The Role of Conversational Implicature Generated By Flouting The Gricean Maxims In Jokes.

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i Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam skripsi ini saya membahas implikatur atau makna yang tersirat yang

dapat menciptakan hal-hal yang lucu melalui percakapan yang ditemukan dalam

lelucon dalam bahasa Inggris. Humor dapat dibangun dengan menggunakan ujaran

atau ungkapan yang sebenarnya mempunyai arti yang tersirat. Agar dapat lebih

menikmati lelucon, sebagai pembaca, kita harus lebih memperhatikan bahasa yang

digunakan di dalam cerita tersebut, termasuk jika membaca lelucon dalam bahasa

Inggris.

Dalam menciptakan humor dalam sebuah cerita, hal yang ditangkap oleh

karakter-karakter dalam suatu pembicaraan di dalam cerita itu sering digunakan

sebagai alat untuk membangun kelucuan. Pendekatan linguistik yang digunakan

dalam menganalisis humor-humor tersebut adalah Pragmatik, khususnya teori Grice

tentang bidal.

Dari hasil penelitian saya dapat disimpulkan bahwa dalam suatu lelucon,

kesalahpahaman sangat efektif dalam menciptakan hal-hal yang lucu. Penulis cerita

humor juga sering menggunakan permainan kata dan membuat ucapan-ucapan yang

mengandung makna yang tersirat, sehingga terjadi kesalahpahaman antara apa yang

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1 Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Basically, everybody likes humor. Moreover, these days many people need

humor in their life because of the stressful conditions that they cannot avoid in their

life. According to Dr. Norman Cousins, laughter may or may not activate the

endorphins or enhance respiration. Laughter is an antidote to apprehension and panic

(Cousins). Laughing increases people’s desire and makes them have a good mood.

Bernie Siegel, M.D. in his book Love, Medicine and Miracles, says “Our state of

mind has an immediate and direct effect on our state of body” (Siegel). Stress,

depression and anger are the negative emotions that can influence our immunity and

increase the heart problem and slow the healing of illness. On the other hand, positive

emotions such as love, hope and humor are effective to keep illness away from our

body. Therefore, laughing is one of the important parts of our life.

We can find a funny thing that can make us laugh in jokes. We can find jokes

in movies, books, articles, the Internet sites and even in our daily interactions with

other people. In creating jokes, we may use language in building the funny thing and

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Sometimes we have a problem in understanding some jokes, especially those

in foreign language, that we read and hear in many kinds of text. We do not know and

do not understand which part of the jokes that can make us laugh, because sometimes

in creating the funny thing, the writer adds an implicit message in the jokes. As

readers, sometimes we do not catch those implicit messages that actually the writer

wants to convey. As a result, we cannot understand the jokes, and of course, we do

not laugh. In short, the main point of the jokes that can make people laugh cannot be

understood by readers. That is the reason why I choose to analyze jokes for my thesis.

In my thesis, I would like to make readers more aware of those implicit

messages in the jokes, so that readers can enjoy reading the jokes more. Actually

those implicit sentences are related to one linguistic aspect, namely conversational

implicature. For some people, linguistics may be unfamiliar and they may not be

aware that actually linguistics is an important aspect in understanding jokes,

especially when the funny thing is conveyed implicitly. Many writers tell jokes in an

implicit way. That is why readers must be more aware of one particular linguistic

aspect, in this case implicature, in understanding jokes.

In analyzing the jokes in my thesis, I use H. P. Grice’s theory ‘Conversational

Implicature’. By applying that theory, I can analyze the implicit meaning of the jokes.

I understand what the speakers actually intend to say and what their words mean in

the jokes. In some sentences, there is something that is more than what the words

mean. Or, it is also possible that the speaker meaning is completely different from

what the words literally mean. This additional or different meaning is called

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In linguistics, there are some factors and rules in observing those implicatures.

They are called conversational maxims. These maxims are introduced by H. P. Grice.

According to Grice, there are four maxims in conversation as follows:

1. Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required and do not

make your contribution more informative than is required.

2. Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false or do not say that for which

you lack adequate evidence.

importance of linguistics, so that people appreciate linguistic aspects more. More

specifically, I hope readers can appreciate the joke writers’ creativity more; it is not as

easy as we probably think to build the funny thing through sentences, especially when

they contain an implicit meaning. Through my thesis, I also hope readers will have

better language competence in order to be able to observe the implicature in the jokes

so that they can enjoy reading the jokes and can laugh at them more.

Statement of the Problem

The problems that will be analyzed in this thesis are:

1. What utterances in the jokes flout the Gricean maxims so as to produce the

humorous effect?

2. What maxims are being flouted?

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Purpose of the Study

Based on the problems above, I would like:

1. To find out the utterances in the jokes that flout the Gricean maxims so as to

produce the humorous effect.

2. To describe the maxims that are being flouted.

3. To find out the implicature the utterance contains.

Method of Research

The first step is that I browse the Internet to find jokes which contain some

implicit meaning that makes the jokes funny. And then, I analyze the role of

conversational implicature in each joke. Finally, I write a research report.

Organization of the Thesis

This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One, the Introduction, contains

the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study,

Method of Research and Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the

theoretical framework used to analyze the data. Chapter Three contains the analysis of

the conversational implicature in the jokes. Chapter Four contains the conclusion of

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31 Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

There are twenty-two data in my thesis. After analyzing those jokes using

Grice’s theory, I find that actually, based on how the humor is created, the jokes in the

discussion belong to three different groups.

Data 1 until 13 are jokes that consist of utterances that contain implicatures

that require reader’s language competence in observing the implicatures. If they fail to

do that, they will not be able to detect the funny part of the joke. Furthermore, in this

group of jokes, the utterances that contain the implicature or an additional meaning

which makes the joke funny must be put as the punch line, that is at the end of the

story. The jokes end without any further explanation about the other character’s

response.

Data 14 until 20 are jokes in which the funny thing is caused by the fact that

one of the characters fail to observe the implicature. Jokes belonging to this group

will have the implicature in the middle of the story. It can also be put before the punch

line. There is a response of the other character which shows that the character does

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32 Maranatha Christian University Data 21 and 22 are jokes that not only require reader’s language competence

in observing the implicature, but also build the funny thing by one of the character’s

failure to understand the implicature. This kind of jokes has two implicatures. The

utterances which contain the implicature are put as the punch line. Other utterances

containing an implicature are put in the middle of the story.

After analyzing the jokes, I also find that the most common maxim that is

flouted in the jokes is the maxim of Manner. Out of the twenty-two data I use, twenty

of them contain utterances which flout the maxim of Manner. The maxim of Manner

is often used because it deals with utterances which must be expressed briefly and

the joke. Eleven of my data contain utterances that flout the maxim of Relation. I am

of the opinion that this happens because relation deals with utterances that must be

relevant with the topic of the conversation. Commonly, the funny thing can occur

when there is a response or utterance from one of the speakers that is irrelevant with

the context.

In my analysis, I also find that none of my data contains utterances that flout

the maxim of Quality. I believe the maxim of Quality is rarely used in creating the

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33 Maranatha Christian University interesting as when someone utters an ambiguous statement. Commonly, the response

of the speaker when hearing an ambiguous statement is funnier that when hearing an

untrue statement.

Another thing that I find after completing my analysis is that it is possible that

one joke has more than one utterance which contains implicature that makes the joke

funny. In joke number 22, for example, there is an implicature in the teacher’s

utterance that makes little Johnny fail to catch the correct meaning. After hearing the

mother’s utterance, the little boy replies to it with an utterance that also contains an

implicature. But in my analysis, I only find two jokes that use more than one

implicature. They are jokes numbers 21 and 22. I believe this means that in creating

the funny part, the writers of the jokes tend to use just one implicature.

To end my conclusion, I would like to give a suggestion to those who are

interested in analyzing jokes using Gricean maxims. Sometimes I encountered some

difficulties to find out the right utterance which contains an implicature or an

additional meaning that makes the joke funny. First, we must understand the story.

We must read the joke carefully and pay attention to the vocabularies in that joke.

Because the joke is not written in our first language, sometimes there are some words

that we do not understand. The problem is that the writers of the jokes sometimes play

with the words in creating the funny part. And we must also imagine the situation that

occurs in the story. It will help us to understand the condition of the speaker in the

joke better. After that, we can find the utterance that flouts the maxims. Usually, that

utterance is put as the punch line of the story or the utterance that makes other speaker

fail to catch its meaning.

Second, to understand and appreciate jokes that we read, we have background

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34 Maranatha Christian University funny. Although we understand the implicature, we may not find the joke funny if we

do not have some background knowledge about what is happening in the joke. Joke

14 is the clear example of joke which needs our background knowledge in

understanding the humor.

If we do not know that only Labrador and Golden Retriever are used to assist

the blind, we will not be able to understand why the second man’s utterance is funny.

Personally, I prefer reading jokes in which the implicature is put as the punch

line. I must understand the whole story to find out the funny part. It is more enjoyable

to realize the funny thing by ourselves. For me, it is funnier when the funny thing in

the joke is put implicitly in the utterance. It is not funny anymore if the funny thing is

said explicitly. Our language competence is important to help us realize the implicit

meaning. In understanding it, we deal with pragmatics, which concerns with what the

hearer or the reader catches from the speaker or the writer. That is why I strongly

believe that pragmatics plays an important role in jokes, both in creating and

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Maranatha Christian University

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman Group Ltd, 1995

Electronic Publications:

Cousins, Norman. “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration.” Vidyaonline. 27 February 2008

<http://www.vidyaonline.net/arvindgupta/anatomy.htm>

Durbin, Chaplain Paul G. “Notes from Love, Medicine & Miracles.” Rev. of Love, Medicine & Miracles, by Dr. Bernie Siegel. Human Trinity

Hypnotherapy 25 February 2008. 27 Feb 2008 <http://www.durbinhypnosis.com/siegel.htm>

Ahajokes.com. 2005. 24 February 2007 <http://www.ahajokes.com/>

Jokeswarehouse.com. 2000. 29 February 2008 <http://www.jokeswarehouse.com/>

Littlejohnnyjoke.com. 2003. 7 March 2008 <http://www.little-johnny-joke.com/>

Iteslj.org. The Internet TESL Journal. 1998-2008. 7 March 2008 <http://iteslj.org/c/jokes.html>