VERBAL HUMOR STRATEGIES IN @PESONAINDONESIA’S TIKTOK COMMENTS: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS USING GTVH
##plugins.themes.academic_pro.article.main##
Abstract
The TikTok account @pesonaindonesia presents a tourism promotion strategy with a cinematic approach and a quirky sound, provoking various humorous responses from users. This study aims to identify the types of humour that appear in user comments and analyse their humour-forming structures using Attardo and Raskin's General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). The authors collected 25 comments from five TikTok contents and classified them into five types of humour: irony, sarcasm, parody, wordplay and absurdity. Analysis of six GTVH parameters-Script Opposition, Logical Mechanism, Situation, Target, Narrative Strategy, and Language-shows that irony and absurdity appear most dominant, driven by the mismatch between promotional visuals and audio used. Humour not only acts as entertainment, but also as a form of criticism, cultural participation, and public evaluation of digital institutions. The findings reinforce the importance of sociolinguistic studies in understanding the dynamics of digital communication and public perception of institutional content.