“Happy wives” and “sad husbands”

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic (a global health emergency) following its ravaging spread and increasing death toll that led to the unprecedented multi-sectoral crisis and collateral damage. These, and the non-discovery of reliable therapeutic medicines combined to generate rising fears and tension across the globe. To cope with these realities, discourse participants devised humorous expressions to create laughter, ease tension and melt fears. The paper seeks to examine the contextual usage of such humorous expressions used in Nigeria, particularly in Calabar, that denote the sociolinguistic milieu, and shared knowledge and experience of the interactants. The study adopts Relief and Encryption Theories of Humour because the theories account for the situational appropriateness of the humorous expressions as “coping devices” in coherence with the cognitive, linguistic, situational and social contexts. Data were generated by means of participant observation in on-site and virtual interactions in social media platforms. Findings show that COVID-19 pandemic has exerted irresistible pressure on language resources that stimulated the creation of humorous expressions as coping needs for the consequential circumstance. Specifically, the humorous expressions such as “happy wives”, “sad husbands”, “side chicks are hungry” among others were regularly and contextually deployed for comic reliefs and cognitive recreations to stimulate laughter in crisis. Linguistically, the expressions are devised English structures and other constructs with codemixed elements derived from the registers of several discourse domains that reflect the Nigerian sociolinguistic environment. The constructs are therefore modelled to demystify the pandemic and unify interactants in order to ease tension and cope with the realities of the preventive and survival protocols.

Beyond laughter and smiles

“…Almost 69 per cent of the reviewed studies analysed the humorous posts in the context of their respective countries, targeted at diverse social groups. As established by Uwen & Ushie (2022), these humorous expressions are communicated through heterogeneous linguistic codes in different social contexts. Future research can provide insights into the sociocultural and sociolinguistic factors responsible for the linguistic choices in communicating COVID-19 humour among various social groups.…”

“…Most of these were non-Western countries, and Nigeria was the most studied one. As discussed by Ukwueze & Igbokwe (2021) and Uwen & Ushie (2022), the reason behind this could be the Nigerian temperament of amusing themselves by creating humour to fill the lack of the basic amenities that make for a good life and that COVID-19 offered yet another crisismotivated opportunity to practise this psychic identity of Nigerians. Additionally, researchers observed that some Nigerians were sceptical about the reality of the pandemic (Tunde Asiru & Bello 2021) and considered the guidelines published by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as ridiculous, hence the humorous responses found on social media (Ogoanah & Ojo 2021).…”

“…Mahat-Shamir & Kagan (2022) found that humour was used to connect to cultural worldviews, as a means for inclusion in a social group, and as a means to gain a sense of control. Many researchers stated that humorous posts serve as a beneficial coping mechanism (Ajayi & Akinrinlola 2021;Uwen & Ushie 2022) and help maintain emotional well-being (Hussein & Aljamili 2020;Marfo et al 2022). According to El-Shokrofy (2021), humour educates and instructs in times of crisis.…”

“…As the global community has been facing the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals have relied on social media for interaction, information, social connections, humour, leisure, and convenience. The pandemic has placed irresistible pressure on language resources that encouraged creating humorous expressions to cope with the situation (Uwen & Ushie 2022). Humorous posts related to various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, be it the lockdowns, work from home, school from home, etc., are all over social media.…”

“…Most social media posts about COVID-19 tend to be primarily negative or serious, whereas humorous posts can deal with the same serious issue by pointing out "the funny or ironic aspects of a situation" (Phillips-Kumaga et al 2022). The sense of humour can facilitate the restructuring of a crisis situation so it is less stressful (Abel 2002), thereby making people receptive to messages which they would otherwise not have been open to (Ogba 2021) hence promoting positive social interaction and solidarity (Chadwick & Platt 2018;Uwen & Ushie 2022). The general posts mainly deal with topics such as COVID-19 tests and deaths (Ahmed et al 2021), misconceptions and complaints about COVID-19 control (Kwok et al 2021), the spread of the virus, and bans and orders (Norstrom & Sarna 2021).…”