A Pragmatic Approach In The Analysis Of Verbal Humour: A Case Study Of Athiani Fm Radio Presenter, Sammy Mulinge

Abstract

Humour is probably the most fundamental element of enriching human life. Therefore, humour is one of the things greatly enjoyed by the human race irrespective of age, class, level of education, country, culture, and gender thus it is universal. The main of this study was to look at verbal humour and specifically to identify humour exhibited by one Kikamba Radio Presenter named Sammy Mulinge of Athiani FM. It aimed at analyzing how Mulinge‟s jokes were perceived as humorous through the tenets of the Relevance theory. Moreover, it tried to find out if metaphor, irony, and hyperbole intentionally created humorous effects and established whether stereotypes were humorous. The methodology consisted of taping the informant using a sound and CD recorder to collect 9 Sammy Mulinge‟s Kikamba jokes aired in his weekly Radio Program: Too wa Athiani (“sleep of investigators”) on Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:20 pm to midnight respectively between the month of May to August 2016. The data was then translated and analyzed using the concept of incongruity which is important in any form of humour since humourous effects are achieved from the incongruous resolution. The study also determined how the humourist intention to create humorous effects was expressed through explicatures and implicatures. The study demonstrated that Kikamba jokes achieve humourous effects by use of metaphors, stereotypes, irony, and hyperbole which assisted Sammy Mulinge‟s audience to unravel his communicative intention