The representation of Islam, Muslim, and Muslimness within the slippage of meaning: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of Saturday Night Live

Almarshd, Anfal 2023. The representation of Islam, Muslim, and Muslimness within the slippage of meaning: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of Saturday Night Live. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Research on the representation of Islam and Muslim people in the media has yielded some valuable studies; however, there are few examples examining the discursive construction of Islam and Muslim people in comedy from a critical discourse analytic perspective. To help fill the sizeable gap present at the intersections of humour studies and media discourse analysis, this thesis seeks to understand the cultural politics that inform representations of Islam, Muslim, and Muslimness (MIM) in humorous discourse. It builds upon critical humour theories that interpret humour and comedy as discourses that are formed through sign slippage – or through the slippage of meaning created by incongruity –this is the movement of meaning in language use. The incongruities within humorous discourses create disparities, tension, and a continuous slippage of meanings, opening a discursive space to situate and negotiate serious experiences related to ethnicity, race and religion. More specifically, the study examines discursive representations of MIM in a specially constructed corpus of comedic sketches from the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) taken from the years 2008 and 2020. The research employs corpus linguistic tools in the first stage of analysis to identify areas of interest worthy of closer investigation through in-depth, qualitative analysis. It then utilises analytical tools and concepts from discourse-historical and the discourse theory of humour to examine the textual representations and evaluations of MIM in the show and highlight the historic and contemporary meanings they carry and the considerations they express. Where pertinent, the thesis offers further debate pertaining to the visual elements of the sketches. The main research question addresses whether, and if so in what respects, the dominant discourses and representations of MIM in SNL articulate, disarticulate, or rearticulate normative cultural understandings about MIM in contemporary America. The findings reveal a lack of fixity in the humour and emphasise the complexity of evaluating the ambivalence of humorous discourse. This suggests humour has the potential for layering multiple discursive positions and meanings, thereby discursively strengthening ambivalent or contradictory discourses about MIM. Undoubtedly, the linguistic analysis yields interesting findings regarding the textual and visual features that may guide audiences toward particular interpretations or readings. Here, the overall discursive analysis suggests that while SNL may engage in some persistent and problematic trends and narratives seen in Western media, it also presents opportunities to challenge and question these narratives through comedic interventions. Nonetheless, not even the most discursively stereotype- problematising sketches can avoid categorical positioning based on pre-existing ideologies.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Funders:	Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	18 December 2023
Last Modified:	18 Dec 2024 02:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/164892

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