The Role of Gricean Maxims and Raskinâs Theory of Script Incongruity in Family Jokes in Jokes.Siliconindia.Com.

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ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini, saya membahas peranan bidal dan menggunakan teori Raskin, Script Incongruity, untuk menganalisis humor bertemakan keluarga yang terdapat di situs jokes.siliconindia.com.

Secara lebih spesifik, ruang lingkup tugas akhir ini termasuk ke dalam pragmatik, dengan berfokus pada pembahasan pelanggaran bidal. Pelanggaran bidal sendiri terdiri atas beberapa jenis, antara lain flouting, violating, infringing, opting out, dan suspending. Didukung dengan teori Raskin, Script Incongruity,

saya menerapkan teori bidal dan script incongruity dalam humor keluarga dari jokes.siliconindia.com.

Salah satu temuan yang saya peroleh dari jokes.siliconindia.com yaitu bahwa bidal yang sering dilanggar adalah flouting the maxim, yang termasuk dalam kategori bidal kuantitas dan perilaku. Kedua bidal tersebut sering digunakan untuk memicu terjadinya humor. Saat seseorang memberikan informasi yang kurang, atau berbicara ambigu, dan tidak langsung dengan alasan tertentu, serta memiliki implikatur tersendiri, ia dapat menimbulkan atau memicu kelucuan.

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Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

In daily life, communication is the most effective means for people to interact with others. People communicate for several purposes, such as expressing their feelings, giving their opinion, having fun, and others.

The most common way of communication is conversation. Through conversation people can interact with others directly using verbal language. Yet, sometimes people often make mistakes to observe the maxims in their conversation.

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observing the maxim. In pragmatics, conversational implicature is something which is implied in conversation, which is left implicit in actual language use or the implicature is according to the context in utterance. Conversational implicature can be used to create humour or jokes.

In conversation or in our daily life, misunderstanding and misinterpretation happen between the speaker and the hearer, which creates funny situations. Usually, in conversation the hearer does not always grasp exactly what the speaker means. The hearer thinks that he or she has understood the speaker’s meaning completely, and gives an answer which is actually irrelevant with the topic, which causes misunderstanding.

According to Grice’s theory of the maxim, misunderstanding happens when “...a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or misleading. Instead, it is simply because the speaker wishes to prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from, or in addition to the expressed meaning.” (Thomas, 1995, p.65). This insight about the theory is

very important to help people find out and understand what the speaker really means.

The topic of this thesis is The Role of Gricean Maxims and Raskin’s Theory of Script Incongruity in Family Jokes. The reason that I choose this topic

as my analysis is because I am very interested in one aspect of communication, namely humour. Moreover, jokes are interesting to analyze.

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observance of the maxim are not observed in the jokes, the implicature of the understand which part of jokes is considered funny. In many cases, a joke is just a word or a phrase that refers to some humourous situation; therefore, it makes people entertained.

Finally, the purpose of this study is to help people identify which part of an utterance is considered funny through the role of maxim and script incongruity theory in jokes.

The theory that I am going to use is Grice’s theory on the role of maxim and Raskin’s theory of script incongruity. According to Raskin’s theory, script

incongruity is the change of the script and it relates to non-observance of the Gricean maxim. It happens when a speaker fails to observe a maxim without any intention of deceiving or misleading. Sometimes, it creates a joke. Speaker’s failure occurs when the hearer cannot catch what the speaker means.

The source of the data which I am going to use as the subject of my analysis is family jokes in jokes.siliconindia.com. Many categories of data which I can analyze in this web like funny jokes, families, colleges, managers and short jokes. However, I will choose family jokes because there are plenty of data which can be analyzed in this category.

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Statement of the Problem

In this study, the problem that are going to be analyzed are:

1. Which types of non-observance of the maxim are not observed in the joke?

2. What is the implicature?

3. How do Grice’s theory of maxim and Raskin’s theory of script incongruity reveal the humour?

Purpose of the Study

The steps I would like to take in gathering the data:

1. To find out which types of non-observance of the maxim are not observed in the joke.

2. To identify the implicature.

3. To explain how Grice’s theory of maxim and Raskin’s theory of script incongruity reveal the humour?

Method of Research

In writing this thesis, I have taken the following steps. I collected the data, analyzed and gave explanations about the whole data. I read family jokes in a form of conversation from the website as my primary source. Then, I also read as well as compiling some information from Guy Cook’s Language Play, Language Learning and Jenny Thomas’ Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to

Pragmatics to support my analysis of script incongruity and the role of maxims.

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Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to present the result of my analysis of the role of Gricean maxims and Raskin’s theory of script incongruity in family jokes in joke.siliconindia.com using the non-observance of the Gricean maxims along with

Raskin’s theory of Script Incongruity.

There are only two types of non-observance of the maxim out of the five types of non-observance of the Gricean maxim that can be found in the whole data. They are flouting the maxim and violating the maxim. I find that the most frequent type of non-observance of the maxim used in the whole data is flouting the maxims, which are flouting the maxim of manner, while the least is flouting the maxim of quantity and violating the maxim. The non-observance of the maxims which are not found in the data are infringing the maxim, opting out of a maxim, and suspending a maxim.

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demonstratives, or pronouns. The unclear reference of the pronoun can easily trigger ambiguties. For example, in data 1 the use of demonstrative ‘that’ can refer

to spray poisonous chemicals for the vegetables or kill his wife by himself. This is really effective as the basis of humour before coming out with the punch line of the joke.

The same case also applies to the pronoun ‘we’ in data 3, which can be

understood as all the people tend to evade from her obligations. The pronoun is used to effectuate the ambiguity for the hidden meaning because even a pronoun sticks to the context. The reason why the maid uses the pronoun ‘we’ is because she does not want to be blamed as the one causing the phone bill to become exceptionally high.

Similarly, in data 4, the word “them” in Peter’s utterance to reply to Doctor Larmer’s question is a general pronoun which refers to his wife’s family

which has caused him to get a high blood pressure. Peter’s utterance shows that his high blood pressure is not hereditary, but the doctor fails to diagnose it. Then, it turns out that Peter gives the doctor a sarcastic response because he thinks that his previous utterance is already clear. I can conclude that speech of reference and pronoun in ambiguous and long-winded or indirect utterance are very effective to ignite laughter.

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gives the information with make a long winded sentence by giving indirect answer to his father.

Hiding some information purposefully is the reason why flouting maxim of quantity is used, because it can lead to a certain interpretation. As soon as the complete information is given at the end of the joke, it creates a surprise which makes the joke funny. It happens 2 times. In data 2 and 6, the speaker seems to give out complete information, but actually there is still some hidden information.

I find some interesting cases in my analysis in which naughtiness becomes the reason why flouting the maxim of quantity and violating the maxim happen at the same time. Based on my analysis in data 2 and data 6, naughtiness which is

one of a child’s natures is shown through Little Johnny’s utterance. In data 2,

considering that Little Johnny’s utterance flouts the maxim of quantity will not make the joke funny, because his utterance seems like he feels sorry for what has happened to his father. On the other hand, it can be concluded that Little Jonny’s utterance violates the maxim as he has succesfully misled his mother and this makes the joke funny.

I find the difference in data 6 in which flouting the maxim of quantity together with violating the maxim makes the joke funny. Once again, the

naughtiness of a child is shown through Little Johnny’s witty utterance, which has

violated the maxim and successfully misled his teacher that ignites humour. However, the utterance can also be considered flouting the maxim of quantity, and

it still makes the joke funny because it is related to Little Johnny’s intention of

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In my data, there are no flouting the maxim of quality and flouting the maxim of relation because the case is always related and focused on the opposite of what a person says. Based on my analysis, I find that all utterances given in every data is relevant and based on the fact although some utterances are not complete in the beginning.

The other types of non-observance of Gricean maxims, such as infringing a maxim, opting out of a maxim and suspending a maxim are rarely found in family jokes in joke.siliconindia.com. Infringing a maxim rarely occurs in family jokes as the speakers use English as their mother tongue. Likewise, in the case of opting out of a maxim, the people inside a family environment do not need to refuse cooperating when giving information to the other party in the family. Besides, opting out of a maxim is usually involved in a conversation between people from some specific professions, such as detectives, politicians, private investigators, and etc. My analysis does not include suspending a maxim because I find that those who are inside family environment not suspend anything to the other party members of the family because as they speak openly and freely to one another.

From my analysis, we can learn which part of the joke becomes funny through non-observance of the maxim and Raskin’s theory of Script Incongruity to reveal the humour in the jokes. In addition, we can improve our knowledge through this study, and we know that the non-observance as well as script incongruity play a significant role in jokes.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

Siliconindia jokes. (2014, March 6). Retrieved from jokes.siliconindia.com website: http://www.jokes.siliconindia.com/

References

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

Grice’s Cooperative Principle Maxims and Implicatures. (2014, April 21). Retrieved from Grice’s Cooperative Principle Maxims and Implicature: http://www.unibuc.ro/prof/dinu_a_d/docs/2012/mai/14_12_52_48CPandC onversationalImplicatures.pdf/

The Role of Gricean Maxims and Raskinâs Theory of Script Incongruity in Family Jokes in Jokes.Siliconindia.Com.