vi
ABSTRACT
Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.
Linguistically, humor in TV-shows often arises from the verbal interaction that often emerges in daily life conversation. The humorous fragments are often found in the characters’ utterances when the conversation technically does not work as is supposed to be. The similar cases can be found in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2. In this case, humor was attributable to violation of normal conversation, also the comic characters. As is known, Grice’s Cooperative Principle governs the daily conversation based on principle of cooperation. Accordingly, this research aims to gain the sight of the language humor process in
perspective of Grice’s CP and describe the involvement of the non-observances of CP in creating humorous effects.
The research focus was framed within two questions: 1) What are kinds of the non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations in the sitcom
How I Met Your Mother season 2? And 2) How do the violations maxim take place in creating humorous effects in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?
To discover the findings, qualitative research was conducted with the pragmatic understanding by employing discourse analysis as a method. The research data are taken from the situation comedy How I Met Your Mother season 2. To gain the findings of the first focus, the humorous utterances in How I Met Your Mother season 2 were identified and classified according to the four categories of non-observance maxims, namely flouting, violating, infringing and suspending; without an exclusion of basic conversational structure theory. The second focus findings were gained with the guidance of the GTVH associated with the incongruity theory.
The analysis resulted two main findings. First, there were four kinds of non-observances maxim of CP employed in humorous conversation: flouting, violating, infringing and suspending. Furthermore, exploiting multiple maxims were discovered as well. Second, humor was attributable to violation of four maxims. Violation maxims done by employing the non-observance maxims became script opposition as knowledge resource for humor production -- when the violation conflicted to the audiences’ normal conceptual patterns. However, violation maxims were insufficient in the context of audiovisual humor. It needed to be combined with other resources knowledge to be perceived that the situation is supposed to be funny in the context given.
vii ABSTRAK
Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Secara linguistik, humor di sitkom sering muncul dari interaksi lisan dalam percakapan sehari-hari. Humor sering ditemukan pada ungkapan-ungkapan yang diucapkan oleh tokoh ketika secara teknis percakapan tersebut tidak berjalan semestinya. Kasus serupa dapat ditemukan di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Dalam kasus ini, humor berasal dari pemain sitkom dan percakapan yang dilanggar. Seperti yang diketahui, prinsip kerjasama oleh Grice mengatur mekanisme percakapan sehari-hari berdasarkan asas kerjasama. Sesuai hal tersebut, penelitian ini ditujukan untuk menganalis proses bahasa humor dari perspektif prinsip kerjasama oleh Grice dan mendiskripsikan keterlibatan cara-cara penyimpangan maksim dalam menciptakan efek humor.
Penelitian ini fokus pada dua perumusan masalah: 1) Macam cara-cara penyimpangan apakah yang diterapkan dalam percakapan humor di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2? Dan 2) Bagaimanakah penyimpangan-penyimpangan maxim tersebut berperan dalam menciptakan efek humor di sitkom
How I Met Your Mother season 2?
Untuk menemukan hasil, penelitian kualitatif dilakukan melalui pendekatan pragmatik dengan menerapkan analisis percakapan sebagai metode. Data penelitian diambil dari sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Rumusan masalah pertama dijawab dengan mengidentifikasi dan mengklasifikasi ungkapan-ungkapan lucu di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2 dengan arahan teori struktur dasar percakapan dan 4 macam cara penyimpangan:
‘flouting’, ‘violating’, ‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Rumusan masalah kedua dijawab dengan mendiskripsikan hasil penyimpangan maksim dengan berpedoman pada teori humor verbal secara umum yang dikaitkan dengan teori humor.
Hasil penelitian menunjukkan 2 penemuan utama. Pertama, 4 macam cara penyimpangan diterapkan dalam percakapan humor: ‘flouting’, ‘violating’,
‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Selain itu, penyimpangan maksim bersamaan juga ditemukan. Kedua, humor muncul dari penyimpangam maksim. Penyimpangan maksim dari penerapan cara penyimpangan menjadi teks oposisi, yakni sebagai element sumber untuk pembuatan humor -- humor muncul ketika terjadi ketidakserasian antara penyimpangan dengan konsep sehari-hari penonton. Namun, penyimpangan-penyimpangan maksim tersebut tidak cukup dalam konteks humor secara audiovisual. Suatu kombinasi tertentu perlu ditambahkan agar humor dalam situasi yang diberikan dapat tangkap oleh penonton.
AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN
HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN
HOW I MET YOUR
MOTHER
SEASON 2
A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree
in English Language Education
By
Caesilia Carolina 101214142
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN
HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN
HOW I MET YOUR
MOTHER
SEASON 2
A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree
in English Language Education
By
Caesilia Carolina 101214142
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
i
AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN
HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN
HOW I MET YOUR
MOTHER
SEASON 2
A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree
in English Language Education
By
Caesilia Carolina 101214142
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA
iv
STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY
I honestly declare that this thesis, which I have written, does not contain the work or the parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the references, as a scientific paper should.
Yogyakarta, September 10, 2015
The writer
Caesilia Carolina
v
LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN
PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma: Nama : Caesilia Carolina
Nomor Mahasiswa : 101214142
Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:
AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN HUMOROUS
CONVERSATION IN HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 2
beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalty kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.
Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Dibuat di Yogyakarta
Pada tanggal: 10 September 2015
Yang menyatakan,
vi
ABSTRACT
Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.
Linguistically, humor in TV-shows often arises from the verbal interaction that often emerges in daily life conversation. The humorous fragments are often found in the characters’ utterances when the conversation technically does not work as is supposed to be. The similar cases can be found in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2. In this case, humor was attributable to violation of normal conversation, also the comic characters. As is known, Grice’s Cooperative Principle governs the daily conversation based on principle of cooperation. Accordingly, this research aims to gain the sight of the language humor process in
perspective of Grice’s CP and describe the involvement of the non-observances of CP in creating humorous effects.
The research focus was framed within two questions: 1) What are kinds of the non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations in the sitcom
How I Met Your Mother season 2? And 2) How do the violations maxim take place in creating humorous effects in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?
To discover the findings, qualitative research was conducted with the pragmatic understanding by employing discourse analysis as a method. The research data are taken from the situation comedy How I Met Your Mother season 2. To gain the findings of the first focus, the humorous utterances in How I Met Your Mother season 2 were identified and classified according to the four categories of non-observance maxims, namely flouting, violating, infringing and suspending; without an exclusion of basic conversational structure theory. The second focus findings were gained with the guidance of the GTVH associated with the incongruity theory.
The analysis resulted two main findings. First, there were four kinds of non-observances maxim of CP employed in humorous conversation: flouting, violating, infringing and suspending. Furthermore, exploiting multiple maxims were discovered as well. Second, humor was attributable to violation of four maxims. Violation maxims done by employing the non-observance maxims became script opposition as knowledge resource for humor production -- when the violation conflicted to the audiences’ normal conceptual patterns. However, violation maxims were insufficient in the context of audiovisual humor. It needed to be combined with other resources knowledge to be perceived that the situation is supposed to be funny in the context given.
vii ABSTRAK
Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Secara linguistik, humor di sitkom sering muncul dari interaksi lisan dalam percakapan sehari-hari. Humor sering ditemukan pada ungkapan-ungkapan yang diucapkan oleh tokoh ketika secara teknis percakapan tersebut tidak berjalan semestinya. Kasus serupa dapat ditemukan di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Dalam kasus ini, humor berasal dari pemain sitkom dan percakapan yang dilanggar. Seperti yang diketahui, prinsip kerjasama oleh Grice mengatur mekanisme percakapan sehari-hari berdasarkan asas kerjasama. Sesuai hal tersebut, penelitian ini ditujukan untuk menganalis proses bahasa humor dari perspektif prinsip kerjasama oleh Grice dan mendiskripsikan keterlibatan cara-cara penyimpangan maksim dalam menciptakan efek humor.
Penelitian ini fokus pada dua perumusan masalah: 1) Macam cara-cara penyimpangan apakah yang diterapkan dalam percakapan humor di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2? Dan 2) Bagaimanakah penyimpangan-penyimpangan maxim tersebut berperan dalam menciptakan efek humor di sitkom
How I Met Your Mother season 2?
Untuk menemukan hasil, penelitian kualitatif dilakukan melalui pendekatan pragmatik dengan menerapkan analisis percakapan sebagai metode. Data penelitian diambil dari sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Rumusan masalah pertama dijawab dengan mengidentifikasi dan mengklasifikasi ungkapan-ungkapan lucu di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2 dengan arahan teori struktur dasar percakapan dan 4 macam cara penyimpangan:
‘flouting’, ‘violating’, ‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Rumusan masalah kedua dijawab dengan mendiskripsikan hasil penyimpangan maksim dengan berpedoman pada teori humor verbal secara umum yang dikaitkan dengan teori humor.
Hasil penelitian menunjukkan 2 penemuan utama. Pertama, 4 macam cara penyimpangan diterapkan dalam percakapan humor: ‘flouting’, ‘violating’,
‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Selain itu, penyimpangan maksim bersamaan juga ditemukan. Kedua, humor muncul dari penyimpangam maksim. Penyimpangan maksim dari penerapan cara penyimpangan menjadi teks oposisi, yakni sebagai element sumber untuk pembuatan humor -- humor muncul ketika terjadi ketidakserasian antara penyimpangan dengan konsep sehari-hari penonton. Namun, penyimpangan-penyimpangan maksim tersebut tidak cukup dalam konteks humor secara audiovisual. Suatu kombinasi tertentu perlu ditambahkan agar humor dalam situasi yang diberikan dapat tangkap oleh penonton.
ix
“Every time you find
some humor in a
difficult situation,
you win.”
DEDICATED TO:
x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Praise to Jesus, begotten Son of God. I truly thank God for every second of breath I breathe. Uneven for not leading me into temptation but lessons learnt. For me, everything may fail but Him. Even most rhymed, most beautiful, most meaningful sentence in any language would fail to describe my gratitude.
The great gratitude goes to Carla Sih Pribandari, S.Pd., M.Hum. Her favor, her patience support me during the process of accomplishing this thesis. Moreover, her advice, comments, suggestions, and corrections were very valuable for me. I also thank all lecturers, especially Henny Herawati, S.Pd., M.Hum. as my academic advisor and Drs. Barli Bram, M.Ed., Ph.D. for spreading smile in PBI district. I thank to my big families who always make me feel blessed. For every support and companion, I favorably thank PBI C 2010 for being the living hilarity and relentless supporters.
For the irresistible moments, I thank Ginger and Alto. For the amusing and incongruous behavior, I thank Sendi. For the pleasurable timeline, I thank
Pandhu for the weeks of cinema and being annoying. I thank Disa, Mega, Ijah,
Kapuk, and Doci for being inside the time glasses with. I also thank Nut-nut,
Amel and Tiwi for the hilarious chats and engaging disturbing pictures. Last but not least, I thank all friends around who met me for reasons.
x
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
TITLE PAGE ... i
APPROVAL PAGE ... ii
STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY ... iv
PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI ... v
ABSTRACT ... vi
ABSTRAK ... vii
DEDICATION PAGE ... viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS ... x
LIST OF FIGURES ... xiv
LIST OF TABLES ... xv
LIST OF APPENDICES ... xvi
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ... 1
A.Research Background ... 1
B. Research Problems ... 4
C.Problem Limitation ... 4
D.Research Objectives ... x
E. Research Benefits ... 6
F. Definition of Terms ... 7
CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ... 10
A. Theoretical description ... 10
1. Humor Theory ... 10
a.General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) ... 14
b.Pragmatic of Humor ... 16
2. Conversation Theory ... 16
a.Basic Structure of Conversation ... 17
b.Grice’s Cooperative Principle ... 21
1) Types of Maxims ... 22
2) Non-observance Maxims ... 25
B. Theoretical Framework ... 28
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 32
A.Research Method ... 32
B.Research Setting ... 34
C.Objective of Study ... 34
D.Instrument and Data Gathering Technique ... 35
E. Data Analysis Technique ... 36
F. Research Procedures ... 37
CHAPTER IV. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ... 40
xi
1. The Analysis on a Situation which Flouts Maxims ... 42
a. Flouting maxim of quality ... 42
b. Flouting maxim of quantity ... 46
c. Flouting maxim of relevance ... 49
d. Flouting maxim of manner ... 51
e. Flouting multiple maxims ... 54
2. The Analysis on a Situation which Violates Maxims ... xi5
a. Violating maxim of quality ... 55
b. Violating maxim of quantity ... 59
c. Violating maxim of relevance ... 62
d. Violating maxim of manner ... 63
e. Violating multiple maxims ... 68
3. The Analysis on a Situation which Infringe Maxims ... 69
4. The Analysis on a Situation which Suspend Maxims ... 71
B.Contribution of Non-observance Maxims in Creating Humorous Effects in Sitcom How I Met Your Mother Season 2. ... 72
xii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
xiii
LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Page
A 4.1 Table of Flouting Maxim of Quality ... 102
B 4.2 Table of Flouting Maxim of Quantity ... 105
C 4.3 Table of Flouting Maxim of Relevance ... 108
D 4.4 Table of Flouting Maxim of Manner ... 110
E 4.5 Table of Flouting Multiple Maxims ... 112
F 4.6 Table of Violating Maxim of Quality ... 113
G 4.7 Table of Violating Maxim of Quantity ... 118
H 4.8 Table of Violating Maxim of Relevance ... 120
I 4.9 Table of Violating Maxim of Manner ... 122
J 4.10 Table of Violating Multiple Maxims ... 126
K 4.11 Table of Infringing Maxim ... 127
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the introduction of the research is deliberated into six parts, namely the research background, the research problems, the problem limitations, the research objectives, the research benefits, and the definition of terms. The research background discusses the underlying reasons why the topic is chosen by the researcher. As well as an introduction of an analysis of the non-observance of cooperative principle in humorous conversation from the situation comedy How I Met Your Mother season 2.
A. Research Background
Humor is a universal phenomenon which represents an important part of human experiences (Raskin, 1985, p. 47). Humor, especially verbal humor often happens in everyday interactions. Sometimes, people interact and express their opinion and ideas either in written or spoken form with concise, humorous, dramatic, exaggerating and sarcastic way to successfully get certain aimed effects, as the consequences some people find it funny, and even get enlightenment. People laugh at something pleasurable. However,
“different people will not necessarily find the same things funny – many things which will strike one group as funny may bore another group; some jokes are private or individual [but] the ability to appreciate humor is universal and shared by all people” (Raskin, 1985, p. 2).
In addition, humor has its features of practicability which reflect intrinsic rules (e.g. techniques, mechanism, types, function) and characters of English language from various aspects and different points (Pan, 2012). It is no wonder that
it has been the subject of various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, aesthetic and linguistics. For that reason, this research have an attempt to appreciate humor.
There are many forms and sources of humor which can meet people’s sense of humor, current popular audiovisual humor such as stand-up comedy, comedy films, and TV comedy series. One of the most popular humorous genres in television, situation comedy is often shortened to sitcom. It is a form of humor which attracts many people and also researcher. Sitcom has continuous storyline and interesting composition technique, beside its joke content and audiovisual form. Besides, sitcom has factors of humor generally: participants (speaker and hearer), stimulus, life experience of individual, psychological type of individual, certain physical environment and/or situation (context provided), and society (cultural context). Apart from this, there are some remarkable and unusual humorous phenomena in sitcoms. Besides, the conversations of sitcom often show contradiction with the environment, action and common sense which elicits humor. Verbal humor in situation comedy is the most important feature of sitcoms and also the main mechanism to proceed. Characters interaction is one of the key functions to build comedy in a sitcom which this research is interested in.
In this research, the characters’ interaction explicitly, the conversations in
to analyze the conversations which are humorous. Thus, the research places pragmatic understanding as the baseboard of the research with the method of discourse analysis.
Attardo’s explanation that humor which resulted from the violation maxims of cooperative principle often occurs in the conversation among friends and colleagues. By the same token, this research tries to discover humor which is elicited from the violations of cooperative principle maxims by inspecting the employment of non-observance maxims, and how the violations take part in creating humorous effects.
B. Research Problems
The formulated problems of the research are:
1. What are kinds of the non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?
2. How the non-observance maxims of CP take place in creating humorous effects in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?
C. Problem Limitation
non-observance maxims employed in conversation in the episodes of How I Met Your Mother season 2. Grice’s Cooperative Principles proposed by Paul Grice (1975) is considered as the closest reference to limit the discussion, without an exclusion from the most related theory of humor, namely incongruity theory and General Theory of Verbal Humor.
D. Research Objectives
E. Research Benefits
Some research has been conducted to analyze the language. Since this research applies linguistic theory especially pragmatic theory, this research analyzes language in relation to the speakers, conversation and context based on the humor theories. The research is expected to have benefits for some parts.
Academic Benefits:
1. This research will contribute to pragmatics study, especially related to Cooperative Principle and verbal humor.
2. The research findings will enrich the theories of pragmatics related to Cooperative Principle.
3. This research can be used as an academic reference about a pragmatic analysis in the language based on comedy movies.
Practical Benefits:
1. The students would be able to learn how pragmatic theories take part in the creation of verbal humor in TV-sitcoms / comedy movies.
2. The teachers would know better about the implementation of Grice Cooperative Principle maxims in creating verbal humor on purpose.
F. Definition of Terms
For perceiving a clear understanding upon the discussion, it is better to know the meaning of terms used throughout the discussion:
1. Verbal humor
Verbal humor is when an aspect of language, such as structural ambiguity, is exploited in order to achieve humorous effects (Jensen, 2009, p. 1).
2. Humorous conversation
In this research, a humorous conversation refers to a conversation which the humorous situation occurs for the reason that one or more logical maxims of CP are violated.
3. Grice’s Cooperative Principle
The basic description of Grice’s cooperative principle governs how people ordinarily react in conversation: be true, be brief, be relevant and be clear. Cooperative Principle according to Grice is to ‘make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’ (Mooney, 2003, p. 1)
4. Conversational maxims
maxim of relation, and maxim of manner. Usually the maxims are regarded as unstated assumption in the conversation (Yule, 1996, p. 37).
5. Non-observance conversational maxim
According to Grice, non-observance is defined as either blatant or unostentatious failing to observe the maxims i.e. corresponding to ‘flouting’ or ‘violating’ of maxims (Brumark, 2004, p. 13). The rest of which are infringing, opting-out and suspending. Non-observances are ways that the participants use to make a distinction between what is said and what is meant which then generate implicature (Kalliomaki, 2005, p. 24).
6. General Theory of Verbal Humor
Shortened to GTVH, a humor theory which isproposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo in the article “Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model” (Raskin & Attardo, 1991, p. 293). It integrated Raskin’s ideas of Script Opposition (SO), developed in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor [SSTH], into the GTVH as one of six levels of independent Knowledge Resources (KRs): Script Opposition (SO), Logical Mechanism (LM), Situation (SI), Target (TA), Narrative strategy (NS), Language (LA) (Attardo, 1991).
7. American sitcoms
How I Met Your Mother
Based on IMDb, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) is one of the finest late comedy series in United States, admittedly when there are not many great ones around. HIMYM first aired on September 19th, 2005, created by David Letterman.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter explores a set of well-developed concepts related through statements of relationship, which together constitute interrelated theories which can be used to explain and predict phenomena. The theories, which constitute the research, include the theory of humor which can be used in the view of pragmatics and theory of conversation are discussed in theoretical description. The theoretical framework depicts the links among the concepts of theories which are used to discover the findings from research problems.
A. Theoretical Description
In the sub chapter, some theories are sketched out in order to expose the territory of the discussion. The first discussed theories are humor theories, pragmatic of humor and the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The first set theory is used jointly to answer the second question of research. The second theories will concern on the local organization within a conversation and Cooperative Principle by Herbert Paul Grice which are used to answer the first question stated in the problem formulation.
1. Humor Theory
Dozens of different definitions of humor arouse from time to time. In wide-ranging term, humor is whatever evokes laughter or felt to be funny (Spanakaki, 2007). The following are two representative ones. Crawford (1994) defines humor as any communication that generates a ‘positive cognitive or affective response
from listeners’ (p. 57). Romero and Cruthirds (2006, p. 59) define humor as ‘amusing communications that produce positive emotions and cognitions in the individual, group, or organization.’ There is no single universally accepted and all-encompassing theory of humor. The following theory is the most commonly discussed. The research comes to an agreement which states “humor primarily consists of jokes (spoken or written words) and actions (describable through words) which elicit laughter or generate merriment.” (Critchley, 2002; Ritchie, 2004). Attardo (1997) is increasingly explicit to define humor, he states “laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage (p. 396). Another humor theory which highlight and meet this research focus and previous theory comes from Audrieth. According to Audrieth (1998, p. 5), humor is defined as ‘the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous absurdly incongruous. Ludicrous is an adjective, meaning amusing or laughable through obvious absurdity, incongruity, exaggeration, or eccentricity (Anthony, 1998). Traditionally, there are three traditional notions of humor theory which define what humor is:
1) Superiority Theory
possess the fun parts by pointing out their perceived weaknesses, misfortunes, or defects, such as the fun from joking people who have different social classes, or social groups. Typically, the humor is generated from ethnic jokes, sexist jokes, and mother-in-law jokes. In this research, this theory is not matched with the humorous characteristic possessed from the research data since the data contains the exploitation aspect of language.
2) Relief theory
In this theory, humor is perceived when someone faces a situation where the tensions are created within the perceiver (Smuts, n.d). This theory is also used in the movie, especially plots that deal with thriller and adventure. It is as a technique used when the audience in a movie is experiencing a high tensions which include the comic relief at the right times. The tension or the suspense is built up as much as possible and then breaks it down slightly with a side comment, allowing the viewer to relieve himself from the high-tension emotions. In this research, this theory is not exactly relevant for the analysis since it is a generally psychological scope to discuss the plot of humorous story rather than the mechanism within the humorous utterances.
3) The Incongruity Theory
occurs in humor. This gives detail for the most obvious feature of much humor: an ambiguity, or double meaning, which deliberately misleads the audience, followed by punch line. Incongruity theory is the dominant theory of humor, since it seems to work in most cases of humor, which is partly because “incongruity” is something of an umbrella term (Latta, 1998, p. 106). Humor is said to have the following elements:
• A conflict between what is expected and what actually occurs in the joke • An ambiguity at some level of language with semantic or pragmatic
meaning or both.
• A punchline which resolves the conflict.
According to Morreal (1987), the incongruity theory creates humor from the violation of an expectation. For humor resulted from the unexpected results, the event must have an appropriate emotional climate, comprised of setting the characters, prior discourse, relationship of the characters, and topic. Morreal (1987) gives sort of incongruities under incongruity theory:
• Moral shortcoming, a violation of an understood social code; • Ignorance, a violation of understood knowledge;
• Impersonation, pretending to be someone or something that you are not; • Physical deformities, a violation of how we view the way in which we ought
to appear;
a. The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH)
The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) is a tool for analyzing and explaining humorous text (both spoken and written) formulated by Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin. This theory explain that verbal humor is a construction of knowledge resources. Raskin and Attardo (1991) jointly combined Semantic Script Theory of Humor proposed by Raskin with five levels of joke representation (developed by Attardo, 1987), turning them into the six-hierarchical representation model of verbal jokes, described as follows:
1. Script opposition (SI)
Seen as the incongruity of the SSTH (Attardo, 2008). The one parameter that every joke will contain (Attardo, 1994). In this research, the script opposition is seen as the violation of Grice’ maxims (Attardo, 1997, p. 108)
2. Logical mechanism (LA)
The parameter that brings the two opposing scripts together (Attardo, 1994).
3. Situation (SI)
Includes all the “‘props’ of the joke: the objects, the participants, instruments, and activities.” (Attardo, 1994, p. 24). In this data of research, the data emphasize humorous effects (Attardo, 1994).
4. Target (TA)
5. Narrative strategy (NA)
Divided into three general types: descriptive, dialogue, combination (combination of first two types (Aromaa, 2011))
6. Language (LA)
Linguistic choices supporting the decisions made in other Knowledge Resources (Attardo, 2008). The parameter which is in charge of not only the wording and syntax but also how the different elements are arranged (Attardo, 1994).
The GTVH posits script opposition as the necessary condition for humor. It is necessary to note the definition of script. Attardo (1997) partly altered the definition of script:
[Scripts are]… collections of semantic information pertaining to a given subject… [embodying] the sum total of the cultural knowledge of a society, which can be represented as a set of expectation and/or weighted choices. (p. 402)
b. Pragmatic of Humor
The pragmatic constituent of humor in this research is constructed when there is a violation of Grice’s cooperative maxims. Humor can be seen as conversational implicature (Hassan, 2013). Conversational implicature is a type of pragmatic inference in which the meaning is conveyed through non-conventional means (Grice, 1975). Humor in linguistic level has three levels, derived from linguistic devices: vocalization, lexis, syntax. Those devices are important to construct humor. The linguistic levels of humor are phonetic levels, lexical level, discourse level (He, 2008). This research has a tendency for humor at discourse level since it focuses on humor which resulted from rule-breaking, explicit or implicit meaning conveyed through the speakers’ utterances in conversation. As Dolitsky (1992) said humor is based on the bending and breaking of rules. Thus, it is necessary to understand some basic underlying theories of conversation.
2. Conversation Theory
a. Basic Structure of Conversation
In a conversation, there is always local management organization operating within every conversation. Sequence and structure within conversation can be summarized below.
1) Opening Conversations
Opening takes place in the first slice of conversation which most common example of opening usually chances in telephone conversation. For example, first expression to utter is a summons (i.e. call by name), the second is an answer to the summons in return. The pair establishes an opening channel for talk.
(1) Child: Mommy summons
Mom: Yes, dear. answer
Child: Can I have chocolate? reason for summons
In the telephone conversations, the ringing of the telephone acts as the summons. Additional potential problems are identification or recognition.
(2) A: (call B) summons
B: Hello answer + display for recognition
A: Hi greeting 1 claim that A has recognized B + claim that B can
recognize A
B: Oh hi! greeting 2 + claim that B has recognized A
2) Closing Conversations
Closing conversation can be done by saying, ‘ok, bye, anyway, or other parting phrase like see you, bye.’
3) Turn Taking
and can attempt to get the floor. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), proposed basic rules about turn-taking, includes:
(1) If current speaker selects next speaker, he’s obliged to take the next turn (2) Otherwise, any speaker may self-select the next turn
(3) Otherwise, the current speaker may continue
In having the conversation, there are two possible phenomena which sometimes the participants try to speak at the same time, which is called overlap
(Yule, 1996, p. 72). As the reverse of overlap, sometimes there is an absence of vocalization between the participants which is called as silence or gaps (Cutting, 2002). Silence is an absence of vocalization between the participants. It is a lengthened transition space results in a silence in the talk. If any speaker actually turns over the floor to another and the other does not speak, which produce a silence, intending to carry meaning, the silence is called as an attributable silence (Cutting, 2002, p. 29). When a silence occurs at the end of a completed action in the talk, such as after the answer to a question, the silence is not attributable to any particular speaker. Some others may interpret it as ignorance. Silence is sometimes interpreted as distance, or the absence of familiarity.
(3) A: Is this seat taken? (2 seconds)
A: Excuse me, is this seat taken?
B: Oh, no. (Grab her bag) You may sit here.
For many (younger) speakers, overlapping the utterances appears to function like an expression of solidarity or closeness or excitement in expressing similar opinions. Also, overlap can communicate competition.
4) Adjacency Pairs
According to Paltridge (2008), adjacency pairs are utterances produced by two successive speakers in a way that the second utterance is identified as related to the first one as an expected follow-up to that distance. The pairs of utterances normally occur together automatically and help to structure a conversation. There is a consistent match between format and content found across a number of adjacency pair seconds which is described in the following table:
Table 2.1 Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair sequences
First pairs
Second pairs
Preferred Dispreferred
Request Acceptance Refusal
Offer/invite Acceptance Refusal
Assessment Agreement Disagreement
Question Expected answer Unexpected answer / no answer
Blame Denial Admission
(Levinson, 1984, p.336)
the sequence. A pair can also initiated with statements, complaints, greetings, introductions. The preferred responses for these utterances respectively are: recognition, replies and exchange of greeting. If the rules are ignored, these patterns are broken by means of floutingwhich it immediately call forth a response. There are some ways to provide dispreferred second parts:
Table 2.2 Variety of response tokens
Variation Tokens
Delay/hesitate pause; err; em; ah
Preface well; oh
Express doubt I’m not sure; I don’t know
Token acceptance that’s great; I’d love to
Apology I’m sorry; what a pity
Mention obligation I must do X; I’m expected in Y
Appeal for understanding you see; you know
Make it non-personal everybody else; out there
Give an account too much work; no time left
Use mitigators really; mostly; sort of; kind of
Hedge the negative I guess not; not possible
5) Feedback (Backchannels)
feedback to the speaker that the message is being received, they indicate that the listener or following and not objecting.
6) Repair
Repair is the way the speakers correct things which has been said, and check what they have understood in a conversation (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 1977). There are two types of repair:
a) Self-repair
(5) Charlotte: I saw her with a man yesterday. I mean, I saw her with a middle aged man who looks like her uncle.
b) Other-repair
(6) Miranda: But you have to introspect yourself! Cintya: Excuse me? Shouldn’t it be you?
b. Grice’s Cooperative Principle
In the field of linguistics, even more specifically in the area of pragmatics, an important concept was introduced: maxims of conversation. It is unwritten rules that govern people to make an appropriate conversation. The Cooperative Principle were first formulated by Herbert Paul Grice which refers to the assumption of a basic conversation which is made when the speaker speaks to one another that are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. As stated in H.P. Grice’s “Logic and Conversation” (1975):
Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (p. 45).
assume that the conversational partners are doing the same. There will be times when speakers operate the same conversational norms as the interlocutors deliberately mislead the speakers’ utterances and cause the occurrences of the mistakes and misunderstandings (Thomas, 1995, p. 62). Some reasons why someone might be uncooperative in conversation. Some assume that participants conceal the interrogated information they do not want to give up. Speakers become uncooperative to person they hate. Another of some cases is the participants are just being crazy.
1). Types of Maxims
Grice came up with the maxims of conversation. Maxims is kind of a rule of thumb which is general rules the speakers follow in conversation. Those maxims are:
1. Maxim of Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: 1) do not say what you believe to be false 2) do not say that for which you lack of adequate evidence. This maxim states that one’s contribution to a conversation should be truthful and that the speaker should have adequate and sufficient evidence to back up what is being said. For example:
Andi’s mom expect a truthful answer from his son, after she noticed Andi’s bad mark.
(7) Mom: Did you study last night? Andi: I did not study last night.
assets a person can hold. In real life, this maxim is often violated in order to deceive the addressee. In less serious context, it can be violated in obvious manner when the speaker tries to be humorous or teases the addressee. Grice shows four examples to illustrate how the first maxim of quality is flouted: irony, metaphor, hyperbole (Martinich, 1984).
2. Maxim of Quantity: 1) make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange 2) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. The meaning of this maxim is that the speaker should avoid including unnecessary, redundant information in the contribution. For example:
(8) Lius: Do you know where Alto is? Linda: He’s sunbathing in the sandbox.
According to Thomas Ritter, if the speaker rambles on without saying anything new or informative, the addressee will lose interest in the discourse very quickly and stop paying attention (Davies, 2000). In multi-agents conversation process in which the social relationship between participants is, to some extent, intimate, such as relatives, lovers, good friends, if someone says something other persons do not need and are not interested in, this redundant information will disturb the path the communication will develop, which is one of the sources of humor production in sitcom.
to the topic under discussion” (Davies, 2000). For example, Mom asks if her daughter knows who she is talking to in the telephone:
(9) Mom: Who you’re talking to? Lita: Umm, my new friend Ana.
In the purpose of creating humor, Giora (1991) states that “The joke’s marked constituent is least relevant but not irrelevant, that is, not entire distant or unrelated” (p. 470).
4. Maxim of Manner: be perspicuous, and specifically, 1) avoid obscurity, 2) avoid ambiguity, 3) be brief, 4) be orderly. (Grice 1989, p. 26). For example, a teacher ask about how to replace the:
(10)A: Can you show me where the common room is? B: Yes. It is next to K.12.
2) Non-Observance Maxims
Maxims of CP can be exploited for communicative purpose. There are many occasions which the conversational interaction between speakers do not happen as what expected. In certain situation, people fail to observe the maxims for some purpose. As the example, the speakers observe the maxim but pretend to fail rather than cooperate. Other examples, they are incapable of speaking clearly or because they deliberately choose to lie. According to Grice in Thomas (1995), there are five ways of failing to observe a maxim which are flouting, violating, opting out, infringing and suspending maxim. However, the territory of the discussion is narrowed down explicitly into four ways of failing maxims discovered in this research, described as follows:
1) Flouting Maxims
A flout occurs when a speaker obviously fails to observe a maxim at the level what is said, with the deliberate intention of generating implicature (Thomas, 1995, p. 65). According to Grice (1975), this additional meaning is called Conversational Implicature and the way by which such implicature is called flouting a Maxim (p. 71). For example:
A lecturer speaks to a student who arrives late more than ten minutes to the class:
(11)A: Terrific! You’re such a punctual fellow! Welcome to the class. B: Sorry, Miss! It won’t happen again.
(12)A: Where are you now? B: I’m in my clothes.
Or, the speaker may flout maxim of relevance to avoid hurting someone’s feeling:
(13)A: What are you and C talking about?
B: Oh well… why don’t we go get something to drink?
Moreover, the speaker flouts maxim of relevance when s/he utters slang or ambiguous utterance:
(14)A: Let’s play emoji tennis. B: Ok.
The word ‘emoji tennis’ is ambiguous. However, it is a slang, meaning texting nothing but emoticon back and forth between a friend or partner.
2) Violating Maxims
According to Grice (1975), the speaker violates a maxim when the speaker will liable to mislead the hearer to have such implicature. The speaker deliberately tries to make the hearer misunderstanding the truth meaning of speaking. The hearer is misled to look for the surface meaning. This make the hearer infers an implicature. People in real life tend to tell lies for different reasons, hide the truth, save face, feel jealous, satisfying the hearer, cheer the hearer, building one’s belief, avoid hurting the hearer, and convincing the hearer (as cited in “Non Observance of Grice Maxims”, 2013). As said by Tupan and Natalia (2008), people believe that a lying is the natural tool to survive and to avoid from anything that may put the speaker in an inappropriate condition (p. 64-66).
A speaker violate maxim quality when s/he lies to cover the truth: (15)A: Who was with you last night?
Furthermore, a speaker violates maxim of quantity to limit the exposure of a truth:
(16)A: Where have you been? I called you thirty times. B: I wasn’t around. What’s the big deal?
Or, the speaker violates maxim of relevance to evade current situation or topic being discussed:
(17)A: Why did you not come to class today? B: (pointing away) Is that Mr. Carla?
3) Opting out Maxims
Thomas (1995, p. 73), defines opting out as a situation when a speaker “chooses not to observe a maxim and states an unwillingness to do so”. For example, a new friend asks about personal life:
(18)A: I heard your boyfriend ran away and dumped you, is it true? B: I’m sorry I can’t say it to you. Privacy area.
There are some conversations in How I Met Your Mother season 2 which the speakers opted out certain maxim and stated her unwillingness to do so clearly.
(19)Robin was hiding the reason why she does not go to the Mall. Robin: Sorry, I just don’t like Malls.
Barney: Why not?
Robin: I’d rather not say.
However, the above example in the situated condition does not appear to be humorous. Rather it appeared to be a disappointment or curiosity for the hearer.
4) Suspending Maxims
This condition occurs when there is a certain circumstances or as part of certain event which does not expect the participant or any participant to observe one or several maxim (and no fulfillment does not generate any implicatures) (Thomas, 1995, p. 76). For example:
Discovered data has the suspension of maxim within a joke uttered by Ted in the following excerpt:
S0208/SP01
(20)Barney: A cougar. An older woman, usually in her 40s or fifties, single and on the prowl for a younger man,
Ted: What’s a women in her sixties or 70s—a turtle?
5) Infringing Maxims
Infringement occurs when a speaker fails to observe the maxim, although the speaker has no intention of generating an implicature and deceiving the hearer. Thomas (1995, p. 74) explains that generally infringing rooted from imperfect linguistic performance (in the case of a young child or foreigner) or from impaired linguistic performance triggered by nervousness, drunkenness, excitement, disability. The following excerpt exemplifies an account of infringement triggered by nervousness:
(21)A: Do you have any difficulties in conducting the research?
B: Emm… a little. But there is a when understand, I mean when I try understand the meaning of words.
Moreover, drunkenness infringes maxim of manner as appeared in the following humorous conversation:
(22)Robin (talking to the waiter): I’d take you with gravy. If my boyfriend wasn’t sitting right here. – Just kidding. I’m good.
Lily: What are you so chirpy about? Ted: She’s still drunk from last night. Robin: I don’t think so. Whoo!
B. Theoretical Framework
phenomena can be explained by the cooperative principle (e.g. humor from physical behavior) and even when we are dealing with the conversational jokes (e.g. humor at lexical or phonetic levels). Nevertheless, several linguists (Attardo, 1997; Norrick, 1993; Raskin, 1985) have been trying to make a general pragmatic explanation on humor with reference to Grice’s theory. Raskin (1985) suggested that joke-telling mode of communication (non bona fide) is still governed by the cooperative principle because he believed that humor is communicative functions.
This research takes the pragmatic view to discuss humorous conversational interaction. Thus, conversation is to be the model of interpretation. Fundamentally, this research put the language into a context-through with a more full contextual analysis of humor which the context of conversation is given. Although, the built characters in recorded data of conversation vary in characterization, background knowledge, interests and concerns, still, conversation is a flexible text negotiated between the various participants in a conversation as found in the data. In this research, laughter serves as the most identifiable signal for identifying humor in the text (cf. Archakis & Tsakona, 2005). Hay (2001, p. 56) adds that the presence of laughter is used to characterize an utterance or a text as humorous.
the conversations that is humorous. In this research, the conversation will be placed and situated at the basic rules within conversation and how the characters negotiate and exchange the information which give arise to humor in form of comedy and intend to amuse the audience. This involves noting the role of joking regarding 1) language games: turn taking, intruding, parting, greeting, closing, questioning, bridging uncomfortable gaps, “winding down the conversation”, encouragement, warning, etc. 2) intention of the speaker, e.g. to relieve embarrassment, save face, etc. With the knowledge of Grice maxims, the humorous conversations are evaluated by using known building blocks: adjacency pairs, turns and other standpoints from basic structure of conversation. Since the research focuses its concern in humorous conversation resulted from the violation of cooperative maxims, it is oblique to examine how the speakers violate those maxim. Here, the categories of the non-observance maxims take place. Those set of theories are helpful to explain phenomena of violation maxims in humorous conversation and answer the first research question.
the level of exchange structure. In usual events, the conversational moves are usually concurrently predicted, and or, paired between the inquiry and the exchange boundaries. In conversational humor, however, results to blurred exchange boundaries. Explicitly, the humorous effects resulted from flouting of basic formal language rules (Vandaele, 2002, p. 150).
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, the methodology helps the researcher to conduct the designed research. The research is to discuss how maxims are violated (viz. flouting, violating, infringing, suspending) by the characters of sitcom in the conversation with the reference of cooperative maxims principle, and how the violation maxims took place in creating humorous effects. The scope of this chapter includes research methodology, object of study, instruments and data gathering technique, data analysis technique, and research procedures.
A. Research Method
Humor analysis is also in the same kind of conventional qualitative research in other respects, which is characterized by a naturalistic orientation to the investigation. The instance or setting in which the data is collected is expected to be as close to the natural state as possible. Sen (2012) conveys, the analysis of humor can also be naturalistic in its orientation. If the specific instances of humor which mostly are jokes are gathered from regular conversations (i.e. spontaneous and unscripted), then the data can be classified as those from naturalistic setting. Sen adds, if the jokes are embedded in the script of movies, as the research does, then there is still an air of quasi-naturalness about them and that can provide insightful information about humor that is publicly acceptable in the society. Humor analysis can follow the same method of inductive analysis. Instances of humor are
mined from conversations or printed matter such as movie scripts and then analyzed for common themes or pattern.
This research observed how the humorous utterances occurred by discovering the violations of cooperative maxims principle, which later were linked to incongruity theory and the GTVH. Discussing how humor was built up in the movie, this research identified conversations among characters at the discourse level. The research employed the approach of discourse analysis (a spoken discourse analysis) in relation to disobedience maxims using non-observances of CP terms of framework to create humorous effects.
According to brown and yule (1983)in general, a tape-recording of an event is the data to work on, from which then it is transformed into a written transcription, annotated according to the research interests on a particular occasion. However, since this research took the data from movie series, which then the verbal interaction is presented using normal orthographic conventions; any details of intonation, non-verbal interaction (setting) and rhythm which supports the analysis would be verbalized as well. In discourse analysis, the data is treated as the record (text) of a dynamic process in which language was used as an instrument of communication in a context by a speaker to express meanings and achieve intentions (discourse). Then, the researcher seeks to describe the regularities in the linguistic realizations used by people to communicate those meanings and intentions.
this research, the discourse was treated as a process view (Widdowson, 1979, p. 71, Brown and Yule, p. 24). The words, the phrases and the sentences which appear in the textual record of a discourse to be the evidences of an attempt by a producer (speaker) to communicate his message to a recipient (hearer). This research focused on the productions of utterances which logically elicited humorous effects. The data then experienced the process interpreting. These involve computing the communicative function (how to take the meaning, message), using general socio-cultural knowledge (facts about the world) and determining the inferences to be made.
B. Research Setting
The setting of the research refers to the setting in which the research was conducted. The researcher conducted this research during the period of August 2014 to July 2015. The research experienced the process: analyzing the scripts; categorizing the utterances into each proper type of maxims; identifying and describing the utterances with the references of local management within conversation theory and non-observance maxim theory; describing the role of disobedience maxims in creating humorous effects; and the last was summing up the findings.
C. Objective of Study
the series was a comedy TV-show, also it was popular. Importantly, the series had many unexpected situations which led to the even more unexpected reactions of other characters and thus not only entertained but at the same time offered a great data for this research. The data as the primary sources of the research were the script obtained from the conversations among the characters which appeared to be humorous.
D. Instrument and Data Gathering Technique
dissimilarities, then, were accorded with the movie. To the extent of analyzing, supplementary extracts were necessary to describe the situation in own words because there were little of none verbal communication extracts available.
The researcher selected the humorous conversations were carefully by using criteria: occurrence of laughter track; humorous effects in form of conversation; and detection of one or more maxims of cooperative principles violated by the characters. The indication of humorous conversations were detected and pinpointed by the sign of canned laughter in the scenes which might come from the speaker while producing his/her utterance or from the audiences as a reaction to what is being uttered.
E. Data Analysis Technique
According to Miles and Huberman (1994), qualitative research is outlined in three flows of activity: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing or verification. This research hired those three flows.
a. Data reduction
(1975) with an assistance of basic structure of conversation theory in order to sort the data into some categories in which four maxims as the categories. Then, the proceeding coded data were clustered into proper kinds of non-observance maxim and collected into partitions. At this stream, the researcher noted the regularities, patterns and explanation transpired from the humorous conversation in order to solve the research problems.
b. Data display
After reduction of data, the clustered data in this research was displayed into tables (see appendices). It was aimed to assemble the information needed to analyze the analytic construct of humor resulting from conversations and draw the conclusions.
c. Conclusion drawing
In this research, the vague conclusion was prefigured during the analysis. However, the final conclusion was verified from the elaboration of discussion after it was over. This research sum up the violation (viz. flouting, violating, infringing, suspending) of maxims occurred in humorous conversation and the general analytic construct of humor which was increasingly grounded and explicit.
F. Research Procedures
The research took some ordered steps in conducting the research. The steps were as follow:
1. The Steps of Segmenting the Transcription Based on Its Speech Events.
identified. The identification was seen when ‘any turns which are breaking one or more of the Gricean maxims’ (Brumark, 2004:13).
2. Classifying the Conversations
After identifying the existence of maxim, the conversations which indicated to have humorous effects were classified and analyzed further. The conversations, which violated the maxims of cooperative principles were coded such as [S02/EP01/QL/VL1], meaning the excerpt was taken from the episode 01 which indicated to violate maxim quality.
3. The Steps of Categorizing the Violation Maxims
The data were organized by placing each conversation into its category in the references with four (4) kinds of non-observance maxims, it might belong to category of flouting, violating, infringing or suspending.
4. The Steps of Dividing the Excerpts
After collecting the data, the researcher put the humorous conversations consisting of violation maxims into tables. The table were preceded by the text of conversations, so that the context of humor could be seen. These texts were called as excerpts. The following table were analyzed to answer the first research problem which was what kinds of non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations.
2.1 Non-observance of maxims distribution based on types of maxims
Note: QL: Quality QN: Quantity RL: Relevance MN: Manner
5. Analyzing Non-observance Maxims in the Connection with the GTVH and
Incongruity theory
This step was used to answer the second research problem, which how the violation maxims took place to elicit humor. After all the dialogues, which consisted of breaking maxims in the verbal humor, were inspected the six elements of knowledge resources contained in humorous conversation. Types of maxims used to create humorous effects were analyzed (Viz. quantity, quality, relevance, and manner).
6. Drawing Conclusions
The last stage of the steps, which after the steps of segmenting, categorizing, data gathering, analyzing the humorous conversations, and finding the results, the conclusions were drawn. The conclusions sum up how the non-observance maxims were applied and how the violation maxims created humorous effects in sitcom
CHAPTER IV
RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This research only analyzes those which have the same characteristics with the theory of humor and in the relation to the theory of maxims by Grice. Therefore in this chapter, the classified data will be analyzed to discover the findings concerning the statement of the problems.
This chapter will be divided into two sub chapters. The first will be the analysis of how maxims violated (viz. flouted, violated, infringed, and suspended) in the humorous conversation and the second will discuss the analytic construct of the humorous effects resulting from the violation in the references of incongruity theory and the GTVH.
A. Non-Observance Maxims of CP in Humorous Conversations Taken from
Sitcom How I Met Your Mother Season 2
Before diving into an in-depth analysis on humor elicited from the violation maxims, the researcher discovered types of the non-observance maxims employed in the humorous conversations explicitly flouting, violation, infringing, and suspending. From a hundred-twenty-two (122) excerpts, the findings were discovered to have: a hundred-nine (109) cases in which the characters did not observed one of four maxims and another thirteen (13) in the point of multiple violations (flouting, violating, suspending) in How I Met Your Mother season 2. Those excerpts were found in 22 episodes of season 2, casted by five main
characters. The distribution of those types of maxims are described in the following chart:
In the chart above, each of clusters described the maxims of CP which were violated by the way of non-observance maxims. In the clusters, violating maxim of quality was the most frequent above all and infringing maxim of quality was the least, occurred in humorous conversations. As it appeared in the chart, all maxims were violated. However, only four of five types of non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations (Viz. flouting, violation, infringing, and suspending).
In this section, the researcher discussed and analyzed the violated maxims discovered from the episodes of How I Met Your Mother season 2 in accordance with the non-observance maxims of CP and the theory of basic structure within conversations. Each of excerpts was exclusively presented based on its category of non-observance: flouting maxim, violating maxim, infringing maxim and suspending maxim.
4.1 Chart of distribution of violation maxims based on the non-observance maxims' types
1. The Analysis on a Situation which Flouts Maxims
Flouting a maxim occurred when a participant in a conversation chose to ignore one or more of the maxims by using a conversational implicature (Thomas 1995, p. 65). In this research, the all four maxims of CP were discovered to be flouted by the characters.
a. Flouting Maxim of Quality
This category chanced when the speaker blatantly intended to say something untrue or lied and denied something. The speaker misrepresented his information in order to make the hearer understand the intended meaning of an utterance (Levinson, 1983, p. 110). Its implicature could be drawn when the contribution was untrue or lack of adequate evidences. Flouting maxim of quality discovered from the excerpts were done by exaggerating, using metaphor and delivering sarcastic tone (Essay, 2013).
1) Using Exaggeration
The following excerpts illustrated the example of the situation in which maxim of quantity was flouted:
S02E01/QL/FL1
The year 2030, the narrator, Ted was telling his kids a very long story about how he met their mother.
(1) Ted: Okay, where were we? It was June of 2006 and life had just taken an unexpected turn. (2) Daughter: Dad, can’t you just skip ahead to the part where you meet Mom? I feel like
you’ve been talking for like a year.
S02E11/QL/FL6
At Lily’s apartment, Barney was smoking facing over the opened window while he was sick and it was winter.
(1) Robin: Barney. What the hell are you doing? Get in here, it’s freezing outside. Are you insane?
As appear in the excerpt S02E01/QL/FL1, Ted’s enthusiasm did not meet his daughter’s interest, which consequently bored the daughter, in this conversation as the second speaker. The followed-up question produced by Ted’s daughter indicated that she was bored to listen to father’s talking rather than being excited to listen out for his father’s long story. In exchange to his father’s utterance, she misrepresented the duration by laying it on thick with utterance (1) “I feel like you’ve been talking for like a year.” It was plainly on the earth that somebody cannot be talking in a year length. Thus, Ted’s daughter’s utterance was unreal. The occurrence of the same account was in the excerpt S02E11/QL/FL6. In the excerpt
S02E11/QL/FL6, Robin cared about Barney’s condition by asking him to get inside. However, Barney threw the guilt on Lily’s ‘No cigar’ rule in return. He fashioned his utterance by hyperbolizing the situation, explicitly the rule literally was impossible. In Barney’s utterance, he uttered that Marshall was marrying Taliban. It was fictitious to witness that somebody literally married to an organization.
However, both utterances above were not expected to be inferred literally. Purposefully, the speakers aimed the implicature to be inferred without the intention of misleading the hearer (Levinson, 1983, p. 110). That at some points, the situations had the equivalent of the literal meaning. In the excerpt S02E11/QL/FL5, Barney expressed the impact of ‘No cigar’ rule on him as if it was in the situation of Taliban issues in Afghanistan in the 1990s (“Taliban”). While in the excerpt
