Analysis of Ambiguity in Humorous Riddles.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Ketika manusia menggunakan bahasa dalam berkomunikasi, termasuk di dalamnya bahasa Inggris, akan terdapat kemungkinan munculnya ketaksaan. Hal tersebut berpotensi menyebabkan perbedaan dalam pengertian antara pemberi dan penerima pesan. Akan tetapi, pada kenyataannya ketaksaan tidak hanya mengarah pada hal-hal negatif. Ketaksaan juga dapat digunakan secara positif dan kreatif dalam penggunaan teka-teki yang menghasilkan kelucuan.

Dalam penelitian ini, saya menganalisis teka-teki yang menggunakan ketaksaan yang menghasilkan kelucuan. Teka-teki yang saya analisis berjumlah enam belas, yang diambil dari lima sumber di Internet, yaitu Enchanted Learning, Funology, Jokes in English for the ESL/EFL Classroom, Reading Rockets dan RinkWorks. Ketaksaan dalam analisis ini didasarkan pada teori Charles W. Kreidler dalam bukunya Introduction to English Semantics dan teori humor tentang script of incongruity dari Victor Raskin.

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APPENDIX

Table 1. List of Ambiguities in Riddles

No Riddles Type of Ambiguity

1.

Why are fish so smart? Because they swim in schools!

Lexical ambiguity

2.

Why did the student bring a king to class? Because his teacher told him he needed a ruler!

Lexical ambiguity

3.

What kind of stamp do you have to stick on yourself?

None. You stick them on envelopes.

Syntactic ambiguity

4.

What is the easiest way to make a banana split? Cut it in half!

Syntactic ambiguity

5.

What did the doctor say to the patient who thought he was getting smaller? You’ll just have to be a little patient!

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Why did the bear tiptoe through the campground?

He didn't want to wake the sleeping bags!

Syntactic and lexical ambiguity

7.

Q: Mr. Blue lives in the blue house, Mr. Pink lives in the pink house, and Mr. Brown lives in

the brown house. Who lives in the white house?

A: The president!

Lexical ambiguity

8. I am the black child of a white father, a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven. I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me, even though there is no cause for grief, and at once on my birth I am

dissolved into air. What am I? Smoke.

Lexical ambiguity

9.

How do you stop an elephant from charging?

Take away her credit card! Lexical ambiguity

10.

Where do penguins go to dance?

The snow ball! Lexical ambiguity

11.

Why did the teacher wear sunglasses?

Because her students were bright! Lexical ambiguity

12.

Why didn't the sun go to college?

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Q: Tuesday, Sam and Peter went to a restaurant to eat lunch. After eating lunch, they

paid the bill. But Sam and Peter did not pay the bill, so who did?

A: Their friend, Tuesday.

Syntactic and referential ambiguity

14.

Q: If a blue house is made out of blue bricks, a yellow house is made out of yellow bricks and a pink house is made out of pink bricks, what

is a green house made of? A: Glass

Lexical ambiguity

15.

Why was the clown sad?

She broke her funny bone! Lexical ambiguity

16.

Q: Why did the man put the clock in the safe?

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

People are social creatures; thus, they express their feelings, emotions, thoughts, and ideas by interacting with their fellow beings. They use language to interact with others and it is undeniable that they use language in almost every aspect of their lives. Therefore, it can be considered that language is a very important part in people’s lives, which cannot be separated from communication. Anna Wierzbicka (3), in her book, Semantics: Primes and Universal, states that the function of language is an instrument for conveying meaning.

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Maranatha Christian University Furthermore, understanding written language is more difficult than spoken language. If the hearer does not understand what the speaker says in his or her utterances or speeches, the hearer can directly ask the speaker what he or she actually means. However, if the reader does not understand what the writer has written, he or she most probably cannot directly ask the writer. Because of the different views and interpretations between the two sides, misunderstanding in spoken and written language is likely to occur.

One of the sources of misunderstanding is ambiguity. Ambiguity means a word or a phrase or a sentence that has more than one meaning (Bach). In other words, a word or phrase or sentence can be interpreted in more than one way. The ambiguity in a word or a phrase or a sentence usually creates confusion or uncertainty of meaning for the reader. In support of this view, according to Geoffrey Leech (30), an expression is said to be ambiguous when more than one interpretation can be assigned to it. This ambiguous expression can happen in a word, a phrase or a sentence.

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Maranatha Christian University expressing people’s ideas, but also as something which gives pleasure to the writer or speaker and the reader or hearer. On top of that, riddles are one of the examples of a creative way of using language for fun. Besides this, ambiguity plays a significant role as a technique which is commonly used to create humour, and it is also one of the causes of misunderstanding in communication. Riddles, then, use the misunderstanding from the ambiguity to create humour.

The title of my thesis is “Analysis of Ambiguity in Humorous Riddles.” The reasons for choosing this topic are, firstly, ambiguity is one of the language aspects which abound in many languages, including in the English language. Moreover, people cannot avoid ambiguity, although there are many theories to help people avoid it. When an ambiguity occurs in a statement, it can create a misunderstanding. Secondly, the misunderstanding does not usually refer to a bad thing. The misunderstanding which results from the ambiguity can be used for something pleasant, as the ambiguity has an important role in producing humour. Thirdly, riddle is a form of language which uses ambiguity to create a humorous effect.

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Maranatha Christian University I believe this topic is significant to analyse. It is commonly known that people might think that riddles are just for fun. Yet riddles have an academic side too, as one of the significant aspects is ambiguity, which belongs to linguistics. Therefore, the readers are expected to be able to realize and also explore how the theoretical understanding of linguistics contributes to language patterns in English riddles.

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Statement of the Problem

The problems which I would like to analyse in this thesis are stated below: 1. What word or phrase makes the riddle ambiguous?

2. What kind of ambiguity can be found in the riddle? 3. What is the cause of the ambiguity?

4. How does the ambiguity in the riddle contribute to the script incongruity?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this thesis is to answer the problems of this research which are mentioned above. They are as follows:

1. To show the word or phrase that makes the riddle ambiguous. 2. To show the kind of ambiguity found in the riddle.

3. To show the cause of the ambiguity.

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Method of Research

First of all, I choose the topic of this thesis, which is ambiguity in riddles. Then I begin to do some library and Internet research by reading some books and searching for other materials needed which relate to the theory of ambiguity and script incongruity. After that, I gather and choose some riddles from different websites in the Internet which can be analysed by using some ambiguity theories and also the theory of script incongruity. Finally, I write the research report.

Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to give my personal opinion and comments on the findings elaborated in Chapter Three. After analysing the sixteen riddles, which are taken from five different websites in the Internet, it is revealed what words or phrases make the riddles ambiguous, what kinds of ambiguity are found in the riddles and what causes the ambiguity. Furthermore, it is also shown how the ambiguity in the riddle contributes to the script incongruity which produces humour.

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Maranatha Christian University In my opinion, the riddle-makers tend to use lexical ambiguity in their riddles. It can be seen that lexical ambiguity is more frequently used than the other types of ambiguity. In my opinion, this is absolutely a good thing because when a riddle-maker uses more words in the types of lexical ambiguity, it means that he or she is rich in vocabularies. Furthermore, it also shows the riddle-maker’s creative skills, as it is not an easy thing and it needs high creativity in making a good riddle. On the other hand, for the readers, riddles with lexical ambiguities demand that the reader has a wide vocabulary. In this case, it is clear that there is a good academic side to riddles containing ambiguity.

The next point is the causes of the three types of ambiguity. There are two causes of lexical ambiguity. The first one is homonymy, while the second one is literal and figurative meaning. I find that homonymy is the major cause in this finding, seeing that there are seven data containing homonymy and five data containing ambiguity of the literal and figurative meaning. Then, for the syntactic ambiguity, there are four data using certain function words, one data using a construction containing the coordinator ‘and’ and one data using gerund + object or participle modifying a noun. Lastly, one data used an indefinite referring expression as the cause of the referential ambiguity.

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Maranatha Christian University When doing my analysis, I also find a special case. There are some riddles which have more than one kind of ambiguity. This finding shows that it is possible for a word or a phrase in a riddle to have more than one kind of ambiguity. We can see this condition in data 6 and 13, in which they have more than one kind of ambiguity.

In my opinion, it is also another extraordinary thing for the riddle-makers to use more than one kind of ambiguity to be applied in their riddles. This is absolutely not an easy thing to do. Making a riddle with one ambiguous word is not an easy thing, let alone to think of many ambiguous words with different types of ambiguity in one riddle. Thus, as the readers, we have to appreciate this more, as it reveals how creative the riddle-makers are.

Furthermore, in the humour analysis, I find that there are fifteen riddles that have two scripts of incongruity and only one riddle that has four scripts of incongruity. Thus, it can be said that one story commonly only has two scripts of incongruity, which leads to humour. However, data 6 shows that it is possible for a riddle to involve more than two incongruous scripts; in this case, four scripts.

In my opinion, the cause of the existence of four scripts in the riddle is the fact that the riddle has two types of ambiguity: the homonymy, and the literal versus figurative meaning. The lexical ambiguity with the literal and figurative meaning adds another meaning and another possible script to the riddle. This is truly an extraordinary thing as the more complex the ambiguities are, the higher the level of creativity that is needed.

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Maranatha Christian University riddle, in fact, has an academic side, with ambiguity as its significant aspect. Thus, the analysis of this thesis hopefully can make the readers able to realize how linguistics contributes many things to our daily life. The study of ambiguity can make people not only avoid miscommunication, but also acknowledge its positive use in playful communication. Ambiguity in riddles has an important role in playful communication as it leads to humour.

All in all, considering the significance of the study of ambiguity in riddles, I sincerely hope that in the future there will be other studies that discuss ambiguity in riddles, using theories espoused by other linguists. I also suggest that studies which simply focus on lexical ambiguity as the most frequently-used type of ambiguity should be explored more for analyzing riddles. However, my analysis does not represent riddles in general; therefore, a further research on ambiguity in riddles by using the same theories may still be worth doing to verify the findings of this research analysis which shows that lexical ambiguity is the type of ambiguity that is most frequently identified in English riddles.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

“Riddles.” Crafts Projects Science Experiments and Recipes for Moms with Young Children Funology. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2013.

Stoddard, Samuel. “Brain Food.” RinkWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2013. Zipke, Marcy. “Teaching Metalinguistic Awareness and Reading Comprehension

with Riddles.” Reading Rockets. WETA, 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2013. “Enchanted Learning.” Enchanted Learning. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

“Jokes in English for the ESL/EFL Classroom, A Project of The Internet TESL Journal.” Jokes in English for the ESL/EFL Classroom. N.p., 1998. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.

References

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Maranatha Christian University “Bone.” Def. 1a. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “Charge.” Def. 2a. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “Charge.” Def. 2e. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. Cook, Guy. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2000. Print.

“Degree.” Def. 1b. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “Degree.” Def. 1d. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “Funny.” Def. 1b. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “Funny bone.” Def. 1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

“Green House.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online, 2014. Web. 1 March 2014.

Hurford, James and Brendan Heasley. Semantics: A Coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Print.

Kreidler, Charles W. Introduction English Semantics. London: Routledge, 1998. Print.

Leech, Geoffrey. Semantics: The Study of Meaning. London: Penguin Books, 1981. Print.

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Maranatha Christian University “Save.” Def. 1e. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “School.” Def. 1a. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “School.” Def. 1i. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print. “Sleeping bag.” Def. 1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

“White house.” Def. 1. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Wierzbicka, Anna. Semantics: Primes and Universal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.

Analysis of Ambiguity in Humorous Riddles.

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

APPENDIX

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY