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Pragmatics of Humour in a Nigerian University's Departmental Chat Rooms

Pragmatics of Humour in a Nigerian University's Departmental Chat Rooms

Onwu Inya
Copyright: © 2016 |Pages: 17
ISBN13: 9781522503385|ISBN10: 1522503382|EISBN13: 9781522503392
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0338-5.ch011
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MLA

Inya, Onwu. "Pragmatics of Humour in a Nigerian University's Departmental Chat Rooms." Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication, edited by Rotimi Taiwo, et al., IGI Global, 2016, pp. 190-206. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0338-5.ch011

APA

Inya, O. (2016). Pragmatics of Humour in a Nigerian University's Departmental Chat Rooms. In R. Taiwo, A. Odebunmi, & A. Adetunji (Eds.), Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication (pp. 190-206). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0338-5.ch011

Chicago

Inya, Onwu. "Pragmatics of Humour in a Nigerian University's Departmental Chat Rooms." In Analyzing Language and Humor in Online Communication, edited by Rotimi Taiwo, Akinola Odebunmi, and Akin Adetunji, 190-206. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0338-5.ch011

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Abstract

This chapter develops an elaborated Pragmatic Act Model (ePAM) and applies it to humorous interactions in students' text chats in a Nigerian university. The model draws insights from Giora's Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH), Mey's Pragmatic Act theory and incorporates current issues in pragmatic theorising such as the dialectics between a priori and co-constructed, emergent intention. The data for the study is got from three departmental chat room interactions in Federal University of Technology, Akure. Four humour types are analysed: canned jokes, punning/wordplay, question and answer jokes, and hyperbole/overstatement. Similarly, five pragmatic acts are performed in the identified humour types, namely, satirising, eliciting laughter, electioneering, teasing and overstating. In each of the humour types, the pragmatic mechanism drawn upon to comprehend the joke and to perform the pragmatic acts is indicated. Overall, the chapter argues that the effective appreciation of any humour act would require a pragmatically and culturally enriched context.

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