The Occurrence of Humor Due to Non-Observance of the Gricean Maxims in Family Jokes in Jokeswarehouse.Com.

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iii Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, sumber data yang saya gunakan berasal dari situs Jokeswarehouse.com. Secara khusus, saya menggunakan lelucon yang tergolong dalam kategori lelucon keluarga.

Sebelum mengerjakan analisis dalam tugas akhir ini, saya terlebih dahulu mengidentifikasi serta mengklarifikasi pelanggaran-pelanggaran bidal, atau yang lebih dikenal dengan maxim. Pelanggaran-pelanggaran bidal tersebut merupakan gagasan dari Herbert Paul Grice, yang terdiri dari lima jenis pelanggaran, yakni: flouting, violating, infringing, opting out, dan suspending. Karena humor

merupakan hal yang bersifat subyektif, saya juga mengaplikasikan teori Incongruity-Resolution di dalam analisis yang saya kerjakan untuk membantu

saya dalam memahami humor dalam lelucon secara obyektif.

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ii Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

People in this world do not live alone. They need and support each other in order to live. In other words, they rely on each other. They communicate with others in order to build a good relationship. Therefore, people are given the ability to talk. This ability enables them to share their opinions and thoughts. However, people sometimes tend to convey things differently from what they truly mean, “People do not always or even usually say what they mean.” (Thomas, 1995, p. 1) This can

cause others to fail to understand the meaning and may result in a misunderstanding between the speaker and the hearer. Misunderstanding may also lead people to either conflict or humor.

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2 Maranatha Christian University of the conversation in which we are involved. In other words, the Cooperative Principle is used to describe how people should interact with one another. (Thomas, 1995, p. 62) The misunderstanding may also occur not only in people’s daily conversation but also in jokes.

The primary source of data in this thesis is taken from JokesWareHouse.com. The jokes that are taken are categorized as family jokes. I choose these jokes from the JokesWareHouse.com because I find that the speaker in the joke often fails to observe the maxims in their conversation. This may happen when the speaker’s utterance contains an implicature in which the reader does not understand. Thus, its results in humor.

Analyzing jokes is interesting. Reading jokes is also useful for people’s life. It cannot be avoided that people certainly have experienced being stressed in their life. That is why people often search for something that can entertain them. Jokes can be the choice for people to entertain themselves.

Laughter is the common thing that happens when reading a joke. By laughing, in some way the person has entertained himself. For several people, however, they may have different opinions about how humorous the joke might be. The humorous effect resulting in a joke itself is various depending on the social context, “For the individual, instances of humor can serve a number of functions

simultaneously, and these depend on social context, a single joke can have multiple and varigated effects on the jokesters, targets, and bystanders” (Chapman, 1983, p.

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3 Maranatha Christian University There is a fact, as I have mentioned above, that people may have different perspectives of how humorous the joke is. By this fact, I conclude that humor is subjective. Thus, I decided to use Incongruity-Resolution theory. This theory will enable us to see objectively how humor is created in the jokes.

According to Incongruity-Resolution theory, a joke is said to be humorous if the reader finds the incongruity of the joke and resolves it by giving information about the joke. “Stated quite simply, the theory is that humor results when the perceiver meets with an incongruity (usually in a form of the punch line or a cartoon) and then is motivated to resolve the incongruity either by retrieval of the information in the joke or cartoon or from his or her own storehouse of information”

(Suls, 1983, p. 42). I decided to choose this theory of humor because it is a good and appropriate theory in showing the humorous effect of a joke.

I find that it is interesting to know more about the implied meaning of the speaker’s utterance and how the implied meaning of the speaker’s can lead to humor.

That is why I decided to choose the topic “The Occurrence of Humor due to Non-Observance of the Gricean Maxims in Family Jokes in JokesWareHouse.com” The

reason why I choose this topic is to help the reader to understand the implied meaning within the speaker’s utterance as well as to get the humor of the jokes.

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4 Maranatha Christian University opting out of, and suspending the maxims in analyzing my data. By using these types of maxim, the reader will be helped in understanding the speaker’s intention.

The significance of my thesis is to make the reader more critical of the importance of the implied meaning that lies within the other’s utterance,

considering the fact that it has become very common not to convey our real intention directly which sometimes can result in humor.

(787 words) 1.2 Statement of the Problem

There are three problems that I am going to analyze:

1. Which type of non-observance of maxims is found in the utterance? 2. What is the implied meaning within the speaker’s utterance?

3. How is the Incongruity-Resolution theory applied in the joke?

1.3 Purpose of the study This study is done:

1. To show the type of non-observance of maxims that is found in the utterance. 2. To show the implied meaning within the speaker’s utterance.

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5 Maranatha Christian University 1.4 Method of Research

First of all, I choose the topic that I am going to analyze. After that I read some jokes and choose several of them that I think are suitable to be analyzed. Then I search for some relevant references to support my analysis. Finally, I write this thesis.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I will present my personal opinion and comments based on my findings I have written in Chapter Three. All the data that I have chosen are taken from an online website JokesWareHouse.com. Based on my findings, from seven family jokes, there are thirteen utterances which do not observe Gricean maxim. All those thirteen utterances flout the maxims. In addition, I also find that there is one utterance that flouts more than one maxim. Thus, there are 14 maxims that have been flouted. They are flouting the maxim of manner (6 data), flouting the maxim of relation (6 data), flouting the maxim of quality (1 data), and flouting the maxim of quantity (1 data).

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34 Maranatha Christian University Based on my findings, I find that type of maxims that is mostly flouted is flouting the maxim of manner. There are six out of thirteen utterances or about 50 percents of my findings that break this type of maxims. This shows that flouting the maxim of manner is the most common type of maxim that can be easily found within family conversation. Yet, as the speakers convey their utterances which are not in straight-forward manner, there is a possibility that the readers find it is speakers flout maxim of relation when they ignore others’ goal in conveying their

utterances because the speakers insistently want to keep what they want. In my opinion, their insistence itself makes the jokes funny despite the fact that they are being irrelevant toward others.

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35 Maranatha Christian University The last type of maxim is flouting the maxim of quantity which also only has one occurence. I find in my analysis that the reason for the speaker to give more information is because he wants to assure the person he is talking to so as to prevent something he does not like from happening. Once again, however, in my findings only one data that flout maxim of quantity, thus I observe that giving too much information in their utterance has less impact on the readers because it might be possible that the readers sometimes cannot get the bottom line of the speakers’ utterance.

As I have mentioned before that all my findings are flouting the maxims, this means that I also find the implicatures as well as a result, the implicatures can lead to humor in the jokes. However, implicature is not an easy thing to be understood. Once again, the readers should at least have a proper knowledge in order to perceive the implicature. Thus, I can say that implicature is an aspect for the reader to find whether a joke is funny or not.

There is an obvious fact that the readers must have their own prediction about the outcome of a joke. Therefore, I choose Incongruity-Resolution theory to help me to reveal the humorous effect in my data. This theory shows that punch line also has great importance in building the humor. The speaker often says something beyond the readers’ thought yet in my opinion it is the point where the

readers find the joke amusing. In other words, humor arise due to the unpredictable utterance or the punch line within the jokes.

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36 Maranatha Christian University aspects that the readers should consider in order to understand as well as get the humor of a joke. First and the most obvious one, the readers should at least have adequate awareness and understanding of the context so as to manage to get the implicature of an utterance, in this case an utterance which flouts a maxim. I observe that if the readers manage to get any possible implicature within an utterance, it means they are able to comprehend the joke well. Second, in relation to the unpredictable ending I find in all my findings, thus it shows that punch line also has important role in building the humorous effect of a joke.

At last, I would like to provide some suggetions especially for researchers who are also interested in taking a similar topic. First, in analyzing Gricean maxims, the primary source can be anything. It can be in the forms of films, comics, soap operas, jokes in magazines and many more. Second, in analyzing the humor I recommend the reasearchers use Incongruity-Resolution theory. In my perception, this theory is not hard to be learned and foremost it is an appropriate theory in revealing the humor of the data that I use. I hope my thesis can be helpful for those reasearchers as a reference in developing their own thesis with the same topic.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Source

JokesWareHouse.com (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://www.jokeswarehouse.com/cgi-bin/category1.cgi?id=8

References

Chapman, A. J. (1983). Humor and laughter in social interaction and some implications for humor research. In P. E. McGhee, & J. H. Goldstein (Eds.), Handbook of humor research (pp. 135-157). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Suls, J. (1983). Cognitive processes in humor appreciation. In P. E. McGhee, & J. H. Goldstein (Eds.), Handbook of humor research (pp. 39-57). New York: Springer-Verlag.