Laughter as Means of Politics in Pakistan: A Discourse Study

Abstract

Negative attitudes and prejudices can be conveyed and expressed through indirect channels by means of jokes (Allport, 1954; Freud, 2004). The current paper is aimed at studying the political jokes of the selected Pakistani politicians which are spread through the social media to portray their political opponents as inferior, small, contemptible and amusing. Sigmund Freud, author of the book ‘Jokes and their relations to unconsciousness, argues in 1960 that political regimes, their leaders and their policies are targets of the jokes. Freud even goes ahead to say that such jokes are made on the leaders and are the weapons that are wielded by people because of the unequal balance of power relations. The present study adopts the approach proposed by Freud who classifies jokes into obscene jokes that are made for the purpose of exposure and hostile jokes that are used for purposes of aggression and satire in order to make one's rival appear inferior and disgraceful. Moreover, Ruskin (1985) classifies humor into three categories: a) sexual humor; b) ethnic humor; and c) political humor. From the findings of the research, it can be seen that the jokes circulating on social media serve the purpose of politics in Pakistan. Non-violent political activists belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League N (PMLN) and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI use humor against their opponents who they perceive as being more powerful and the jokes serve as a way to put the opponent political groups or leaders to shame because both of these political groups are diametrically opposed to each other.