A Pragmatic Analysis of Implicatures in Covid-19 Coronavirus English Jokes

Abstract

The present study aims at examining implicature in covid-19 Coronavirus jokes in the light of a neo-Gricean approach. For carrying out a meaningful analysis of jokes, an eclectic model is adopted. The data of the study consist of (25) electronic coronavirus English jokes. Only (10) are selected for data analysis. The analysis deals with jokes in terms of their types, principles breaking, and humor devices utilized to infer the meaning of the intended implicature. The jokes are analyzed according to Horn’s (1989/2004) neo-Gricean principles and Attardo’s (1997) Neo-Gricean distinction between two levels of cooperation: the illocutionary Cooperative Principle (ICP) and the Perlocutionary Cooperative Principle (PCP). A neo-Gricean type of principles breaking is conducted by adopting Thomas (1995). While humour devices are analyzed according to Dynel (2009). The data of the study were collected from WhatsApp, Facebook and some other network sources.
 Data analysis revealed that the (Quantity) Principle is more frequently broken than the (Relevance) Principle. The analysis showed that the ‘violation' of principles was more utilized type of breaking. In addition, ‘flouting’ and ‘opting out’ were also utilized in coronavirus jokes. As for humour devices, ‘sarcasm’, ‘irony’, ‘teasing’, and ‘self-denigrating’ were mostly used in Coronavirus jokes. This indicated that the major concern of the joke teller is criticism through humour.

Beyond laughter and smiles

“…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.…”

“…Specific to the language used in humour, Marfo et al (2022) found the use of localised terminologies related to COVID-19 in Ghana. Salman et al (2022) witnessed a violation of Gricean principles in the COVID-19 jokes. Ajayi & Akinrinlola (2021) found the language of these humorous posts filled with robust images.…”

“…Hussein & Aljamili 2020; Ajayi & Akinrinlola 2021; El-Shokrofy 2021; Lotfy & Soliman 2021; Nabea 2021; Ogoanah & Ojo 2021; Outley et al 2021; Raj & Jayaprakash 2021; Tunde Asiru & Bello 2021; Ukwueze & Igbokwe 2021; Wabende 2021; Kadri & Jumrah 2022;Salman et al 2022). This small sample size did not seem representative of the whole population and thus possibly resulted in sampling errors in some of the studies.…”

“…Outley et al 2021;Salman et al 2022), the remaining studies mainly considered the posts from the period between March 2020-May 2020, as can be seen in Figure4. Internet meme activity increased during the first lockdown phase(Priyadarshini et al 2021), March 2020-May 2020, which was imposed in most parts of the world.…”

“…The researchers employed various tools like Reddit API (de Saint Laurent et al 2022), Python (de Saint Laurent et al 2022; Dynel 2022), R Studio tool (Roig & Martorell 2021), Pushshift API(Barnes et al 2021), and Twitter Capture and Analysis Tool (TCAT)(Murru & Vicari 2021) to retrieve data from social media. However, certain studies did not specify their search strategy for finding and collecting the data(Outley et al 2020;Barnes et al 2021;Chłopicki & Brzozowska 2021;El-Shokrofy 2021;Al-Daher et al 2022;Salman et al 2022). Researchers employed online questionnaires(Glǎveanu & de Saint Laurent 2021;Younes & Altakhaineh 2022) and semi-structured interviews(Roig & Martorell 2021) to collect individuals' responses.…”