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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
In this study, the writer applies some terms namely Pragmatics, Conversational Implicature, Grice’s Theory of Cooperative Principle, Observing
the maxims, Theory of Humor, and Humors in Reader’s Digest.
2.1 History of Pragmatics
Pragmatics has become one of the most interesting topics in the area of linguistics. Pragmatics, as the sub-field of language that investigates the
techniques by which language is used for communicational purposes, studies how language users make use of their knowledge of language purposes, studies how
language users make use of their knowledge of language – conceived in terms of their understanding in mind of the language structure and rules. The study of
pragmatics was developed in Europe when Charles Morris in 1938 mentioned that semiotics, or the science of signs, was devided into three major branches: syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics. According to him, pragmatics is the study of relation of signs to interpreters. This view was then developed by Halliday who proposed
social theory of language Levinson 1983:1. The development of pragmatics in US was inspired by Austin, a British
language philosopher, and Searle. Austin’s work ‘How to Do Things with Words’ which was published in 1962 discussed about performative and constantive act.
He also proposed his idea about locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary act. Searle developed Austin’s idea to US and published his work. He classified the
number of speech act into five categories; reperesentative, directive, expressive, commisive, and declarative Austin, 1969: 33.
After the publication of their works, other theories appeared. Grice 1975 proposed his theory of Conversational Implicature. His work appeared in an
article ‘Logic and Conversation’. His other idea was about Cooperative Principle, which is aimed to guide participants in a conversation to talk cooperatively,
effectively, and efficiently. Cooperative Principle is described to four maxims; quantity, quality, relation and manner.
Brown and Levinson 1987: 34 published an article ‘Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena’. They proposed term face, which is
distinguished into positive and negative face. Every utterance in a conversation has a chance to threat one of other’s faces. To minimize the threat, they proposed
five politeness strategies: bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record, and keep quiet.
Levinson 1983: 103 published his book ‘Pragmatics’. He revised Grice’s theory of implicature. He suggested the test of implicature and its type. According
to Levinson, meaning can be expressed explicitly and implicitly. Implicit meaning can be conventional and non conventional.
Leech 1983: 79 published ‘Principle of Pragmatics’. In his book he proposed Politeness Principle PP and Irony Principle IP to complete Grice’s
Cooperative Principle. Politeness Principle is a series of principle that is used to convey politeness in communication. The principle is described into five maxims;
tact, generosity, approbation, modesty, agreement, and sympathy.
Mey 1993: 88 published ‘Pragmatics’: an Introduction. He distinguished pragmatics into micro and macropragmatics. Micropragmatics involves reference
and implicature, speech act, speech act verbs and indirect speech act, and speech act’s classification. Macropragmatics involves conversational analysis,
metapragmatics, and societal pragmatics.
2.2 Definitions of Pragmatics
Kategori