The Role of Non-Observance of The Gricean Maxims that Leads to Humor in Couple Jokes in Jokes-Best.Com and Laughfactory.Com.

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ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini, saya mengambil topik tentang The Role of

Non-observance of the Gricean Maxims That Leads to Humor. Saya menganalisis

sebelas cerita lucu tentang pasangan suami istri menggunakan teori bidal atau

maxim dari Herbert Paul Grice. Kemudian analisis tersebut diperjelas dengan

menggunakan teori Script Incongruity dari Victor Raskin.

Data yang saya gunakan dalam tugas akhir ini bersumber dari Internet, yaitu jokes-best.com dan laughfactory.com. Berdasarkan analisis dari sebelas data tersebut, saya mencermati bahwa humor terjadi karena adanya pelanggaran terhadap bidal yang menyebabkan terbentuknya implikatur, dan memicu terbentuknya dua skenario yang berbeda dalam sebuah data. Teori Script

Incongruity digunakan untuk meneliti perubahan skenario dalam suatu data yang

akan berujung pada terciptanya sebuah humor.

Berdasarkan data-data yang telah saya analisis, saya menyimpulkan bahwa pelanggaran prinsip-prinsip bidal yang paling banyak terjadi adalah maxim of

manner. Hal ini sering terjadi di kehidupan nyata karena banyaknya pernyataan

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

In daily life, people always communicate with one another in order to say something. One of the ways to communicate is by doing a conversation. Through conversation, people may share their ideas, opinions, or utter anything on their mind. However, in the way of communicating, sometimes it does not work perfectly.

Within people’s conversation, there are some cases in which people say more or less than they actually mean; they may give an ambiguous statement; they may utter something that is totally irrelevant to the topic discussed; or they even fail to observe the maxim because of several problems. We might get many examples in daily life within a conversation between the speaker and the hearer.

When those situations occur, there is a possibility that the hearer(s) will get misunderstanding by the message sent by the speaker because the speaker’s

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implies that she has to go and they have to end the conversation. In this example, the hearer will have to infer what the speaker means in saying the utterance.

“Grice’s theory is designed to explain how hearers get from what is said to what is implied” (Thomas, 1995, p. 60). To avoid the hearer’s misunderstanding

from the speaker’s implicature, “Grice also introduced four conversational

maxims and the Cooperative Principle (CP). The four conversational maxims are used in order to make your contribution as informative as is required, do not say what you believe to be false, be relevant with the topic, and avoid ambiguity” (p.

63). However, there is a big possibility that the speakers will fail to obey the conversational maxim, either the speaker deliberately does it or not. The failure to the conversational maxim is called the non-observance of the maxim. These maxims will be discussed further in the Chapter Two in this thesis.

People’s utterances which show the non-observance of the maxims may

lead to different results, such as puzzlement, annoyance, misunderstanding, or humor. In the jokes that I have got from jokes-best.com and laughfactory.com, I decided to focus on the conversation between husbands and wives because I find so many implicit statements that create misunderstanding between husbands and wives. To me, it is really interesting to be discussed and analyzed. Not all of speakers, hearers, or even the readers will realize the misunderstanding easily. Over all, humor is sometimes important in the conversation to produce the reader’s laughter.

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which contains an implicature in almost every conversation. Grice’s Theory of Maxim and Raskin’s theory of Script Incongruity are the most relevant theories to

be used in my analysis. These theories are needed in order to give a clear explanation of the humor in implicit conversation. These theories are also important to reveal the humor within the joke itself and it will make people consider and believe that the joke is funny and interesting.

I chose this topic for my thesis because in daily life, people’s utterances

are often different from what they actually mean. They use implicit statements or implicatures and sometimes the hearer(s) is/are not aware of it. Another thing is, sometimes their utterances may create humor. Those things make me interested to analyze people’s utterances, their implicature, and how the conversations create a

humorous atmosphere by using two relevant theories.

I chose jokes from the Website jokes-best.com and laughfactory.com because those Websites contain so many jokes either in a long conversation or short conversation and are classified into several categories.

The analysis of non-observance of the Maxim and Script Incongruity that leads to humor in couple jokes from the Websites jokes-best.com and laughfactory.com hopefully will make people more aware that in daily life, there are so many people creating an implicature from their utterance because of several reasons. Besides, this analysis will make the readers more critical in producing and perceiving an utterance. So, it will decrease the possibility of misunderstanding in the speaker’s implicature. I also hope people, including me,

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Statement of the Problem

Based on my analysis about the topic that I chose, there are several questions that I would like to answer:

1. What types of non-observance of the maxim can be found in the jokes? 2. What is the implicature?

3. How does the non-observance of the maxim together with Raskin’s theory of script incongruity reveal the humor?

Purpose of the Study

Based on the statement of the problem above, I would like to accomplish these purposes:

1. To classify the type of the non-observance of the maxims occur in the joke.

2. To find the implicature from the utterances.

3. To reveal the humor from the non-observance of the maxim using Raskin’s theory of script incongruity.

Method of Research

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of Script Incongruity based on the statement of the problem. Finally, I wrote the research report.

Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I will draw a conclusion of the analysis I have done in the

previous chapter, which is analysis about the role of non-observance of the

Gricean maxim that leads to humor in couple jokes in jokes-best.com and

laughfactory.com.

First of all, there are eleven jokes that I have got from the two websites.

There are several types of non-observance of the maxim that I found. There are

three jokes in which I found flouting of the maxim of quantity, three jokes where

there is flouting of the maxim of relation, and ten jokes which involve flouting of

the maxim of manner. Those three types maxim are the most maxims which are

commonly flouted in the data that I have analyzed in this thesis. In addition, there

are two jokes which involve another type of non-observance of the maxim, which

is violating the maxim.

There is a huge possibility that one data involves more than one maxim

that is non observed. There are also seven data in my thesis which have more than

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Based on my analysis in Chapter Three, the type of non-observance of the maxim

that appears the most is flouting the maxim of manner. I get ten data in which I

found flouting the maxim of manner. Flouting this type of maxim happens a lot in

daily life because of many reasons. Mostly the speaker gives an ambiguous

statement, unclear statement, or not being brief in their conversation. Those cases

may lead the hearer to think of an unexpected meaning instead of the intended

one. But once the intended meaning known, the non-observance of the maxim will

create a funny effect. For example, the speaker says ‘How was the teacher in the

class? Did she explain everything clearly?’, then the hearer replies ‘Oh the

teacher is so pretty and sexy. She creates a good atmosphere in class, so all of the

students could understand the material faster way.’ By looking at the hearer’s

utterance, he answers the question in a long winded and not brief while he actually

could simply say ‘yes’.

Flouting the maxim of quantity and flouting the maxim of relation are

found in some data as well. Through my analysis about flouting the maxim of

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Flouting the maxim of quality is not found in any of the data. I conclude

that this happens because this kind of maxim does not give a big impact in

creating a humor, compared to the other types of flouting the maxim. This type of

maxim often happens in a serious situation when the speaker believes that lying is

the best way to survive and avoid them from an inappropriate condition. For

example, when the speaker wants to hide the truth, feels jealous, wants to satisfy

the hearer, builds his or her belief or convince other, or does not want to hurt the

hearer by blatantly rejecting them.

I also find two data in which the maxim is violated. In this case, the

speaker hides some information because the speaker does not want the hearer to

know the whole truth. Therefore, the speaker only reveals some parts of the story

and keeps some other details to mislead the hearer. For example, a child asks his

father ‘Dad, why does Mom never appear in my life?’, the father answers ‘because

your mom passed away right after giving birth to you’. Later we know that the

child’s mother did not pass away but she does not want to have a child, so she

decided to leave her family.

I also do not find infringing a maxim, opting out of a maxim, and

suspending a maxim in the Websites I choose because of several reasons. First,

the speakers in the data are not foreigners and language learners, in a nervous

condition, or in extreme excitement. Second, the speaker in the data does not have

a reason for being not cooperative while engaging in a conversation, so it makes

the opting out of a maxim not found. Third, I do not find any circumstances,

events, or cultural differences in the data that makes the speaker fail to observe the

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because it needs more expertise to create jokes involving this type of

non-observance and it is not as easy as using the other types of non-non-observance of the

maxim. But overall, these types of non-observance still have a huge possibility to

be used to create.

Script incongruity appears when there are at least two different scripts that

can be found. The script names help us to catch the main topic in the story. This

topic must be triggered by the words that are used in the joke. Here, the

non-observance of the maxims helps us to find a change of script in the jokes. When

the misunderstanding between the speaker and the hearer happens, a change of

script will create a surprise in the story and it makes the joke funny.

Through my analysis, I can conclude that the type of non-observance of a

maxim that is most commonly found and trigger humor in jokes-best.com and

laughfactory.com websites is flouting the maxim of manner. Yet, the other types

of flouting a maxim and violating of a maxim still appear in the jokes. In addition,

I conclude that flouting a maxim is the type of non-observance of the maxim that

mostly causes the occurrence of humor in the jokes.

As the writer of this thesis, I hope my analysis can help whoever reads this

thesis to get a better understanding about the role of non-observance of the

Gricean maxim in jokes. Based on my experiences in searching for data, I suggest

that those who wish to do a similar analysis to make a deeper research and have a

clear understanding about the theory as the first step. So, they can get various data

easier and faster in one internet website only. I did not do that at first and it makes

me waste my time by searching hundreds of data from several websites and I

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to find other linguistic approaches because I strongly believe that there are other

theories that can support the analysis of jokes. I hope my thesis can further be

developed into a beneficial research and become useful for other people who need

it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

Jokes-best. (2015, February 28). Retrieved from jokes-best website: http://www.jokes-best.com/family-jokes.php

Laughfactory. (2015, September 11). Retrieved from laughfactory website: http://www.laughfactory.com/jokes/relationship-jokes

References

Cook, Guy. (2000). Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University.