A Pragmatic Study of the Discourse of Sarcasm on X

This research explores the pragmatic functions and discourse strategies of sarcasm on X (formerly twitter), focusing on how users employ sarcasm to express criticism humour, resistance, and social commentary. Through a qualitative analysis of tweets, this research investigates how sarcasm operates within the constraints of twitter’s format and how context, shared knowledge, and implicature shape the interpretation of sarcastic content. The purposively selected ten tweets within the Nigerian X space and pragmatically analyzed the context of their usage. The study further corroborates the fact that sarcasm allows users to express dissent, frustration, or disappointment in a way that is both creative and thought-provoking. Also established in this study is the presence of speech acts in sarcastic tweets.