Humour in Peter Enahoro’s The Complete Nigerian: A speech act analysis

Abstract

Humour has a high profile in the society and it is influential as a way of establishing friendship. It is evident that humour refers to anything that people say or do and is perceived as funny and tends to make others laugh. Humour is a universal phenomenon that is exhibited by most cultures. This paper explores humourous contents in Peter Enahoro‟s novel, The Complete Nigerian through the adoption of J.L Austin‟s (1962) Speech Act Theory with insight from John Searle‟s (1969) Speech Act Theory. The study adopted quantitative and qualitative research method for analysis of data. The data for analysis were extracted from the primary text; The Complete Nigerian where ten (10) humorous utterances were used. In line with one of the objectives of the study, frequency count was conducted and the result showed that out of
the five classification of speech act by J. Searle only two was accounted for. They are; Representatives and Directives. Representatives accounted for 70% while directives accounted for 30%. The preponderance use of "representatives" in the data analysed is an indication that the author knows who the complete Nigerians are by always making factual utterances and asserting his stance on complete Nigerians. The "directive" depicts the rhetorical questions the author always throws at his readers to ponder on the happenings in Nigeria.