CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.0 Preamble
This study examines the pragmatics of comedy. Adrian Akmajian
conceives of pragmatics as a term that “covers the study of language
use, and in particular the study of linguistic communication, in
relation to language structure and context of utterance.”(361)When
Charles Morris proposed his famous trichotomy of syntax, semantics and
pragmatics, he defined the last as “the study of the relation of signs
to interpreters” (6). But he soon generalized this to “the relation of
signs to their users” (29). What this implies is that pragmatics
interprets meaning from the angle of the speaker (i.e. speaker-intended
meaning). When comedians use language, what acts are they performing?
What are the issues of politeness in their language use? These are some
of the questions this study will attempt to answer.
1.1 Background to the Study
The intricacies in language use have brought philosophers (first) and
then linguists (later) into the study of language. Although, the first
attempt made to study language was prescriptive, less technical,
superficial, unprofessional, shortsighted and weak, the Greek
philosophers provided the basis for which today’s linguists have made
rigorous and more serious researches into the complex nature of
language, its behaviour, and its workings from one society to the other
or from an individual to another.
Language may be studied from different perspectives. If the
substance of language is the focus of language study, then it is
referred to as phonetics/phonology and graphology. The former deals with
the phonics (sound) of a language and the latter deals with the graphs
or the written letters of the language. If the aspect of word formation
or word behaviour or word arrangement is the focus of language study, it
is referred to as morphology/syntax. However, if the context of
language and its function are the focus of study, then the study is
placed within semantic/pragmatic fields. This present study is situated
in the area of pragmatics.
Although semantics and pragmatics both study meaning, there has
been a number of attempts to fairly separate them. Leech observes that
“once meaning has been admitted to a central place in language, it is
notoriously difficult to exclude the way meaning varies from context to
context, and so semantics spills into pragmatics… Semanticists found
they had bitten more than they could chew” (2). However, linguists have
succeeded in delineating these two subfields. In doing this, Adegbite
dichotomizes them from the perspective of whole-to-part and
parts-to-whole. He claims that if semantics is given a wide coverage-
cognitive, social and contextual meaning, then pragmatics will be seen
as part of semantics (whole-to-part). But if it is given a narrow
coverage- cognitive meaning, then they are different parts that
constitute the study of meaning as whole (parts-to-whole). It is in line
with this that pragmatics is seen as covering those areas uncovered by
semantics.
Scholars generally conceive of Pragmatics as the study of meaning in
context from the angle of the speaker. It centres on how meaning varies
from one context to another despite sameness of expressions. It may also
be seen as the study of the speaker-intended meaning as against the
sentence meaning so that a sentence may mean one thing but the speaker
has made it to have another meaning conforming to his or her thought.
This is why the listener or the audience continuously searches for the
speaker meaning from the speaker’s utterances. This causes him or her to
ask questions like: Why did he say so? Does he mean that …? and so on
bearing in mind that it is the meaning in the speaker’s mind that
prompts the utterance. Pragmatics has a wide coverage of language use
ranging from speech acts, cooperative principles, sequencing, to
politeness principles and so on. Speech acts and Politeness principles
which are parts of the most discussed pragmatic subjects constitute the
focus of this study.
In speech act, language is used to perform a variegated number of
functions. It is used to socialise or to desocialise, to organise or
disorganise, to cause affection or disaffection, to start war or to
maintain peace, to foster harmony or disharmony, and so on. In the words
of Parikh, “When we use language, we typically use it to communicate
information. The two dimensions of communication and aboutness
correspond to two constraints, communicative and informational. These
two constraints interconnect and jointly enable us to use language to
communicate information” (3). Perhaps, Parikh’s two language indices,
communicative and informational, mean more than they appear. Language is
used to communicate our intentions, feelings, thoughts, agreements,
disagreements, and so on but the way language is used probably relays
communicativeness more than the language content itself. Consider
‘sorry’ made with a soft tone and the one made with a harsh tone.
Whereas the content of the expression in the two instances remains the
same, the communicativeness in either varies. More so, whereas the basis
of language is to use it to share information, among many other things,
language may as well lose its informative power if it is not well
situated within its appropriate context or if the audience or other
interlocutors do share the same background knowledge. The idea that
language is used to do a lot of things, and that the meaning of forms
used to accomplish such acts is highly dependent on socio-cultural
context, was introduced into the discussion of linguistic meaning by
Malinowski (1923) and Firth (1968). During this time, sociologists and
sociolinguists have been particularly concerned with the use of language
to negotiate role-relationship, peer-solidarity, the exchange of turns
and the saving of face in conversation (Ayodabo 132). Speech act theory
which examines the use of language to perform a variety of functions is
an aspect of pragmatic study. With regard to the language of comedy, one
wonders what comedians are doing with words especially in their
creation of humour. This study will try to examine the place of speech
acts in the language of comedy.
Maintaining proper etiquette and speaking properly to a
person without offending him or her is what is referred to in
linguistics as politeness. Some define politeness as “being nice” to the
other party, and argue that when another says “I think I’m a good
teacher; what do you think?” Polite people respond “You’re great”, even
if they don’t think so. In this view, agreeing with another’s
self-praise is considered one of the “most fundamental rules of
politeness” (Nass 36). Yet while agreeableness may often accompany
politeness, it does not define it if one can be both agreeably impolite
and politely disagreeable. One can politely refuse, beg to differ,
respectfully object and humbly criticize, that is, disagree but still be
polite. Conversely, one can give charity to others yet be impolite,
that is, be kind but rude, (Whitworth & Liu 208).
To be polite also means, one must not be rude or offensive. One must
use proper words to convey something. Foul language can put off a
person. Also, one has to be choosy about words while conveying
something. Whatever has to be conveyed has to be conveyed in a subtle
manner (http://www.paggu.com). However, with regard to the language of
comedy, one wonders if politeness can ever find its way to the ways
comedians manipulate language to elicit perlocution from their audience.
It is not uncommon to find comedians ‘cracking jokes’ that may elicit
negative reactions from the audience. This is usually the case when
people tag such jokes as “expensive” as they can be rude, impolite,
crude, or inconsiderate of the feelings of the audience. This was the
situation when the former First Lady of Nigeria, Dame Patience Jonathan,
was at logger head with veteran comedian, Ali Baba, for making an
“expensive” joke about the First Lady. Still, there are situations where
the audience responds positively to such “expensive” jokes especially
when one considers the sociology of language from the perspective of
male-female talk or sexist language. Here, the researcher means that
even when the males make impolite or negative comments about the
females, they (females) tend to appreciate it.This is another form of
linguistic violence against women.
According to Adetunji, linguistic violence (LV) is a
concept used to capture the psychological and social use of any instance
of language to abuse, offend, or hurt somebody or people. It emphasizes
the linguistic situation of two people or groups symmetrically along
the lines of power or status, whereby one person or group occupies a
higher, and therefore, oppressive position in relation to the other
(20). Gay has classified LV into three broad types-subtle, abusive, and
grievous-in a continuum stretching from the minimally intensive to the
maximally intensive. Subtle LV concerns an unconscious use of language
by persons or groups to subjugate other persons or groups. McGhee
submits that men from early childhood have the greater tendency than
women to use humour oppressively: boys learn to tell aggressive or
face-threatening, especially sexual jokes and girls grow up to just
laugh and be amused (Cited in Ugbabe 22). Thus, impoliteness in the
language of comedy can be another form of sexist language or gender bias
especially if it is used by the males to consciously or unconsciously
oppress the females. This work prefers to look at the place of
politeness in the language of comedy as an aspect of pragmatic study.
1.2 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of this study is to describe the language of
comedy from a pragmatic approach. The objectives of the study are:
i. to describe the pragmatic features of the language of comedy
ii. to discuss politeness issues in the language of comedy
iii. to discuss the acts performed in the language of comedy.
1.3 Significance of the
Study
This study focuses on the pragmatics of comedy. The study is significant in the following ways:
i. It describes the language of comedy from a pragmatic approach, which to the knowledge of
this researcher, has not been done before.
ii. It examines issues of politeness in the language of comedy.
iii. It examines the acts performed in the language of comedy.
iv. It will describe the linguistic features of the language of comedy.
v. It will serve as a resource material for students, teachers and
future researchers who may want to carry out similar research in
pragmatics.
vi. The study is also significant for its contribution to knowledge in the field of pragmatics.
1.4 Problem Statement
This study is an analysis of the pragmatics of comedy. It
is not uncommon knowledge about the role of comedy in society.
Comedians manipulate language to create humour to make people laugh and
this creates medicinal, physical and psychological effects on the
audience. However, perhaps, the language of comedy, as known to this
researcher, is one that has been barely described by linguists in the
past, let alone from a pragmatic perspective; this research sets out to
describe the language of comedy from a pragmatic approach using Bovi and
Basket Mouth as case studies. The problem to be resolved in this
research is covered in the research questions below.
1.5 Research Methodology
This study is a descriptive analysis of the language of
comedy from a pragmatic approach. The study adopts politeness principles
and the speech act theory in its discussion of the language of comedy.
The data is limited to selected comedies of Bovi and Basket Mouth
streamed on YouTube and the responses (comments) of viewers. This means
that the internet will provide a useful source of data for this study as
primary data, while linguistic textbooks, journal articles, magazines
and periodicals will serve as the secondary sources of information.
1.6 Scope and Limitation
This study comes under the purview of pragmatics. However, pragmatics
is a broad field which covers a lot of subfields or subjects. This
study is limited to the areas of politeness principles and speech acts
in describing the language of comedy.
1.7 Research Questions
The study shall be guided by the following research questions:
i. What are the pragmatic features of the language of comedy?
ii. Are there politeness issues in the language of comedy?
iii. What are the types of acts performed in the language of comedy?
1.8 Motivation of the Study
Comedians have manipulated language to create humour for the interest
of their audience. Their role in society cannot be over emphasized.
However, to the best of this researcher’s knowledge, linguists have paid
little or no attention to the description of the language of comedians
especially from a pragmatic standpoint. One wonders what act they
perform whenever they use language and what are the issues of politeness
that describe their language use? These questions motivated this study.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 Introduction
This chapter reviews past literature in pragmatics. It discusses,
among other things, issues of politeness in pragmatics, speech act
theory, the place of humour in pragmatics, pragmatics in the media, and
the biographies of Bovi and Basket Mouth.
2.1 Pragmatics: An Overview
Norrick (4) conceives of pragmatics as the study of the
context-dependent aspects of meaning which are systematically abstracted
away from in the construction of logical form. In the semiotic
trichotomy developed by Morris, Carnap, and Peirce in the 1930’s, syntax
addresses the formal relations of signs to one another, semantics the
relation of signs to what they denote, and pragmatics the relation of
signs to their users and interpreters.
According to Wolfram and Norrick (2), even though its roots can be
traced back to early classical traditions of rhetoric and stylistics, to
Immanuel Kant’s conception of pragmatics as empirical and purposive and
to William James, who pointed out its practical nature, modern
pragmatics is a fairly recent discipline. Its inauguration as an
independent field of study within semiotics took place early in the 20th
Century by C. Morris, R. Carnap and ultimately C.S. Peirce. The classic
division between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics goes back to Morris,
who distinguished three separate “dimensions of semiosis” within his
science of signs. According to Morris (21-22), one may study the
relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable.
This relation will be called the semantical dimension of semiosis, symbolized by the sign ‘DSEM’; the study of this dimension will be called semantics. Or the subject of study may be the relation of signs to interpreters. This relation will be called the pragmatical dimension of semiosis, symbolized by the sign ‘DP’; the study of this dimension will be named pragmatics.
One important relation of signs has not yet been introduced: the formal
relations of signs to one another. […] This third dimension will be
called the syntactical dimension of semiosis, symbolized by the sign ‘DSYN’, and the study of this dimension will be named syntactics.
Morris attempts to separate semantics, pragmatics and syntax in the
evaluation of linguistic meaning by also noting their point of
convergence. According to Norrick (2), syntax studies the relations
signs bear to other signs, semantics the relation between signs and
objects, and pragmatics the relation between signs and their
interpreters. Of course, there were and are differences of opinion on
where exactly to draw the line between semantics and pragmatics. Some
thirty years elapsed before pragmatics finally made its way into modern
linguistics in the late 1960s, when linguists began to explore the
performance phenomena. To this end, they adopted ideas developed and
advanced by L. Wittgenstein, G. Ryle, P. Strawson, J.L. Austin and other
eminent (ordinary or natural) language philosophers. It seems safe to
claim that the ensuing ‘pragmatic turn’ was most notably induced by J.L.
Austin, J.R. Searle and H.P. Grice, who were interested in utterance
meaning rather than sentence or word meaning, i.e. in studying unique
historical events created by actual speakers to perform linguistic acts
in actual situational contexts in order to accomplish specific goals.
Other scientific movements that nourished pragmatics include
anthropology (B. Malinowski, P. Wegener, A. Gardiner), contextualism
(J.R. Firth), functionalism (K. Buhler, R. Jakobson, D. Hymes),
ethnomethodology (H. Garfinkel, E. Goffman, H. Sacks) and European
sociology (J. Habermas). Since the pragmatic turn, pragmatics has
developed more rapidly and diversely as a linguistic discipline. Since
the 1970s, the early Anglo-American framework of pragmatic-linguistic
study has been immensely expanded and enhanced by research in
Continental Europe and elsewhere. With historiographic hindsight, it can
be seen that the broadening, i.e. the interdisciplinary expansion, of
the field of pragmatics has been a cumulative process; the broader
conception of pragmatics chronologically (and
causally) followed the narrower one.
Despite its scientific acclaim, the notion of pragmatics remains
somewhat enigmatic and is still difficult to define. This holds for its
readings in everyday discourse as well as in scholarly contexts.
Nonetheless, when people refer to attitudes and modes of behaviour as
pragmatic, they mean that they have a factual kind of orientation in
common. People who act pragmatically or take a pragmatic perspective
generally have a preference for a practical, matter of fact and
realistic rather than a theoretical, speculative and idealistic way of
approaching imminent problems and handling everyday affairs. To put it
differently, they share a concrete, situation-dependent approach geared
to action and usage rather than an abstract, situation-indespendent and
system-related point of view. To assume a pragmatic stance in everyday
social encounters as well as in political, historical and related kinds
of discourse, means to handle the related affairs in a goal-directed and
object-directed, common-sense and down to earth kind of way. Such an
understanding of pragmatics as an attitude in non-scientific discourse
has obviously left its traces in scientific definitions of the term. By
and large, one can say that in semiotics and philosophy, pragmatic
characterizes those theoretical and methodological approaches that are
oriented toward use and context rather than toward some system, and that
they regard use and context as creating a high degree of analytical
surplus.
While essentially the same is true for linguistics in general, there
is no commonly accepted definition of pragmatics in linguistics which
would refer to a single, unified and homogeneous field of study. In
contemporary linguistics, scholars can identify a narrow and a broad way
of delineating pragmatics (of which the former is sometimes allocated
to an “Anglo-American” and the latter to a “Continental [European]”
tradition of pragmatics, (Huang, xi). According to the narrow view,
Wolfram and Norrick (2) observe that pragmatics is understood as the
systematic investigation of what and how people mean when they use
language as a vehicle of action in a particular context and with a
particular goal in mind. Thus, the context-dependency of utterance
meaning is the central component of more narrowly defined accounts of
pragmatics, which focus on a few key issues that can be juxtaposed with
related issues in other modules of language theory such as grammar and
semantics. Those issues include indexicality/deixis (versus anaphora),
presuppositions, implicatures (versus entailments) and speech acts
(versus types of sentences), to name only the most conspicuous topics.
According to Wolfram and Norrick (4), in a much broader point of
view, pragmatics is the scientific study of all aspects of linguistic
behaviour. In particular, pragmatics includes patterns of linguistic
actions, language functions, types of inferences, principles of
communication, frames of knowledge, attitude and belief, as well as
organizational principles of text and discourse. Wolfram (3) summarizes
the thrust of pragmatics as a discipline which deals with
meaning-in-context, which for analytical purposes can be viewed from
different perspectives (that of the speaker, the recipient, the analyst,
etc.). It bridges the gap between the system side of language and the
use side, and relates both of them at the same time.
2.2 Speech Act Pragmatics
Pragmatic theory has drawn inspiration from logic. It draws mainly
upon philosophy of language and ‘the theory of speech act’ in
particular, as well as the analysis of conversations and of cultural
differences in verbal interaction. Just as the rules governing semantic
interpretation respect the classes of syntactic structure, the operation
that turns discourse into acts might also be called a pragmatic
interpretation of utterances (van Dijk cited in Ayodabo 133).
Blakemore (18) is cited as saying that pragmatic theory
is concerned with the mental structure underlying the ability to
interpret utterances in context. The suggestion that pragmatic theory
involves abstracting away from the particular properties of the
situation in which it is put to use is not meant to conflict with the
generally accepted view that pragmatics is the study of utterances or
sentences in use. The whole point of pragmatic theory is to explain how
the context is used in the interpretation of an utterance (Ayodabo 133).
According to Kempson (561), pragmatics is the study of
the general cognitive principles involved in the retrieval of
information from an uttered sequence of words. Lawal sees pragmatics as
evolving as a result of the limitations of structural semantics to
capture satisfactorily the sociological and other non-linguistic
dimensions of verbal communication. What is usually meant by saying that
we do something when we make an utterance is that we accomplish some
specific social acts (for example, making a promise, request, giving
advice, etc.) usually called speech acts (Dijk 195), or more
specifically, illocutionary acts. He adds that a global differentiation
between the various kinds of acts involved is made by the distinction
between a locutionary act, a propositional act, and an illocutionary
act, and in some cases, a perlocutionary act (Ayodabo 196).
Speech act theorists have classified speech acts in
different ways. Austin (1962), the forerunner of this field, classified
them into five categories of ‘verdictives,’ ‘exercitives’,
‘commissives’, ‘behabitives’ and ‘expositives’. Searle’s (1969)
categories is based on the argument that Austin’s classification is
deficient, in that there was too much overlap in Austin’s (1962)
classification; based on that observation and some others, Searle (1969)
came up with the classes of assertives, directives, commissives,
expressives and declaratives, with various sub-categories and
definitions (Ayodabo 134).
In Sadock’s view, the most straight-forward way in which
our intended locution can be communicated is to mention directly what we
are doing in making a particular utterance. He adds that the factors
that determine whether a particular illocutionary act succeeds are
termed felicity conditions, maintaining that in the majority of cases,
the illocutionary force of an utterance is not signaled by a perfomative
formula.
Bach and Harnish (197) criticized certain aspects of
earlier theories, claiming that intention and inference are basic
elements to understanding. They also came up with the notion of
presumption. In their opinion, both linguistic and communication
circumstances are presumed. They recognized two main categories of
illocutionary acts: communicative, with four main categories of
constatives, directives, commissives and acknowledgements, and
non-communicative class with two subcategories of effectiveness and
verdictives.
Trauggot and Pratt classified illocutionary acts into
Representatives, Expressives, Verdictives, Directives, Commissives, and
Declaratives, the sub-categories of which they also defined and
explained. The centre-point of their theory as noted by Ayodabo is that a
speaker’s communicative competence includes not just knowledge of what
illocutionary acts can be performed in the language, but also, how,
when, where and by whom they can be performed (134).
Adegbija’s major grouse with previous speech act theories
is that they relegated the pragmatics of a situation of social
interaction to the background. He states that at every stage of
discourse, both speaker(s) and hearer(s) have to mobilize appropriate
areas of the pragmatic, social, syntactic, semantic, and lexical
competencies in order to be able to participate effectively in the
interaction at hand (Cited in Ayodabo 134). Leech (183), writing under
‘varieties of illocutionary function’, classifies illocutionary
functions into four types of competitive, convivial, collaborative and
conflictive. To leech, a perlocutionary act is performed by saying
something.
Allan, relying heavily on the works of Austin (1962),
Searle (1969), and Bach and Harnish (1979), observes that language comes
into existence only because someone performs an act of speaking or
writing. He presents a scheme for analyzing the meaning of a speech act,
in which there is a hierarchy among the acts, that is, the
perlocutionary act presupposes a denotational act which presupposes a
locutionary act which presupposes an utterance act. Allan’s (1986)
classification follows Bach and Harnish’s (1979) work in terms of
identifying ‘interpersonal acts’ and ‘declaratory acts’. Allan, however,
justifies the major category distinction between interpersonal and
declaratory acts by sub-classifying interpersonal acts into constatives,
predictive, commissives, acknowledgements, directives, authoritative;
and declaratory acts into effective and verdictives, totaling eight
categories of speech act, as against five found in Austin (1962), six in
Searle (1975), and four of Bach and Harnish (1979).
Lawal (192) identifies the pragmatic mappings of general factual
knowledge of the world, local factual knowledge, socio-cultural
knowledge, and knowledge of context as useful for constructing meaning
out of an utterance. He adds that an understanding of the mapping helps
to illustrate that a pragmatic interpretation of utterances goes beyond
the meaning of lexical components and the structural semantic relations
among them. Lawal’s (1995) ‘Aspects of Pragmatic Theory’ focuses on both
the surface structure of an utterance as well as the background
structure.
Ayodabo’s work was able to espouse the aspects of
pragmatic theory captured by Lawal and how these can be applied to
texts. Ayodabo noted that illocutionary acts, typically, do not come
alone. They are part of a sequence of actions in general, or of a
sequence of speech acts in particular. This sequence must satisfy the
usual conditions for action sequence. Thus, it may be required that the
final state of some speech act is a necessary condition for the success
of a following act. In this sense, an illocutionary act may be an
auxiliary act (135).
Just like another in general, Dijk (238) opines that
speech act sequencing requires planning and interpretation. In other
words, certain sequence of various speech acts may be intended and
understood, and hence function socially, as one speech act. Such a
speech act performed by a sequence of speech acts is called a “global
speech act” or “macro speech act”
(Ayodabo 136).
Sequences in monologue or dialogue conversations may be
assigned a global speech act through some conditions. Firstly, as Dijk
says, by “deleting irrelevant or predictable information” (239). For
such speech acts as well as for actions in general, this would mean that
preparatory and auxiliary speech acts may be deleted, as well as those
component speech acts which, taken together, desire the essential
component of the resulting global speech acts. Similarly, Dijk adds that
expressions of mental states and context descriptions may be deleted,
although they may determine the acceptability of the speech act.
Finally, the speech acts establishing, maintaining and concluding the
sequence, that is, the communicative interaction in general, may also be
dropped in macro-interpretation.
2.3 Humour in Pragmatics
The tendency of some particular cognitive experiences to
provoke laughter and provide amusement can be termed humour. The term
derived from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught
that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (from
Latin - body fluid) controlled human health and emotion. Most people are
able to experience humour ̶ be amused, smile or laugh at something
funny ̶ and thus are considered to have a sense of humour. The
hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the
behaviour induced by humour to be inexplicable, strange or even
irrational. Though intimately decided by personal taste, the extent to
which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables,
including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education,
intelligence and context. For instance, young children may favour puppet
shows or cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, whose physical nature makes it
accessible to them. By contrast, sophisticated forms of humour such as
satire require an understanding of its social meaning and context and
thus tend to appeal to the mature audience.
Many theories exist about what humour is and what social
function it serves. The prevailing types of theories attempting to
account for the existence of humour include psychological theories, the
vast majority of which consider humour-induced behaviour to be very
healthy; spiritual theories, which may for instance, consider humour to
be a “gift from God”; and theories which consider humour to be an
unexplainable mystery, very much like a mystical experience (Raymond
Smullyan, 1).
The benign-violation theory, endorsed by Peter McGraw, attempts to
explain humour’s existence. The theory says that humour only occurs when
something seems wrong, unsettling, or threatening, but simultaneously
seems okay, acceptable or safe (2). Humour can be used as a method to
easily engage in social interaction by taking away that awkward,
uncomfortable or uneasy feeling of social interactions. Others believe
that the appropriate use of humour can facilitate social interactions.
Humour is a ubiquitous, highly ingrained and largely meaningful aspect
of human experience and is therefore decidedly relevant in
organizational contexts, such as the work place. The significant role
that laughter and fun play in organizational life has been seen as a
sociological phenomenon and has increasingly been recognized as also
creating a sense of involvement among workers (Wikipedia 2014). Sharing
humour at work not only offers a relief from boredom, but can also build
relationships, improve camaraderie between colleagues and create
positive effect. It may also relieve tension and can be used as a coping
strategy. Sharing a laugh with a few colleagues may improve moods and
bring out quality of work.
Humour has a medicinal effect of decreasing stress,
reducing tensions, killing boredoms and prolonging people’s life span.
The financial benefit of humour is an understatement. Rich comedians are
making a living off cracking jokes in Nigeria today among which Bovi
and Basket Mouth have made names for themselves. Humour can be made out
of the most serious events or situations. For instance, Nigerian standup
comedians today make jokes out of national situations or ridicules
public figures to create jokes. A case in point is the former first
lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, whose idiosyncratic language use has
provided much reference points for Nigerian comedians at all levels.
However, some of the jokes created out of this language situation have
not been taken likely when they are used out of context. This explains
the strained relationship between the former first lady and veteran
standup comedian, Ali Baba. Context in humour is vital and this is where
pragmatics may come in.
In literature, humour is mostly satiric as writers try to
lampoon, satirize or use sarcasm to change certain societal excesses.
The driving force of every humour is language or one of the basic
aspects of humour is language. Language can be manipulated for stylistic
and humorous effect. However, a joke made or words spoken as humorous
must be context based. Jokes and humorous statements can stir up trouble
if not applied to the right context. Therefore, the place of humour in
pragmatics will be the application of humorous languages in their
appropriate social context.
2.4 Politeness Issues in Pragmatics and the Media
For a lay person, to be polite means, one must not be rude or
offensive. One must use proper words to convey something as foul
language can put off a person. Also one has to be choosy about words
while conveying something. Whatever has to be conveyed has to be
conveyed in a subtle manner (http://www.paggu.com). Although politeness
as a research area of pragmatics and sociolinguistics was initiated by
Brown and Levinson more than 30 years ago, it seems to be a topic which
still offers enough space for new definitions and theoretical frameworks
within which researchers concentrate on various politeness strategies
and also language devices used for their manifestations, often in
different languages, cultures, (Válková 208), and perhaps, media. Such
studies on politeness have adopted one of three views – “traditional”
(Lakoff 1973, Brown and Levinson 1987[1978], Leech, 1983); “post-modern”
(Eelen 2001, Mills 2003, Watts 2003); and ‘frame-based view’
(Terkourafi 2001). For instance, after the emergence of the traditional
view of politeness came the postmodern and frame-based views which were
all borne out of dissatisfactions with the earlier theories. Initially,
emphasis was on the place of politeness in physical human interactions,
gradually however, and with the advent of the internet and social media
in recent time, researchers’ attentions are shifting to studying
politeness in machine mediated human interactions and how perceived
distance affect use of politeness among others, (Hoffmann, Krämer,
Lam-chi, and Kopp, 2009).
Among such salient evolving dimension to politeness
studies is the delving into its relationships with social network
(media)–a computer based communications. Social network according to
Redbridge Marketing (208) is an “online communities of people who
typically share a common interest in activity”. Those web sites that
provide opportunity for the users with such platform is called social
networking sites. The sites enable users ‘to interact, allow visitors to
send e – mails, post content, build web content and or take part in
live chat (YALSA, 2007). Explaining the social network frontiers, Taylor
Nelson Sofres (TNS), The Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU) and Marketing
Evolution (2007) remarked that Social Networking represents: a fad,
especially among the young and technologically obsessed; an
unprecedented tool for keeping in touch with friends and family; a
disruptive, unscripted environment; an un paralleled opportunity for
brands and consumer to make real connections; and some combination of
all of the above and then some. Sometimes, social networking sites allow
users to set up online profile or personal home pages and develop an
online Social Network, (Gbadeyan 208). Examples of social networking
sites include but not limited to Facebook, Myspace, Stream, Twitter, and
Google+, YouTube, etc.
The data for this study is drawn from YouTube streaming
and the reactions from the viewers to elicit the perlocution. To assess
politeness issues in YouTube’s social network, however, it must be
defined in information terms. If politeness is “considering others”,
then since different societies “consider” differently, what is polite in
one culture can be rude in another, (Whitworth and Liu, 208). Given no
universal “polite behaviour”, there seems to be no basis to query the
politeness in social media like on YouTube. Yet while different
countries have different laws, the goal of fairness that underlies the
law can be attributed to every society (Rawls 201). Likewise, different
cultures could have different “etiquettes”, but a common goal of
politeness. Nevertheless, while each society may “implement” a different
etiquette, politeness remains the common “design goal”, just as
legitimacy is the “spirit” behind laws that vary in detail between
societies, (Whitworth and Liu 208).
If politeness can take different forms in different societies, to ask
which implementation applies online is to ask the wrong question. The
right question is how to “reinvent” politeness in each specific online
case, whether for chat, wiki, email or other groupware, (Whitworth and
Liu 208). Just as each different physical society develop local
etiquettes and laws, so different communication medium may need a
different politeness implementation especially online, based on a
general design “pattern”, specifying politeness in information terms
(Alexander 164).
Since this study relies on data from YouTube, it is not
out of place to discuss in brief, this online communication medium.
Another way to interact and share personal content with others is on
YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing site (Huang et al. 210).
YouTube was founded in 2005 and their vision is to “give everyone a
voice, to evolve video, and to make partners and advertisers successful”
(Pressroom - YouTube). More than 65,000 videos are uploaded every day
and most videos uploaded are available to the public (Huang et al. 210).
On YouTube users can share their own videos, comment on uploaded
videos, rate them, and create video collections. The videos are
characterized. By that, they are mostly short and much information can
be collected by the description and the comments on the videos (Huang et
al. 210).
YouTube can be a trigger for a crisis, since hundreds or thousands of
people can reach it. The videos that are uploaded can also be viewed
repeatedly. United Airlines is a company, which have had problem with
negative videos on YouTube (González-Herrero & Smith 2008).
2.5 Politeness Theory
Attempts to give an in-depth description of how human beings
understand others and how they make themselves understood have led
researchers across diverse disciplines- philosophy, rhetoric,
communication arts, linguistics and so on- into theorizations. For the
linguist, there must be a scientific procedure leading to an empirical
result in giving such a description. It is against this that Austin
propounded his Speech Act Theory; Grice presented his Cooperative
Principle, Leech, Brown and Levinson, Lakoff and so on dwelt on
Politeness Theory, at least from a pragmatic perspective.
It is, however, important to mention that, more often than not, one
theory of locutionary description serves as bedrock for another. While
Austin approached his theory from a speech-action perspective, and Grice
from speaker-listener cooperation perspective, Leech, Brown and
Levinson, Lakoff and others approach their theory from direct-indirect
meaning perspective. They are often concerned about why speakers
sometimes consider expressing their thoughts in an indirect manner. This
is what underlies politeness theory.
Just as it is applicable to almost all linguistic concepts, it has
always been a trouble finding a unified definition of politeness shared
by all despite the innumeracy of scholarship on the concept. This could
be partly because of the labyrinth of usages the term has been put to
over time. No wonder Papacharissi (204) described it as attributes that
are difficult to define but somehow, ‘we know them when we see them’.
The non-generality of definition of politeness notwithstanding, we can
still rely on scholars’ definitions in explaining the term.
From a layman’s perspective, politeness can be seen as behaviour that is respectful or
considerate to others. This layman’s view of politeness, however,
underlies many sociolinguistic definitions of the term. For instance,
Lakoff maintains that “to be polite is saying the socially correct
thing” (53), while in the words of Adegbija, politeness is associated
with situations in which one “speaks or behaves in a way that is
socially and culturally acceptable and pleasant to the hearer” (58).
Both Lakoff’s and Adegbija’s definitions reveal that there must be
certain cultural norms and values which people’s behaviour including
their speeches must conform to. One is only seen as polite if he or she
behaves or speaks the way it is stipulated within that culture.
Similarly, Ide views politeness as a cover term for behaviour “without
friction” (7), while Brown sees it as “saying and doing things in such a
way as to take into account the other person’s feeling” (114). By
‘without friction’, Ide probably means conformity (to norms). Brown is,
however, particular in his definition because he does not see politeness
as general. He, therefore, maintains that politeness is observed in
relation to ‘the other person’s feeling.’
Fraser and Nolen took a more general approach to defining the term
‘politeness.’ According to them, “to be polite is to abide by the rules
of the relationship. The speaker becomes impolite just in cases where he
(or she) violates one or more of the contractual terms” (96). Nwoye
shares similar view when he observed that “being polite is ...
conforming to socially agreed codes of good conduct” (310) and for
Watts, Ide, and Ehlich, politeness “help(s) us to achieve ‘effective
social living’” (2). It is important to mention here that these scholars
maintain that there may be a communication breakdown when codes of
conduct of the society are not respected in speech or behaviour.
2.6 Approaches to Politeness Theory Although
politeness is a research area of pragmatics and sociolinguistics
initiated by Brown and Levinson more than 30 years ago, it has emerged
to be a topic which still offers enough space for new definitions and
theoretical frameworks within which researchers concentrate on various
politeness strategies and also language devices used for their
manifestations, often in different languages and cultures, (Válková
208). While summarizing the theoretical approaches to politeness over
the past years, Fraser (223) identified four current perspectives: the
social-norm view, the conversational-maxim view, the face-saving view,
and the conversational contract view. These are discussed below:
2.6.1 The Social-Norm View
The ‘social-norm view’ refers to the normative view of politeness
seen as the social standards of behaviour in any society. It reflects
the historical understanding of politeness as embraced by Western
cultures. According to these standards, polite behaviour adheres to
rules of etiquette and rude behaviour contradicts these norms. This view
associates politeness with speech style, and connects a higher degree
of formality to greater politeness. There is controversy in the
literature regarding the status of this approach within approaches to
politeness. On the one hand is the extreme view which asserts that the
interpretation of politeness as the desire to be pleasant to others “has
no place within pragmatics” (Thomas 150). Fraser seems to hold a
similar opinion and states that this approach has few adherents in the
current research on politeness. It seems, however, that this
conceptualization of politeness can be seen as corresponding to another
view, that of “discernment politeness”, which has been proposed as the
underlying basis of politeness systems in non-Western cultures (Hill et
al. 196; Ide 189)