SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In this paper, an analysis of form of linguistic ambiguity in the headlines of contemporary Yorùbá newspapers is presented. The paper analyses 100 verbally ambiguous headlines in some newspapers. The focus of the paper is on examples of lexical and structural ambiguity that result in involuntary humour. This is usually contrived by Yorùbá newspaper writer for the sake of entertainment which makes the headlines funny. Therefore, this paper examined some words and expression which are possibly ambiguous in the headlines of contemporary Yorùbà newspapers. The headlines collected in our corpus and analysed were selected precisely because the sources of ambiguity that produced the humorous effect were of a linguistic nature. This is in an attempt to propose a systematic analysis of humorous headlines that have rarely been considered in the Yorùbá literature.