Infringing Maxim of Quality
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EXCERPT S02E15QNFL12
SI On the sale, wedding dress store, robin and lily. Lily has been wanting to buy
wedding dress on sale but she didn’t knew the place. NA
Conversation 1
Robin: This is the place. 2
Lily: Oh, wow. Badgley Mischka Melissa Sweet Vera Wang Oh, Robin, do you have any idea what you guys stumbled onto here?
3
Robin: giggling You said Wang.
SO Flouting maxim of quantity
LM Missing link
TA Family name of a designer
LA Natural do not correspondent to the production of humor
As appeared in the excerpt above, the punchline came out from Robin within a conversation NA between Robin and Lily. The conversation occurred
SI when Lily was delirious to run into a wedding dress on sale in a store. Lily’s question was considered as part of speech figure which to make a point rather than
to elicit an answer. At this point, Robin’s follow-up utterance was not necessarily aired. The humor laid on Robin’s utterance because she uttered other informative
utterance for current purpose of conversation. Consequently, she flouted maxim of quantity. In terms of script opposition SO it constituted an abnormal behavior.
The logical mechanism LM then follows as ground reversal since the expected situation in current conversation changes into unexpected one as in Robin’s
utterance. The humorous effects were created when the perceivers, explicitly audiences, have the conceptual patterns which formed variable expectation of what
might be Robin’s responses in exchange to Lily’s inquiry. The formed expectation was based on, in this given situation: topic discussed, Lily’s tone of voice, and
Lily’s gesture. Those factors formed the expectation that Robin would be as delirious as Lily was. Unpredictably, Robin’s conflicting utterance violated the
audiences’ concept Morreal, 1987. As a result, it gave a rise to amusement.
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