Phonological Wordplay and Linguistic Creativity in TikTok Discourse: A Study of Chidera Madu

Creative language use on social media is easily deemed mere entertainment, while related phonological wordplay is often equated with humour. Researchers commonly investigate linguistic items associated with social media users, with limited attention to related sound-based creativity. This study examines Chidera Madu's TikTok discourse to identify and classify his phonological wordplay strategies and determine how they contribute to meaning-making and perform communicative functions. Framed in Carter’s (2004) Framework of Linguistic Creativity, 47 extracts of Chidera Madu's phonological wordplay are purposively analysed using a qualitative descriptive-interpretive design. Findings reveal four phonological strategies employed in Chidera's TikTok discourse, including resegmentation, homophones, phonemic substitution, and rhyme-based wordplay. The resegmentation occurs as word-to-phrase, phrase-to-word, and phrase-to-phrase, while the rhymes are masculine, feminine and internal rhymes. The study found that Chidera's wordplays contribute to meaning-making through reinterpreting and shifting meanings, and performs communicative functions by serving various discourse functions, including humour, praise, satire, indirect communication, affirmation, emphasis and social commentary. The findings are relevant to applied linguists and researchers on digital discourse, linguistic creativity and Nigerian multilingual communication. The researcher recommends examining informal social-media discourse, such as TikTok, as a resource for linguistic innovation.