Phonological humor as perception and representation of foreignness

Basols, Javier Muñoz; Adrjan, Pawel; David, Marianne

doi:10.1075/pbns.231.10bas

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The Arabic culture itself constitutes the material for switching. There is a cultural message behind the switching practice (see Munoz-Basols et al, 2013). The second consideration is procedural.…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humor and the Creative Use of English Expressions in the Speech of University Students: A Case From Jordan

2020

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The present study examines the use of English lexical insertions to create humor by Jordanian university students. The data of the study are collected from spontaneous tape-recorded conversations from 62 participants of both males and females, representing different age groups (from 18–23 years old) and belonging to different specializations (e.g., engineering, pharmacy, mathematics, business, and English). The recorded conversations are qualitatively analyzed applying Auer’s sequential approach to code-switching to attain a local interpretation of lexical insertions for humor effect from English into Jordanian Arabic (JA). The findings of the study reveal that Jordanian university students exploit their bilingual repertoire to create humor by playfully and innovatively switching to English. This is shown to take place by unexpected switching points, a switching that flouts Arabic syntactic constraints, a violation of code-switching constraints, incongruity and incompatibility of translating Arabic culture-bound expressions to English, and imposing Arabic word formation templates to English insertions. Specifically, five patterns of code-switching of humor are found, namely, switching around the interrogative, playful affixation, phonological playfulness, haphazard calquing, and the imposition of Arabic morphological rules on English lexical insertions. The study argues that humorous insertions are in fact a marker of solidarity and an in-group membership. Humorous insertions are also shown not to contribute to the content of the message or the pragmatic meaning. Bilingual university students (of Arabic and English) purposefully make use of an additional linguistic resource to mock certain propositions.

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Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humor and the Creative Use of English Expressions in the Speech of University Students: A Case From Jordan

2020

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“…For instance, Muňoz-Basols et al (2013) explored the creation of humour through a parody of the sounds of other languages which is achieved through deliberate manoeuvre, mispronunciation, distortion, substitution and so on. Although this study gave a newer perspective to what a phonological joke is, different from Lew's one (1997), it is still quite restrictive.…”

Section: Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Okhuosi

2023

EJHR

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The majority of studies on Nigerian comedy are discourse- and pragmatics-related, despite the impact of phonology on humour creation as seminal studies have shown. These seminal studies describe phonological jokes to mean ambiguous utterances whose humour lies in their multiple phonological interpretations. However, comedy skits from Nigeria show that there are more dimensions to phonological jokes. Therefore, this study investigated the phonological jokes in comedy skits from Maryam Apaokagi, using Chomsky and Halle’s Distinctive Features and McGraw and Warren’s Benign Violation Theory. Twenty skits were purposively selected from the artist’s YouTube channel. Four strategies were identified in the data: minimal pairs, phonological restructuring, phonological ambiguity, and phonological extension. Four instances each of minimal pairs and phonological restructuring were identified; the former replaced phonemes in words, thus, changing their meanings, while the latter re-arranged phoneme sets and syllables to achieve new structures. There were two instances of phonological ambiguity where strings of sounds had multiple meanings; homophony was engaged to achieve rhythm and humour. Phonological extension had twenty-eight instances; it occurred when one character produced a syllable, and another extended it by providing a longer but partially similar word. Four types of phonological extensions were identified, and these were extension into regular words, popular names, concepts and other languages. The jokes portrayed socio-cultural and economic situations in Nigeria like poverty, promiscuity, high living costs, and burglary. Apaokagi used comedy to teach patience and tolerance. The comprehension of these jokes thrived on shared background knowledge between the artist and the audience.

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“…with prefixes or suffixes evoking the foreign sounds and languages connected with these places," and observes that other cultures and nations play similar games with place-names and phonemes in use elsewhere. 177 No observations are offered about how the snark of that cover has held up over time, its overarching implication that these funny-sounding, far-off places we are now required to think about, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, really aren't worth the trouble. All of this was before the United States entered two wars "Out There" that have cost thousands of lives and are not over yet.…”

Section: The Year In Theorizingmentioning

confidence: 99%