Analysis of Non-Obervance of the Gricean Maxims in Relation to Script Incongruity in Marriage Jokes.

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ABSTRACT

Judul skrispi saya adalah Analysis of Non-observance of the Gricean Maxims in relation to Script Incongruity in Marriage Jokes. Saya menganalisis

data yang berupa marriage jokes, yaitu humor yang melibatkan pasangan di dalam pernikahan. Saya menganalisis beberapa humor dengan menggunakan teori bidal atau maxim dari Herbert Paul Grice, dan kemudian dilanjutkan dengan analisis menggunakan teori Script Incongruity dari Victor Raskin.

Data yang saya gunakan diambil dari beberapa sumber di Internet, yaitu Santa Banta Jokes, A Joke A Day, Reader’s Digest, LIPY dan NET Jokes. Dari

data yang saya dapatkan, saya melihat bahwa kebanyakan humor muncul karena adanya pelanggaran terhadap bidal yang menyebabkan terbentuknya implikatur dan yang menjadi pemicu munculnya dua skrip yang berbeda dalam satu cerita. Teori Script Incongruity digunakan untuk meneliti perubahan skrip dalam suatu data yang akhirnya menimbulkan humor.

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Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of the Study

Human beings cannot live without having communication with others. That is why communication is a very important part of our lives. The importance of communication cannot be denied. Using effective communication skills is crucial to relationships and to success at work. There are, of course, many types of communication. We use verbal communication, non-verbal communication, written communication and many forms of each of those (Brinser).

When people communicate with one another, deliberately or not, the speaker sometimes tends to express his or her intention implicitly to the hearer. The speaker does not always say directly what he or she means. As written in The Handbook of Pragmatics by L.R. Horn, "What a speaker intends to communicate

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Maranatha Christian University speaker’s utterance which gives more or less information than needed, is irrelevant, lacks adequate evidence, and creates an ambiguous situation (Thomas 63-64). For that reason, we have to be more aware when we are interpreting people’s utterances. In order that we can interpret people’s utterances accurately, we need to observe the maxims, which are introduced by H.P. Grice, because when a speaker says something, his utterance may not only contain literal meaning, but also figurative.

Non-observance of the maxim is often used for creating jokes. Frequently, misinterpretation happens within a conversation and this can cause humorous situations, especially in jokes. When a speaker says something to the hearer, the speaker sometimes does not say it straightforwardly. Still, the hearer feels that he or she understands the situation as intended and replies to the speaker with an answer that is actually totally unrelated to what the situation requires. As a result, when the wrong answer is given, a humorous situation is created. Generally speaking, humour is created from misinterpretation between a speaker and a hearer, as each of them has a different point of view, knowledge, and interpretation.

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joke. I believe that many people like jokes, but they tend to fail to appreciate jokes due to lack of knowledge required to understand it.

This topic is significant because the readers can be conscious of how a joke creates the implicature and how the implicature works as the central of the jokes. It is expected that the new knowledge will help the readers to appreciate and interpret humour in the way it is aimed in the first place. Thus, after reading this thesis, the readers are expected to understand jokes better.

My topic belongs to the study of Pragmatics as its main field. Specifically, the theory that I am going to use to observe the utterances in the jokes for my thesis is non-observance of the Gricean maxim as one of the subfields of pragmatics. Non-observance of the Gricean maxims occurs when the speaker’s utterance shows that he does not observe the maxims due to deception, ethical reasons, unwillingness to cooperate, and imperfect linguistic performance (72-76).

According to H.P. Grice, maxims are categorised into Maxim of Quality, Maxim of Quantity, Maxim of Relation, and Maxim of Manner (63). There are five categories of non-observance of the maxims of the conversational implicature. They are flouting a maxim, violating a maxim, infringing a maxim, opting out of a maxim, and suspending a maxim (64).

I use Raskin’s theory of script incongruity to enhance the explanation of humour. I choose these two theories because they are closely related with each other, and in a joke the relation between these theories has an important role in creating humour.

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Maranatha Christian University ample amount of data that the Websites contain can be used for my analysis. Moreover, Websites offer many categories of jokes, such as marriage, bar, doctors, lawyers, religions, and children, that I can analyse. Most of the jokes on the websites are in the form of conversation. Thus, it will be easy to analyse them in the study of pragmatics and script incongruity.

(800 words)

1.2Statement of the Problem

The problems which I am going to analyse are:

1. What types of the non-observance of Gricean maxim are found in each joke? 2. What is the implicature?

3. In relation to Raskin’s theory of script incongruity, how does the non-observance of the maxim lead to the occurrence of humour in the joke?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

This study is done:

1. to identify which types of the maxims are not observed in each joke. 2. to show the implicature generated by the speaker.

3. to explain the significance of the relation of the non-observance of the maxims with Raskin’s theory of script incongruity in the occurrence of the humour in the jokes.

1.4Method of Research

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non-observance and the conversational maxims, as introduced by Grice. Then I complete my analysis using Raskin’s theory of script incongruity. The next step is analysing how the utterances lead to humour and the last step is writing the research report.

1.5Organisation of the Thesis

This thesis is presented in four chapters. Chapter One is Introduction, which consists of Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and Organisation of the Thesis. Chapter Two is Theoretical Framework, in which all the theories used in analysing the data are provided. Chapter Three is the analysis of the data. Chapter Four contains the conclusion of the analysis. At the last part of this thesis, I put Bibliography, which contains all the references used, and Appendix, in which I provide screenshots of the data that I use.

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to present the conclusion of my analysis from the previous chapter. I also want to comment on the non-observance of the Gricean Maxims in the jokes about marriage. I analyse twelve data in this thesis and from those data, I find various types of non-observance of the Gricean Maxims which make the jokes funny.

From the twelve data I have analysed in Chapter Three, I find ten data in which the speakers flout the maxim and four data which show that the speakers

violate the maxim. Seven out of twelve data show that the speakers flout the

maxim of manner, which is the maxim that is flouted the most. The second most

often flouted maxim is the maxim of quantity with a total of six data. The third most often flouted maxim is the maxim of relation, with a total of two data. Lastly, the maxim of quality is the least flouted maxim, which is found in only one out of twelve data.

Throughout the analysis there is no case of infringing a maxim, opting

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involve more than one maxim; in data 1, the maxim of manner, the maxim of quantity and the maxim of relation are flouted. In data 6, the maxim of quantity, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner are flouted. In data 10, the speaker violates the maxim as well as flouting the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner. In data 2, 3, 5 and 11, there are two maxims which are not observed in each joke. In data 4, 7, 8, 9 and 12, only one maxim is flouted in each joke.

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Maranatha Christian University I find that flouting the maxim of relation occurs in some of the data. I have observed that in those jokes, the speakers give information which is not related to the previous topic. Yet the speaker wants the hearer to think about something else. That is when the situation becomes funny. This is observed in data 6. It can be seen when the wife answers with something that is totally unrelated to the previous topic.

I also find that violating the maxim happens in some jokes I have analysed. Violating the maxim happens when the speaker does not give the true information to the hearer so that he misleads the hearer. The speaker tends to hide something because he does not want the hearer to know about the speaker’s real intention. This is clearly seen in data 4, when the father misleads his children into thinking that he and his wife are getting divorced. From this, I can conclude that when a speaker wants to hide his intention, he misleads the hearer; thus he violates the maxim.

The maxim of quality is the maxim flouted the least in my data. It seems to me that flouting the maxim of quality happens when the speaker tells the hearer the opposite of what really happens.

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Script incongruity occurs when there is more than one script that exists at the same time in the joke. These scripts are triggered by words or sequence of words that appear in the joke. The non-observance of the maxim helps to achieve this situation, since it may simply cause a misunderstanding or a funny atmosphere between the participants. It also helps to create another script which replaces the first one that is followed by the reader. This new script brings an unexpected point to the conversation, and this new point is what makes the jokes funny.

In this thesis, I analyse the data by using conversational implicature of the non-observance of the maxim together with Raskin’s theory of script incongruity. In accordance with my analysis, it is clearly seen that each joke has hidden meaning. After doing this research for three semesters, I can say that the research has increased my knowledge and understanding about utterances, including those with hidden meaning, which are often given in an indirect message such as when people do not want to hurt other people’s feelings.

I have some suggestions for my fellow students who are interested in doing similar kinds of research. First, they have to correctly choose the topic they will analyse. It will be easier for them to focus on one topic and it is better to categorise the jokes. Next, they have to make sure that they have chosen the correct data for the research, since not all the data in the websites can be used for the analysis. Some of them cannot be analysed with either the non-observance of the Gricean maxim or Raskin’s theory of script incongruity. Lastly, I hope my analysis can be a good source and useful to those who study a topic similar to

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

A Fish Lover. AJokeADay.com. EMERgency 24 Inc. 8 November 2002. Web. 5 April 2015.

“Can’t Stop Laughing.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web. 15 May 2014.

“English Girl.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web.11 September 2014.

“Loving Wife.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web. 10 March 2015.

“Married Men.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web.15 May 2014.

“Minor Procedure.” Reader’s digest. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. N.d. Web. 5 April 2015.

“Miraculous and Powerful Wife.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web. 21 March 2014.

“Most beautiful woman in the world.”LIPY. Lipy. N.d. Web. 5 April 2015, “Prescription for Love.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web. 28

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“Scottish Christmas.” SantaBanta.com. SantaBanta.com Limited. N.d. Web. 24 March 2014.

Simkins, Patti. “A Home Affair.” Reader’s digest. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. N.d. Web. 28 March 2015.

Sporest. NetJokes.NET. N.p. 29 October 2013. Web. 4 April 2015.

References

Brinser, Linda. “Importance of Communication.” Easy Stress Management. StressAffects.com. N.d. Web. 27 February 2014.

Cook, Guy. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford Universities Press. 2000. Print.

Nordquist, Richard. “Conversational Implicature.” About.com Grammar & Composition. About.com. N.d. Web. 27 February 2014.