A Linguo-Cultural Analysis of COVID-19 Related Facebook Jokes

Abstract

This research aimed to get an insight into Pakistani people’s thought patterns and matters of concern through social media humor. The data collected through online crowdsourcing have been analyzed, adapting the Linguo-Cultural Approach by Petrova. The ‘culturemes’ have been arranged based on their 'semantic density' in a descending order. The highest dense ‘cultureme’ consists of the memes about gender, reinforcing the traditional notions of patriarchal tendencies. The second and third categories target the people's non-seriousness about the precautionary measures and the 'online classes', respectively. Satirical posts about political figures and governmental decisions are in the fourth position. The aggressive role of police, coupled with the expected population increase, has taken the fifth position in the hierarchy. The sixth category is about the masses' tendency to shop carelessly. The seventh category comprises self-deprecating memes, followed by the eighth category about over-eating and getting fat during the stay at home. Memes about China being labeled as the creator of the virus have taken the ninth position, and the posts about the ethnic slur come next. The least dense category consists of the posts about the hype created by news channels. This hierarchical arrangement of the semantic densities has revealed real-life situations and concerns and doubts and belief systems of the current social media users in Pakistan. The need of the hour is to employ content creators to come up with the comic, but creative memes and jokes to condition people's subconscious to be more careful about their health.

Beyond laughter and smiles

“…Since China was the country of the first known case of COVID-19, many humorous posts were found to be revolving around this fact. Several related themes emerged, such as the conspiracy theories attributing China to be the creator of the virus (Khan et al 2020), linking coronavirus with things that seem Chinese (Kadri & Jumrah 2022), and sinophobia (Matamoros-Fernández et al 2022). de Saint Laurent et al (2022 found that most memes focused on themes such as coronavirus transmission, protective measures, shopping and stockpiling, virus spread, symptoms, and infected people.…”

“…Source, Message, Channel, and Receiver. In this systematic review, the majority of the studies (64 per cent) aimed to examine the message, i.e., the humorous post, focusing on the tools of humour employed in these posts (Dynel 2020(Dynel , 2022Khan et al 2020 2021) attempted to consider the following elements: source, i.e., the sender (author/sharer), the message, i.e., humorous post, and the receiver, i.e., social media users, in their studies. In some of the studies (12 per cent), two of these elements, i.e., the source and the message, were considered (Abidin 2020;Cancelas-Ouviña 2021;Inyabri et al 2021;Roig & Martorell 2021;Aronson & Jaffal 2022); whereas, in some (10 per cent), the message and the receiver were considered (Hussein & Aljamili 2020;Glǎveanu & de Saint Laurent 2021;Raj & Jayaprakash 2021;Chibuwe & Munoriyarwa 2022).…”

“…In the selected studies, the humorous posts were analysed for characteristics that they display. (Dynel 2022), self-defeat (Khan et al 2020), testing, self-denigration, and criticism through humour (Salman et al 2022). Most of these characteristics are linguistic in nature, for example, satire, sarcasm, irony, etc., which are specific and deliberate language constructions used to convey meaning.…”

“…The researchers found various functions carried out by the humorous posts related to COVID-19, such as entertainment and public announcements (Abidin 2020), political critiques (Khan et al 2020;Murru & Vicari 2021;Nabea 2021;Chibuwe & Munoriyarwa 2022;de Saint Laurent et al 2022;Dynel 2022;Kadri & Jumrah 2022) (Dynel 2022), and transmission and reproduction of social and cultural norms (Lomotey 2020;Lotfy & Soliman 2021). Lemish & Elias (2020) found parental humour as an outlet for parents' anxieties and distress during the pandemic.…”

“…Analysing the time periods of the data creation/collection indicates the data of interest to the researchers. Although certain studies (17 per cent) did not specify the time of collection/creation of posts(Ajayi & Akinrinlola 2021;El-Shokrofy 2021;Inyabri et al 2021;Khan et al 2020;Ogoanah & Ojo …”