Disparaging Wives through Humor: A Linguistic Analysis of Jokes on Pakistani Social Media

Abstract

Abstract Humor is a tool to develop and to strengthen mutual  relationships among people. Humor sometimes is used to show superiority of a person, sect, caste or gender to other. This particular study about the linguistic structure of randomly selected jokes is made in order to highlight different stereotypes that are associated with the Pakistani wives. For this purpose a corpus of 60 jokes is developed by collecting jokes randomly in Urdu languge related to wives, using facebook pages,“Husband & Wife jokes” and “Laughing colours” and then twenty jokes are further selected under specific themes for analysis. These jokes are translated into English language and then analyzed using the Atordo’s and Raskin’s model of (GTVH) general theory of verbal humour (1991). This study also throws light on the fact that the stigmas attached with pakistani wives in the form of jokes are widely accepted and enjoyed even by  wives themselves that is giving way to their disparaged identity in our society. Hence, the aim of this study is to make the Pakistani women and the wives aware of the intensity of this situation and to provoke them to reject this practice of their disrespect and exploitation through verbal humour. This study will also prove helpful for the future reserch in order to check and make variations in the attitude of the participants and the receivers of the jokes to discourage jokes which are the source of disresopect for any other sect or gender. Key words: Verbal humor, GTVH, wives in jokes,