Digital Orality and Islamic Preaching: Ethnosociopragmatics as a Lens for Humor in Religious Discourse

Siti Rumilah; Ramadhina Ulfa Nuristama; Wahju  Kusumajanti; Raudlotul  Jannah

doi:10.31849/vyzhn310

Authors

Siti Rumilah Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.
Ramadhina Ulfa Nuristama Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.
Wahju Kusumajanti Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.
Raudlotul Jannah Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31849/vyzhn310

Keywords:

Cultural humor, Da’wah values, Ethnosociopragmatics, Oral literature, Value-bearing speech act

Abstract

Humor has become a pervasive yet insufficiently theorized feature of Indonesian digital da’wah. Existing studies tend to describe rhetorical techniques or audience reception, but rarely examine humorous utterances as culturally embedded pragmatic acts within platform-mediated preaching. This study addresses that gap by investigating how humor in Indonesian YouTube sermons encodes social, cultural, and religious values using an ethnosociopragmatic framework grounded in Mey’s pragmatics as social practice and sociopragmatic theories of appropriateness. The corpus comprises 10 sermons (approximately 600 minutes) delivered by five prominent ulama, selected through explicit criteria: minimum 20-minute duration, over 50,000 views, verified channels, and identifiable humorous segments. From these videos, 109 humorous utterances were segmented as the unit of analysis based on syntactic completion, prosodic closure, topic shift, and audience laughter cues. Data were transcribed verbatim and coded inductively using a structured codebook mapping value domains and oral forms; double-coding yielded 87% inter-coder agreement, and findings were triangulated with repeated viewing and 15 semi-structured audience interviews. Results show three dominant value domains: social solidarity and soft critique (38%), cultural identity through oral forms such as pepatah, pantun, parikan, and guyon pesantren (34%), and reinforcement of religious virtues including sabr, adab, humility, and moderation (28%). These findings demonstrate that humor functions as a value-bearing speech act that digitally recontextualizes sastra lisan while sustaining moral authority. The study contributes theoretically by extending ethnosociopragmatics to digital religious discourse and implies that culturally calibrated humor enhances ethical engagement in contemporary platform preaching.

Author Biographies

Siti Rumilah, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.

Siti Rumilah is a lecturer in the Department of Indonesian Literature at Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya, Indonesia, and frequently serves as a corresponding author in academic publications. Her academic interests include Indonesian literature, literary criticism, cultural studies, and linguistics, particularly in the area of pragmatics. Her research explores how language and literary texts reflect social interaction, cultural identity, and meaning within specific contexts. By drawing on perspectives from both literary and linguistic studies, she examines the ways discourse and interpretation operate in contemporary Indonesian society. Through her teaching and research, she aims to contribute to the development of critical literary scholarship while also fostering a deeper understanding of language use in cultural and social communication.
Ramadhina Ulfa Nuristama, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.

Ramadhina Ulfa Nuristama is a lecturer in the English Literature Department at Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya, Indonesia. She holds a master’s degree in American Studies and specializes in English literature, with particular interest in popular literature and cultural studies. Her research explores literary texts within broader social and cultural frameworks, contributing to discussions in contemporary humanities scholarship.
Wahju Kusumajanti , Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.

Wahju Kusumajanti is a senior lecturer in the English Literature Department at Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya, Indonesia. She holds both her master’s and doctoral degrees in American Studies. Her research interests include English literature, education, and cultural studies, with a particular focus on the intersections between literary analysis and educational contexts. She has published widely in the areas of literary, cultural, and educational studies and has been awarded several competitive research grants to support her work in English education.
Raudlotul Jannah, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia.

Raudlotul Jannah is a lecturer in linguistics at the English Literature Program, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya. She holds a BA from the Faculty of Arabic Literature, IAIN Sunan Ampel, and a master’s degree from The University of Queensland, Australia, where she strengthened her expertise in contemporary linguistic research within an international academic setting. Her academic interests lie in applied linguistics, particularly in examining how linguistic theories address real world language issues in educational, discursive, and social contexts.

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