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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... i
ABSTRACT ... ii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Background of the Study ... 1
Statement of the Problem ... 4
Purpose of the Study ... 4
Methods of Research ... 5
Organization of the Thesis ... 5
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK... 6
CHAPTER THREE: MISUNDERSTANDING CAUSED BY DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF SPEECH ACT CLASSIFICATION AND AMBIGUITY IN THE NAKED GUN TRILOGY 3.1 Misunderstanding Caused by Different Interpretations of Speech Act Classifications ... 11
3.2 Misunderstanding Caused by Ambiguities ... 21
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ... 34
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 38
APPENDICES Table 1. Data of Misunderstanding of Speech Act Classifications ... 39
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ABSTRACT
Tugas Akhir ini mengangkat masalah kesalahpahaman dalam percakapan. Saya mengambil data dari film trilogi The Naked Gun, sebuah film komedi tentang seorang polisi bernama Frank Drebin yang sering menyalahartikan apa yang orang lain katakan.
Film pertama menceritakan tentang Frank yang bertugas untuk melindungi Ratu Elizabeth II. Film kedua menceritakan tentang Frank yang berusaha untuk menghentikan seorang penipu membacakan laporan palsu tentang sumber energi yang harus didukung oleh pemerintah. Di film ketiga, Frank bertugas untuk menghentikan pembomban di gedung tempat Academy Award akan diadakan.
Bercakap-cakap sudah menjadi hal yang biasa kita lakukan setiap hari. Di dalam percakapan kita sering salah mengartikan apa yang dimaksudkan oleh orang lain. Kita bisa salah mengartikan sebuah kata, karena kata tersebut memiliki lebih dari satu arti yang berbeda. Kita juga bisa salah mengartikan topik percakapan, karena kita dan lawan bicara kita memiliki pemikiran yang berbeda.
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APPENDICES
Table 1. Data of Misunderstanding of Speech Act Classifications
No. Data Speech Act
better, we'll go sailing together, we’ll take
a cruise, just like last year.
representative
Give him a shot, quickly!
representative directive
4
Nordberg : No... Heroin! Heroin, Frank!
Frank : Nordberg, that’s a pretty tall order. You have to give me a couple of days on that an angry husband, a gay lover...
expressive directive
6
Frank : Good cop, needlessly cut down and ambushed by some cowardly hoodlum. Ed : That’s no way for a man to die.
Frank : You’re right, Ed. A parachute not opening.
40 repay you. How about dinner? I know this a little out-of-the-way place that serves great Viking food.
Jane : That’s quite a tempting offer Lieutenant,
but I'm afraid I’m gonna get my rest this
evening, tomorrow being Arbor Day and all.
Frank : Of course. Well, perhaps some other time. Jane : How about a rain check?
Frank : Well, let's just stick to dinner.
commissive directive
10
Frank : That’s the red light district. Wonder why Savage is hanging out down there.
Ed : Sex, Frank?
Commissioner : Do you realize that because of you this city is being overrun by baboons? Frank : Well, isn’t that the fault of the voters?
Nordberg : Hey, how’d he get tickets?
directive representative
Table 2. Data of Misunderstanding Caused by Ambiguity
No. Data Ambiguity
1
Frank : Hm…interesting. Almost as
41 (A body builder shows up)
syntactic
Frank : Lieutenant Frank Drebin, Police Squad. This is my captain Ed Hocken. Shopkeeper : Is this some kind of bust?
Frank : Well, it’s very impressive, yes… but we need to ask you a few questions.
lexical ambiguity
something more up-tempo, like Guantanamera.
Cashier : Lieutenant Drebin.Frank, didn’t you see that?
42
have yanked it too much maybe.
12
the Earth was a molten mass.
lexical ambiguity inflated and check the fluid levels.
syntactic
ambiguity: ellipsis
16
Ed : I’m Ed Hocken and this is Nordberg from Police Squad. We're here to prevent a disaster.
Stage Director : You’re too late for that.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
The topic of this thesis is “Misunderstandings Caused by Different Interpretations of Speech Act Classifications and Ambiguities in The Naked Gun Trilogy.” Misunderstandings sometimes happen when we are having a conversation. We may misunderstand what people are trying to say because we misinterpret it. We misinterpret what people say probably because they say it implicitly; they do not say directly what they want to say. For example, when we want to go to the restroom, we do not say, “I need to piss.” because we would be considered impolite. So, instead, we say, “I need to powder my nose.”, “I need to drain the dragon.”, and so on. This, of course, can confuse someone who does not understand the implicit meaning of the utterances, which then leads to misunderstanding or misinterpretation.
My topic belongs to Pragmatics, Syntax, and Semantics. Pragmatics deals with speaker meaning and contextual meaning (Yule 3). The theory I use to analyze the data of my topic is speech acts, which exists in Pragmatics.
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what a person really wants from us or what she or he wants us to do, speech act has five classifications. They are declaration, representative, expressive, directive, and commissive.
Different interpretations of speech act classifications happen normally because a sentence can be categorized into more than one classification. Some people may be unable to determine what classification of speech act the speaker intends to say. For example, when we say, “You’re drinking too much.”, it can be interpreted as a representative: the speaker only says what he or she believes to be true, or as a directive: the speaker says it as an order or a suggestion that the hearer should stop drinking. However, misunderstanding can still happen even though we already understand the speech act classifications, that is when we misinterpret the type of the speech act classification. For example, when we offer something, the hearer may interpret it as a question. In this case, the speech act classification interpreted by both the speaker and the hearer is directive, but the types of directive are different. The type of directive intended by the speaker is an offer, but the type of directive interpreted by the hearer is a question. For example, the utterance “Soda?” can be interpreted as a question or an offer.
Another linguistic area that my research belongs to is Syntax. Syntax is “the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed.” (Yule 4). In Syntax, there is a potential source of misinterpretation, namely syntactic ambiguity, which means ambiguity caused by different interpretations of a structure of a sentence.
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1491). In Semantics, one potential factor of misunderstanding is semantic ambiguity or lexical ambiguity; it means ambiguity caused by the different interpretations of meanings of a word, a phrase, or a sentence.
To avoid ambiguities in a conversation, we need context. Context is “the situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it.” (Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 263). People talk with a lot of other people, such as friends or family every day. We talk at different time and place. In general, we talk in different contexts. Regardless of how many contexts we are in, we can understand what our friends or family talk about because the context is clear. For example, when we are in one’s house and the owner of the house offers us a drink, we either accept or reject it. In this case, we understand what he or she is trying to do, which is offering us a drink; we do not think that he or she is trying to mock us. However, there are times when the context is not clear, which leads to confusion, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation of the context. For example, when we want to offer someone a cigarette, it can be interpreted as an insult or an offer; it depends on the context.
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these movies, Frank often misinterprets what people say, even though the context is clear. I also surf the Internet to get the scripts for each movie; therefore, I can save my time. I choose these sources of data because in these movies, I can find a lot of misinterpretations of speech act classifications, and syntactic and semantic ambiguities.
The significance of my topic is to show how speech acts, syntactic and semantic ambiguities are misinterpreted in these movies to build the comical scenes. As a matter of fact, the misinterpretations of those linguistic features are what we usually do every day. However, this can make The Naked Gun trilogy very comical. In short, by analyzing the topic, I would like to prove that something as ordinary as the misinterpretations of speech act classifications, syntactic and semantic ambiguities can be an extraordinary source of the comical scenes in The Naked Gun.
Statement of the Problem
In this thesis, I would like to discuss two things:
1. What utterances lead to misunderstanding in the movies?
2. How are the speech act classifications or syntactic and semantic ambiguities misinterpreted so as to create misunderstandings leading to the comical scenes?
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of discussing the problems above is:
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2. To find out how the speech act classifications or syntactic and semantic ambiguities are misinterpreted so as to create misunderstandings leading to the comical scenes.
Method of Research
In gathering the data, I go through five steps. First, I watch the movies. Second, I surf the Internet to find the scripts of the movies. Third, I choose the conversations which contain misunderstanding in the movies. Fourth, I write the conversations down. Last, I analyze the conversations by applying the theories of speech act, syntactic and semantic ambiguities.
Organization of the Thesis
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
Having analyzed the data from the conversations in The Naked Gun trilogy in the previous chapter, I have arrived to some conclusions. I find out that the most frequent misunderstanding caused by different interpretations of speech act classification happen when a representative utterance is misunderstood as a directive utterance. The first reason why this can happen is that sometimes people say something not in a form of a complete sentence, but using only one or two words. Now that it is only one or two words, people are bound to misinterpret what the other people are saying. Since there is not much to comprehend from just one or two words, the hearer can think of several different things, which are all related to the words. For example, when Frank hears “Ship… Boat…”, he thinks it means that Nordberg wants to sail, which is not what Nordberg means.
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word has more than one meaning; as a result, he misunderstands the speech act classification.
I also find out that misunderstanding in speech act classification does not necessarily have to be of different speech act classifications, but it can also be of the same classification. In this thesis, I find out that an offer can be misunderstood as a question. An offer and a question are both classified as directive. In my opinion, an offer can be misunderstood as a question because people can offer something in the form of a question; as a result, the hearer thinks that the speaker is asking a question. The exact reason why a question is misunderstood as an offer is that the form used as an offer is incomplete. For example when Frank offers a cigarette, he just says, “cigarette?”, which can be the incomplete way of saying
“would you like a cigarette?” as an offer or “do you know that this a cigarette?” as a question.
On the other hand, in this analysis the least frequent misunderstanding caused by different interpretations of speech act classification happen when a directive utterance is misunderstood as a representative utterance. In spite of this, actually in reality this kind of misunderstanding happens very often. I believe it is just a coincidence why the reality about this misunderstanding is not reflected in the film. A directive utterance can be misunderstood as a representative utterance when people implicitly tell someone to do something, for example, when a person
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The next thing I find out is that an expressive utterance can be easily misunderstood as other speech act classification. In this thesis, an expressive utterance can be misunderstood as a directive utterance, a representative utterance, or a declaration utterance. In my opinion, this happens most probably owing to the fact that the context allows the hearer to have a different interpretation of what it is meant. The situation or the context when a conversation takes place can affect
someone’s understanding on what the speaker says. Therefore, a conversation at
different times and different places can have different interpretations. For example, when a priest expresses his surprise by shouting, “Jesus Christ!”, and he shouts it out at the end of a prayer in a burial ceremony, one can think that the priest has just finished the prayer. Nevertheless, if the priest shouts, “Jesus
Christ!” when he is not in a burial ceremony, Jesus Christ! may not be understood
as a declaration utterance.
I also do not find a declaration utterance being misunderstood as any other speech act classifications. I think this makes sense because we know that declaration utterances can only be uttered by certain people of certain institution and at a certain time and place. For example, a priest can only appropriately say,
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.” at a wedding ceremony. Seeing that it
can only be said appropriately by certain people of certain institution and at a certain time and place, it is unlikely that someone will misunderstand declaration utterances.
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is that there is a word or a phrase that can refer to more than one thing. As a result, people are bound to have a different idea of what is being talked about by the speaker. Demonstrative pronouns and proper nouns are the examples of words that can easily create referential ambiguity. For example, the word that in what is that? can refer to anything. Another example, when a doctor says “what is your
problem?”, the word problem can refer to any problem. Nevertheless, the context
will limit what that or problem means so that the hearer will not have too many interpretations of the words.
Another thing that I find out is that I do not find any utterance that contains categorial ambiguity. I believe this kind of ambiguity is almost impossible to happen when the speaker and/or the hearer knows English well. Considering that categorial ambiguity is ambiguity that happens because a word can refer to more than one part of speech, the speaker and the hearer must be someone who has limited knowledge of English.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!. Paramount Pictures, 1988 The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear. Paramount Pictures, 1991
Naked Gun 331/3: The Final Insult. Paramount Pictures, 1994
REFERENCES
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2003.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. England: Pearson Education Limited, 2005.
Yule, George. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
INTERNET SOURCES
Drew’s Script-O-Rama. 10 September 2006
<http://www.script-o-rama.com/filmtranscripts.shtml> Ambiguity. 27 May 2007
