Underlying Data to the Manuscript: Travelling Slogans: Irony, Humour and Sociolinguistic Identity in Vehicular Writings

This study investigates vehicular writings, including, but not limited to slogans, jokes, proverbs, religious messages, and other inscriptions displayed on taxis, buses, lorries, private vehicles, boda-bodas, and helmets across Uganda, as a form of mobile vernacular literature and public discourse. Using a qualitative approach grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), verbal humour theory, and the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, the researchers analysed a corpus of 56 inscriptions collected across various linguistic regions of Uganda between August 2024 and August 2025. The study examines how irony and humour function as rhetorical strategies through which ordinary Ugandans express religious beliefs, social and political commentary, economic struggles, gender relations, aspirations, resilience, and cultural identity. It further explores how inscriptions written in English, Arabic, Luganda, Leb-Acoli, Runyankole, Lusoga, Lumasaaba, Swahili, and other languages reflect Uganda’s rich multilingual landscape and facilitate the circulation of local identities and cultural knowledge across regions. The findings demonstrate that vehicular writings serve not only as humorous and creative expressions but also as mobile sites of identity construction, social critique, and cultural preservation, transforming vehicles into travelling texts and vernacular archives that carry everyday philosophies, memories, and aspirations throughout the country.