, our preliminary investigation suggests a line of research into humour practices within contexts like Nigeria. In our view, the analysis raises a number of important questions, such as are there different joke circles within (Nigerian) stand-up comedy, how does intertextuality mark out individual comic style in the stand-up genre, and what cultural ideologies and discourse practices facilitate intertextuality in humorous texts? In a way, we have attempted to give preliminary observations in these directions. It is hopeful that further studies will tackle these questions in a detailed manner.

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13 Pragmatic Acts of Humour in Selected Series of Helen Paul’s Alhaja Donjasi Comedy Skits Monsurat Aramide Nurudeen

Introduction A veritable medium through which people address and communicate their intention is through amusement, jokes, or humour. One of the functions of humour is to make people temporarily forget their grief and relieve them of stress. Comedians, through their esteemed imagination, elicit jokes that reflect the socio-cultural sensitivities of their environment, and the Nigerian comedy context is not an exception. The rise of Internet comedy has provided new opportunities for comedians to reach larger and more diverse audiences and also democratized the industry. Instagram comic skits can be seen as a form of art and a genre of humour; they are mostly short videos created by comedians and shared on their Instagram handles for the viewing pleasure of their local and international audiences; they parody different characters and employ verbal strategies such as irony to maximum effect. While amusing the M. A. Nurudeen (*) Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_13

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audience through dexterous language use in comedy skits, Nigerian comedians also exploit language resources to reflect on societal intricacies and the decadence of the Nigerian society. The goal of this study is to explore exactly how the Nigerian Comedienne Helen Paul achieves this through her comedy style as evident in the series, Alhaja Donjasi on Instagram. The study also seeks to uncover the covert and overt manipulations of the pragmatic and stylistic elements of language to achieve the objective of both humour and satire.

Online Comedy Skits in Nigeria Comedy skits in Nigeria are usually traced to the adept shows of recognized stand-up comedians such as Ali Baba, Bovi, Basketmouth, Lepacious Bose, AY, and many others, first on stage, TV, and later on social media. The emergence of diverse social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and so forth now serve as platforms where comedians meet with their audience without time constraints, unlike stage and scheduled TV performances. Comedy skits in Nigeria and perhaps elsewhere around the globe ironically received a boost from the recent COVID-19 pandemic that necessitated a lockdown across the country and left many Nigerians stuck at home with plenty of time. They often turned to comedy skits to kill time. Comedians keyed into the demand by creating skits that were shared on social media platforms, many of which went viral. Esomnofu (2020) avers that Nigerians believe they are some of the funniest people on the Internet today. Popular Nigerian online comic skits creators who have become household names include Maryam Apaokagi (Taooma), Adebowale “Debo” Adedayo (Mr. Macaroni), Emmanuel Ogonna Iwueke (Crazeclown), Ereme Abraham (Twyse), Gloria Oloruntobi (Maraji), among others. Traditional Nigerian stand-up comedians such as Helen Paul who hitherto plied their wares on TV and stage joined the league of these modern online comic creators to enrich their status in the contemporary online market of comedy in Nigeria. Helen Paul, a popular Nigerian comedian, actress, and television presenter, is known for her versatility and ability to portray different

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characters. One of her famous characters is “Alhaja Donjasi,” a humorous, confident, and dramatic Muslim woman. Alhaja Donjasi comedy skits are usually funny and relatable, with themes that touch on Nigerian culture, society, and politics. The skits are predominantly in Yoruba, but with English subtitles. Helen Paul embodies this character fully in her skits, thereby giving the audience an authentic experience. “Don jasi” is a Nigerian slang expression used to refer to someone who is very versatile or can adapt easily to any situation. “Alhaja,” on the other hand, is a title given to Muslim women who have completed the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Helen Paul adopted the nickname “Alhaja Don Jasi” to represent her versatility and ability to adapt to any situation or character in her performances. Helen Paul’s Alhaja Donjasi comedy skits are a good representation of Nigerian comedy and culture and a great source of entertainment for people who enjoy Nigerian humour.

Humour, Comedy Skits, and Pragmatics Humour has a great profile in our society. It is powerful—from political satire to joking as a way of establishing friendships and excluding others (Ross, 1998). Schwarz (2010, 8) observes that humour “represents a central aspect of our everyday conversations and it is a general fact that all humans naturally participate in humorous speech and behaviour.” Humour, therefore, transcends social hierarchies and relationships between individuals involved in a humorous conversation, regardless of their affiliation. Humour amuses and elicits laughter or smile. While Ross (1998, 1) asserts that it is possible to claim that something is humorous, even when no one laughs, laughter has however been well established as a key manifestation of humour. Oloruntoba-Oju (1998, 154) describes the comic or humorous as “that which excites amusement, culminating in laughter or other expressions of comical feeling.” And humour is versatile, as it can manifest itself in many different types of texts, such as jokes, puns, satire, irony, sarcasm, and many more. Schmitz (2002, 90) simply avers that humorous discourse is a variety of text which suggests that humour can take on many different forms and can be expressed in a variety of ways through written or spoken language. Sunday

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and Bamgbose (2021, 21) admit that “humour is a veritable tool for the pursuit of joy, especially in the face of global economic and security challenges.” Research on humour has gained tremendous interest from diverse fields of study, such as linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, literature, and philosophy (see Dynel 2009). Linguistic studies have explored how humour is derived from language and its use in interpersonal relationships. However, in spite of the many broad disciplinary approaches involved—such as cognitive linguistics (Bergen and Binsted 2003), conversational analysis (Sacks 1972, 1978; Tannen 2005; Andrew 2012; Pan 2012; Matsumoto 2009; and Knight 2008), and gender (Holmes 2006; Sev’er and Unger 1997), traditional theories of humour have continued to exercise influence and to manifest in three major ways. Incongruity theory holds that humour is created from conflicting or opposing meanings, being “based on the mismatch between two ideas in the broadest possible sense” (Attardo 1994, 48). Sub-theories of this approach include the  Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humour and General Verbal Theory of Humour. Koestler (1964) and Apter (1982) are significant contributors to the incongruity approach of humour. Superiority or aggression theory on the other hand posits that a person’s jokes and/or amusement express feelings of superiority over other people or over a former state of oneself (Morreall 2014), while Relief theory states that humour releases one from tension and psychic energy which inhibit conventions and laws. These theories straddle the cognitive, sociological, and psychosocial domains.

Application of Pragmatics Pragmatics as a branch of linguistics dates back to Morris (1938), followed by contributions from other linguists, such as Austin (1962), Searle (1969), Grice (1975), Leech (1983), Mey (2001), Kecskes (2010), among many others who have reinforced the importance of context in the interpretation of an utterance. The field of pragmatics is relatively perfect with the system of ontology, epistemology, methodology, and axiology (Niu 2023, 54).

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In 2001, Jacob Mey propounded the pragmatic acts theory (PAT). Historically, Mey’s (2001) pragmatic act theory (PAT) originates in the socio-cultural interactional view that emphasizes socio-cultural and societal factors in meaning construction and comprehension (Kecskes 2010, 1). Mey’s PAT is a reaction to Austin’s speech act theory which Mey considered to fall short of action and be non-situated (Mey 2001, 214). PAT aligns with Fairclough’s (1989) criticism of speech acts theory to the effect that the theory is seen “as atomistic and as a thought wholly emanating from the individual.” According to Mey (2001), all pragmatic acts are pragmemes because they are based on language use as constrained by the society and not as defined by syntactic rules or semantic selections or conceptual restrictions (p. 228). The theory relies extremely on the situation of speech or situational context in which both speaker and hearers find their affordances and constraints, which is the only condition for establishing them as practs. Mey also claims that indirect speech acts derive their force, not from the lexico-semantic build up, but instead from the situation in which they are appropriately uttered. To Kecskes (2010), both the language and the surrounding situations are important contributors to meaning comprehension and apprehension. Mey (2001) came up with the PAT schema represented in the figure below (Fig.13.1):

Fig. 13.1  Model of pragmatic acts (Mey 2001, 222)

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The model above explains the concept of the situated speech act known as pragmeme. It explains that in a speech event, a speaker’s utterances alone do not reveal his/her intentions when speaking, but other paralinguistic features do combine adequately with the utterance to lead the hearer to successfully realize the meaning of the intentions of the speaker. In relating Mey’s model of pragmemes to humour texts, we observe that humour is achieved through various choices from the textual part of the model. As seen above, they include “INF” inference, “REF” reference, “REL” relevance, “VCE” voice, “SSK” shared situation knowledge, and “MPH” metaphor. These elements collaborate to facilitate effective communication and achievement of desired interactional objectives. The activity component, on the left side of the model, includes non-verbal signals such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice, which can enhance the conveyance of the speaker’s intended meaning. Utilizing these non-verbal cues during communication enables participants to select from the available options on the left to effectively express their intentions.

Methodology The data for this study comprise image-enabled discourses, which involves both physical and verbal actions. The pragmatic act theory (PAT) will be employed to reveal the predominant styles used in carrying out the intention of Helen Paul in her comedic series, Alhaja Donjasi. Four series of Alhaja Donjasi comedy skits will be randomly retrieved from the comedienne’s Instagram handle, transcribed and analysed qualitatively to examine their pragmatic and stylistic force, using insights from both Mey’s (2001) pragmatic acts theory and Adetunji’s (2013) pragmatic humour strategy of linguistic coding. The dimensions of this coding will be explicated. The pragmemes contained in the skits will be linked to issues of social, moral, and political importance in Nigeria.

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 umour in Nigerian Skits: Structure H and Linguistic Coding Structural Coding Helen Paul’s skits are structurally similar in a number of ways. Firstly, all the skits contain two interactants who are usually Alhaja Donjasi herself and a visitor, who is usually in the background and contributes minimally. Another structural attribute that is similar in the selected skits is the presence of an anchoring narrative—again, save for “End SARS Brutality”—narrated by Alhaja Donjasi, and upon which the pragmeme of each skit is based. Also, structurally the comedienne starts by engaging in odd linguistic/behavioural acts, creating some suspense, until the explanation for these apparently incongruous acts emerges later. These structures form part of the pragmatic shared situational knowledge (SSK) useful in realizing humour in the skits. Relevant details of the narratives are accordingly included in the analysis. Furthermore, the analysed skits are generally located within the genre of comedy which by itself creates a level of expectation that enhances the humour. Humour is therefore expectedly central to the composition and decomposition of the comedy skits.

Choice of Language A major pragmatic humour strategy that the comedienne deploys in the selected Alhaja Donjasi comedy skits is what has been described as linguistic coding (Adetunji 2013), which is the manner in which language elements have been arranged to enhance humour. However, it needs to be pointed out that the coding begins with or is preceded by a conscious choice of codes. English, Nigerian Pidgin (NP), and Yoruba are the codes that Helen Paul uses and often in a mix. While the comedienne uses English frequently, the type of English is marked by wrong pronunciation and ungrammatical sentences, among others. An instance of this is the comedienne’s pronunciation of the words “children” and “chairman” as

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shudren and shiaman, respectively. It should be noted that, in real life, the comedienne, who is a PhD holder, has an excellent command of the English language, as evident in her numerous stand-up comedy routines. Thus, it is clear that her choice of a “basilectal” English (see Bamiro 1991) is for humorous intent and to affiliate with Nigerian viewers, especially the Yoruba speakers as well as educated and non-educated speakers of the English language. Another reason for the use of “basilectal” English or verbal mimicry in her discourse is to reflect her parody personality of Alhaja Donjasi, a partially educated wealthy Yoruba Muslim trader often in bridal wears in the heart of Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria. This is complemented by the physical act of dressing in all the selected comic skits. The linguistic style adopted by the comedienne is actually incongruous with her social pedigree, and her mispronunciation of English words is also a manifestation of incongruity. It can thus be said that the language choices and the resultant style of incongruous basilectal rendition is deliberate in order to elicit laughter from the viewers (Fig. 13.2). The picture above displays the female comedian situated in her store, vending fashion products while seated on a chair. She is dressed in Islamic clothing, with a hijab covering her head and her shoulder. Alongside linguistic coding, the comedienne also makes use of psychological act, prosody (notably intonation and stress), and physical acts (dressing, gestures, gaze, and facial expression) which interact with contextual features like shared situational knowledge (SSK), shared cultural knowledge (SCK), relevance (REL), inference (INF), reference (REF), metaphor (mph), to engender humour in the skits. These contextual features are equally useful in the interpretation of the pragmatic functions encoded in the skits. The rest of this section focuses on these pragmatic functions contained in the selected comedy skits. The four comedy skits are analysed in turns.

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Fig. 13.2  A screenshot of Helen Paul’s dressing parodying Alhaja Donjasi

Analysis of Pragmemes of Humour in the Skits The central pragmatic function of Helen Paul’s skits is to condemn, through humour, some of the social ills in society or moral laxities and excesses of young folks. These satirical sketches are also steeped in culture and therefore produce practs based on shared cultural knowledge (SCK). For example, in Love your Mum, she condemns those who express disdain for their parents, while advising love and care for the parents. The major pragmatic acts that the comedienne uses to achieve this function are rebuking and criticizing, advising, and threatening. These are illustrated with the data in the sections below.

Rebuking and Criticizing The pragmatic act of rebuking recurs a number of times in this skit to underscore the pract of rebuking as vital to the skit. At the beginning, when Banji leaves Alhaja Donjasi’s shop, Alhaja Donjasi makes the following remark:

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Ex 1: Alhaja Donjasi: Pele, sorry o (Banji leaves). Jeje o [easy o]. Hmm, oh … Oloshi [“stupid fellow” »] Omoradarada. (“nonsensical child”)

The italicized words above are references (REF) that the viewers are able to understand through SSK of the Nigerian indigenous language used, Yoruba, to imply rebuking. Apart from these REFS, oloshi and omoradarada, which respectively mean a stupid person and a never-do-well, the comedienne also uses facial expression as a communicative act as she sneers at Banji when he exits her shop. The combination provokes mirth. The pract of rebuking is reinforced by alternating in basilectal English as Alhaja Donjasi engages in dialogue with her visitor, pointing to Banji: Ex 2: Alhaja Donjasi: He’s a useless boy. Visitor: Haha! Alhaja Donjasi: He’s a boy that e unfortunate boy (pointing to her head).

Alhaja Donjasi’s rebuking practs through the adjectives “useless” and “unfortunate” as REF can only be clearly understood as rebuking through shared socio-cultural knowledge (SCK) of the use of the adjective “unfortunate” in a Yoruba context of deprecation, where it is usually used as an insult to mean a stupid or useless person. The reason for Alhaja Donjasi’s rebuking practs is taken up by the remainder of the skit through her gossipy narration to the visitor: apparently, the rebuked persons had despised and denigrated their own mothers despite their years of nurturing and caring for them. This is considered an abominable act within the culture. The rebuke is linguistically coded in a combination of basilectal forms, as indicated above. This is expanded into a verbal criticism of folks who engage in such expressions of disdain for a mother, and people who are insensitive to the needs of their family but instead show off their affluence by being magnanimous to strangers through giveaways: Ex 3: Alhaja Donjasi: Most people, they’re doing diva, doing giveaway (gestural movement denoting “giveaway”) on the internet, but their mummy they will not give “do” Visitor: Heeey

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Alhaja Donjasi: Aaayeeeooo! Their sibling are suffer o. [“Their siblings are suffering”] Tomorrow, he now say “forgive,” and we forget [with her arms spread wide]. No more “forgivene” [forgiveness]. The “forgivene” is of the Lord.

The pragmatic act of criticizing is achieved above through an indirect speech act, as it appears that Alhaja Donjasi is merely making an observation, but through SSK, particularly of the narrative of Banji and his brother’s irresponsible behaviour to their mother, as well as the follow-up comment to this extract, the inference (INF) is easily made that Alhaja Donjasi here practs criticizing. The REFS “giveaway” and “do” (a Yoruba lingo that means “nothing”) are understood by the audience through shared cultural knowledge (SCK). The mixed rendition creates humour.

Advising At the beginning of the skit, Alhaja Donjasi practs advising: Ex 4: Alhaja Donjasi: No do laidah [“like that”] again o Banji: Yes ma’am. Alhaja Donjasi: E no good u hear? [“it’s not good, you understand?”] (Banji nods affirmatively), I will talk your mother for you.

The conversational acts above achieve the pragmatic act of advising. In the first conversational act, a direct speech act is used, while in the second an indirect speech act is used. While the audience can infer that the comedienne practs advising simply through the denotative meaning of the conversational acts, the audience is not able to know the cause or reason for the advice until the latter part of the skit in which the comedienne lets the audience in on the SSK between Alhaja Donjasi and Banji, that is, what Banji did, which Alhaja Donjasi advises him against repeating. Apart from having the pragmatic implication of advising against despising one’s parents, this pragmatic act serves to set the stage for the skit and thus contributes to the production of the humour.

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Threatening The comedienne makes use of the pragmatic act of threatening when she explains to the visitor the reason why she will not oblige Banji’s request for her to plead with his mother on his behalf. Ex 5: Alhaja Donjasi: I know, because anybody who no know me when I dey suffer [laughs] anybody who no know me, when we wanto shop [chop (“eat”] the belefit (benefit—pauses a bit) wi [“will”] shop [“chop”] cane.

As can be seen above, Alhaja Donjasi practs threatening as she makes it clear that anyone who ignores her during her time of suffering will not benefit from her affluence later. While Alhaja Donjasi uses hand gestures to reinforce her utterance, the understanding of the pract relies on the cultural SSK of retributive justice and the SCK of Nigerian Pidgin to understand the expressions “chop cane” which means “to be flogged” or “punished.” A similar pattern is seen in Life Gist, which also contains practs such as critiquing and advising. The skit begins with Alhaja Donjasi enraged and asking people not to beg her or try to dissuade her from her rage. It turns out that she had been swindled by a couple who came to her shop to purchase a wedding ring but paid with a fake electronic transfer, as their payment was reversed shortly afterwards. In retaliation, Alhaja Donjasi resorts to diabolism and curses the fortunes of the couple. After things started going bad for them, the couple returned to Alhaja Donjasi to seek forgiveness. In this narrative, the comedienne makes use of direct speech acts, psychological acts, physical acts, gestures, and prosody. Understanding the story requires making recourse to the different SSK and SCK used by the comedienne. For example, while the comedienne relies on the SSK of electronic transaction to present how Alhaja Donjasi was swindled, SCK is needed to understand the linguistic code used by the comedienne. SCK is also particularly needed to understand the part of the story below:

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Ex 6: Alhaja Donjasi: I say, “argh”, trust me now! Idilewa won nsere. (We don’t play in our lilage (lineage). I call ancestor. I talk to ancestor. They look at TTTV [traditional CCTV]. They say this thing is cautionless.

In African voodoo, what Alhaja Donjasi does here is divination, where oracles are consulted to reveal secrets. Also, TTTV puns on CCTV to imply traditional CCTV and to denote using supernatural power to see what is or has or will happen. Without the possession of this socio-cultural knowledge of African voodooism and black magic, it may be difficult to understand what the extract above means. Relevant pragmatic acts contained in the skit include advising. The main pragmatic act in this skit is advising and is illustrated by the extract below: Ex 7: Alhaja Donjasi: … So, you call for rifas, and i give you rifas. Anything you cannot shop [“chop”—brings hand to mouth], don’t dash it to people to shop (chop). The cane you canor [cannot] chop, don’t give it to flog other people in-layeyi. What you canor enjoy, hot, don’t serve it to people. The behafiour [behaviour] you have, if you see people do it to you, sheywalegba [“would you be able to accept it?”—pointing at the camera]. …

The comedienne uses both direct and indirect speech acts to pract advising as can be seen in this extract. Direct speech act is instantiated in Alhaja Donjasi’s utterance, “Anything you cannot shop (chop), don’t dash it to people to shop (chop),” and relies on the SSK of the meaning of lexemes like “dash” (gift), “chop” (eat), and the linguistic code generally—including the code mixing of NP and Yoruba—for it to be understood and to infer that the comedienne advises fairness as a guiding life principle; that is, one should always do to others what one expects to be done to one in return. Other pragmatic acts in the skits include cautioning and affirming. An example of cautioning occurs in the skit titled Pride. Here the pragmatic act also appears like a variant of advising: Ex 8: Alhaja Donjasi: That if she dor nor know [“does not know”], that pride is become the fall the fall [comes before the fall].

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This skit generally centres on pride, respect, and humility. Humour catalysts in the skit include Alhaja Donjasi struggling to correctly make reference to the English proverb: “Pride goes before the fall,” and it is only through correction by her visitor that the audience is able to make out the proverb that she is trying to say. Alhaja Donjasi uses this proverb to pract caution. This pragmatic intent of the comedienne is established through the SCK of the proverb that it is usually used as a warning against pride. The story that Alhaja Donjasi begins to narrate to her visitor forms another SSK that establishes the utterance as practing caution. The comedienne no doubt makes use of a combination of SSK, SCK, VCE, MPH, INF to encode the illocutionary force of this extract, and the viewer must make recourse to same to decode it. An example is seen in the criticizing pract below: Ex 11: Alhaja Donjasi: But, some people, they will say what, I cannot call maluboda [“accord respect”] because ehn, what’s it? Because I want to shop (“chop”—“eat”). You cannot call a (an) animal boda (“brother”).

Here the comedienne uses  an indirect speech act to criticize “some people” who place a limit on their level of respect for other deserving people. The inference is made that such people are exhibiting pride. The comedienne thus uses VCE to highlight and criticize the common retort of some proud people. Their retort, as Alhaja Donjasi recalls using VCE, is that, “I cannot call maluboda … Because I want to shop.” This retort insinuated to be a marker of pride requires using SCK of Yoruba proverbial sayings for it to be understood. To “call maluboda” [one cannot dignify a cow with an honorific title “brother” just because of love of beef ) is a common Yoruba proverbial expression which means kowtowing or feigning humility to achieve an end. One other pragmeme that one may draw attention to in Helen Paul’s skits is that of reformation. For example, in the skit End Sars, the need for reformation is reiterated at the end of the skit in Alhaja Donjasi’s monologue: Ex 19: Alhaja Donjasi: … But, Nigeria need reformation. Lagos state e trying to tackle it. But, it’s not only the matter of Lagos. Is matter of Nigeria.

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Here Alhaja Donjasi counsels that reformation should be practised in the country and not limited to specific locations such as Lagos State. As in the various other skits, the linguistic coding in the form of mixture of lects and the comedienne’s demeanour combine to convey humour and provoke laughter.

Findings and Conclusion Helen Paul’s (Alhaja Donjasi) performances in the comedy skits are devoted to creating humour, but they have pragmatic implications beyond the elicitation of laughter. Thus, the pragmatic tools are employed for this twin purpose, to engage relevant and current socio-political issues in Nigeria, offering commentaries, and in the process to create humour. With regard to the four comedy skits examined in this chapter, the comedienne’s pragmatic intentions include correcting individual and societal ills. The coverage ranges from criticizing a common expression of disdain for and neglect of one’s parents and family by youths, advocating fairness as a guiding life principle, and condemning inordinate acts, to standing advocate for socio-political reformation in Nigeria, among others. These pragmemes are achieved through the practs and allopracts of informing, affirming, advising, threatening, cautioning, rebuking, and criticizing. The realization of these practs owes to the interaction between communicative styles (such as direct and indirect speech acts), conversational acts, psychological act, intonation, and stress and physical acts—used by the comedienne and her interactants—with contextual features of inference (INF), reference (REF), relevance (REL), shared situational knowledge (SSK), shared socio-cultural knowledge (SCK), voicing (VCE), and metaphor (MPH). The comedienne’s input can be summarized as deploying linguistic and pragmatic elements of language to produce a peculiar humour style with which she has been identified by thousands of her skit followers.

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References Secondary Sources Adetunji, Akin. 2013. The Interactional Context of Humour in Nigerian Stand-up Comedy. Pragmatics 23 (1): 1–22. Andrew, Patricia. 2012. Laughter is the Best Medicine: The Construction of Old Age in Ageist Humor. In Language and Humour in the Media, ed. Jan Chovanec and Isabel Ermida, 11–24. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Apter, Michael J. 1982. The Experience of Motivation: The Theory of Psychological Reversals. London: Academic Press. Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic Theories of Humour. New York: Mouton. Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bamiro, Edmund O. 1991. Nigerian Englishes in Nigerian English Literature. World Englishes 10 (1): 7–17. Bergen, Benjamin, and Kim Binsted. 2003. The Cognitive Linguistics of Scalar Humor. In Language, Culture, and Mind, ed. Michel Achard and Suzanne Kemmer, 79–92. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Dynel, Marta. 2009. Beyond a Joke: Types of Conversational Humour. Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (5): 1284–1299. Esomnofu, Emmanuel. 2020. Nigerians are the Funniest People on the Planet. These Five Prove It. Allafrica. Accessed 6 July 2021. https://africanarguments. org/2020/09/nigerians-are-the-funniest-people-on-the-internet-these-fiveprove-it/; https://africanarguments.org/2020/09/ nigerians-are-the-funniest-people-on-the-internet-these-five-prove-it/ Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, 3, ed. Cole Peter and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–46. New York: Academic Press. Holmes, Janet. 2006. Sharing a Laugh: Pragmatic Aspects of Humor and Gender in the Workplace. Journal of pragmatics 38: 26–50. Kecskes, Istvan. 2010. Situation-bound Utterances as Pragmatic Acts. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2889–2897. Knight, Naomi K. 2008. “Still Cool … and American Too!”: An SFL Analysis of Deferred Bonds in Internet Messaging Humour. Systemic Functional Linguistic in Use. Odense Working in Papers and Communication 29: 481–502. Koestler, Arthur. 1964. The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson.

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Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 2009. Dealing with Life Changes: Humour in Painful Self-Disclosures by Elderly Japanese Women. Ageing and Society 29: 929–952. ———. 2001. Pragmatics: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Morreall, John. 2014. Humor, Philosophy and Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory 4(2): 1–12. https://philpapers.org/asearch.pl?pub=300 Morris, Charles, W. 1938. Foundations of the Theories of Signs. In International Encyclopedia of Unified Science In Neurath, Otto, Carnap Rudolf, and Morris Charles, W, 1–59. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press. Niu, Min. 2023. The Origin and Development of Pragmatics as a Study of Meaning: Semiotic Perspective. Language and Semiotic Studies 9 (1): 54–78. Oloruntoba-Oju, Taiwo. 1998. Rhetorical and Linguistics Games in Comic Aesthetics. In Language, ed. E.L. Eipstein and R. Kole, 153–168. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press (Reprinted from Language and Style: An International Journal 25(3), Summer 1992: 259–269). Pan, Weiwei. 2012. Linguistic Basis of Humor in Uses of Grice’s Cooperative Principle. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature 1 (6): 20–25. Ross, Alison. 1998. The Language of Humour. London: Routledge. Sacks, Harvey. 1972. On Some Puns: With Some Limitations. In Sociolinguistics: Current Trends and Prospects (Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics), ed. Roger W. Shuy. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. ———. 1978. Some Technical Considerations of a Dirty Joke. In Studies in the Organisation of Conversational Interaction, ed. Jim Schenkein, 249–275. New York: Academic. Schmitz, John Robert. 2002. Humor as a Pedagogical Tool in Foreign Language and Translation Courses. Humor 15 (1): 1–59. Schwarz, Jeannine. 2010. Linguistic Aspects of Verbal Humor in Stand-up Comedy. PhD Thesis, University of Saarland. Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sev’er, Aysan, and Sheldon Unger. 1997. Boundaries of Gender Based Humour in the Classroom. The Journal of Higher Education 68 (1): 87–105. Sunday, Adeshina, and Bamgbose, Ganiu. 2021. Pragmatic Analysis of Humour Strategies and Functions in Jenifa’s Diary and Professor JohnBull. The European Journal of Humour Research 9 (4): 20–34. Tannen, Deborah. 2005. Conversational Style: Analysing Talk among Friends. New edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

14 An Analysis of Humour Style in Nigerian Situation Comedy Lekan Christopher Olawale

Introduction In humour scholarship, the source of humour is often explicated via three popular theories of humour, namely: incongruity, superiority and relief theories. While any or a combination of these theories may underlie a humorous incident, there are usually specific techniques or styles which are involved in the configuration of humour. For example, with regard to the incongruity theory of humour, which claims that humour is based on the perception of something incongruous (Morreall 2009), pun and irony, among others, are common techniques by which incongruity is achieved. Humour techniques or styles, thus, play a direct role in the activation of humorous feeling. A related assertion is also made by Berger (1993)  who,  as cited in Juckel et  al. (2016), argues that “it is not the content or subject matter that is funny, but rather the way that content is presented.” The “way” here is understood as technique or style. Considering these assertions, the study of humour style of any comedic L. C. Olawale (*) Department of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3_14

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work can be worthwhile. This is more so when a given humour technique has not received adequate scholarly attention. In the present paper, both verbal blunders and bombast are posited as effective humour styles in Nigerian situation comedy. Though verbal blunders are usually perceived as humorous, they are often neglected in humour studies. For example, neither in their adapted models nor in their own typology of humour techniques in the sitcom genre are verbal blunders included as a humour technique by Juckel et al. (2016). The lack of scholarly attention on verbal blunders as a viable humour technique may owe to the fact that when verbal blunders occur, they are sometimes explained away as “a momentary loss of control over speaking” (Erard 2007). In other words, they are unintentional and by implication, accidental humour. Indeed, verbal blunders are by nature unintentional humour (Dynel 2015). At such times as they exit the mouth of the speaker, whether in the spontaneity of real life or in the contrivance of fictional comedy, verbal blunders are spontaneously perceived as accidental and unintentional. However, at the level of filmic production or even of speaker’s intention in real life, verbal blunders do admit intentionality. This is so when they are intentionally deployed, that is, contrived to achieve humour (Dynel 2015). The aim in this paper is, thus, to argue for intentionality in the deployment of verbal blunders as well as bombast in Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull, two popular Nigeria sitcoms, and hence, highlight both verbal blunders and bombast as effective humour styles in the Nigerian context.

Situation Comedy in Nigeria One of the most popular forms of comedy is situation comedy. The genre of situation comedy is well-established and has a history as long as the history of television. Popularized in the US, the emergence of sitcom in the 1950s coincided with the rise of commercial television (Grandio and Diego 2010). Sitcom has a number of distinctive features with which it is often identified. As Glatzer (2010) observes, these features can be seen in the genre’s narrative style, shooting technique, manner of acting,

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duration, and scheduling. More specifically, scholars have identified comedic series shot with a three-camera setup in front of a live audience or a laugh track as substitute, running for half an hour, and involving stereotypical characters and a static setting, as situation comedy (Sanders 2014). However, sitcoms have evolved with regard to some of these distinguishing features. According to Kutnik and Neale (1990), cited in Rahmi (2017, 39), a situation comedy is “a short narrative series comedy, generally between twenty-four and thirty minutes long, with regular characters and setting.” Sanders (2014) suggests that the genre of situation comedy can be easily defined when the term is picked apart. According to Sanders (2014, 35), “a situation is a position, locale or a state of affairs,” while “comedy” denotes “a story about this (stable) situation told with nothing but comic intent in a pattern of repetition.” That is, a situation comedy is a comedy series that makes use of regular groups of settings and characters “who interact in comic situations” (Wolf 1996, 3, cited in Grandio and Diego 2010). The birth of situation comedy in Nigeria can be traced to travelling theatre groups which performed as far back as the 1940s (Haynes 2016). Influential theatre practitioners during this time included Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo, Kola Ogunmola, Moses Olaiya, Oyin Adejobi. Many of the theatre companies were concentrated in the Southwestern part of Nigeria and travelled from place to place to perform. According to Haynes (2016, 5), there were about 100 travelling theatre troupes in Nigeria by the 1960s. As these theatre groups increased in number, there was a corresponding increase in competition among them and many theatre companies explored other media such as television (Nwankwo 2015). Following the creation of the first television station in Nigeria in 1959, the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV), many of these theatre companies and practitioners moved to the television (Haynes 2016). Baba Sala (Moses Olaiya), who had championed comic roles and performance during the pre-TV theatre tradition of the like of Hubert Ogunde, immediately distinguished himself as a veritable comedian on TV (Filani 2016; Nwankwo 2015). “In 1965, Baba Sala and his Alawada Theatre group won a Talent Hunt contest sponsored by Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Ibadan station, which led to their getting a weekly half-hour slot on prime-time television.” (Nwankwo 2015, 52, citing Haynes 2016).

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The birth of comedy on Nigerian television can therefore be traced to this beginning, as Baba Sala enjoyed tremendous popularity on television, especially in Yoruba speaking areas. As Olu Obafemi submits, “Baba Sala relied on the efe tradition in creating a theatrical peculiarity that lies in his ability to provide laughter and popular entertainment through an unparalleled dexterity at treating the excruciatingly funny [and] the farcical” (quoted in Nwankwo 2015, 52). Following Baba Sala’s success on the TV, the 1970s and 1980s came with a number of popular serials which were broadcast on NTA (Haynes 2016). These included Samanja Mazan Fama, The New Masquerade, The Village Headmaster, Basi and Company, and Hotel De Jordan (Filani 2016; Nwankwo 2015). These sitcoms were aimed to create a common national culture (Haynes 2016). To this end, the serials were made to reflect the ethnic diversity of the country via the characters and languages. For instance, Oreh (1985), cited in Haynes (2016, 10), notes that “all the [television] plays without exception inject the vernacular—Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or pidgin English—into the dialogues of the play which are usually in English.” In addition, the sitcoms “pandered to the spectators’ natural fondness for familiar scenes and ways of life or indigenous norms and mores.” Furthermore, another major purpose of these sitcoms was to provide Nigerians with comedy at a time Nigeria was experiencing economic and political upheaval. Apart from these first set of sitcoms— which have all been rested—many other sitcoms have been produced in Nigeria. Some of these are Papa Ajasco (1996), Fuji House of Commotion (the 2000), Jenifa’s Diary (2015), Professor Johnbull (2016), The Johnsons (2017), It’s a Crazy World (2020), just to mention a few. Research on sitcoms in the Nigerian context has been carried out from a number of perspectives. The focus in Azeez and Doghudje (2015) is on the didactic potential of sitcoms. Examining the sitcom, Papa Ajasco, the researchers investigate the discursive process through which the sitcom condemns social vices and behaviour. In Esan (2005), Fuji House of Commotion, a Nigerian sitcom, alongside a few sitcoms from the US and the UK, is examined in order to determine the extent to which the depiction of family life in sitcoms is reflective of the real world. Similarly, in his study of Jenifa’s Diary, John (2020) examines the ways in which the sitcom reflects dominant identities displayed by social

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actors in social (real) life. Also, Bamgbose and Ehondor (2021) examine pragmatic and discourse functions in Jenifa’s Diary, and note that the sitcom addresses moral and social issues like incivility, domestic violence, poor etiquette, lying and indecent dressing. Furthermore, Jenifa’s Diary is the object of study in Nwankiti et al. (2019). Focusing on young viewers of the sitcom, the authors investigate the viewers’ perception and preference of the star actress’s role as “Jenifa,” and the implication of her brand of English on their spoken English education. It should be noted that while the study invariably highlighted the verbal blunders committed by the lead character, Jenifa, among others, the focus on verbal blunders is however on their effects on the education and spoken English of viewers. Furthermore, studies like Oloruntoba-Oju (1998) and Teilanyo (2003, 2020) have noted the comic potential of verbal blunders and bombast. In the former, Oloruntoba-Oju (1998) demonstrates how a linguistic analysis of comic expressions is a more productive stylistic endeavour than the traditional engagement with mere rhetorical terms. In the latter, malapropism (Teilanyo 2020) and bombast (Teilanyo 2003) are examined in two Nigerian comedy series: Icheoku and Masquerade, and the author notes that both malapropism—a kind of verbal blunder—and bombast are responsible for the bulk of humour in these comedy series. However, the primary concern in these articles was to examine bombast and verbal blunders as (socio)linguistic realities of the English language in a second language situation, as typified by Nigeria. Thus, examining the artistic deployment of bombast in Icheoku and Masquerade, Teilanyo (2003) notes the prevalence of bombast in the Nigerian context and identifies the general elements of bombast, the expressive and perceptive dimensions of bombast, as well as highlighting bombast as a feature of nonstandard language that is motivated by three sociolinguistic factors. Similarly, Teilanyo (2020) examines malapropisms in Icheoku and Masquerade and submits that malapropism is a consequence both of inadequate mastery of the lexico-semantic patterns of the second language and of interference from the indigenous mother tongue or first language (p. 33).

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Another related study is Bamgbose (2019). In his investigation of humour strategies, linguistic devices and multimodal cues used by characters in the two Nigerian sitcoms represented in this study, Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull, Bamgbose identifies verbal blunders as a subset of humour strategies found in the sitcoms. This present study similarly analyzes verbal blunders. However, this present study is different in scope, as it examines not only verbal blunders, but also bombast and how the intentional deployment of these constitutes effective humour styles in Nigerian situation comedy.

The Status of English in Nigeria A pertinent peculiarity of the Nigerian context is that English exists in a second language situation in Nigeria (Quirk 1985, cited in Adedimeji 2007). That is, it is non-native to Nigeria. English as a second language (ESL) in Nigeria means that Nigerians already have a first language (i.e., mother tongue), which is often the indigenous languages, before acquiring the English language. One relevant implication of this is that English is usually acquired formally in school by Nigerians, and this second language acquisition is often marred by sociolinguistic and cognitive phenomena like interference and transfer, et cetera. In other words, there is usually the chance of an imperfect mastery or acquisition of English given the sociolinguistic milieu and coupled with many pedagogical challenges that beset the acquisition of English in a second language context. Consequently, the phenomena of bombast and malapropism have been ascribed to the inadequate mastery of English in Nigeria (Teilanyo 2003, 2020). Teilanyo (2003) observes that “bombast in West Africa and other contexts in which English is not a native language is explained by the fact that most speakers are not fully competent in the target language.” This paper agrees with Teilanyo’s (2003) submission above and posits further that, aside the issue of competence, the attitudes towards the existence of English as a second language in Nigeria confer unusual significance on the phenomena of verbal blunders and bombast. The range of attitudes which Nigerians have towards the English language in Nigeria includes the view of English as a necessity and as a sine qua non for

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upward socioeconomic mobility of the individual. This is due to the pivotal role of English in Nigeria: it is the official language, language of governance, language of institutional communication, language of literature, media, trade and commerce, and education, etc. Consequently, as Odumosu (1990), cited in Teilanyo (2003), observes, English is a factor that is considered in the socioeconomic stratification of Nigerians. In addition, there are both negative and positive attitudes towards the Nigerian variety of English. Negative and positive attitudes towards Nigerian English are views which consider Nigerian English as a deviant and a variety, respectively (Adedimeji 2007; 2012; Jowitt 1991). Generally, this range of attitudes, as well as the status of English as a second language in Nigeria, commands in Nigerians some degree of fascination about the English language, more so than in native speaker contexts—and this is precisely what makes verbal blunders and bombast particularly remarkable in the Nigerian context. For example, this fascination may manifest as a certain fixation on pedantic usage of English or a predisposition towards general amusement, et cetera. Moreover, Teilanyo (2003) observes that as English in a second language situation is often considered superior to indigenous languages, people employ bombast to boost their ego and show their erudition. This is also why Oloruntoba-Oju (1998) describes bombast as an element of “linguistic affectation.” In any event, whether a person speaks English well, even grandiloquently, or whether a person speaks it badly, ungrammatically, English usage in the Nigerian context often generates much ado.

Verbal Blunders, Bombast and Humour Humour can be verbal or nonverbal (Dynel 2009). While verbal humour deals with humour produced through language, nonverbal humour includes humour from pictures or body language (Dynel 2009). Verbal blunders are a class of verbal humour. Blunder is based on a person who makes a mistake which in turn makes them look foolish (Audrieth 1998, cited in Palupi 2006). Verbal blunders, in Erard’s (2007) view, are speech accidents; they are “inadvertent and unintentional, and outside of our

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control” (Erard 2007). They include slips of the tongue and speech disfluencies like fillers such as “uh,” “um,” repeated words, repeated sounds, or repaired sentences (Erard 2007). Though an age-old phenomenon that underlines our humanness, verbal blunders are often considered of little worth (Erard 2007). According to Erard (2007), “Until recently, they [verbal blunders] have been treated as meaningless fillers, played for laughs, or used to reinforce stereotypes of people who were already disliked or mistrusted.” One of the earliest scholarly attempts to study verbal blunders can be seen in psychology. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theory, for instance, derives from his belief that phenomena like dreams, slips of the tongue, forgotten names, and misrememberings, et cetera, are eruptions of the unconscious self ’s desires (Erard 2007). “The unconscious conveyed its own desires via verbal blunders.” In more recent years, verbal blunders have been studied in a number of disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, sociology, cognitive science, et cetera (Erard 2007). And as in this present study, verbal blunders can be an object of study in humour scholarship. Classifying the varied forms of verbal blunders, Goffman makes a distinction between “knows better” and “doesn’t know better” errors (quoted in Erard 2007). The “doesn’t know better” errors occur when someone does not know the norms or rules and ends up ignorantly violating them; whereas, in “knows better” errors, the individual knows the rules and norms, but the errors occur due to a momentary, involuntary loss of control. While both types of verbal blunders identified by Goffman (cited in Erard 2007) have potentials to encode humour, the conceptualization of verbal blunders in this paper inclines towards the “doesn’t know better” errors. Specifically, what is denoted by verbal blunders in this study are what Bamgbose (2019, 66) aptly describes as “cases of errors that are associated with ungrammatical/ill-formed expressions in English and are technically called solecism.” More often than not in the Nigerian context, verbal blunders result from improper mastery or ignorance of the rules of English grammar (Teilanyo 2020). The humour potential of this kind of verbal blunders is noted by Bamgbose (2019, 66) who submits that, “in communities where English serves as a second language, the improper mastery of syntactic rules serves as a source of humour.” Bamgbose (2019, 66) further explains

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that “when errors or verbal blunders are made by a person as a result of their improper mastery of the language, we laugh at him/her.” For different reasons that may be explicable by any of superiority, incongruity and relief theories of humour, people may laugh at a person who commits verbal blunders. Bamgbose (2019, 66) argues that the audience laugh at the ignorance of grammatical laws which makes a person commits verbal blunders. And from a standpoint of superiority theory, some of the audience may proceed to ridicule or humiliate such a blunderer. Furthermore, commenting on the significance of verbal blunders in comedy series, Teilanyo (2020, 37) seems to invoke the relief theory and explain that the difficulties and challenges posed by the English language to Nigerian users are what are put on stage, so that “we can laugh at ourselves and recognize the role and problems of the English language in the life of the Nigerian” (Teilanyo 2020, 37). In addition, people may laugh at an individual’s verbal blunders precisely because of the incongruity or mismatch between the position occupied or held by the person and their verbal blunders, as unbefitting. For example, Erard (2007) notes that the verbal blunders made by former US president, George W. Bush, were the subject of much fascination among Americans, many of whom fetishized his verbal blunders—the rave no doubt owed to his position as the president of the United States of America. Bombast can be understood as pretentious and flowery language use that is marked by the use of high-sounding, complex and esoteric vocabulary in speech or writing. Bombastic language often achieves some rhetorical effects. Especially in a second language context, as is English in Nigeria, bombastic language use by a speaker often indexes not only the possession of an impressive vocabulary, but also a mastery of the grammar of a language, although it has been noted that bombast may also index the linguistic deficiency of the speaker (Oloruntoba-Oju 1998; Teilanyo 2003). Correspondingly, its use can elicit in the hearer reactions that range from amusement, awe, laughter, shock, confusion to anger. It is on the gamut of such reactions, for example, that the former Nigerian parliamentarian, Honorable Patrick Obahiagbon, rose to prominence. Obahiagbon, to many Nigerians, is synonymous with bombast. With his big words, ingenious coinages and a generous use of foreign classical Greek, Latin and French words weaved together in a grandiloquent style,

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Obahiagbon has over the years in his political and public speech titillated many Nigerians. Reference to Obahiagbon here is useful in illustrating the idea of bombast and its nexus to comedy. To exemplify bombastic language, Amao and Okeke-Uzodike (2013) cited a bombastic response made by Obahiagbon when asked about his view of the 2012 democracy day celebration in Nigeria. To the question, Obahiagbon replies: …a celebration of democracy or a depreciable apotheosis of an hemorrhaging plutocracy, cascading into a mobocracy with all the ossifying proclivities of a kakistocracy? With our democracy enveloped in a paraplegic [sic] crinkum crankum, we must all rise up to bring to focal hiceps and biceps, Nigeria’s Pluto-mobo-kakistocracy … Certainly not democracy! (as cited in Amao and Okeke-Uzodike 2013, 127)

To such bombast is usually attached a feeling of amusement. Amao and Okeke-Uzodike (2013, 110) note the comic potential of Obahiagbon’s bombastic style by commenting that the “audience becomes lost in the euphoria of the complex semantics he employs, thus rendering the rhetorical situation a comedic jamboree.” As this paper will demonstrate, bombastic language as used by some of the characters in the two sitcoms, Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull, encode potentials to elicit comic perlocutions in the viewers.

Methodology The data for this study are two Nigerian situation comedies: Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull. Jenifa’s Diary has had twenty seasons as at the time of writing this paper, and each season usually contains thirteen episodes. The average running time for each episode is 28  minutes. Professor Johnbull has six seasons and, similar to Jenifa’s Diary, each season contains thirteen episodes. The average running time of episodes in Professor Johnbull is 25  minutes. Five episodes each are randomly selected from each of the two sitcoms. The sample for the analysis, therefore, comprises a total of ten randomly selected episodes.

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The focus in each selected episode is the verbal blunders and bombastic language use of characters in the sitcoms. The rationale for the final selection of any segment or scene that contains these lies in the potential of the segment to elicit humour. This potential may or may not be overtly marked by laughter by any of the character interactants. Thus, following Dynel (2015), the emphasis in the analysis is on the potential of verbal blunders or bombast to elicit a humorous response in the recipient and no claim is made on their certitude to engender humour nor on the viewers’ actual reactions. In addition, useful transcription conventions from Jefferson’s (2004) transcription convention are employed in this paper. Furthermore, the analysis of the data is based on recipient design as theorized by Dynel (2011a, 2011d, 2011e, 2015). One of the earliest conceptualizations of recipient design is by Sacks et al. (1974) who identified the phenomenon as a general principle of conversational interactions. They define recipient design as: a multitude of respects in which the talk by a party in a conversation is constructed or designed in ways which display an orientation and sensitivity to the particular other(s) who are the co-participants. (Sacks et  al. 1974, 727)

In general, recipient design is a phenomenon attested to undergird communication (Kecskes 2017), be it conversations or forms of media talks, and it is also known in literature under other labels like audience design or overhearer’s design (Dynel 2011d). Adopting the general principle of recipiency and building on such frameworks as Goffman’s participation framework and Clark’s (1996) layered discourse approach, Dynel (2011a, 2011d, 2011e, 2015) develops a theory of recipient design for film discourse, and conceptualizes it as “a set of discursive (as well as cinematographic) techniques enabling the target viewer’s interpretative processes and arrival at meanings, in accordance with the collective sender’s plan” (Dynel 2011a, 315). In Dynel’s recipient design, communication takes place on two levels: the inter-character/characters’ level, where characters communicate with one another through interactions and actions; and the recipient’s level, where viewers participate by making inferences and interpretations (Dynel

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2011a, 2011d, 2011e, 2015). Having access to these two levels, the recipient, described as the ideal viewer, engages in gleaning “inherently intentional, speaker meanings, as well as (intermittent) unintentional meanings” (Dynel 2015, 5). However, as Dynel (2015) points out, whatever meanings the recipient gleans are intentionally devised by the collective sender (i.e., the production crew). The manner in which the recipient design works for humour production and reception in film talk can be inferred from Dynel’s (2015, 5) observation below: Characters’ intentions established by the collective sender, even if not necessarily consciously, are made available to the recipient. The context and coherent character development, as well as relevant world knowledge, allow the recipient to derive inferences concerning the meanings communicated on the screen.

The significance of adopting recipient design in this study can be seen in that it lends credence to the main argument of the paper that verbal blunders and bombast are veritable humour styles intentionally deployed in Nigerian situation comedy for humour. Specifically, the adoption of recipient design for the analysis will aid in unravelling how verbal blunders and bombast interact with other elements of film discourse such as characters’ verbal and nonverbal reactions as well as production techniques in order to elicit humour in the recipient. Also, the postulation of the recipient level of communication helps explicate how humour, derived by the recipient from the verbal and nonverbal interchanges among characters even when the characters themselves are not conscious of the humour in their interchanges, is contrived by the collective sender and inferred by the recipient accordingly. In addition, as verbal blunders and bombast are merely rhetorical labels for some specific language-related situations (Oloruntoba-Oju 1998, 153), the explication of the nature of verbal blunders and bombast found in the data relies on linguistic analysis at the relevant phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic and pragmatic levels. This practice follows Oloruntoba-Oju’s (1998, 166) observation that it is “useful to analyze comic expressions in terms of core linguistic operations exhibited by the expressions.”

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Data Analysis In this section, samples of verbal blunders and bombast extracted from Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull are analyzed. The attempt here is mainly to explain how these instances of verbal blunders and bombast may encode humour for the recipient. Extracts of verbal blunders are first examined, before extracts of bombast. For convenience, the following abbreviations are made use of in the analysis: PJ (Professor Johnbull), JD (Jenifa’s Diary), BS (Background Sound), S (Season) and E (Episode).

Verbal Blunders Extract 14.1 Mechanic: I was on my own o when I noticed his crank shaft was shaking. So when I get close, I now found out, you will not even believe it, the shock cassava is leaking oil. Professor Johnbull: What was that? Chief Zebrudaya: He said shock cassava. Professor Johnbull: ((Faces Elizabeth in surprise)) shock absorber! (PJ S2E1) While narrating how he attempted to repair Chief Zebrudaya’s car, the mechanic blundered by saying “shock cassava” instead of “shock absorber.” The error here appears to be occasioned by the partial rhyme between “cassava” and “absorber,” which made the mechanic to substitute the former for the latter, resulting in a malapropism. In the  L2 context, like Nigeria, words and phrases are sometimes distorted and bastardized in this manner because of the “inadequate mastery of the lexico-semantic patterns of the second language” (Teilanyo 2020, 33). The blunder seems to engender confusion in Professor Johnbull who seeks clarification by asking: “What was that?”—to which Chief Zebrudaya quickly interjects by repeating the malapropic blunder, “shock cassava.” Through the co-­ text, Professor Johnbull is able to realize that the mechanic meant to say “shock absorber.” Each of the turns is strategic from the point of view of the collective sender. It is argued that the collective sender structures the

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interchanges of characters at the inter-character level for maximum uptake of humour by the recipient. This is evident in the question-­ answer-­comprehension structure of the turns. For instance, Professor Johnbull’s question helps provide the prompt for Chief Zebrudaya to highlight and foreground the relevant humour-inducing blunder in case it escapes the attention of the recipient. Recognizing the blunder that has been made, Professor Johnbull reveals the distorted word as “shock absorber” which creates a juxtaposition with the preceding turn that clearly reveals the incongruous nature of the blunder where “absorber” is ludicrously substituted for “cassava,” and this blunder, it must be added, encodes a great potential to elicit humour at the recipient’s level due to the incongruous substitution. Extract 14.2 Professor Johnbull: Here in this family, we treat our domestic staff with dignity, love, respect. Chief Zebrudaya: And that are why exactly I was brought her here to hear with her two nakedness of ears from people who are know book ((Professor shakes his head; BS: a sharp “boom” sound)). If you are see how she are treatment our house help at home, the seventh one in two months! Oh Chineke, God of Africa! You will pity me. [And that is why I have brought her here to hear directly from learned people like you. If you see how she maltreats our house help at home.. .] Professor Johnbull: And if you get one who is hardworking, appreciate them, tell them how good they are, and how better they can be. Most of all, treat them as family, integral part of the family, O yes. Chief Zebrudaya: ((To his wife)) Are you hear it? “Treat them bassintiga” ((BS: a gunshot sound)). Why you are- [Can you hear that? “Treat them as integral”] (PJ S3E12) There are a number of verbal blunders in this extract which are of various linguistic provenance. Interestingly, all the verbal blunders are committed by one character, Chief Zebrudaya. In his first turn in the extract, Chief Zebrudaya uses “are” instead of “is” and “was” instead of “have.” There are also the superfluous insertions of “are” and the wrong use of “treatment” by Chief Zebrudaya in his first turn. While these are

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blunders at the grammatical level, there are also blunders at the pragmatic level. These include “nakedness of ears” and “people who are know book.” The former is obviously an analogous creation (see Adegbija 1989) from the popular Nigerian English idiom, “naked eyes,” which translates to “firsthand” in standard English. It is quite humorous that even within Nigerian English, Chief Zebrudaya still manages to blunder by using “naked” in the nominal form (i.e., “nakedness”). Similarly, “know book” is a Nigerian English expression for “intelligent”/“intelligence.” The inclusion of these blunders seems to suggest that the collective sender expects the recipient to be able to make necessary inferences relying on his/her sociocultural knowledge of Nigerian English in order to decode the humour in Chief Zebrudaya’s blunders, and this point suggests that the sitcom is primarily designed for Nigerian viewers. Furthermore, in signalling the humorous potential of Chief Zebrudaya’s blunders, the collective sender uses contextualization cues (see Gumperz 1982) in the form of technologically-enhanced background sounds, which accompany the major verbal blunders made by Chief Zebrudaya. The collective sender deploys these cues to alert the recipient to the strings of errors issuing from Chief Zebrudaya, and coupled with Professor Johnbull’s facial reaction—which is however open to different interpretations—the humour on the part of the recipient is enhanced. Furthermore, while there are other errors made by Chief Zebrudaya in his other turns, worthy of note and potentially humorous is Chief Zebrudaya’s distortion and mispronunciation of part of Professor Johnbull’s utterance: “treat them as family, integral part of the family.” In reiterating this point to his wife, Chief Zebrudaya bastardizes the expression above and says, “treat them bassingtiga.” The potential of this blunder to elicit humour in the recipient lies in the ludicrous distortion of Professor Johnbull’s expression. The potentially comic effect is further enhanced by a gunshot sound in the background—a contextualization cue—that immediately accompanies Chief Zebrudaya’s blunder “treat them bassintiga.” Extract 14.3 Mr. Williams: Synonym Class: Synonymmm

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Mr. Williams: Don’t worry. I’m sure with examples it will be clearer. For instance, the synonym for short is close. The synonym for sad isStudent (Eleran): Sadder. Mr. Williams: What? ((Waves off further attempt)) (JD S1E13) In Jenifa’s adult class, the teacher, Mr. Williams introduces the topic, “Synonym” and tries to make the class pronounce it. However, the class mispronounced it by over stressing the bilabial nasal /m/. Afterwards, Mr. Williams gives examples of synonyms. It is precisely at this point that one of the adult class students makes a verbal blunder. This is seen when the student quickly gives the synonym of “sad” as “sadder.” The co-text established through the introduction of the topic as synonym makes “sadder” to be a wrong synonym of “sad,” and hence a blunder. The humorous potential of this blunder lies in the fact that the recipient most likely knows that “sadder” is not a synonym of sad, but a ludicrous blunder. One important element of recipient design used by  the collective sender in this extract to aid the recipient in recognizing the blunder is repetition. The repetition of the topic by the class, even though is potentially humorous in itself, given the exaggerated stress on the bilabial nasal /m/, is principally to emphasize the topic, so that the recipient can be unmistaken in knowing that “sadder” is a ludicrous blunder in the context of the topic. Other samples of verbal blunders from the data include: Extract 14.4 Segun: Ehn, you are having pregnant? [Are you pregnant?] Jenifa: Jo gbenu lo. Who having pregnant? [Shut your mouth. Who is pregnant?] (JD S3E1) Extract 14.5 Segun: Why is it that every time I follow you, I follow you, you dodge me like somebody that is having helpdemic? [epidemic] Jenifa: Endemy? Who’s called you help–mendemic now? Why accusation me? Everybody him minding im business. Mind to me I mind my own. I want to go and eat. So leave me. [Why are you accusing me?

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Everybody here minds their business. So mind your business and I mind my own business.] Segun: Is not good. Every time I shase you, I shase you, but then you afford me. [Every time I chase (i.e. woo) you, you avoid me.] Jenifa: Afford ko, Kunle ni. Make you dey, make I dey my own. Mind your business. Eyinbo o si l’omo so kiri. [It’s not only Afford, but also Kunle. Stay on your lane; I stay on mine. Mind your business. You just go about speaking nonsensical English.] (JD S4E8) In Extract 14.4, the verbal blunder is made by Segun. As Adaku mentions the possibility of conception as a reason for Jenifa’s sleeping in the salon, Segun, who is in love with Jenifa, immediately asks Jenifa whether she is pregnant. However, he makes a blunder in the process. The blunder can be seen in the ungrammaticality of his question: “you are having pregnant?” Firstly, “have” as a stative verb is wrongly used in the progressive tense. Secondly, “have” does not collocate with pregnant/pregnancy in this context. The verbal blunder appears to result from the direct transfer of meaning from Nigerian indigenous language to English. For example, in Yoruba, “se o ni oyun” directly translates to English as “Do you have pregnancy.” In furtherance, the humour potential of the verbal blunder is reinforced as Jenifa also repeats it. The collective sender seems to rely on the recipient’s ability not only to identify the ungrammaticality of both Segun and Jenifa’s utterances, but also to recognize that it stems from a direct transfer from their indigenous language. Thus, it can be said that background knowledge of the grammatical structure of the indigenous language as the linguistic provenance of the error constitutes an element of recipient design relied upon by the collective sender to encode humour in this extract. In Extract 14.5, almost every line has one or more verbal blunders. At this point in the sitcom, consistent viewers of the sitcom would already know that Jenifa and Segun are two characters who have a weak command of English and frequently make grammatical blunders. Despite this knowledge, some of these verbal blunders if not all encode potentials to be comical. For example, in Segun’s first turn, his choice of “dodge” over apter words like avoid, shun, et cetera, and his pronunciation of “helpdemic” for “epidemic” amounts to blunders at the lexical and

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phonological levels, respectively. Jenifa’s response to this turn contains even more blunders. She also mispronounces epidemic as “endemy” and “mendemic” and thinks it is a name for a category of sick people. Jenifa also wrongly uses “accusation” instead of “accuse.” Similarly, in his second turn, Segun further commits verbal blunders. He wrongly articulates “chase” as “shase,” substituting /ʃ/ for /tʃ/, and also says “afford” instead of “avoid.” Prior to this latter blunder, the humorous potential of the strings of blunders made by Segun and Jenifa is dependent simply on the recipient’s linguistic competence in the English language, as recipients with even an average level of competence would easily be able to detect these blunders. However, for this latter blunder, background knowledge of Nigerian movie industry is required to derive humour. Jenifa plays on Segun’s blunder by saying “Afford ko, Kunle ni.” The inherent humour embedded in this retort is realizable only through the activation of the background knowledge of Nigerian movie industry. The required knowledge pertains to the identity of Kunle Afod who is a popular Nigerian actor. It would, thus, be seen that the collective sender builds the humour in this instance around the recipient’s background knowledge—which therefore constitute an element of the recipient design employed by the collective sender. Finally, while Jenifa’s retort is not exactly a verbal blunder, the significance of verbal blunder in encoding the humour inherent in the retort lies in the fact that it is Segun’s initial mispronunciation of “avoid” as “afford” that generates the retort in first place.

Bombast Extract 14.6 John the Genius: Greatest Nigerian students ((Hostelites: Great!)). Greatest Nigerian students ((Hostelites: Great!)). Greatest of the greatest Nigerian students ((Hostelites: Great!)). Greatest shhhhhhh. From my optical point of view, I can say that our peaceful protest has caused volcanic eruption.

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Austin: John, John, you have come again o, haha. John the Genius: Our physical activities have evoked the legal attorneys to vocalizing and discuss with us. ((In the background: O de [Not again])) (JD S2E6) John the Genius is known in the sitcom, Jenifa’s Diary, for using bombast. In this extract, John addresses his hostel mates during one of the protests against the forceful eviction of students from the hostel. John’s brief speech can be found in his first and second turns. However, his speech is perceived as bombastic, and this is evident in Austin’s reaction, as well as the background comment at the end of his second turn given in Yoruba, “o de” which glosses as “he has come again” and roughly translates as “Oh no! Not again.” While John’s speech does not elicit humour at the character level, it encodes potential for humour at the recipient level. This comic potential owes not only to John’s bombast in the speech—which the viewer may already know and expect—but also to the reactions to his speech as can be seen in the above extract. Thus, expectation of amusement from the character of John who has established himself as a character who uses bombast as well as characters’ reactions that foreground the bombast are devices which the collective sender uses to encode humour for the recipient. Extract 14.7 Professor Johnbull: What a big dioscorea rotundata! Udoh Etuk: Ehmm. I talk am naw. I talk am sey e don rotten. ((BS: a zap sound)). [I said it. I said it that it is already rotten.] Mallam Mai Doya: Ehn? Udoh Etuk: You hear am naw from the horse’s mouth sey your yam don rotten. So carry it back. [You just heard it from the horse’s mouth that your yam is rotten.] Professor Johnbull: When I say rotundata you hear rotten? Udoh Etuk: Nam. Rotten [Yes.] Professor Johnbull: That is capricious. Udoh Etuk: Ugwa! (PJ S1E8)

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This extract contains an interplay of bombast and blunder for humorous effect. Manifesting as bombast is the phrase “dioscorea rotundata” and the lexeme “capricious” in the first and last turns of Professor Johnbull, respectively. It should be noted that these two instances are only contextually bombastic, because most educated viewers can easily decipher their meanings. However, at the level of the inter-character communication in the above extract, both the phrase and the lexeme are bombastic as they are able to amuse and befuddle the other characters. As Mallam Mai Doya measures a tuber of yam he wants to sell to Professor Johnbull, Professor Johnbull exclaimed as seen in his first turn. “Dioscorea rotundata” is the botanical name of yam. However, Etuk, clearly ignorant of this fact, only catches the sound of “rotundata” and quickly interprets it as meaning “rotten.” Etuk, thus, commits a blunder that can be described as “perceptive malapropism” (Teilanyo 2020) by interpreting “rotundata” as “rotten.” The humorous potential of this blunder is signalled by the collective sender with a background sound that immediately accompanies his utterance. Moreover, while commenting on Etuk’s erroneous interpretation of rotundata as rotten, Professor Johnbull uses the word “capricious,” which elicits a rather comical reaction from Etuk. For example, Etuk reacts by saying “Ugwa” which appears to be an interjection that connotes amusement. At the recipient level, the interplay of Professor Johnbull’s bombast and Etuk’s blunder on the one hand, and Etuk’s reaction in his last turn, on the other hand, encode the potential for humour. Extract 14.8 Elizabeth: This will be an absolute manifestation of my independence and prevalent congenital filial ties to my daddy the Professor’s apron-­ strings as a relationship ((Nje befuddled and decides to use bombastic language in her turn)) with his influence on multiple facets of my existence. Nje: The fumiliation of the occupatiollon of the international reliation facets. Elizabeth: Mundio! What’s that? What are you saying? Nje: I-I speaking like you and bege Professor you speaking. [I’m trying to speak like you and Professor.]

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Elizabeth: What you’re saying does not mean anything. In fact, it is zilch, it is jargon. O yes! (PJ S5E9) Elizabeth’s first turn contains what approximates bombast. In the sitcom, Elizabeth often attempts to speak like Professor Johnbull, her father. However, she appears to be particularly successful at the attempt in this particular extract. And in confirmation of Elizabeth’s use of bombast, though only relative to the character she speaks to, Nje is not only befuddled but also determines to use bombastic language in her own turn. Expectedly, considering that the character of Nje is presented as uneducated, Nje fails spectacularly at using bombast. The resultant blunders or rather incoherent gibberish encode potential to elicit humour. Thus, in this extract, the collective sender leverages on both verbal blunder and bombast to engender humour in the recipient.

Discussion and Conclusion The analysis in the preceding section is necessarily limited to a handful of samples of verbal blunders and bombast in Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull. It, however, goes without saying that the two sitcoms are replete with numerous instances of verbal blunders and bombast. As Bamgbose (2019) points out in his study, there are other sources of humour in Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull that include various verbal and nonverbal humour types. However, the sheer number and frequency of verbal blunders and bombast in the two sitcoms are enough to draw the conclusion that both are intentionally deployed by the collective sender for humorous purposes, and constitute major sources of humour in the two sitcoms. Contrasting the two sitcoms in this regard, Jenifa’s Diary contains far more instances of verbal blunder than bombast—cases of bombast are minimal in Jenifa’s Diary; whereas, Professor Johnbull relies heavily on bombast and also has ample instances of verbal blunders as well. Furthermore, patterns emerging in the use of characterization in the two sitcoms suggest the intentional deployment of verbal blunders and bombast as humour styles. Both Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull contain characters who quickly establish their identities as blunderers or

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as bombastic. In Jenifa’s Diary, Jenifa and Segun are two major characters who frequently make verbal blunders, while John the Genius is a character renowned for his bombast. Similarly, in Professor Johnbull, the success of the character of Professor Johnbull is anchored on his consistent use of bombastic language, while Caroline and Chief Zebrudaya are two major characters notorious for their verbal blunders and ungrammaticality. Moreover, the choice of the replacement for Caroline at the beginning of the fifth season is significant. Nje, who replaces Caroline as Professor Johnbull’s house help, retains some attributes of Caroline: she is also uneducated and frequently commits grammatical blunders in English, although she is fluent in French. Thus, the like-for-like replacement of Caroline with Nje in terms of the aforementioned attributes seems to suggest intentionality on the part of the collective sender at the level of characterization—possibly, due to the necessity for the role of a blunderer. Furthermore, this pattern of characterization as explained above is not only common to the two sitcoms, but also to other sitcoms in the past and present in Nigeria. For example, much of the success of the New Masquerade and the fame of Zebrudaya in the 1980s owes to the notoriety of Zebrudaya’s verbal blunders. Also, in the highly successful sitcom, Papa Ajasco, Pa James is a character who plays the role of a blunderer. And in the sitcom, Hotel De Jordan, the court clerk is famous for his bombast. Even outside sitcoms, comedians sometimes adopt the identity of a blunderer for themselves for humorous effect (a good example is Alhaja Donjasi (Helen Paul) in her comedy skits). There are certainly more examples across the Nigerian sitcom and comedic sphere. What the foregoing suggests, therefore, is a recognition of the veracity of verbal blunders as well as bombast as effective humour styles especially in Nigerian situation comedies. As a result, collective senders appear to consistently intentionally deploy these humour styles to generate humour in situation comedies, as already explicated for Jenifa’s Diary and Professor Johnbull. Of significance to the production of humour that arises from verbal blunders and bombast are the elements of recipient design which the collective sender uses to ensure the recipient decodes humour. These are devices as well as discursive techniques used by the collective sender (Dynel 2011a), and some of these elements of recipient design employed in the analyzed extracts include: structuring of character participants’

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interchanges at the inter-character level to maximize humour, rote repetition of a topic, background and sociocultural knowledge of the recipient, expectation of amusement as a result of characterization, characters’ verbal and non-verbal reactions, and contextualization cues. Given their peculiar deployment in these sitcoms, the last two elements bear further commenting on. Humour arising from verbal blunders and bombast can be said to be dialogic in the sense that there is a co-production between or among characters. The elicitation of humour in the recipient relies not only on the raw materials of blunders and bombast from a character, but also on the spiced reactions from other characters. This assertion appears to be particularly true of humour arising from bombast. There is perhaps nothing inherently humorous in bombast. The inclination towards a feeling of amusement as a reaction to bombast is only one of other possible inclinations. However, verbal and nonverbal reactions of characters to an instance of bombast enhances to a lesser or greater extent the degree of comic perlocutions elicited in the recipient. This has been demonstrated in the analysis. Relatedly, the employment of contextualization cues (see Gumperz 1982) in the form of background sounds, as seen in Professor Johnbull, can be interpreted on the one hand as reactions to a blunder or bombastic language use by the collective sender; on the other hand, these contextualization cues can be viewed as indicators of the presence of humour. As reactions to blunders or bombast at the level of the collective sender, they aid much in the same way as the verbal and nonverbal reactions of characters to enhance the comic effect of a blunder or bombastic language use; whereas, as an indicator of the presence of humour, they appear to signpost intentionality on the part of the collective sender in the use of blunders or bombast to engender humour. In conclusion, in the Nigerian context, verbal blunders and bombast are humour styles often deployed for humour. The employment of verbal blunders and bombast in past and current sitcoms in Nigeria are pointers to the fact that comedy content creators in Nigeria acknowledge the effectiveness of verbal blunders and bombast as humour styles, which are thus consistently deployed as humour styles across the Nigerian comedy space, notably in Nigerian sitcoms. What appears to aid the effectiveness

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of verbal blunders and bombast as humour styles in Nigeria are the circumstances and peculiarities of the non-native speaker context in which the English language subsists in Nigeria.

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Index1

A

Adejobi, Oyin, 323 Alhaja Donjasi, viii, 303–317, 342 Anglophone crisis, 205–220 Aristotle, 4 Attardo, Salvatore, 11, 13, 14, 15n4, 21, 29, 39, 41, 48, 50, 52, 53, 57, 67, 72, 89, 104, 122, 123, 126, 127, 144, 158, 201, 210, 231–233, 255, 272, 273, 276, 277, 288–290, 306 Austin, J.L., 151, 211–212, 217, 306, 307, 339 B

Background assumptions, 273 Bergson, Henri, 2, 2n1, 4, 5, 16–18

Bisociation, 47, 56, 57, 66, 67, 69, 71, 74, 78, 80, 230 Bombast, 23, 31, 322, 325–333, 338–344 C

Cameroon, 30, 206, 206n1, 213, 219, 220 Characterization, 23, 105–109, 148, 196, 198, 233, 341–343 Characters, xi, 20, 90, 100, 119, 146, 187, 227, 276, 303, 323 Classical world, 235, 237, 240, 244, 245, 247 Collective sender, 117, 331–333, 335–343

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Oloruntoba-Oju (ed.), Humour Theory and Stylistic Enquiry, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40387-3

347

348 Index

Comedy skits, viii, 31, 181, 191–195, 200, 303–317, 342 Comic voice, 116, 119, 284 Competence, 65–82, 84, 85, 150, 182, 186, 190, 194, 195, 326, 338 Context, ix, xi, 5, 7, 8, 14, 22, 24, 29, 43–45, 47, 53, 56, 101, 112, 113, 116, 126, 127, 130, 133, 148, 153, 165, 172, 184, 186, 187, 190, 195, 196, 198–200, 207, 208, 210, 216, 233, 236, 245, 250–252, 256, 258, 262, 267, 268, 272, 274–280, 283, 284, 290, 293, 295, 297, 303, 306, 307, 312, 322, 324–329, 332, 333, 336, 337, 343, 344 Contextualization cues, 184, 335, 343 Contradiction, 5, 6, 17, 56, 57, 64, 230, 232, 239 Counterfactuals, 238, 240, 243, 246 D

Dare, Olatunji, 29, 152, 167–173 Deviation, viii, x, 42–45, 47, 48, 50–54, 57, 58 Dickens, Charles, xi, 29, 87–96 Discourse practice, 280, 283, 297 Discursive, 131, 151, 184, 196, 205, 206, 208, 272, 273, 283, 324, 331, 342 Discursive practice, 274

E

English varieties, 182, 188–190, 199, 200 Errors, x, 27n5, 240, 328, 329, 333, 335, 337 F

Forced reinterpretation, 46, 47 Foregrounding, 19, 28, 41–58, 150, 160–162, 195, 196, 279 France, 77, 206n1 Fuji House of Commotion, 324 G

Gender, x, 23, 24, 30, 71, 73, 84, 283, 289, 290, 306 Germany, 28 H

Haynes, Jonathan, 323, 324 Holiday Romance, 87–96 Hostility, viii, 1, 6, 9, 41, 42, 44, 48–54, 56, 72, 74, 77, 78, 80, 103, 230, 267, 269 Humour, vii, 1, 39, 63, 88, 100, 116, 144, 181, 205, 227, 272, 303, 321 Humour catalysis, 3, 15, 16, 21–24, 150, 156, 157, 164 Humour catalysts, 316 Humour competence, 22, 66–80, 84, 150, 157 Humour-laughter, ix, 26, 154 Humour styles, xii, 2, 29, 30, 205–220, 317, 321–344 Humour stylistics, 18, 26, 148, 151, 152

 Index  I

K

Ideational, 10, 16, 43, 44, 52–54 Ideology, 52, 56, 149, 274, 275, 280, 283, 297 Incongruity, viii, x, 1, 4–6, 8–10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 41, 42, 44–48, 57, 58, 67, 72, 78, 80, 90, 91, 100, 103, 104, 106, 109, 120–123, 127, 129, 134, 135, 145, 149–151, 162, 165, 166, 172, 173, 198, 213–217, 227, 230, 232, 241, 255, 282, 285, 287, 306, 310, 321 Incongruity-resolution (IR), 45, 46, 53–55, 57, 65, 66, 75, 82, 278 Intentionality, 3, 15n4, 26, 29, 322, 342, 343 Inter-character/characters’ level, 331, 340, 343 Interdiscursivity, 284, 287, 293, 297 Intertextuality, viii, 30, 31, 118, 169, 271–297 Irony, 13, 23, 26, 29, 105–107, 111–112, 133, 145, 150, 151, 153, 162, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 208, 227, 241, 287, 289, 303, 305, 321

Kimenye, Barbara, x, 29, 99–113

J

Jenifa's Diary, 188, 322, 324–326, 330, 333, 339, 341, 342 Joke cycle, 288 Jokes, viii, 11, 40, 63, 111, 117, 195, 208, 227, 256, 272, 303

349

L

Ladipo, Duro, 323 Language play, 19, 96, 195, 196, 199–201 Levels of linguistic analysis, 13, 15, 21, 26, 152, 156, 162, 173 M

Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), 30, 230, 234–236, 246 Measurement, 65, 69, 82 Mimicry, 187, 189, 198, 277, 278, 293, 293n7, 310 Model of humour, 63–85 Mooreeffoc Effect, 29, 87–96 Moses, 29, 102–112 Moses in Trouble, 100, 102, 103, 110, 111 The Moses Series, x, 29, 99–113 Mukibi, 106–110 N

Nigeria, ix, 20, 30, 152, 154, 166, 181–192, 188n1, 198–201, 234, 237, 239, 241–243, 245, 251, 259, 278, 283, 287, 289, 290n6, 295n8, 296, 297, 304–305, 308, 310, 316, 317, 322–327, 329, 330, 333, 342–344 Nigerian English, 183, 188, 192, 198, 327, 335

350 Index

Nigerian Pidgin (NP), 182, 183, 187, 189–191, 200, 272, 280n2, 292, 309, 314, 315 O

Obahiagbon, Patrick, 329, 330 Object-subject trap, 65 Ogunde, Hubert, 323 Ogunmola, Kola, 323 Olaiya, Moses, 323 Oloruntoba-Oju, Taiwo, vii, ix, 3, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 28, 29, 145, 150, 152–154, 159, 167n10, 168, 216, 305, 325, 327, 329, 332 Opposition, 12, 15, 25, 57, 158, 160, 162, 164, 167, 171, 206, 231, 232 Osundare, Niyi, 29, 151–153, 163–168, 173 P

Papa Ajasco, 324, 342 Parallel World Linguistics (PWL), 30, 230, 234–246 Parody, 3, 13, 90, 145, 150, 151, 157, 159, 172, 173, 187, 214–217, 219, 227, 273, 276, 277, 293, 303, 310 Paul, Helen, viii, 290–293, 303–317, 342 Political cartoons, x, 30, 225–247 Pragmatics, viii, 14, 18, 21, 30, 31, 117, 133, 151, 157, 160, 170, 171, 196, 207, 208, 250, 258,

272, 278, 279, 290, 297, 303–317, 325, 332, 335 Pragmemes, 31, 307–309, 311, 316, 317 Professor Johnbull, 188–190, 322, 324, 326, 330, 333–335, 340–343 Pun, 3, 11, 13, 14, 47, 81, 85, 122, 133, 133n1, 150, 151, 153, 164, 168, 172, 173, 321 R

Rasch model, 28, 63–85 Recipient, 40, 45–47, 63, 64, 68, 72, 73, 79, 272, 273, 275–277, 288, 331–339, 341–343 Recipient design, 31, 331, 332, 336–338, 342 Recipient's level, 331, 332, 334, 339, 340 Recontextualization, 145, 280, 283, 297 Re-incorporation, 282 Release, viii, 5, 26, 41, 42, 44, 48, 51–54, 56, 74, 75, 77, 78, 103, 104, 210, 211, 220, 230, 306 Reported speech, 287 S

Satire, vii–ix, 13, 29, 40, 49, 101, 105, 143–173, 187, 198, 228, 277, 287, 293 Script, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 118, 121–123, 125–127, 129, 136, 137, 150, 150n6, 157, 158, 160, 164, 171, 190, 231, 232, 276, 286, 288–293, 297

 Index 

Searle, John, 211–212, 306 Second language context, 326, 329 Sedaris, David, ix, 29, 115–138 Semiotics, 4 Shared knowledge, 247, 277, 278 Short, Mick, 7 Signification, 4, 165, 274 Signifier, 156, 182, 186 Simpson, Paul, 3, 7, 11, 13, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 52, 57, 90, 96, 144, 148n3, 150, 151, 155n8, 172 Sitcom, 49, 188–190, 272, 322–326, 330, 331, 335, 337, 339, 341–343 Situation comedy, 321–344 Soyinka, Wole, 29, 152–162, 171–173 Stereotypes, 21, 23, 26, 29, 127, 156, 186, 187, 196, 241, 268, 273, 276, 288–290, 293, 297, 328 Styan, 1, 2, 2n1 Stylistics, vii, viii, x, 1–31, 39–58, 88, 100, 105, 129, 133, 135, 144, 145, 148, 151, 152, 167, 167n10, 172, 173, 185, 190, 191, 200, 213, 262, 267, 283, 304, 308 Stylization, 30, 181, 184, 191–199, 201 Superposition, 235, 237, 239, 240, 242, 244–247

351

T

Textual Conceptual Functions (TCFs), 54 Textual meaning, 41–44, 46–48, 50, 51, 53–57 Textual strategy, 275 Theory of Textual Meaning, 43 Toolan, Michael, 3, 9, 9n3, 26, 28, 30 Trauma, 206, 207, 213 U

Uganda, 29, 99, 100, 105 Uptake, 15n4, 24, 151, 159, 216, 259, 334 V

Verbal blunders, x, 31, 322, 325–338, 341–344 Vernacular, 135, 191, 201, 324 W

Wales, Katie, xi, 7, 29, 88, 90, 94, 105 Women, ix, 93, 103, 116, 205–220, 280–285, 290–293, 295, 296, 305 Women and humour, ix, x, 30, 205–220