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Non-Observance of Gricean Maxims in The Dialogues of 'The Nanny' TV Series.

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iv Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam tugas akhir ini, saya akan membahas tentang ketidaktaatan pada aturan-aturan maksim dalam dialog di sebuah serial televisi The Nanny, yang diperankan oleh Fran Descher. Film The Nanny merupakan serial televisi yang cukup terkenal di tahun 1996.

Dalam menganalisis ketidaktaatan pada aturan maksim ini, saya menggunakan teori H.P. Grice yang terdapat dalam buku karangan Jenny Thomas. Tugas akhir ini menyoroti jenis-jenis ketidaktaatan pada prinsip kerjasama dan aturan maksim dalam 7 adegan di serial televisi The Nanny yang saya ambil dari seri ke satu sampai dengan seri ke lima. Aspek kebahasaan yang terdapat dalam kajian saya berfokus pada bidang Pragmatik. Selain itu, saya menggunakan teori humor yang dikemukakan oleh Jerry Suls untuk mengetahui bagaimana penonton mengapresiasi humor yang terdapat dalam serial ini.

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ii Maranatha Christian University

1.2 Statement of the Problem ... 4

1.3 Purpose of the Study ... 4

1.4 Methods of Research ... 4

1.5 Organization of the Thesis ... 5

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iii Maranatha Christian University BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 31

APPENDICES:

Table of Types of Non-Observance of

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33

APPENDIXS

Types of Non-Observance of Gricean Maxims of The Nanny Television Series

Scene Dialogue Types of maxims flouted

1

Mr. Sheffield : Yes, Niles. What is it?

Niles : Sorry to interrupt, sir. I

see you’re working hard

as always, Miss Babcock.

(1)

C.C. : Theater has always been

a passion of mine. (2)

Niles : Yes and I can’t wait to

see what you’ll be

mounting next. (3) I just

thought I’d inform you, sir,

that the new nanny’s

gone.

(1) Flouting the maxim of manner

(2) Flouting the maxim of quality

(3) Flouting the maxim of manner

2 Fran : Hello, I'm Fran Fine, your ― Niles : Yes, come in, We've been

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34

(5) Flouting the maxim of relation

3 Niles : Well?

Fran : Honestly, Niles. What’s the

point of having a nanny if

she can’t handle these

things herself. (6)

(6) Flouting the maxim of manner

4 Marsha: You call your husband “Mr.

(7)

35

(11) Flouting the maxim of relation

(8)

36

I hope you said "Hi"

for me.

C.C. : Why does Miss Fine

know about her?

Niles : He talks in his sleep.

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1 Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

In a daily conversation, a speaker and a hearer will operate under the cooperative principle, which means that both the speaker and the hearer converse with a good intention. Sometimes people mean much more than they actually want to say. When communicating, speakers frequently produce utterances the meaning of which are not clear for the hearers. In a conversation, for example, a speaker may give an untrue answer to make a false assumption to the hearer. The fact is that people are not always good and kind or cooperative in a conversation. This shows their non-cooperation of the cooperative principle.

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2 Maranatha Christian University utterance is not directly stated in the words uttered. Thus, it can create a gap

between the speaker and the hearer which can result in the occurrence of humor.

When a conversation is conducted by a speaker who is trying to deliver a

message to the hearer who draws a conclusion from the utterance, they may

have different interpretations. In addition, a conversation also depends on its

context. It is important to realize that maxims function to support verbal

communication. Non-observance of the Gricean maxims can refer to the style of

the speaker when deceiving, misleading, even showing imperfect linguistic

performance to the hearer so that the hearer gets a different meaning. It

becomes worth studying since the utterance of a speaker might have two

intentions of meaning: a) the literal meaning, which is the expressed meaning

that can be obtained by interpreting the words based only on the information from

the utterance, b) the implied meaning, which is what the speaker means on a

specific occasion (Thomas 56).

Because of those reasons, I would like to analyze the non-observance of

the Gricean maxims in television series which creates humor. The topic of my

thesis is Non-Observance of Gricean Maxims in the Dialogues of The Nanny

TV Series. It is interesting to analyze how the non-observance of Gricean maxims in The Nanny television series occurs. This topic is significant for both

speaker and hearer in a communication that people are supposed to tell the truth,

be relevant, and inform anything as clearly as they can. Besides, this topic seems

very challenging since it is difficult to identify which maxims that occurs in

non-observance of Gricean maxims. I choose this topic because the main character in

this series often shows non-observance of the maxims to save her status when

she is in an uncomfortable situation, and because I want to show that the use of

non-observance of the maxims in the television series is very important to create

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3 Maranatha Christian University In terms of linguistic area, the topic I choose belongs to Pragmatics.

Pragmatics, according to Jenny Thomas, is the study of speaker’s meaning. In

particular, it is “the study of the contextual meaning and is concerned with the

speaker’s utterance and the interpretation of the utterance” (2). I use specific

theories of maxims by H.P. Grice since these theories enclose an attempt at

explaining how a hearer gets the information or the idea from what is said to what

is meant from the level of expressed (literal) meaning to the level of implicature

(implied) meaning. Therefore, Grice’s theory is suitable for my topic in which the

humor in the television series is triggered by dialogues which have implicatures.

I hope by writing this thesis, people will understand that they often do

non-observance of the Gricean’s maxims in a daily conversation. This will help them

as a hearer, to be more aware of people who fail to observe the maxims in one’s

communication. Moreover, the awareness may help the hearers to understand or

interpret the speaker’s utterances which have an implicature.

The data of this study are taken from a television series entitled The

Nanny from the episodes in the first until fifth seasons. The Nanny is a story

about Fran Fine, who becomes the nanny for a single-parent family in Manhattan,

the Sheffields. Fran has to take care of Maxwell Sheffield’s children, Maggie,

Bryan, and Gracie. The Sheffields have a butler, Niles, whose father has worked

for them since he and Maxwell Sheffield were boys. Maxwell Sheffield has a

business partner, C.C. Babcock.

In their interaction, the characters, especially Fran, Niles and C.C. often

use offensive words which deliver some implied meaning within their

conversation. When the characters are being witty, deliberately choose to lie or

even trying to tease each other, they often misunderstand others. As a result, the

non-observance of the maxims occurs when they interact; in addition, those

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4 Maranatha Christian University (864 Words)

1.2 Statement of the Problem

From the background of the study presented previously, the problems of

this study are stated as follows:

1) What type of non-observance of Gricean maxim occurs in the

utterance?

2) What type of Gricean maxims does the speaker fail to observe?

3) What is the implicature of the speaker’s utterance?

4) How does the speakers’ failure to observe a maxim create humor?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

Based on the statement of the problem above, the purposes of the study

are formulated in the following points:

1) To find the type of non-observance of Gricean maxim which occurs in

the utterance

2) To identify the type of Gricean maxim the speaker fails to observe

3) To reveal the implicature of the speaker’s utterance

4) To find how the speaker’s failure to observe a maxim creates humor

1.4 Method of Research

I started my research by studying the theories from several sources and

then I watched The Nanny’s DVD the first until fifth seasons to collect the data. With the theory of Gricean maxims, I analyzed the data, classified the findings

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5 Maranatha Christian University

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One is the Introduction,

which contains the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, the

Purpose of the Study, Method of Research and the Organization of the Thesis.

Chapter Two is the Theoretical Framework, which contains the theories used to

analyze the data. Chapter Three presents the analysis of the non-observance of

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27 Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

According to the findings in the all fourteen data which mainly focus on the non-observance of Gricean maxims, I would like to present some concluding points. The first concerns with the kind of non-observance found in the data. Based on the findings, I can find that there are two kinds of non-observance used in the data namely, flouting and violating the maxim. Mostly, flouting the maxim happens when the characters involved in the conversation do not have an equal status, for example, in the conversation between Niles and C.C. or C.C. and Fran. Thus, I can conclude that in situations when the speaker and hearer are of different statuses and the speaker wants to tease the hearer, they can use flouting in order not to be straight forward in the conversation.

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28 Maranatha Christian University There is only one data which refers to violating the maxim of quantity. In my data analysis, flouting of manner happens because the characters’ utterance is not to the point as in data (1), (3), (4), (6), (8) and (9). On the other hand, the maxim of quantity is not obeyed because there is a situation in which it is difficult to give the right amount of information, especially when the speaker tries to conceal information or deliberately choose to lie as found in data (4), (10), (13), (14). I can see that flouting the maxim of manner may occur at the same time with flouting the maxim of quantity and quality like in data (4) and (8).

In addition, in data (5), (11), and (12) since the character gives irrelevant response to other, the maxim of relation comes out as the last non-observance of the maxims which mostly appears in this television series. The flouting of the maxim of relation is done when the speaker wants to mock or to criticize the hearer, but do not do it straight-forwardly.

On the other hand, there is only one data of violating the maxim of quantity. It happens when the speaker intends to mislead the hearer. The speaker speaks the truth but implies what is false as in data (7).

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29 Maranatha Christian University In this thesis, the humorous effect in each scene analyzed is caused by the non-cooperation between the characters. The non-cooperation is found surprising by the audience, as it violates the cooperative principles. In this case, the humor in all the analyzed scenes is in accordance with the Incongruity resolution theory. However, the scene may not be considered funny by some audience since people can have different sense of humor. Another thing that can make the audience think that the scene is not funny is the condition when the element of surprise cannot be found within the scene. In this case, the rule of the incongruity cannot be found and the context of the humor is still confusing. Thus, I can say that the audience’s background knowledge is important to understand

the humor.

After doing the analysis, I do believe that the non-observance of Gricean maxims is tricky to recognize. It is because sometimes people do maxim non-observance accidentally. It happens when people do not have any implied meaning in their utterance, but their response to an utterance does not seem to obey the maxim. Occasionally, an utterance may have one or more types of the non-observance. This usually happens in certain situation, for example when the speaker wants to conceal a lie or the speaker and the hearer have an unequal status. Besides, when people try to criticize other in a more polite way, they also tend to be non-observant to the maxim.

Indeed, the awareness of the hearer may help him or her to interpret the same context with the speaker’s utterance. As a hearer, one has to understand

what the speaker means first even if it is not explicitly stated. In other words, when the speaker try to contribute a meaningful or productive utterance in a conversation, then it should be followed with the hearer’s proper response. In this

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30 Maranatha Christian University observant to the maxims. Generally, it is safe to assume that the speaker and the hearer are trying to be cooperative.

However, a hearer does not always understand what the speaker means. It can be seen when they are not cooperating in giving a response to the speaker’s utterance. When this happens, the conversation can end in a misunderstanding because there is a gap between the speaker and the hearer. The ability to understand the implied meaning in an utterance is important to make people able to react properly to the speaker. It is interesting to find out that in the television series, inability to understand implicature is often exploited to create humorous scenes.

The non-observance is not only found in the dialogues of a film. Actually, it is common for us to find in daily situations. There are some circumstances when the speaker and the hearer do not want to cooperate. It happens when the speaker does want to hurt someone’s feeling, states a lie, and deliberately mocks

the hearer. In other words, the speaker is in a situation where he or she cannot give clear and accurate information.

Personally, I consider that my thesis is still imperfect. The study of the non-observance of Gricean maxims in The Nanny television series can be developed for a better finding. In most scenes that I analyze, I provide data in which the characters have unequal status. I suggest that further researchers can find the non-observance of Gricean maxims of the other characters that have an equal status. Besides, some other theories of humor may also be applied to analyze other data from this television series.

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Maranatha Christian University 31

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text

Amazon Twiztv. Amazon-Style Review Script,1993. Web. 13 March 2010.

References

History of J.C Penny. History of Business, 3 March, 2007. Web. 30 August 2011. Hornby, A.S. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current English. UK:

Oxford University Press, 1974. Print.

Juez, Laura Alba. “Verbal Irony and The Maxims of Grice’s Cooperative

Principle”. Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 8 (1995): 25-30.Web. 26 March

2010.

Leech, Geoffrey. Principles of Pragmatics. New York: Longman Inc., 1983. Print. Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. England: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Print.

McGhee, P.E and Jeffrey H.G. Handbook of Humor Research. New York: Springer-Verlag,1983. Print.

Mooney, Anabelle. 2004. Co-operation, Violation and Making Sense. Journal of Pragmatics. 33:1601-1623. Print.

“Politically Correct.” Business Online Dictionary. Business Online Dictionary,

2010. Web. 30 August 2011.

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Maranatha Christian University 32

Shaughnessy, Madeline Zima, Lauren Lane, Daniel Davis, Nicholle Tom, and Benjamin Salisbury. 1993. CBS Paramount Network Television. 1993. DVD.

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