TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE OF APPROVAL………...……….i
STATEMENT OF AUTHORIZATION...ii
PREFACE………..…..iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...iv
ABSTRACT………...………..………vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS....………..…...……….…vii
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1.Background…….………...……...………...11.2.Statement of Problems……….………...….5
1.3.Aims of the Research……….………..5
1.4.Reason for Choosing the Topic………5
1.5.Significant of the Research………...5
1.6.Research Design………...6
1.7.Scope of the Research………...7
1.8.Clarification of Terms………...7
CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW
2.1. Humor Theory………....…10
2.2. Types of Humor……….………....13
2.2.1. Superiority Theory………..………...14
2.2.2. Incongruity Theory………...15
2.2.3. Relief Theory……...………..17
2.3 . Humor in Short Stories………....……….…..18
2.4. Humor and Narrative………...20
2.5. Previous Study………...21
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1. Research Questions……….………...243.2. Research Subject and Context……….…………...24
3.3. Research Method………25
3.4. Research Procedure………26
3.5.1. Data Source………29
3.5.2. Synopsis………...30
3.5.2.1. Synopsis in Rape Fantasies………...30
3.5.2.2. Synopsis in The Concert Stages of Europe……...31
CHAPTER IV FINDING AND DISSCUSION
4.1 Constructing Humor………...………....334.1.1. The Role of Narrator in Humor Construction……….……….34
4.1.1.1. The Role of Narrator in Rape Fantasies..…...35
4.1.1.2. The Role of Narrator in The Concert Stages of Europe……38
4.1.2. Narrative Structures in Humor Construction...41
4.2. Types of Humor………...………..43
4.2.1. Superiority Humor………...44
4.2.1.1. Superiority Humor in Rape Fantasies…...44
4.2.1.2. Superiority Humor in The Concert Stages of Europe……..47
4.2.2. Incongruity Humor………...52
4.2.2.2. Incongruity Humor in The Concert Stages of Europe…….54
4.2.3. Relief Humor………...55
4.2.3.1. Relief Humor in Rape Fantasies ………...56
4.2.3.2 Relief Humor in The Concert Stages of Europe…………...57
4.3. The Function of Humor..…...……….59
4.4. Discussion………...………...62
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
5.1. Conclusion………..……….………...655.2. Suggestion…………...………...66
REFERENCES………...………..68
APPENDIX A………...………...……….71
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter introduces the basic of the research. It begins with the background of the research in which the research questions and the aims of the research are presented. The reason for choosing the topic and its significance are also engaged with this chapter. The research design employed in the research is clarified in relation to data analysis within certain scopes. This chapter also serves with the organization of paper as the general description of the research paper.
1.1
Background
Humor can be found in different media and classified into several categories. For instance, humor presented in electronic media such as television is called stand-up comedy that requires a person delivering a monologue to entertain the audiences with his/her jokes. As for the printed media, humor can be found in comics, short stories, novels, newspapers, and magazines.
Many researchers such as Bardon (2005) who believe that the study of humor covers a large, relative yet rare scopes. It is a large and rare field because it connects humor to people’s daily lives; it is relative due to its indicator, that is the sense of humor which determines one’s reactions towards humorous
situations.
When narrowing down the studies of humor in the context of literary work also applies. Humor has been discussed extensively; studies on this topic include firstly, the work of Fine (as cited in Neuendorf & Skalski, 2001) who investigates the functions of humor. In his work, Fine finds three functions of humor: to make people feel each other’s chemistry; to be an ice-breaker in a bad situation and to
be a good weapon to initiate conversation in a new situation. Other research is Kaufman & Kozbelt’s (2009) modes of delivering humor. They note:
One main vehicle by which funny thought which can be blunt the edge of potentially controversial topics and contribute to increasing the audience’s health through laughter. Clearly, from their standpoint, humor can be conveyed through creative writing.
experience joy even when faced with adversity. Further, she mentions three components of humor namely wit, mirth and laughter. She believes that if one of the three components is gone, humor would be meaningless.
From the above explanation, humor may involve a lot of aspects, namely situations, customs, habits of speech or dialects, or arrangement of words. Another point is that humor affects people in different ways: it may result in laughter or smile. Therefore, it is clear that there is a line between humor and laughter. Humor is delivered as one’s efforts to make others laugh, while laughter means a happy feeling resulted in laugh due to funny things.
In order to investigate the humor in literary work, the aims of the present research are twofold. First, to investigate the construction of humor and second, to identify the functions of humor in two selected short stories: Rape Fantasies (1977) by Margaret Atwood and The Concert Stages of Europe (1978) by Jack Hodgins. The main reasons for selecting these two stories is because they share similarities in terms of humorous issues, modes of delivery and the role of the narrator.
The first short story entitled Rape Fantasies (1977) by Margaret Atwood
revealed the conversation between five women who were discussing about their
fantasy when being raped. Uniquely, they talk about it during lunch time as their
response to several magazines which highlighting rape as headline news. The
story is about the five female characters responding to the ideas of being raped
seen from the perspective of the narrator.
The second short story entitled The Concert Stages of Europe (1978) by
Jack Hodgins explored the first person point of view as a narrator who was a thirteen-year-old boy named Barclay or known as Clay. He is forced by his mother to participate in a talent show called the concert stages of Europe. His mother wanted Clay to be a pianist as her dream about, but Clay only wanted to be just a Finn—Finish, Finlandian. In his paradigm, being Finn—Finnish, Finlandian—means being liberate in which freedom is one of Finn—Finnish, Finlandian—main-principal. The ridiculous comments which is conveyed by the narrator made the story extremely comical. Finally Clay ended up with his mother’s dream and it turned into disaster because he embarrassed his entire
family in the talent show.
Both short stories bring to forth humorous issues where each of the narrator gives significant meaning and invites the reaction from the readers. Another interesting thing is the way the two short stories are conveyed; the narrator plays a role as a humorous agent of messages.
1.2
Statement of Problems
The present research will be guided by the following questions:
1. How is humor constructed in the texts?
2. What function does the humor serve in the texts?
1.3
Aims of the Research
The aims of the research are to find out the way humor is constructed in the texts and to find out the function of humor in the texts.
1.4
Reasons for Choosing the Topic
The issue of the research is chosen since the writer is interested to learn how a text can make people laugh. Laughter is resulted from humorous event. Therefore, in this research which is to find out two short stories create humorous situations; the humor is revealed in aim to unveil its construction and its function in creating laughter as a result—readers’ response.
1.5
Significance of the Research
The research is expected to give the description dealing with the definition of humor especially in literature. Besides by exploring the research of humor, the student’s appreciation will increase the understanding toward humor in the literary
focusing on humor in the English Department of UPI (Indonesia University of Education).
1.6
Research Design
The research is a qualitative research which uses descriptive methods through narrative analysis where the focus of analysis is the two selected short stories. The qualitative research tends to associate with words, languages, statistics, numerical figures, and experiences than measurements. The result of the data is the words and sentences which describe the elements of short stories that make people laugh and the function of humor in the readers’ responses. Furthermore, the research is directed to find out the connection between the
humorous texts with wit or narrator which is revealed in the texts. The research finds the textual evidences that appear in the two short
stories, especially the dialogue between character and also the role of the narrator. The descriptive method is considered relevant conducted in this research because it can describe the characteristic of humor presence in the short stories.
The aim of a qualitative research is to get close to the data in their natural setting. And it’s also designed to reflect an individual experience in the context of their daily life. The descriptive methods are one of the qualitative research methods which analyzes the text using narrative approach.
The analysis will be on the characters, their interactions, and comments on narrator which is united in the humor’s borderline. Then, the humorous events will
be labeled and interpreted by using the theory of humor and narrative. After labeling the humorous events, then this research categorizes them into the three types of humor, those are superiority, incongruity and relief. Besides, it investigates the ways of the characters react towards the narrator. The narrator holds the important part of the stories.
1.7
Scope of the Research
To limit the research scope, this research is attempted to analyze two short stories entitled Rape Fantasies (1977) by Margaret Atwood and The Concert Stages of Europe (1978) by Jack Hodgins by doing the analysis to find out the
humorous events and the function of humor found in the texts.
1.8
Clarification of Terms
Humor : The attempt to stimulate amusement (Jauregui, 1998).
Short story : A prose narrative of shorter length than the novel, especially one that concentrates on a single theme.
Funny : The realistic situation. (Neuendorf and Skalski, 2001)
Amusement : The human emotional responses to 'funny' or 'comical' objects (Jauregui, 1998).
Wit : The ability to say or write things that are both clever and amusing.
1.9
Organization of Paper
The research paper will be organized as follows: Chapter I : Introduction
This chapter consists of the introduction which provides the information on the background, statement of problems, aim of the research, reason for choosing the topic, significances of the research, research design, scope of the research, classification of terms, and organization of the paper.
Chapter II : Literature Review
This section consists of previous researches and the theoretical reviews that are relevant to the present study, humor and a bit of narrative theory.
Chapter III : Research Method
explanation about the data source, the synopsis of the data which contains of two selected of the short stories.
Chapter IV : Findings and Discussion
After collecting the data, this part reports the result of the research. This chapter contains the research findings and discussions of humor and narrative.
Chapter V : Conclusion and Suggestion
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter deals with the methodological aspects of the research. The first subsection, that is, the research procedure discusses qualitative research design, case study, and humor theory from Billig (2005) in brief. There are also phases of research detailing steps taken in the study. As the tools of analysis, humor theory from Billig (2005) and narrative from Nikolajeva (2002) are reviewed in concerning research questions of the research.
3.1 Research Questions
The research is intended to investigate the following questions:
1. How is humor constructed in the texts?
2. What function does the humor serve in the texts?
3.2 Research Subject and Context
The subjects of the research are two selected short stories which are considered as humorous texts. They are Rape Fantasies and The Concert Stages of Europe. Rape Fantasies was written by Margaret Atwood and the story was
Concert Stages of Europe was written by Jack Hodgins and the story was
published in 1978. The author, Hodgins is the British Columbian writer who has published numbers of novels and short stories. Both stories were written in English which consists of twenty pages.
The research is aimed to investigate the construction of humor by analyzing the elements, the role of narrator, types of humor and also the narrative implied in the texts. Moreover, the research is also aimed to analyze the function of humor employed in the texts.
3.3 Research Methods
This research employs a qualitative method in the descriptive approach. The research describes the textual evidences by analyzing words, phrases, and sentences in two selected short stories (Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood and The Concert Stages of Europe by Jack Hodgins) to answer the research questions.
A descriptive method is chosen since the research is formed to describe the variables and phenomenons rather than to test a predicted relationship between variables using a numerical code.
qualitative research involves an interpretive and naturalistic approach. It means that qualitative researchers learn things in their natural settings, attempt to make sense of, or to interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.
Based on Hancock (1998) a qualitative research can be defined as an attempts to increase our understanding of why things are the way they are in our social world and why people act the way they do. In addition, Locke (2006) argued that the qualitative projects are aimed to create understanding from data as the analysis proceeds.
The text was discussed using humor theory framework from Billig (2005). It focuses on the type, the role of narrator, and function of humor in two selected short stories. In this frame, reader response such a laugh, smile, and cynical response are facilitated. To enhance the validity of the study, the analysis also engages to narrative theory from Nikolajeva (2002) concerning to the issue the narrator of role which construct the humor in the texts.
3.4 Research Procedure
In conducting the research, the writer undertook some steps as presented below:
1. Reading closely the whole short stories Rape Fantasies and The Concert Stages of Europe by focusing on humor issue.
3. Selecting the issue of narrative specifically the role of narrator which is related to the humor issue to find out the main focus of humor construction.
4. Determining categories for collecting data. The categories are superiority humor, incongruity humor, relief humor and their connection toward narrative.
5. Collecting the data from two selected short stories by paying attention to clues signifying humor proposed by Billig (2005). 6. Analyzing the text using humor theory from Billig (2005) and
relate it to the finding dealing with narrative from Nikolajeva (2002) which focuses on the role of narrator in constructing humor. The role of narrator is mostly described as the main determiner in constructing humor in the two selected stories.
7. Evaluating the data analysis which has been classified into the categories.
a. Interpreting result. This steps involve:
Clarifying the data analysis concerning into the humor issue
and its relation to the role of narrator in the process of humor construction.
Finding out the way of humor constructing through the role
of narrator and how it describes its function in the texts. b. Discussing the result of the analysis by meaning of humor
role of narrator. Finally the essence was conceptualized in conclusion with boundaries and several suggestions.
3.5 Data Collection and Analysis
Data are collected by finding textual evidences in the forms of words, sentences, phrases, and dialogues. The textual evidences are those that contain clues signifying them as the humorous texts and also related to humor which have been explained in the previous chapter. After the textual evidences being collected, they are categorized into three types of humor which is based on the theory of humor proposed by Billig (2005).
After the data are categorized, the writer looks into how the rounding context of the humorous effect is being analyzed. From the context, it attempts to find out how is humor constructed in the texts. It also will figure out why the humor is being constructed functioned in the texts. After identifying the humorous texts, the writer focuses into the characteristics of each type. The collected data were presented in a table, for instance:
purse is full of all entitled Rape Fantasies (1977) and The Concert Stages of Europe (1978). These two short stories are considered as humorous texts which is the main focus of this research. In Rape Fantasies, the characters are Estelle, Chrissy, Sondra, Darlene, and Greta. Estelle is the main character which also has a role as a narrator in the story. Chrissy, Sondra, Darlene, and Greta are Estelle’s coworkers. In the story,
they shared about their fantasies of being raped.
While in The Concert Stages of Europe, the characters are Barclay Philip Desmond, Barclay’s parent, Cornelia Horncastle, Mrs. Humphries, Richy Ryder,
Aunt Jessie, Mr and Mrs Greenborough, Korhonen’s family. The concert stages of
Europe. Richy Ryder is the emcee of the recital. Mrs. Humpries, Aunt Jessie, Mrs. Greenborough are Clay’s piano teacher. Korhonen’s families consist of Mr. and
Mrs. Korhonen, Lilja Korhonen, and Larry Korhonen are Clay’s neighbors who
were Finns.
3.5.2 Synopsis
3.5.2.1 Synopsis Rape Fantasies
The story presents the short fiction that discusses about the women’s imagination of rape fantasy. Estelle—the narrator—shares about her personal rape fantasies, she is also talking about her friends’ rape fantasies. The narrator
restrains the whole story which is dominated at each her friends’ imagination because she always gives the ridiculous comments. The narrator also describes her friend as a woman who make up too much and she considers that her friend is not beautiful at all.
Another foolish fantasy of Estelle’s friend is when she imagines being
3.5.2.2. Synopsis The Concert Stages of Europe
The story tells about a thirteen-year-old boy named Clay who was forced to learn piano by his own mother. At first, it was his mother’s obsession to be a
great pianist but she could never reach her dream. Clay who is the narrator in the story brings humor with the description of himself. The story begins with the refusal act from Clay who does not want to take the piano lesson. He makes some excuses to the mother but it never works. One of his efforts is running away from the piano lesson to the creek behind his teacher’s house, but unfortunately he was
falling down from the raft.
Clay has a fool’s dream which is to be a Finn. Finns are people who have a good characteristic based on his perspective. He often acts very strange like asking money from his neighbors to vote and make him win in the recital. Clay also embarrassed his entire family by his stupid answer to Richy Ryder (the emcee of the recital) which mocks his hometown. At the recital, he cannot show off his ability that is playing the piano as well as the other contestant do. The mother feels disappointed and regretted by forcing her son to learn the piano lesson because all she gets just feel ashamed. The humor precisely arises from Clay’s
3.6 Closing Remarks
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
After describing and discussing the findings of the research, this chapter discusses several conclusions which are drawn from the previous chapter. This chapter also provides several suggestions for future research in analyzing humor in literary texts.
5.1
Conclusion
The research is aimed to answer two research questions deals with humor which is about the construction of humor and its function in the texts. The humor is constructed through the types and its elements employed in two selected short stories. The elements of humor divided into three things such as wit, the ideas or creative thinking, and the interaction between all of them with the readers.
From the discussion in the previous chapter, it is concluded that there are three types of humor employed in two selected short stories entitled Rape Fantasies and The Concert Stages of Europe. They are superiority humor,
A line between the function in Rape Fantasies and in The Concert Stages of Europe is depicted clearly. In Rape Fantasies, the function of humor is ironic
which invites the readers’ responses such as a smile while think why rape becomes the subject of humor. In The Concert Stages of Europe, the function of humor tends to entertain the readers by serving several mockery and ridicule. As the whole texts revealed, by analyzing humor we can figure out why humor happens, when humor happens, what factors and raises our senses of humor.
Furthermore, the issue in both stories wrapped in humor construction, emerges the critical thinking of the readers towards stories. On the other words, it affects the readers in questioning the context of the texts since the sensitive issue are wrapped in humor construction. Therefore, it is formally concluded that the short stories—Rape Fantasies and The Concert Stages of Europe—is one of critical literary works due to its capability in using the role of humor as the tools of inviting readers critical-thinking.
5.2
Suggestions
in literary texts. In line with the suggestion, future researchers should have easy and wide access to find literature relating to context of humor.
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