Memes of Saudi Arabian National Soccer Team in World Cup 2022: A Focus from The General Theory of Verbal Humor الميمات الخاصة بالمنتخب السعودي الكروي في كاس العالم 2022: دراسة من وجهة نظر النظرية العامة للفكاهة اللفظية

Abstract

This qualitative descriptive study attempts to investigate verbal humour in nineteen Saudi Arabian national soccer team’s memes on the event of their participation in 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Since this study uses Attardo and Raskin’s (1991) General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) as its methodology, it attempts to check whether GTVH Knowledge Resources (KRs) apply on the different methods and strategies Saudi fans used in the creation of these humorous memes. Data has been randomly selected from various users’ accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter) under different hashtags related to the Saudi Arabian national soccer team’s participation. The results reveal that all the analysed nineteen memes were structured around the six KRs proposed by GTVH. These are: Script Opposition (SO), Logical mechanism (LM), Situation (SI), Target (TA), Narrative strategy (NS), and Language (LA). This ultimately supports Attardo’s (2001) view that all kinds of humorous texts, memes in this study, are within the scope of GTVH KRs. The types of verbal humor used were: irony, wordplay, exaggeration, coincidence, juxtaposition, sarcasm, humor, and satire. Their selection depended on the surrounding context and the user’s intention supporting Dynel’s view (2009). The creation of these memes relied on images related to famous national and international media figures such as singers, actors, players, coaches, and soccer events forming a framework that shaped the soccer humorous discourse of memes in social media. Humor in these memes has been found to originate from the interplay between the different script oppositions used in the image of the meme and the text in the caption. In addition, memes were found to be mainly used for humorous effects in three occasions: (1) celebrating their team’s victory by mocking international players who participated in Saudi Arabia-Argentina match, (2) relieving different emotions such as stress and concern on the occasion of their team’s defeat by Poland, and (3) satirizing Saudi team players after their loss to Mexico. These memes also have been found to have an implicit (non-literal) meaning that depends on culture, time, and the recipient’s personal experience supporting the views of Attardo (2003; 2014), Lestari (2018) and Beskow et al. (2020).