Corona Humourism: A Corpus Based Sociolinguistic Study ofWhatsApp Messages of Pakistani English Teachers

Abstract

The present study aims to find out the corona humourism in the WhatsApp messages of Pakistani English teachers. Corona humourism not only assists language users in dealing with fear, but it also assists in overcoming the psychological and social barriers associated with any pandemic. In the present study, the researchers used the term "corona humor," which refers to the coinage of different humor messages spread through English teachers’ WhatsApp groups in Pakistan. Furthermore, the study addresses how English teachers use the language as a tool to overcome their fear of Corona by creating humourism on WhatsApp. It presents the data collected from the WhatsApp messages, reflecting the humorous imagery of the corona in Pakistan and how Pakistani English teachers perceived the pandemic. The corpus tool Lancsbox V.6 has been used for the corpus-based analysis. The theoretical framework of McGhee's (2013) model of congruity in humourism has also been used for the study. The study revealed that in Pakistan, people used humourism as a tool to fight the pandemic and overcome their fear of the Corona virus. The study categorizes humor as social, cultural, instructional, or directive, having different form and function in its hybrid form and different stereotypical meanings in social situations. The study shows that corona humor is based on illogical, exaggerated, inappropriate, and unexpected situational information, and the participants manipulate language to create humor in a very grave situation. Moreover, the corpus analysis of the data shows that certain corona-collocated terms, figures of speech, and language processes were frequently used for creating humor.