The Occurrence of Humor Due to the Non-Observance of Gricean Maxims of Children Jokes in Jokes4all.Net and Unijokes.Com.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menganalisis humor dalam lelucon anak-anak yang dimuat dalam web jokes4all.net dan unijokes.com. Dalam menganalisis humor ini saya menemukan pelanggaran-pelanggaran bidal dalam percakapan-percakapan antara tokoh-tokohnya, yang kemudian menjadi humor.

Analisis ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan teori dari H. P. Grice (1975) yang mengkategorikan pelanggaran-pelanggaran dalam percakapan tersebut ke dalam beberapa jenis dan teori Script Incongrity dari Raskin yang menjelaskan bahwa humor terjadi ketika ada ketidakselarasan antara skenario-skenario yang mungkin muncul dalam humor tersebut.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

A human being is a social creature that needs interaction with one another to survive. People can interact with one another by communicating through language. Communication is important for human beings to express thoughts, opinion, and feelings.

There are two types of communication, which is verbal and nonverbal. Verbal communication happens when we have conversation with each other. According to Your Dictionary, verbal communication is “the use of sounds or words to express yourself and the process of sending or receiving messages with words, including writing and sign language”. (Your Dictionary, 2015)

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2 Maranatha Christian University Conversation can lead to humour or create a funny situation when people fail to understand or interpret the messages contained in the interactions between the speaker and the hearer. “Humour” is the quality in something that makes it funny or amusing (Hornby, 2010, p. 734). The quality of humor itself is subjective. Therefore, in this thesis I would like to analyse the humour using Script Incongruity Theory by Raskin. According to Raskin’s theory, script incongruity is the change of one script to another script.

This research belongs to Pragmatics, which is one of the branches of linguistics. Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning. Pragmatics leads us to know how we understand the unsaid meaning. When people say more or less about something, they produce a certain extra meaning or meaning beyond what the speaker says, which is called implicature. (Yule, 1996, p. 3)

There is the term conversational implicature in Pragmatics, in which a meaning or message is not explicitly stated in an utterance. H.P. Grice sets out his cooperative principle and describes the conversational maxims for efficient communication. Non-observance of the maxims occurs when people fail to show their true purposes of saying something because they do not directly say what they mean. (Thomas, 1995, p. 64)

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3 Maranatha Christian University The theory that I use to analyze my data is the theory of Gricean maxims and the theory of Script Incongruity by Raskin. I would like to discuss the types of the Gricean maxims failed to be observed. The non-observance of the Gricean maxims does not only lead to conflict, but also humor. Humor happens when someone fails to understand or fails to interpret a speaker’s message in daily conversation. Sometimes people use humor to make the unfamiliar situation comfortable and to build social community.

The topic of my thesis is The Occurrence of Humor due to the Non Observance of Gricean Maxims in Children Jokes. This particular topic is interesting

to be analyzed because people often fail to observe Gricean maxims and the changes of perception of the two scripts in the jokes lead to humour.

Children jokes are used as the data source of my analysis. I choose the Internet websites, namely in jokes4all.net and unijokes.com because in these websites there are many good children jokes. The categories in this website are teacher, school, husband, wife, manager, police, doctor, food, animal, culture, religion, Greeks, short jokes and so on. Yet, I am going to focus on children jokes. This category of jokes is interesting to analyze because children are unique with their behavior, curiosity and they are especially funny and naughty when they try to evade from their duty.

This study will make people aware of how non-observance of the Gricean maxims can create humour in a joke. Their awareness of language will increase in identifying the language which produces humour through the role of maxims and script incongruity theory in the joke. When the readers can understand the implicature, they are expected to understand the humour.

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1.2 Statement of the Problem

In this study, the problems that are going to be analyzed are: 1. Which type of the Gricean maxim is unobserved in each joke? 2. What is the implicature of the utterance?

3. How does Raskin’s theory of script incongruity reveal the humour?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

In this thesis, I am going to:

1. Find out which type of the Gricean maxim is unobserved in each joke. 2. Explain the implicature of the utterance.

3. Explain how Raskin’s theory of script incongruity explains the humour.

1.4 Method of Research

In writing this thesis, I took some steps to complete this thesis analysis. First, I searched for the data in the Internet. From this website, I chose the data and collected the data of children category that contain non-observance of Gricean maxims. Then I analyzed the data using both theories. Finally, I wrote the research report.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I would like to present the conclusion based on the findings of my analysis in the previous chapter. The analysis focuses on the children jokes that I chose from the websites Jokes4all.net and Unijokes.com by using the theories of non-observance of the Gricean maxims and Raskin’s Script

Incongruity.

In order to make a conversation run smoothly, people should observe the rule of conversation. The failure to observe it may cause humour. The characters of these jokes are children who are still simple in thinking and sometimes naive. Since the main characters in the jokes are children, they have interactions with their family, friends or teachers in their school. This becomes the main story of the children jokes.

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Maranatha Christian University nine data in which the speakers flout the maxims and four data which show that the speakers violate the maxim. Besides, I find none of suspending, opting out of, and infringing the maxims.

Because the most dominant type of non-observance is flouting, there are a lot of implicatures. The speakers wish the hearer to catch the hidden meaning. Consequently, the reader must pay attention to the dialogues and the situation at that time to understand and get the right implicature, which later leads to the humour of the jokes. This means, if they do not pay attention to the dialogues and the situation, they will not understand and get the right implicature. This will result in the puzzlement of the essence of the jokes.

Furthermore, from nine utterances that flout the maxims, I find twelve data of the flouting of the maxims. There are five data which flout the maxim of quantity, which is 42 percent, four data which flout the maxim of manner, which is 33 percent, and three data flout the maxim of relation, which is 25 percent.

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Maranatha Christian University a long-winded response in order to make an implicature. For example in joke 7 when grandfather gives a warning to Johnny that his teacher comes to their house because he skips school, he replies with “No, you go hide. I told her you were dead!” Johnny gives long-winded and too much information while the simple words can do.

The three data of flouting of the maxim of relation show that when the speaker gives information which is not related to the previous topic, he or she wants to avoid the topic or it is unnecessary to reply to the question asked to them. That is when the situation becomes funny, especially when the readers can catch the right implicature. This can be seen in joke 4 when his teacher asks about his mother’s job, Ramu flouts the maxim of relation by saying she is a woman. He

thinks that it is unnecessary to reply to the question.

Next, in the analysis when violating a maxim takes place, the speaker wants to trap or to deceive their parents or teacher in order to get compliments, get what they want or to evade from their responsibility. This also shows us the smartness and trickiness of children. Yet, it also leads us to humour. This can be clearly seen in joke 2 when the teacher asks about his homework and asks him the reason why he does not do his homework, and then he asks “It was the television. It was too loud. I couldn’t do my homework” His utterance is violating the maxim because he has the intention to trick his teacher and evade from his responsibility to do his homework.

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Maranatha Christian University having an unpredictable switch between the first script and the second script. The theory of Script Incongruity is effective to make the readers more aware in understanding and catching the implicature of the utterance that is produced in the jokes.

My data have not only an unpredictable ending of the script but also opposite scripts. These utterances containing an implicature become the punchline of the jokes. It is important for the reader to make sure of understanding the punchlines in order to get the humour. For example, the script of joke 3 which is ‘A Loving Elder Brother Script’ becomes ‘A Mean Elder Brother Script’, the

script of joke 5 which is ‘Nice Student Script’ becomes ‘Tricky Student Script’,

the script of joke 6 which is ‘Clever Student Script’, becomes ‘Naughty Student Script’ and the script of joke 10 which is ‘The Teacher Getting a Spanking for Bad Mark Script’ becomes ‘Johnny Getting a Spanking for Bad Marks Script’.

The switch of the scripts successfully explains why the jokes are funny.

Finally, for other researchers who are interested in analyzing the same topic, I would like to suggest that they would analyze the jokes in jokes4all.net and unijokes.com because there are still many categories of jokes, such as children, occupation, animal, culture, religion and so on. I hope this thesis will help the readers to understand more about the failure to observe the maxim and also script incongruity theory as it happens in daily life.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

Jokes 4 All. (2014, October 14). Retrieved from jokes4all.net: http://jokes4all.net/ Unijokes. (2015, February 14). Retrieved from Unijokes.com:

http://unijokes.com/school-jokes/

References

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

Hornby, A. (2010). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics. London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc.

Your Dictionary. (2015, September 18). Retrieved from Your Dictionary: