A Linguistic Analysis of Humor Related to COVID-19 in Jordanians Hashtags

Sukayna  Ali; Bushra  Abu Faraj

doi:10.35516/hum.v49i6:.4035

Authors

Sukayna Ali Department of English Language and Literature, School of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.
Bushra Abu Faraj Department of English Language and Literature, School of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v49i6:.4035

Keywords:

Hashtags, humor, pandemic, COVID-19, linguistic humor

Abstract

This study explores Jordanians’ hashtags related to COVID-19 that aim at creating a sense of humor on Facebook. To achieve the aim of this research, a sample was collected randomly from the Facebook posts based on four popular hashtags that had been widely used among Jordanian society since the outbreak of COVID-19 until the present day. The hashtags selected for this study are "all humanity," "dried and died," "bats’ Sajiyeh" and “I will let my father interfere”. The results of the study reveal that Jordanians mostly use these hashtags to create humor rather than to convey news stories. The results also show that Jordanians commonly use two types of humor: language-based and reference-based. In the first type, they use linguistic devices that include phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In contrast, in reference-based humor, some cultural and religious references were employed.

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