Exploring Sarcasm and Its Meanings in Manchester United’s Defeat Posts on X: A Pragmatic Analysis

Abstract

The main focus of this study is to examine the phenomenon of sarcasm used by football fans on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), with the primary object being the official Manchester United posts (@ManUtd) during several defeats in the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 Premier League seasons. The main objective of this study is to understand the meaning behind sarcastic utterances with the help of cultural context, identify the types of sarcasm, and analyze which conversational maxims are flouted by users, particularly within the context of online football communities. Descriptive qualitative approach is used to analyze a total of 20 comments as the data. The main theories applied are Elizabeth Camp’s (2011) classification of sarcasm and H. P. Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle. The findings indicate that propositional sarcasm and illocutionary sarcasm are the most dominant types, each accounting for 45% of the total data. On the other hand, the most frequently flouted conversational maxim is the maxim of quality, with a total of 85% of the data, indicating that speakers intentionally produce utterances that do not reflect reality in order to convey implicit meanings. The conclusion of these findings indicates that sarcasm functions not only as an emotional expression, but also as a pragmatic communication tool used to convey implicit messages such as criticism and evaluation indirectly toward matters related to Manchester United. However, this study is still limited to the context of Manchester United, suggesting that future researchers are encouraged to use broader objects in order to provide more diverse perspectives on sarcasm, particularly in digital communication