Functions of Humor Created by Maxim Flouting in Modern Family
serious statement since she did not want Claire to know that she was drinking at prom. She wanted Claire to take the problem easy. Haley used humor for topic
shifting which belong to social management function of humor since she did not want to answer Claire’s question.
2 Decommitment
Decommittment happens when a speaker denies any harmful intention for an action and for the speaker to declare that he or she did not have any intention
of maintaining or carrying out or treating seriously an action that had been
initially started.
The basis of the decommitment function is that humorous communication is retractable, i.e., the speaker may back off from his or her utterance without loss
of face. Decommitment tactics include probing and salvaging. Probing is a function of humor in which a speaker could get information by making a
humorous utterance. Whereas, salvaging is a function of humor in which the speaker wants to make a bad situation better. The following data is an example of
humor that has function as decommitment. From the findings, it can be seen that the characters used maxim flouting
to create decommitment. They employed maxim of quality and maxim of relation
flouting to create decommitment.