The Art of Satire during Hard Times: The Pragmatics of Sociopolitical Criticism in Ahmed Hassan Al-Zoubi’s Articles

To augment the critical effect of their work, satirists tend to convey their messages indirectly via implying. In this article, I adopted a slightly revised model of the Cooperative Principle (CP) to analyze the works of a distinguished Jordanian social and political satirist, Ahmed Hassan Al-Zoubi, over a socially, economically, and politically challenging period in recent Jordanian history marked by numerous governmental and societal controversies. Within a corpus of nineteen articles, all instances of flouting the Gricean (sub)maxims were identified, specified regarding the flouted maxims, and justified accordingly. All the literary and discursive devices implemented as satirical techniques were identified and rationalized, and the results were further investigated in terms of the frequency of occurrence and any potential patterns in the co-occurrence of flouted maxims and devices. Quality and Quantity were the most frequently flouted maxims, while metaphor, irony, exaggeration, and sarcasm were the most commonly implemented devices for satirical effects. These findings yielded synchronized patterns of maxims occurring in tandem with the identified devices. In accordance with his satirical style, the author flouted Quality to achieve irony, sarcasm, and exaggeration through insincere positive commentary on the government and governmental officials, sarcasm through mockery of them, and exaggeration through overemphasizing their wrongdoings. Quantity was flouted to include anecdotes, narratives, or lengthy discussions in each article, wherein the characters were utilized to metaphorize or allude. The scope of the articles is primarily political and sociopolitical, and the observed flouting and devices were found to fit best to target political issues as opposed to purely social ones.