| Resumen |
This paper reports on a study investigating the way Tunisian Facebook curators excessively use humor as a discursive resource to counter political practices and decisions. The characters of humor are framed as “rhetorical charms,” or stylistic seductions grounded on startling uses of language and/or images designed to provoke laughter, disrupt ordinary arguments, demean politicians, counter taken-for-granted truths and promote solidarity, among others, which constitute an usher to a new era of democracy in Tunisia. Drawing upon a computer-mediated critical content analysis, this study probed into postings of two different Tunisian Facebook pages created as per the dignity revolution to illustrate how humor is used strategically as a tool both to express solidarity and to exert power. Despite obvious differences between the two Facebook pages data sets, patterns can be observed regarding the use of humor to fulfill relational and transactional goals. The analysis further points to the constitutive, persuasive and edifying power of humor strategies in the political activism of Tunisian Facebook curators. Keywords: humor, rhetorical charms, computer-mediated critical content analysis, revolution, Facebook curators. |
