A synopsis

For the viva

 Egyptian Humor in January 25 Revolution:
A Linguistic Study
By

Gouda Kamal Abdullah Taha

Supervised By

Prof. Amani El-Shazly Dr. Nadia Shalaby

Humor
January 25 revolution is always described as the laughing
revolution due to the various humorous texts and forms
created by Egyptian revolutionaries.
Humor
The appearance of humor during the revolution was thought-
provoking because it was not actually aiming exclusively at
entertaining since revolutions are far from being fun; they are
always known to be tragic and chaotic, yet humor closely
intertwined with every revolutionary event and occasion; it was
produced during marching, protesting and sitting-in, and
various forms of humor were created including verbal,
referential, visual and as well as pantomimes.
 The objectives of the study:
This study has three main aims.
First, it attempted to find out the
relationship between humorous texts and
the revolution, and to uncover the features
of these revolutionary humorous texts, as I
called them.
 Objectives
Secondly, it attempted to
find out the functions achieved
by creating these humorous
texts during the revolution.
Objectives
Thirdly, this study attempted to assess the
explanatory power of two linguistic tools to texts in
question. It evaluated their viability to analyze these
Arabic revolutionary humorous texts. These two
linguistic tools are the Cooperative Principle (CP)
proposed by Grice in 1975, and the General Theory of
Verbal Humor (GTVH) introduced by Raskin and
Attardo in 1991.
Data Collection
The data collection depended mainly upon three main
sources:
1- Facebook pages
2- YouTube
3- Six books combining the texts used by Egyptians during
the revolution
Sources of Data: Books
: -1

(Tahrir's Revolution is Laughing: Egyptians
Genius by Samir El-Gamal)
( .) 2-
The Revolution of the Lightest Sense of Humor By Dina )
(Helal
. 3-
Laugh O Revolution by Yasser Hemayah
Sources: Continued
: 5-

( .
The Comic Slogans and Chants of the Egyptian Revolution: A
Documentary and Analytical Study of the Psychology of the
Egyptian Personality and its Positive Effect on the
Contemporary International Community by Samir El-Hefnawy.)
) . 25 ( 6-
)Jokes of January 25th Revolution by Tarik El-Habib(
Data Analysis
To analyze the collected texts, I used
two linguistic tools:
1- The General Theory of Verbal Humor
(GTVH)
2- Cooperative Principle (CP)
Categorization of the texts
First, I collected eighty five texts which were
humorous according to the definition of Attardo. Only
fifty one texts were chosen for analysis due to space.
These texts were categorized according to their targets
into three main topics: texts exposing peoples
suffering, texts demonstrating the presidents
inefficiency, and those targeting revolution and
revolutionaries. These texts included chants, jokes,
slogans and caricatures.
The chapterization of the study
This study fell into six chapters:
Chapter one: Introduction
Chapter Two: Review of literature
Chapter Three: Methodology and theoretical
framework
Chapterization of the study
Chapter Four: Analysis: Egyptians suffering
Chapter Five: Mubaraks inefficiency &
Revolution and revolutionaries
Chapter Six: Conclusion
 Findings
Humor had a remarkable role during the eighteen- day Egyptian
revolution in 2011. It was present from the very beginning until
Mubaraks resignation on February 11, 2011 after 30 years of autocratic
rule. This outstanding appearance of humor brought the epithets the
laughing revolution and humor revolution to this revolution since
humor was skilfully used to express the people's attitude towards the
ruling regime as well as to articulate the revolution's demands. One
could argue that humor was a silent and peaceful revolutionary means;
it was a manifestation of nonviolent resistance, which motivated people
to overthrow that long-time regime.
Findings
This study presented a comprehensive handling
of humor. It analyzed different forms of humor.
Texts in question included verbal, referential as
well as visual texts with comic captions. They
included situational and canned, or context-free,
humorous forms.
1- Revolutionary humor
Texts in question were called revolutionary humorous texts for two
reasons. First, these texts were being used by revolutionaries and
were intertwined with the revolution as well as its demands.
Secondly, these texts had a revolutionary nature since they were an
essential part of the Egyptian revolution. They were used for
revolutionary aims, either to incite people to participate in those
protests or to expose the regime's poor administration as well as
Mubarak's corruption. They were also used to express the
revolutionaries' claims and aspirations. In short, they combined the
'politicotainment' process with the revolutainment since they
combined both politics and entertainment as well as revolution.
1- Revolutionary humor
Humor was an instrumental tool that combined two
elements: humor and revolution. This mixture one can
call revolutainment since the revolutionary sense was
embellished with these entertaining texts. During
demonstrations and sit-ins, anger was accompanied by
satire, defiance went with ridicule, sit-ins were
abundant in comedy, and resistance was adorned by
humor.
1- Revolutionary Humor
Moreover, these humorous texts obtained a peculiar nature.
They included various features that were worth examining.
For example, these humorous texts were tactfully phrased
and layered ones since they included various phonetic,
semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, and stylistic elements.
These peculiar features are very essential to retain the sense
of humor. These texts also had various elements of
ambiguity, irrelevance, exaggeration, funny situations, and
other stylistic devices.
2- Functions
A- This study showed that the protesters used humor for
many reasons. It was duly used to assert the revolution's
main objectives: expressing the Egyptians' growing
dissatisfaction with Mubarak's administration and his regime
as well as their longing for a new ruling regime that could be
helpful.
B- Humor was also used as a coping mechanism
C- It was also employed as an empowering means since it
provided powerless people with power to ridicule and
2- Functions
D- the layered nature of these texts enabled
the protesters to convey implicit meanings
and criticisms that they could not utter;
these texts' deep meanings were different
from surface meanings which might be seen
as a source of entertainment or mockery.
2- Functions
E- . It was used as an enlightening tool to make the
protesters aware of the true situation in their country. It
increased the awareness of the Egyptians of the deteriorating
state that their country experienced under the administration
of the ruling regime. It also encouraged them to participate
in the ongoing demonstrations to topple that administration.
In fact, it was not employed to just entertain or amuse
protesters or audience during this period.
3- Methodology
Concerning the third objective that
handled the viability of the two selected
linguistic tools, one could say that the
two employed mechanisms were very
effective in uncovering the various
aspects of these humorous texts.
3- Methodology
For example, these politicotainment texts in question
highlighted an important aspect concerning the hierarchical
nature of the Knowledge Resources proposed by Attardo and
Raskin in 1991. They argued that these KRs followed a
specific order in the process of humor invoking: SO, LM, SI,
TA, NS, and LA. However, one noticed that the TA
parameter occupied the highest position in these texts. This
parameter determined the employed opposed scripts that
would define the employed LM, SI, NS, as well as the LA
parameters.
3- Methodology
The following diagrams show the difference
between Raskin and Attardos hierarchy of KRs
in their GTVH and the one that these texts in
question demonstrated:
3- Methodology
The hierarchical order that the
analyzed texts revealed
3- Methodology
The second method of analysis was also vital to
determine the source of humor in these texts and to
deliver the implied messages. In this study, one noted
that in almost all of the created texts, there was a
flouting of the Cooperative Principle. In using
oppositions, ambiguities, satire, false analogy,
reasoning from false premises, one encountered a
breaking of the cooperative maxims and their
requirements.
4- Further Research
This study highlighted two remarkable
points:
1- The need for further research on
humor
2- The problematic aspects of
translating humor.
The impact of the study of
humor
The impact of this study upon me is that
the flavor of the sense of humor is replaced
by an analytic insight one got from the
study to uncover and analyze the comic
element in any text I come across.
Thank you