Phonological distortion as a humorous strategy in Folarin Falana’s comedy skits

Abstract

Various studies exist on the social functions of humour and such studies have been carried out in diverse fields that range from the humanities to the sciences. In linguistics specifically, research shows that humour has been studied from the perspectives of syntax, pragmatics and semantics; moreover, there is a dearth of studies on the creation of humour through phonological processes. Therefore, this study aims to investigate humour and how it is achieved using phonological processes. The study engages mainly qualitative methods of analysis. Five comedy skits were purposively selected from Folarin Falana’s (Falz the Bahd Guy) eleven collections. These were chosen on the basis of their internet popularity among Nigerians; this popularity was determined on the basis of the rates of downloading the skits. McGraw & Warren’s (2010) Benign Violation Theory was used to account for the phonological violations in the comedies. The various phonological processes that were violated include liaison, deletion, insertion, monophthongisation, coalescence and vowel strengthening. It is argued that the phonological distortions are deliberately made to achieve humour in these Nigerian comedies, especially when the high educational level of the artist is considered. Also, there anti-Anglicism and pro-Nigerianism in the data as the artist identifies himself with Nigeria(ns) and creates a niche for himself in the entertainment industry using the phonological peculiarities among Nigerians’ language use, especially the Yoruba tribe. He also creates different personalities to project different messages which are not only peculiar to Nigeria but to the world, using these personalities to portray people’s feelings and views of the world and how these influence their attitudes.

Exploring the Barriers to and Motivators for Using Digital Mental Health Interventions Among Construction Personnel in Nigeria: Qualitative Study

“…Wilkins et al [ 54 ] noted that humor and laughter impart health and well-being. In the Nigerian context, comedy skits are a popular medium of humor, which generates laughter that helps mitigate depression and other stress reactions [ 55 ]. Agwu and Tiemo [ 54 ] reported that laughter and biofeedback are ways to cope with stress among construction personnel.…”

“…Agwu and Tiemo [ 54 ] reported that laughter and biofeedback are ways to cope with stress among construction personnel. Comedy is a big business in Nigeria, a menu served at nightclubs in Nigeria and has moved from stand-up to web-based skits [ 55 , 56 ]. This may be because they provide a way to distract Nigerians from the worsening socioeconomic conditions that stare them in the face.…”

exploration of phonological jokes in Maryam Apaokagi's selected comedy skits

“…Being a phenomenon that is present in very many cultures, humour has been studied in so many cultural contexts, and its cultural peculiarities are revealed in these different situations. Within the Nigerian context, humour has been studied in situation comedies (Bamgbose & Ehondor 2021;Sunday & Bamgbose 2021), stand-up comedies (Filani 2017;Soneye 2019), computer-mediated communication (Inya 2016), comedy skits (Adesoye 2018), literature (Alabi 2021) and even music (Bamgbose 2019). Its features, functions and strategies have also been explored in detail by several scholars.…”

“…In this context, comedy skits are an emerging sub-genre of comedy within digital content creation in Nigeria. It is fast attracting researchers' and even the government's attentionrecently, comedy skit makers were invited to the country's capital, Abuja, by the Nigerian Vice President for a collaboration (Adesoye 2018;API 2021). Specifically, Filani (2017) examined political humour in Nigeria within stand-up comedy.…”

“…It painted the picture that that was all there is to phonological humour and jokes, whereas there could be still more. Adesoye (2018) explored the distortion of phonemes and syllables to achieve humour in a Nigerian's comedy skits. The study used McGraw & Warren's (2010) Benign Violation Theory to account for the phonological violations in Folarin Falana's skits.…”