Functional Pragmatic Analysis on the Humorous Discourse in Balinese Language as a Media of Socialization of Health Protocols during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study describes the choice of humor style used to reduce the anxiety experienced by Balinese people during the Covid-19 pandemic and also explains the language variations as well as linguistic phenomena for constructing a humor. The relationship between humor style and linguistic features is expected to explain the specificity of the humor discourse structure of Covid-19 in Balinese language. The data of this qualitative study were obtained through note-taking and sorting out some short films which were displayed on YouTube from April to May 2020. Furthermore, there were 13 discourses used as data source, and some of the humor styles include affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating. The humor functions as a foundation for information on topics arranged deductively and inductively. The variations in Balinese language used are variety of kepara (general) and kasar (low). Also, the dominating linguistic phenomenon includes code mixing and switching, as well as semantic inaccuracy regarding word similarity. This study can establish public-communication model in a friendly atmosphere to eliminate the impact of socio-psychological gap.