Humorous Atmosphere Due To The Failure of Observing The Gricean Maxims in 'Joey'.

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Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menganalisis terciptanya humor yang diakibatkan oleh pelanggaran bidal yang dibuat oleh penutur dalam suatu percakapan. Saya mengunakan film seri Joey sebagai data saya. Teori yang saya gunakan adalah Conversational maxim yang dikemukakan oleh H.P. Grice. Film seri Joey menceritakan tentang keseharian Joey yang selalu diliputi masalah dan menimbulkan komedi situasi. Pelanggaran bidal dalam teori Conversational

maxim meliputi quantity, quality, relation dan manner. Menurut Grice,

orang-orang tidak akan mengalami masalah komunikasi jika mereka mengikuti teorinya. Grice memperkenalkan lima perlanggaran diantaranya flouting, violating,

infringing, opting out dan suspending a maxim.

Dalam data, saya menemukan banyak penutur yang tidak mematuhi aturan

Conversational maxim. Namun jika mitra tutur dapat menangkap gagasan penutur

yang sebenarnya, maka komunikasi tetap akan berjalan baik.

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Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

People in the world communicate to one another other using language. Language is important in our lives. If we have language, we can express our intentions to people. They will understand our message because of our language.

We cannot imagine life without language. It will be hard to express our intentions to the hearer and the hearer will be not able to understand the meaning of our intentions. Thus, the communication will be ruined.

As we know, an utterance has three parts consisting of the acts, they are: the utterance (locutionary act), the intention (illocutionary act) and the act itself which is caused by the interpretation of an addressee (perlocutionary act). The three elements make an interaction run well (Thomas 49).

As the theory says, the speaker can speak more or less than the speaker wants to say, but usually they are not totally explicit (Thomas 56). In a conversation, it is often found that the speaker puts an implied meaning in it. For example, the

utterance “You’re a very nice girl!” can have three possible interpretations in the

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2 Maranatha Christian University The first interpretation is that the speaker really means to say that the hearer is a very nice girl because of her behavior or her appearance which makes the speaker thinks so. The second interpretation is that the speaker criticizes the hearer that actually the behavior is annoying to the speaker (quality). Here, the speaker can use the mocking intonation to make the utterance in the vice versa of the real meaning. The third interpretation is that the speaker says this utterance as the introduction to the real intention which is. For example, the speaker wants to

borrow the hearer’s money, but because the speaker is afraid to say it directly, she

or he uses an introduction to make the hearer feel good first before showing the

real intention, which is that the speaker wants to borrow the hearer’s money

(manner).

However, there are some rules that are conveyed by H.P Grice to make the conversation run smoothly. If the speaker and the hearer follow the rules correctly, the conversation will be good. Yet, there is another problem: Sometimes, the hearer may have a different interpretation for what actually the speaker means. The problem arises when the hearer has different interpretation and she or he performs an action which is different from the speaker’s expectation. Some of the reasons are that the hearer cannot get what the speaker’s real meaning is; the hearer intentionally lies to hide something because the hearer thinks that the information is not supposed to be told or the speaker does not give clear information that is needed by the hearer. The effects that are caused by these different interpretations are various. It may cause tense atmosphere to arise, cause people to wonder, or cause humor.

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3 Maranatha Christian University am analyzing the cooperative principle which the speaker fails to observe, namely the maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner. My topic belongs to Pragmatics. I am interested in writing it because it is interesting to know the

hidden meaning inside the speaker’s utterances, so we can react properly to what

people expect us to react. I am using the theory of Grice in Jenny Thomas’ book. In my thesis, I want to analyze how the failure of observing the maxim can cause humor. According to Grice the hearer should get the intention of what is said to what is meant (Thomas 56), hence the rules are applied. Nonetheless, in this television series, the characters often fail to observe the maxim. The effect is that, it causes the viewers to laugh.

I choose Joey television series instead of other television series as the source of my data because the characters in this television series, especially Joey, often fail to observe the maxims. This causes laugher to the audience. I want to show that actually failure of observing the maxim can cause humor in conversation. That is why this comedy television series Joey is suitable for my thesis.

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4 Maranatha Christian University Statement of the Problem

In this thesis I am going to analyze following four problems:

1. Which type of non-observance of maxim does the speaker fail to observe? 2. What conversational maxim type does the speaker fail to observe?

3. Why does the speaker fail to observe the maxim?

4. What humorous effects occur due to the failure of observing the maxim?

Purpose of the Study

This thesis is done to show the following points:

1. To show the type of non-observance that the speaker fails to observe. 2. To show the type of conversational maxim that the speaker fails to

observe.

3. To explain why the speaker fails to observe the maxim.

4. To explain the humorous effects that occur because of the failure of observing the maxim.

Method of Research

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5 Maranatha Christian University Organization of the Thesis

In this thesis there are four chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction, which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. The second chapter is the Theoretical Framework, in which I explain the linguistic area and the approach used in writing the thesis. The third chapter presents the Occurrence of Humor due to the Failure to Observe the Gricean Maxim in Joey which is the analysis of the data. The last chapter, chapter four is the conclusion of the analysis. This thesis is ended with the Bibliography and Appendix.

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I will draw a conclusion based on my findings. Basically, Grice states that applying the conversational maxims would make people’s

conversation run well. Actually, the conversation will still run well even if the speaker and the addressee do not obey the conversational rules. Yet, they have to catch the real intention and the sense of the conversation. It shows that a speaker and an addressee do not always have to follow the rules in conversations. If the addressee catches the speaker’s intention, there will be no problem. Nevertheless, in my thesis the speakers and the addressees fail to follow the conversational maxim rules. As a result, implicature appears from failing to observe the Gricean conversational maxims.

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27 Maranatha Christian University First, I found that flouting the maxim is the type of non-observance which the speakers do the most in Joey television series. There are only two types of non-observance I found in the film. They are flouting a maxim (7 data), and infringing a maxim (2 data). By this number, I conclude that as humor appears without any intention to create laughter, it fits to the theory of flouting a maxim which the speaker has no intention to mislead the addressee. And flouting a maxim makes nonsense because no matter what the utterance is it does not fulfill the speaker’s questions in some way. Hence, flouting a maxim works well in causing laughter to audience. Besides, infringing a maxim also creates humor. It is because infringing a maxim in an utterance has no intention either to deceiver or does it contain an implicature. In my opinion, when an ordinary person infringes a maxim, it makes the audience laugh as it happens to people who are nervous, drunk or has an imperfect language skill, for example a language learner who has a limited language skill. Because as physically normal person can speak clearly but because of some reasons like nervousness or drunkenness not uttering clearly looks funny. Yet, it will not cause humor if it happens to disabled speak because it is not something that we can laugh at.

Second, I found that the maxim of relation is the type of conversational maxim which the speakers do mostly. The numbers of the maxims that the speakers fail to observe are: maxim of relation (8 data), maxim of quantity (3 data), maxim of quality (2 data), and maxim of manner (1 data). Based on this number, I conclude that the maxim of relation plays an important role in causing laughter to the audience because the addressee’s answer is out of the topic which

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28 Maranatha Christian University addressee gives an answer which is irrelevant and unclear answer to what the speaker needs. In other words, the audience does not expect the response of the addressee. As a result, surprise appears and leads to a laughter.

Third, I analyzed some reasons that make the speakers fail to observe a conversational maxim. And here is the number: the speaker wants to talk about another thing (3 data), the speaker feels nervous (1 data), the speaker has an imperfect language skill (1 data), the speakers feel uncomfortable to answer the questions (1 data), the speaker just responds to an implicature (1 data), the speaker wants to have a brief conversation (2 data), the speaker wants to use an implicature in the answer (1 data).

I noticed that the reasons that build humor in the conversation are connected with the second finding of my research which is maxim of relation. It is because the speakers and the addresses have different ideas while having the same conversation. It shows that having different ideas in a conversation is the main reason why the addressee fail to observe a maxim.

The last finding of my thesis is the humor that is raised from failing to observe the conversational maxim. Here are the causes why the humor appears: a speaker’s answer to a question is not what the audience expects (5 data), a speaker answers a question by repeating the question (1 data), talking about another things which is irrelevant (1 data), being nervous or not speaking well (1 data), having an imperfect language skill (1 data), not being straight to the point (1 data).

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29 Maranatha Christian University the audience surprised because what the audience expects is just a general answer. Besides, the way how the addressee replies to the speaker’s question is also funny. It becomes ever funnier when the audience finds and understands the implied meaning in the answer.

Finally, in my thesis I found a strong point that flouting a maxim of relation really makes Joey television series become a successful comedy television series. The script writers, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, deserve credit for the success of Joey television series because these two writers have written a great script. They have created humor by using linguistics. In my opinion, a comedy television series can be successful due to the support of funny gestures or stupid actions. Yet, as far as this television series is concerned, it uses linguistics as their main focus of how they build a humor through conversation. Thus, I conclude that by being aware of linguistic fields, people can understand and enjoy this television series more.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics. Conversational Implicature. London and New York: Longman Group Limited, 1995, 55-77

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