Dr. Grey : The healing ritual. Are you OK with that?
Patient : Yeah. They cant find my soul if Im medicated. No pain,
no gain, right?
Datum 59 Grey asks to her patient if she is okay about the healing ritual that the
patient’s father will do before the operation. The patient answers Grey’s worried by convincing Grey using a cliché “No pain no gain” which is usually said to
endure pain and pressure to achieve the price of hard work. Moreover, the pain here means the pain from a surgery that she might feel after doing an operation.
This humor is categorized as transformation of frozen expression for applying a cliché in creating the humor. It also has the function as decommitment in order to
get agreement from the doctor.
3. Function of Humor in Grey’s Anatomy Season 2
The findings show that the characters in Grey’s Anatomy Season 2
employed three from four functions in creating humor. The only function which cannot found is defunctionalization since there is no humor using word playing,
particularly playing with the homophone of the word. The explanation of the discussion in this section is divided into three parts: social management,
decommitment, and mediation.
a. Social Management
The social management function of humor covers all the cases in which humor is used as a tool to facilitate in-group interaction and strengthen in-group
bonding or out-group rejection. The example from the findings related to social management function is firstly presented below.
Dr. Derek: Operation, yes. Ok, hard to tell. Basilar arterys blown up like a balloon. Subarachnoid bleeding. Aneurysm the size of
a golf ball. Datum 2
Joe, a bartender of the bar near a hospital, collapsed and needs to be operated in Seattle Hospital. Derek who is close enough with him is being his
doctor and in this conversation he tries to explain clearly to Joe related to his disease.
Several terms “Basilar artery”, “subarachnoid”, and “aneurysm” are categorized as human anatomy inside parts of brain.
Therefore, Joe’s disease is in his brain.
Derek tries to explain about Joe’s condition, since they are close enough so he uses overstatement by exaggerating the term as the explanation of how bad
the disease is. Here, several anatomy words are being compared to common things. This humor has function as social management for relieving the tension
between Derek and Joe. Since Joe is his close friend and also being his patient, so Derek wants to make him at ease about the operation that will be done. The
following conversation is the second example of social management. Dr. Grey
: Penises, Izzie
Dr. Cristina : Estrogen, George.
Dr. Izzie : OK. What did I miss?
Datum 10 The setting of this conversation is
in Grey’s house when she and Cristina are drunk and talk nonsense. They debate whose love story is more tragic by
blaming the causes; Grey blames “penis” while Cristina blames “estrogen”. After George and Izzie come, Grey and Cristina try to get support from them.
Grey and Crist ina use anatomy terms “penis” and “estrogen” rather than
the real problem which are “boy” and “pregnancy” since they are doctors. The humor type is teasing since they are cursing in funny way because of being drunk
without insult intention. They do not have any harmful intention by saying those words except for cursing and t
hey also attract their friends’ attention by saying taboo words, therefore the function is social management. The following is also
the other data of social management. Dr. Izzie
: Shes my friend too but shes acting like she has no emotions or warmth, like shes missing a soul.
Dr. George : God, shes gonna make a great surgeon.
Datum 33 Izzie is quite upset to Cristina since Cristina has been operated to take
away her fallopian tube and the baby, however she looks fine and begins to work again. When Cristina’s friends try to convince her, it seems like she does not need
the support since she is too strong and cold. Thus, Izzie expresses her upset in that utterance above. Then, George replies a teasing to Cristina that with her
emotionless and coldness she will be a great and professional surgeon. The hospital position of “surgeon” is employed here to create humor. The
type is teasing since Cristina is teased by George as a great surgeon because of her emotionlessness that will lead her to be professional. This humor has no insult
intention even though it upsets someone. Thus, the function is social management as a tool to facilitate in-group interaction and strengthen their friendship because
the teasing humor employed to their close friend among the interns. This example below is the last example of social management.
b. Decommitment
