HUMOUR STRATEGIES, LINGUISTIC AND MULTIMODAL DEVICES IN TWO NIGERIAN SITUATION COMEDIES, JENIFA’S DIARY AND PROFESSOR JOHNBULL

Abstract

Humour, which is associated with entertainment and amusement, is a veritable tool for the evaluation and correction of a society’s socio-political shortcomings. Studies on situation comedies (sitcoms) in Nigeria have focused on the social and ideological issues. However, adequate attention has not been given to humour strategies, linguistic devices and multimodal cues. The study was designed to examine linguistic devices, humour strategies and multimodal cues deployed by characters in Jenifa’s Diary and Professor JohnBull,with a view to identifying different categories of humour and accounting for the linguistic complexity of humour creation in characters’ dialogues. Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory, complemented by Kress and van Leuwen’s Social Semiotic Approach to Multimodality and Jacob Mey’s Pragmatic Acts Theory, was adopted. An interpretive design was used. The available seasons one to ten were selected from Jenifa’s Diary (Diary), while the available seasons one to five were selected from Professor JohnBull (JohnBull). The sample from Diary is larger because it has more seasons than JohnBull. Diary and JohnBull were purposively selected on the grounds of their humour potential, popularity and availability for download. Data were subjected to pragmatic analysis. Layering and relating concepts, implicature and audience’s responsibility, assumptions from processing previous discourse and stereotyped cultural representations are the humour strategies employed.The joking frame is conveyed through the manipulation of the properties of texts and the sociocultural factors such as sense relations and shared knowledge. Phonological, lexical, syntactic and discourse features constitute the linguistic devices that were employed by the characters. Homophony such as ‘sees’and ‘seize’; initialism, with ‘RSVP’ interpreted as ‘Rice and Stew Very Plenty’; and homonymy, instantiated by the dual usage of ‘saw’as a verb and as a tool are more evident in Diary. Collocations such as the incongruous combination of words in ‘Your words rub off on me like baby oil’ are better deployed in JohnBull. Diary features more usages of homophones that are generated through mispronunciations by Jenifa, while JohnBull has more instances of collocations resulting from Professor JohnBull’s wide vocabulary. Syntactic features like stoicism,with remarks like ‘Introducson yourself’; and embolophrasia, instantiated by ‘surprise and surbeans’ are also deployed, with the former being more prominent in Diary because of Jenifa’s linguistic incompetence and the latter being almost equally deployed in both sitcoms.Multimodal cues like incongruous dressing, props, gesture and gaze are identified. Dressing is more pronounced in Diary due to Jenifa’s low sophistication, while JohnBull has more instances of gaze and gesture, resulting from its more humorous characters. Contrived intentional, involuntary, unintended and non-intentional humour types dominate the two sitcoms. The humour potential of these linguistic devices is foregrounded through the techniques of punning, allusion, retort, putdowns, teasing and register clash. The practs of warning, informing, advising and satirising address domestic violence, indecent dressing, electioneering and state of infrastructures in Nigeria. Jenifa’s Diary and ProfessorJohnBull variously deploy stoicism, exaggerated language, gesture, gaze and practs to engender humour. The Nigerian socio-political problems addressed under the guise of humour could also be rectified through this medium