Is Koro indeed our man? Exploring the intertextual role of humour in the Twitter age

Abstract

Humour as a communicative activity is meant to evoke laughter in people, hence, the amusement of an utterance is typically judged by its response from the audience. This study examines amusing tweets on the COVID-19 pandemic and traces the intertextual origin of discourse in some of the tweets. It primarily explores the core role of humour as a cultural tool for satire. The incongruity theory of humour was employed as a theoretical framework for the study as it helps to better understand the reason Nigerians’ tweets are antithetical to prevailing circumstances in the country. This is a qualitative research design where a content analysis of 125 amusing tweets relating to the COVID-19 pandemic was sampled on Twitter. Search terms such as #May4, #3rdMainlandBridge, #KoroIsOurMan and #Obanikoro were employed to identify the pattern of humour in selected tweets as Nigerians’ tweets at the period revolved more around each of the hashtags. Open messages sent via Twitter were assessed adopting purposive sampling technique. Particular characteristics such as location of users, timeline of the lockdown and its relaxation (25 March‐30 June 2020) formed the parameters for the selection of the tweets. Though the coronavirus scourge has left thousands of people dead in its wake, Nigerians’ tweets and memes during the lockdown did not in any way reflect gloom or sombreness. This will pique an average readers’ interest as there is a violation of normative expectations. The results therefore reaffirm the age-long relevance of the incongruous in humour and the satirical role of intertextuality in discourse.