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ABSTRAK
Skripsi ini menganalisis pelanggaran bidal dalam percakapan yang menimbulkan humor. Data dalam skripsi ini bersumber dari sebuah serial komedi situasi yang berjudul Modern Family. Serial ini saya pilih sebagai sumber data karena percakapan-percakapan di dalamnya menimbulkan humor yang berasal dari pelanggaran bidal. Teori yang saya gunakan dalam menganalisis data di skripsi ini adalah teori Pragmatik, khususnya teori bidal dari Grice dan beberapa teori humor seperti teori Incongruity, teori Superiority, dan Raskin’s Theory of Script Incongruity.
Salah satu alasan mengapa saya tertarik menganalisis humor yang bersumber dari pelanggaran bidal dalam suatu percakapan ialah karena dalam kehidupan manusia di dunia ini komunikasi adalah hal yang sangat penting. Akan tetapi, ketika manusia berkomunikasi dengan sesamanya, seringkali cara mereka menyampaikan apa yang menjadi keinginan mereka tidak jelas. Hal inilah yang dapat menimbulkan kesalahpahaman dan memungkinkan munculnya humor dalam suatu proses komunikasi.
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Maranatha Christian University bicaranya mengatakan hal yang tidak ia sangka sebelumnya. Humor dapat terjadi jika penutur mempunyai maksud tertentu yang tidak diduga oleh pendengar.
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2.2.1 Conventional Implicature... 7
2.2.2 Conversational Implicature ... 7
2.3 Conversational Maxims ... 8
2.7 Raskin’s Theory of Script Incongruity ... 16
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF THE NON-OBSERVANCE OF MAXIMS THAT LEADS TO HUMOR IN MODERN FAMILY TV SERIES SEASON 1 EPISODES 1-5... 19
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ... 41
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 44
49 Gloria : How bad is it?
Jay : One of the wings is cracked and the propeller is bent, but I can – (d)
Gloria : I mean Phil.
Phil : I was in a plane crash.
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Communication is very important for people since they cannot live alone and
they need help from others. In communicating with others, people utter what they want
to say to others. When people utter something verbally, communication can be done
easily. However, in many cases, a speaker does not convey their intention directly
through what they utter. This may cause a misunderstanding between the speaker and
the hearer. Some of the misunderstanding may result in humor. In this thesis, I would
like to analyze the utterances that sometimes fail to be interpreted correctly, which
finally lead to humor.
The topic of my thesis is “analysis of the on-observance of maxims that leads
to humor in Modern Family TV Series Season 1 Episodes 1-5”. I chose this topic because I am interested to study about people’s utterances in their everyday life. The
sources of data are the utterances spoken by some of the main characters of a
situational comedy, Modern Family. I chose a film as my data source because I think
film is one of the media in which the communication process between people happens.
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Maranatha Christian University because we could see directly how people interact with each other through their
utterances.
This situational comedy contains many light humors that might also happen in
everybody’s life. Modern Family is a story of three families that are interviewed by a
documentary crew. In every episode of the story they reveal their everyday lives.
Modern Family explores many different types of modern families. The film tells the
story through the stories of a gay couple, Mitchell and Cameron, and their daughter,
Lily, along with a couple named Phil and Claire, and their three children, Haley, Alex,
and Luke. There is also a multicultural couple, Jay and Gloria, and their son, Manny.
The story is wrapped in a form of comedy that may arise a lot of laughters (Adhari). I chose situational comedy because the story of the situational comedy is based on
everyday life situation between people in a family, in a workplace, and in
neighborhood, which may also happen in our real life. One of the things that makes
this situational comedy funny is the use of the non-observance of maxims. All of this
explains why I choose the film to be the data source of my analysis for my thesis.
There is an area of linguistics that is concerned with the speaker’s utterance
and the interpretation of the utterance. It is called pragmatics. Pragmatics is a branch
of linguistics that studies speaker’s meaning. According to George Yule, in his book
Pragmatics, Pragmatics is “the
study of speaker meaning” which
is “concerned withthe study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a
listener (or reader)” (3). “Pragmatics explores the great deal of what is unsaid is
recognized as part of what is communicated”. Yule also stated that “Pragmatics is the
study of how more gets communicated than it is said” (3). The study of Pragmatics
necessarily involves the interpretation of what people actually mean in a particular
context and how the context influences what is said. To avoid misunderstanding that
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Maranatha Christian University This principle can be applied if the participants of the conversation follow the maxims,
which is the rules of speaking, which include quantity, quality, relevance, and manner.
Moreover, as Grice stated, when people communicate with each other in
everyday lives, they do not always say what they really mean. People often mean
much more than they say or they may mean the opposite of what is uttered. This
happens in our everyday life, and also in the situational comedy that I am going to
analyze. In Pragmatics, this issue is called the implied meaning or implicature (Yule
35). According to Yule, we can get some advantages by learning language through
Pragmatics. He stated that through Pragmatics we can find people’s intention behind
their utterances, behind their assumptions, and we can also know people’s purposes
or goals when they speak to others (Yule 4).
It is expected that the result of this study can help people in understanding the
implicature that may happen in other people’s utterances and also it is hoped that
people will be able to catch the humor that lies behind the utterances through the
non-observance of maxims. And hopefully, this study will improve the readers’ ability to
enjoy watching a comedy film.
750 words
1.2 Statement of the Problem
In this thesis, I would like to solve the following problems:
1. What types of non-observance of maxim are found in the utterances of Modern
Family TV Series Season 1 Episodes 1-5?
2. What is the implicature of each of the utterances?
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Maranatha Christian University 1.3 Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is:
1. to describe the types of non-observance of maxims in Modern Family TV
Series Season 1 Episodes 1-5.
2. to reveal the implicature of each of the utterances.
3. to explain how the non-observance of maxims leads to humor in the
utterances.
1.4 Method of Research
To analyze the data, first I watched several episodes of Modern Family TV
series. Then I collected the utterances containing implicature as the data. After that I
searched the theories that are relevant to the topic discussed. This was done by
reading some books and also browsing through the Internet to find information about
the concept of Cooperative Principle and its maxims along with the theories of humor.
Then I analyzed the data, focusing on the maxims that the speaker fails to observe.
1.5 Organization of the Thesis
I divide the thesis into four chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction, which
consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problems, Purpose of the
Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two contains the
theoretical framework, in which I present some approaches that I use to analyze the
data. Chapter Three is the analysis of the non-observance of maxims that leads to
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Maranatha Christian University Four, is the conclusion of the analysis. At the end of the thesis, I put the Bibliography
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
After watching several episodes of Modern Family¸ I find 19 utterances that are suitable to be used as my data in my thesis. In 17 utterances that I use as my
data, there are 6 flouting of maxims, three of which are flouting the maxim of quantity,
two of which are flouting the maxim of manner, and one is flouting the maxim of
quality. There are also 11 violating of maxims, nine of which are violating the maxim
of quality, one is violating maxim of relation, and there is one utterance which is
violating the maxim of quantity and also violating the maxim of manner.
We can see here that the type of non-observance of maxims that most
frequently happens in the utterances is the violating of maxims (11 of 17 utterances).
I believe that this happens because some of the characters in the data often lie in
their utterances to hide from others something bad that they have done. Moreover,
they also try to deceive the hearers by saying something which is not true or in which
they lack of evidence and also by giving an amount of answers which are not
required by the hearers. Yet the type of non-observance of maxims that is not
commonly happens and not really observed in the situational comedy is infringing a
maxim, opting-out a maxim and suspending a maxim. This is true because the
characters in the situational comedy tend to lie more and to give unnecessary
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Maranatha Christian University The character which often violates the maxim is Phil. I can conclude that Phil
is not an honest person, because he often lies and says something about which he
lacks evidence. Moreover, he often makes the others deceived by his utterances. He
tends to utter lies in order to hide the truth from his family. For example, when his
wife, Claire, asks him where he is when the bike that he brings is lost, Phil lies to
Claire by answering that he is at the gas station to get some gas. Actually, the
audience knows that at that time when Phil loses the bike, he is at a new sexy
neighbor’s house. He lies to Claire because he knows Claire will get mad at him if
she knows Phil drops by at the new sexy neighbor’s house. And when it comes to a
situation in which he wants to say the truth (data 4), people seem not too sure that he
is saying the truth. Moreover, he has to accept the truth that his father-in-law makes
a false testimony of what he has done to Phil. Besides violating, the types of
non-observance of maxims is found among the utterances is the use of flouting of
maxims. I think this might happen because the characters in the data tend to lie more
than to wish the hearers to just catch what the speakers want to say.
I use three theories to analyze the humor effect in my data. They are
Incongruity Theory, Superiority Theory and Raskin’s Theory of Script Incongruity.
Compared to Superiority Theory and Raskin’s Theory of Script Incongruity,
Incongruity theory is more dominant in the data. This might happen, because I
believe in making the utterance funny the situational comedy tends to put the
surprise in the punch line of each of the dialogues. The utterances often start with
one story or set-up then continue with the audience making a prediction of what will
happen next at the end of the story. Most of the utterances in the data end up not just
like what the audience has expected, so finally it makes a surprise.
In reality when we are having conversation with others, we expect true
information from the person that we talk to. But somehow our conversation with
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Maranatha Christian University is sometimes surprising and it can be unlike what we expected before. Based on the
Theory of Incongruity, when our expectation of people’s utterance fails, the result can
be humor or puzzlement. If finally the story or the conversation ends up differently
from what we have expected, then the result is a surprise. So when we think what
has just happened is congruous with the earlier information in the story, the laughter
is raised. But if the audience does not get the joke when the incongruity is resolved,
they will get puzzled. For example, when the weather is hot, we expect the person
that we ask for help to open a window will say yes; however, when he rejects our
request and says, “It is good for me,” we will get surprised by his answer. Later when
we know that he is on a diet to lose his weight, we finally get the idea that he thinks
the hot weather will make him/her to sweat and so will help him lose some weights.
For further research about the types of non-observance of maxims that leads
to humor, I recommend other readers will dig more from this situational comedy,
Modern Family. I believe that this situational comedy is not only funny but there are lots of implicatures and the use of non-observance of maxims that supports the
humor to rise. The characters in the film and the stories that are set-up also support
the film to be a real amusement for the audience. Therefore, I really recommend
other students to continue analyzing this situational comedy because there are more
to find in it. It will be amusing and challenging when we are able to reveal the humor
through the analysis that we make. After doing the analysis, we can know considered
funny and how is the process of finding the humor behind utterances.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Source
Modern Family TV Series 1-5. 2011. Levitan / Lloyd, 20th Century Fox Television,
Lloyd-Levitan Productions.
References
Abdalian, Andrew. “Why’s that funny?? An extension to the Semantic Theory of
Humor” 2005. Web. 8 May 2012.
Adhari, Hari. “TV Series Review, Modern Family” Curly Badindas. 2011. Web. 20
Sept, 2011.
Argumentics.”Victor Raskin and the SSTH Argument, One Argument.” Web. 9
May, 2012.
Cook, Guy. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000. Print.
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Print.
Hughes, Laura. “Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Maxims of Conversation &
Conversational Implicature”. n.d. Web. 14 Feb, 2012.
McGhee, Paul E. and Jeffrey H Goldstein. Handbook of Humour Research. New
York: Springer-Verlag, 1983. Print.
Monro, David.Hector. “Theories of Humor” Writing and Reading Across the
Curriculum 3rd ed. n.d. Web. 9 May, 2012.
Short, Mike. “Grice's Cooperative Principle” Ling 131: Language & Style. n.d.
Web. 10 Feb, 2012.
Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London
and New York: Longman Group Limited, 1995. Print.
Wiseman, Richard. “Laugh Lab” Superiority Theory. n.d. Web. 9 May, 2012.
