A Pragma-stylistic Study of Humour inAhmed Matar's Poetry

Abstract

This study aims to review and investigates the role and function of humourin Ahmed Matar's poetry pragma-stylistically. Furthermore, it attempts  to identify the ways andstrategies in which he employs humour negatively. In a sense, he uses strategies of humour or joking so as tomock the socio-political situation in the case of Iraq. Thus, hecreates acceptability and sympathy on the part of the audience. The focus of this study is concerned with verbal mockery, which is produced by means of language or text. Additionally, the study postulates that there is no clear cut amongst humour types categories-that is the categories may interchange and merge in a few cases. Of the stylistic figures presented in this study is mockery,irony, exaggeration, comparison, and sarcasm.

Key Words: Pragmatics , mockery, sarcasm, exaggeration, humour.

0.Introduction

 This study is an attempt to deal with strategies of humour in Ahmed's Matar poetry .Since pragmatics and stylistics are interrelated, especially, in poetry (Nofal, 2011) , it is required to deal with both discplines while approaching a poem.It is not unclear that the stylistic figures , which are employed in the corpus have got pragmatic implications .In this perspective, the current paper aims to find out how '' strategies of humour'' are reflected and manifested in Matar'spoetry.More specifically, the study aims at:

A.Showing the pragma-stylistic devices of humour,  which are utilized by Ahmed Matar.

B.Evaluating the effect of such utilization.

C.Finding the most common strategies.

In view of the aforementioned aims, it is hypothesized that :

A.AhmedMatar heavily relies on strategies of humour to convey his message, the message of mockery and criticism;

B. he intentionally utilizes humour- he aims at, both, entertaining and mocking the public.

C. the most common strategies are : irony, exaggeration, and sarcasm

       To accomplish the aims of the study and test its hypotheses, the following procedures are adopted :

A. Reviewing the literature on humour and pragmatics;

B.Developing a model for analysing the corpus;

C.Conducting a pragma-stylistic qualitative method of analysis of some randomly extracts chosen from Ahmed's Matar poetry;

D.Discussing the results of analysis, however the discussion is done within the analysis-that is no separate heading is dedicated for discussion. Finally,it is worth mentioning that the translation of the corpus is made by the theresearcher himself.