Humorous Atmosphere Due To The Failure of Observing The Gricean Maxims in 'Joey'.
ABSTRACT
Dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menganalisis terciptanya humor
yang diakibatkan oleh pelanggaran bidal yang dibuat oleh penutur dalam suatu
percakapan. Saya mengunakan film seri Joey sebagai data saya. Teori yang saya
gunakan adalah Conversational maxim yang dikemukakan oleh H.P. Grice. Film
seri Joey menceritakan tentang keseharian Joey yang selalu diliputi masalah dan
menimbulkan komedi situasi. Pelanggaran bidal dalam teori Conversational
maxim meliputi quantity, quality, relation dan manner. Menurut Grice, orangorang tidak akan mengalami masalah komunikasi jika mereka mengikuti teorinya.
Grice memperkenalkan lima perlanggaran diantaranya flouting, violating,
infringing, opting out dan suspending a maxim.
Dalam data, saya menemukan banyak penutur yang tidak mematuhi aturan
Conversational maxim. Namun jika mitra tutur dapat menangkap gagasan penutur
yang sebenarnya, maka komunikasi tetap akan berjalan baik.
Saya mendapatkan fakta yang membuktikan terjadinya humor dalam
komunikasi dikarenakan adanya pelanggaran bidal. Fakta tersebut dapat dilihat
dari perbedaan gagasan antara gagasan yang disampaikan dan yang ditangkap
oleh mitra tutur.
Maranatha Christian University
Tanggapan mitra tutur tidak terduga oleh penonton. Tanggapan inilah yang
menimbulkan
humor
dan
membuat
situasi
menjadi
lucu.
Maranatha Christian University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………….....
i
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………..........................
ii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION………………………………………
Background of the Study…………………………………………........
Statement of the Problem…………...……………………………........
Purpose of the Study………...…………….…………………...............
Method of Research…...………………….…………………................
Organization of the Thesis...…………….…………………………......
1
1
4
4
4
5
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK…………………….
6
CHAPTER THREE: HUMOROUS ATMOSPHERE DUE TO THE
FAILURE OF OBSERVING THE GRICEAN
MAXIM IN JOEY……………………………...…. 13
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION………………………………………... 26
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………................. 30
APPENDIX…………………………………………………...........................
31
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APPENDIX
NON-OBSERVANCE OF MAXIM
Type of
Type of NonConversational
Observance
maxim
DATA
Data 1
Quantity and
Manner
Taxi driver: “Where am I taking you?”
Joey: “Oh yeah, I gotta get some place.
It’s my sister’s place.
She supposed to pick
me up but she’s… kind
Flouting
of all there yol, yol,
yol you know.”
Taxi driver: “The address?”
Joey
: “Right! Right! Right!”
Data 2
Joey: “Did you know that girl next door
is married?”
Michael: “Oh. I can’ talk to that girl.
She makes my stutter
come back.”
31
Flouting
Quantity and
Manner
Data 3
Gina: “Fine. If it’s such a big deal, you
can have the stupid key back.”
Joey: “That was too easy. You have
another one.”
Gina: “Oh good job, Nancy Drew.
Flouting
Quantity
Here.”
Joey: “How many more do you have?”
Gina: “We can do this all day.”
Data 4
Alex: “It’s nice to meet you Michael.”
Infringing
Michael: “Golly, Yeah, Uh, Hi, Wow.”
Data 5
Alex: “The last apartment we had open,
he rented no problem,
even though there was
bad plumbing, faulty
heating,
and
there’s
mold in the walls.”
Joey: “Uh, weren’t we the last people to
move in?”
Alex: “So, SeaWorld, huh?”
32
Flouting
Relation
Data 6
Renata: “Bill and Mary go to ssh…
skk…”
Joey: “School, Renata they go to
Infringing
school.”
Data 7
Michael: “Hey, Joey, who did you have
up here last night? It
sounded like bobcat
attacking a seal. Hey,
Flouting
Relation and
Quality
Flouting
Relation
Alex, what are you
doing up here?”
Alex: “I’m the seal!”
Data 8
Joey: “So, Jessica Alba sure is hot,
huh?”
Zach: “We don’t need to do that.”
Joey: “Yeah, we do.”
33
Data 9
Joey: “How does you talking about
Michael lead to you
working for Bobbie?”
Gina: “How does you talking about
Sara
having
lead
sex
to
you
with
Alex?”
Joey: “I explained that! I just had a
steak this big!”
34
Flouting
Relation and
Quality
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
People in the world communicate to one another other using language.
Language is important in our lives. If we have language, we can express our
intentions to people. They will understand our message because of our language.
We cannot imagine life without language. It will be hard to express our
intentions to the hearer and the hearer will be not able to understand the meaning
of our intentions. Thus, the communication will be ruined.
As we know, an utterance has three parts consisting of the acts, they are:
the utterance (locutionary act), the intention (illocutionary act) and the act itself
which is caused by the interpretation of an addressee (perlocutionary act). The
three elements make an interaction run well (Thomas 49).
As the theory says, the speaker can speak more or less than the speaker wants to
say, but usually they are not totally explicit (Thomas 56). In a conversation, it is
often found that the speaker puts an implied meaning in it. For example, the
utterance “You’re a very nice girl!” can have three possible interpretations in the
hearer’s part.
1
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The first interpretation is that the speaker really means to say that the hearer is a
very nice girl because of her behavior or her appearance which makes the speaker
thinks so. The second interpretation is that the speaker criticizes the hearer that
actually the behavior is annoying to the speaker (quality). Here, the speaker can
use the mocking intonation to make the utterance in the vice versa of the real
meaning. The third interpretation is that the speaker says this utterance as the
introduction to the real intention which is. For example, the speaker wants to
borrow the hearer’s money, but because the speaker is afraid to say it directly, she
or he uses an introduction to make the hearer feel good first before showing the
real intention, which is that the speaker wants to borrow the hearer’s money
(manner).
However, there are some rules that are conveyed by H.P Grice to make
the conversation run smoothly. If the speaker and the hearer follow the rules
correctly, the conversation will be good. Yet, there is another problem: Sometimes,
the hearer may have a different interpretation for what actually the speaker means.
The problem arises when the hearer has different interpretation and she or he
performs an action which is different from the speaker’s expectation. Some of the
reasons are that the hearer cannot get what the speaker’s real meaning is; the
hearer intentionally lies to hide something because the hearer thinks that the
information is not supposed to be told or the speaker does not give clear
information that is needed by the hearer. The effects that are caused by these
different interpretations are various. It may cause tense atmosphere to arise, cause
people to wonder, or cause humor.
In my thesis, I am analyzing the non-observance of the maxims in Joey. I
2
Maranatha Christian University
am analyzing the cooperative principle which the speaker fails to observe, namely
the maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner. My topic belongs to
Pragmatics. I am interested in writing it because it is interesting to know the
hidden meaning inside the speaker’s utterances, so we can react properly to what
people expect us to react. I am using the theory of Grice in Jenny Thomas’ book.
In my thesis, I want to analyze how the failure of observing the maxim can cause
humor. According to Grice the hearer should get the intention of what is said to
what is meant (Thomas 56), hence the rules are applied. Nonetheless, in this
television series, the characters often fail to observe the maxim. The effect is that,
it causes the viewers to laugh.
I choose Joey television series instead of other television series as the
source of my data because the characters in this television series, especially Joey,
often fail to observe the maxims. This causes laugher to the audience. I want to
show that actually failure of observing the maxim can cause humor in
conversation. That is why this comedy television series Joey is suitable for my
thesis.
Hopefully, after reading my thesis, people will be interested in knowing
further about speakers’ meaning and be more concerned about it, so that they can
react properly without causing bad effects but humor. Hence, we can enjoy having
conversations with people around us.
3
Maranatha Christian University
Statement of the Problem
In this thesis I am going to analyze following four problems:
1. Which type of non-observance of maxim does the speaker fail to observe?
2. What conversational maxim type does the speaker fail to observe?
3. Why does the speaker fail to observe the maxim?
4. What humorous effects occur due to the failure of observing the maxim?
Purpose of the Study
This thesis is done to show the following points:
1. To show the type of non-observance that the speaker fails to observe.
2. To show the type of conversational maxim that the speaker fails to
observe.
3. To explain why the speaker fails to observe the maxim.
4. To explain the humorous effects that occur because of the failure of
observing the maxim.
Method of Research
In doing this analysis, the first step I do is watching Joey television series.
While watching the television series I collect the humorous dialogues which are
related to failure of observing the maxims. The second step is classifying all the
data into the types of non-observing the maxims. The last step is analyzing the
data and writing the report.
4
Maranatha Christian University
Organization of the Thesis
In this thesis there are four chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction, which
consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the
Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. The second chapter is
the Theoretical Framework, in which I explain the linguistic area and the
approach used in writing the thesis. The third chapter presents the Occurrence of
Humor due to the Failure to Observe the Gricean Maxim in Joey which is the
analysis of the data. The last chapter, chapter four is the conclusion of the analysis.
This thesis is ended with the Bibliography and Appendix.
5
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I will draw a conclusion based on my findings. Basically,
Grice states that applying the conversational maxims would make people’s
conversation run well. Actually, the conversation will still run well even if the
speaker and the addressee do not obey the conversational rules. Yet, they have to
catch the real intention and the sense of the conversation. It shows that a speaker
and an addressee do not always have to follow the rules in conversations. If the
addressee catches the speaker’s intention, there will be no problem. Nevertheless,
in my thesis the speakers and the addressees fail to follow the conversational
maxim rules. As a result, implicature appears from failing to observe the Gricean
conversational maxims.
I have obtained some findings after analyzing the occurrence of humor
due to the failure to observe the Gricean maxims in Joey. The findings include the
type of non-observance of a maxim which the speakers often fail to observe, the
type of conversational maxim which the speakers often do, the reasons why the
speakers fail to observe a maxim and how the failure of observing a maxim in
Joey television series can create humor.
26
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First, I found that flouting the maxim is the type of non-observance which
the speakers do the most in Joey television series. There are only two types of
non-observance I found in the film. They are flouting a maxim (7 data), and
infringing a maxim (2 data). By this number, I conclude that as humor appears
without any intention to create laughter, it fits to the theory of flouting a maxim
which the speaker has no intention to mislead the addressee. And flouting a
maxim makes nonsense because no matter what the utterance is it does not fulfill
the speaker’s questions in some way. Hence, flouting a maxim works well in
causing laughter to audience. Besides, infringing a maxim also creates humor. It is
because infringing a maxim in an utterance has no intention either to deceiver or
does it contain an implicature. In my opinion, when an ordinary person infringes a
maxim, it makes the audience laugh as it happens to people who are nervous,
drunk or has an imperfect language skill, for example a language learner who has
a limited language skill. Because as physically normal person can speak clearly
but because of some reasons like nervousness or drunkenness not uttering clearly
looks funny. Yet, it will not cause humor if it happens to disabled speak because it
is not something that we can laugh at.
Second, I found that the maxim of relation is the type of conversational
maxim which the speakers do mostly. The numbers of the maxims that the
speakers fail to observe are: maxim of relation (8 data), maxim of quantity (3
data), maxim of quality (2 data), and maxim of manner (1 data). Based on this
number, I conclude that the maxim of relation plays an important role in causing
laughter to the audience because the addressee’s answer is out of the topic which
the audience thinks at the first time. In terms of the maxim of relation, an
27
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addressee gives an answer which is irrelevant and unclear answer to what the
speaker needs. In other words, the audience does not expect the response of the
addressee. As a result, surprise appears and leads to a laughter.
Third, I analyzed some reasons that make the speakers fail to observe a
conversational maxim. And here is the number: the speaker wants to talk about
another thing (3 data), the speaker feels nervous (1 data), the speaker has an
imperfect language skill (1 data), the speakers feel uncomfortable to answer the
questions (1 data), the speaker just responds to an implicature (1 data), the speaker
wants to have a brief conversation (2 data), the speaker wants to use an
implicature in the answer (1 data).
I noticed that the reasons that build humor in the conversation are
connected with the second finding of my research which is maxim of relation. It is
because the speakers and the addresses have different ideas while having the same
conversation. It shows that having different ideas in a conversation is the main
reason why the addressee fail to observe a maxim.
The last finding of my thesis is the humor that is raised from failing to
observe the conversational maxim. Here are the causes why the humor appears: a
speaker’s answer to a question is not what the audience expects (5 data), a speaker
answers a question by repeating the question (1 data), talking about another things
which is irrelevant (1 data), being nervous or not speaking well (1 data), having an
imperfect language skill (1 data), not being straight to the point (1 data).
Once again, it is found that giving an unexpected answer is related to the
second and third findings. I can tell that giving an unexpected answer which often
appears really makes this television series funny. An unexpected answer makes
28
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the audience surprised because what the audience expects is just a general answer.
Besides, the way how the addressee replies to the speaker’s question is also funny.
It becomes ever funnier when the audience finds and understands the implied
meaning in the answer.
Finally, in my thesis I found a strong point that flouting a maxim of
relation really makes Joey television series become a successful comedy
television series. The script writers, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, deserve
credit for the success of Joey television series because these two writers have
written a great script. They have created humor by using linguistics. In my
opinion, a comedy television series can be successful due to the support of funny
gestures or stupid actions. Yet, as far as this television series is concerned, it uses
linguistics as their main focus of how they build a humor through conversation.
Thus, I conclude that by being aware of linguistic fields, people can understand
and enjoy this television series more.
I believe my analysis can be improved more by discussing it in another
way. In my thesis I have used the Gricean theory which only focuses on the verbal
utterances. On the other hand, it is shown that humor can arise from funny
gestures or stupid actions which and are non-verbal aspects.
29
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics.
Conversational Implicature. London and New York: Longman Group
Limited, 1995, 55-77
Primary Source:
Joey. By Sherry Bilsing, Kevin Bright, and Brian Buckner. Perf. Andrea Anders,
Jeniffer Coolidge, Ben Falcone, Madchen Amick, Matt Letscher, Alex Ball,
and Danneel Harris. Writ. Marta Kauffman and David Crane. Dir. Kevin
Bright, Sheldon Epps, and Grey Halvorson. NBC.
30
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Dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menganalisis terciptanya humor
yang diakibatkan oleh pelanggaran bidal yang dibuat oleh penutur dalam suatu
percakapan. Saya mengunakan film seri Joey sebagai data saya. Teori yang saya
gunakan adalah Conversational maxim yang dikemukakan oleh H.P. Grice. Film
seri Joey menceritakan tentang keseharian Joey yang selalu diliputi masalah dan
menimbulkan komedi situasi. Pelanggaran bidal dalam teori Conversational
maxim meliputi quantity, quality, relation dan manner. Menurut Grice, orangorang tidak akan mengalami masalah komunikasi jika mereka mengikuti teorinya.
Grice memperkenalkan lima perlanggaran diantaranya flouting, violating,
infringing, opting out dan suspending a maxim.
Dalam data, saya menemukan banyak penutur yang tidak mematuhi aturan
Conversational maxim. Namun jika mitra tutur dapat menangkap gagasan penutur
yang sebenarnya, maka komunikasi tetap akan berjalan baik.
Saya mendapatkan fakta yang membuktikan terjadinya humor dalam
komunikasi dikarenakan adanya pelanggaran bidal. Fakta tersebut dapat dilihat
dari perbedaan gagasan antara gagasan yang disampaikan dan yang ditangkap
oleh mitra tutur.
Maranatha Christian University
Tanggapan mitra tutur tidak terduga oleh penonton. Tanggapan inilah yang
menimbulkan
humor
dan
membuat
situasi
menjadi
lucu.
Maranatha Christian University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………….....
i
ABSTRACT…………………………………………………..........................
ii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION………………………………………
Background of the Study…………………………………………........
Statement of the Problem…………...……………………………........
Purpose of the Study………...…………….…………………...............
Method of Research…...………………….…………………................
Organization of the Thesis...…………….…………………………......
1
1
4
4
4
5
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK…………………….
6
CHAPTER THREE: HUMOROUS ATMOSPHERE DUE TO THE
FAILURE OF OBSERVING THE GRICEAN
MAXIM IN JOEY……………………………...…. 13
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION………………………………………... 26
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………................. 30
APPENDIX…………………………………………………...........................
31
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APPENDIX
NON-OBSERVANCE OF MAXIM
Type of
Type of NonConversational
Observance
maxim
DATA
Data 1
Quantity and
Manner
Taxi driver: “Where am I taking you?”
Joey: “Oh yeah, I gotta get some place.
It’s my sister’s place.
She supposed to pick
me up but she’s… kind
Flouting
of all there yol, yol,
yol you know.”
Taxi driver: “The address?”
Joey
: “Right! Right! Right!”
Data 2
Joey: “Did you know that girl next door
is married?”
Michael: “Oh. I can’ talk to that girl.
She makes my stutter
come back.”
31
Flouting
Quantity and
Manner
Data 3
Gina: “Fine. If it’s such a big deal, you
can have the stupid key back.”
Joey: “That was too easy. You have
another one.”
Gina: “Oh good job, Nancy Drew.
Flouting
Quantity
Here.”
Joey: “How many more do you have?”
Gina: “We can do this all day.”
Data 4
Alex: “It’s nice to meet you Michael.”
Infringing
Michael: “Golly, Yeah, Uh, Hi, Wow.”
Data 5
Alex: “The last apartment we had open,
he rented no problem,
even though there was
bad plumbing, faulty
heating,
and
there’s
mold in the walls.”
Joey: “Uh, weren’t we the last people to
move in?”
Alex: “So, SeaWorld, huh?”
32
Flouting
Relation
Data 6
Renata: “Bill and Mary go to ssh…
skk…”
Joey: “School, Renata they go to
Infringing
school.”
Data 7
Michael: “Hey, Joey, who did you have
up here last night? It
sounded like bobcat
attacking a seal. Hey,
Flouting
Relation and
Quality
Flouting
Relation
Alex, what are you
doing up here?”
Alex: “I’m the seal!”
Data 8
Joey: “So, Jessica Alba sure is hot,
huh?”
Zach: “We don’t need to do that.”
Joey: “Yeah, we do.”
33
Data 9
Joey: “How does you talking about
Michael lead to you
working for Bobbie?”
Gina: “How does you talking about
Sara
having
lead
sex
to
you
with
Alex?”
Joey: “I explained that! I just had a
steak this big!”
34
Flouting
Relation and
Quality
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
People in the world communicate to one another other using language.
Language is important in our lives. If we have language, we can express our
intentions to people. They will understand our message because of our language.
We cannot imagine life without language. It will be hard to express our
intentions to the hearer and the hearer will be not able to understand the meaning
of our intentions. Thus, the communication will be ruined.
As we know, an utterance has three parts consisting of the acts, they are:
the utterance (locutionary act), the intention (illocutionary act) and the act itself
which is caused by the interpretation of an addressee (perlocutionary act). The
three elements make an interaction run well (Thomas 49).
As the theory says, the speaker can speak more or less than the speaker wants to
say, but usually they are not totally explicit (Thomas 56). In a conversation, it is
often found that the speaker puts an implied meaning in it. For example, the
utterance “You’re a very nice girl!” can have three possible interpretations in the
hearer’s part.
1
Maranatha Christian University
The first interpretation is that the speaker really means to say that the hearer is a
very nice girl because of her behavior or her appearance which makes the speaker
thinks so. The second interpretation is that the speaker criticizes the hearer that
actually the behavior is annoying to the speaker (quality). Here, the speaker can
use the mocking intonation to make the utterance in the vice versa of the real
meaning. The third interpretation is that the speaker says this utterance as the
introduction to the real intention which is. For example, the speaker wants to
borrow the hearer’s money, but because the speaker is afraid to say it directly, she
or he uses an introduction to make the hearer feel good first before showing the
real intention, which is that the speaker wants to borrow the hearer’s money
(manner).
However, there are some rules that are conveyed by H.P Grice to make
the conversation run smoothly. If the speaker and the hearer follow the rules
correctly, the conversation will be good. Yet, there is another problem: Sometimes,
the hearer may have a different interpretation for what actually the speaker means.
The problem arises when the hearer has different interpretation and she or he
performs an action which is different from the speaker’s expectation. Some of the
reasons are that the hearer cannot get what the speaker’s real meaning is; the
hearer intentionally lies to hide something because the hearer thinks that the
information is not supposed to be told or the speaker does not give clear
information that is needed by the hearer. The effects that are caused by these
different interpretations are various. It may cause tense atmosphere to arise, cause
people to wonder, or cause humor.
In my thesis, I am analyzing the non-observance of the maxims in Joey. I
2
Maranatha Christian University
am analyzing the cooperative principle which the speaker fails to observe, namely
the maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner. My topic belongs to
Pragmatics. I am interested in writing it because it is interesting to know the
hidden meaning inside the speaker’s utterances, so we can react properly to what
people expect us to react. I am using the theory of Grice in Jenny Thomas’ book.
In my thesis, I want to analyze how the failure of observing the maxim can cause
humor. According to Grice the hearer should get the intention of what is said to
what is meant (Thomas 56), hence the rules are applied. Nonetheless, in this
television series, the characters often fail to observe the maxim. The effect is that,
it causes the viewers to laugh.
I choose Joey television series instead of other television series as the
source of my data because the characters in this television series, especially Joey,
often fail to observe the maxims. This causes laugher to the audience. I want to
show that actually failure of observing the maxim can cause humor in
conversation. That is why this comedy television series Joey is suitable for my
thesis.
Hopefully, after reading my thesis, people will be interested in knowing
further about speakers’ meaning and be more concerned about it, so that they can
react properly without causing bad effects but humor. Hence, we can enjoy having
conversations with people around us.
3
Maranatha Christian University
Statement of the Problem
In this thesis I am going to analyze following four problems:
1. Which type of non-observance of maxim does the speaker fail to observe?
2. What conversational maxim type does the speaker fail to observe?
3. Why does the speaker fail to observe the maxim?
4. What humorous effects occur due to the failure of observing the maxim?
Purpose of the Study
This thesis is done to show the following points:
1. To show the type of non-observance that the speaker fails to observe.
2. To show the type of conversational maxim that the speaker fails to
observe.
3. To explain why the speaker fails to observe the maxim.
4. To explain the humorous effects that occur because of the failure of
observing the maxim.
Method of Research
In doing this analysis, the first step I do is watching Joey television series.
While watching the television series I collect the humorous dialogues which are
related to failure of observing the maxims. The second step is classifying all the
data into the types of non-observing the maxims. The last step is analyzing the
data and writing the report.
4
Maranatha Christian University
Organization of the Thesis
In this thesis there are four chapters. The first chapter is the Introduction, which
consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the
Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. The second chapter is
the Theoretical Framework, in which I explain the linguistic area and the
approach used in writing the thesis. The third chapter presents the Occurrence of
Humor due to the Failure to Observe the Gricean Maxim in Joey which is the
analysis of the data. The last chapter, chapter four is the conclusion of the analysis.
This thesis is ended with the Bibliography and Appendix.
5
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I will draw a conclusion based on my findings. Basically,
Grice states that applying the conversational maxims would make people’s
conversation run well. Actually, the conversation will still run well even if the
speaker and the addressee do not obey the conversational rules. Yet, they have to
catch the real intention and the sense of the conversation. It shows that a speaker
and an addressee do not always have to follow the rules in conversations. If the
addressee catches the speaker’s intention, there will be no problem. Nevertheless,
in my thesis the speakers and the addressees fail to follow the conversational
maxim rules. As a result, implicature appears from failing to observe the Gricean
conversational maxims.
I have obtained some findings after analyzing the occurrence of humor
due to the failure to observe the Gricean maxims in Joey. The findings include the
type of non-observance of a maxim which the speakers often fail to observe, the
type of conversational maxim which the speakers often do, the reasons why the
speakers fail to observe a maxim and how the failure of observing a maxim in
Joey television series can create humor.
26
Maranatha Christian University
First, I found that flouting the maxim is the type of non-observance which
the speakers do the most in Joey television series. There are only two types of
non-observance I found in the film. They are flouting a maxim (7 data), and
infringing a maxim (2 data). By this number, I conclude that as humor appears
without any intention to create laughter, it fits to the theory of flouting a maxim
which the speaker has no intention to mislead the addressee. And flouting a
maxim makes nonsense because no matter what the utterance is it does not fulfill
the speaker’s questions in some way. Hence, flouting a maxim works well in
causing laughter to audience. Besides, infringing a maxim also creates humor. It is
because infringing a maxim in an utterance has no intention either to deceiver or
does it contain an implicature. In my opinion, when an ordinary person infringes a
maxim, it makes the audience laugh as it happens to people who are nervous,
drunk or has an imperfect language skill, for example a language learner who has
a limited language skill. Because as physically normal person can speak clearly
but because of some reasons like nervousness or drunkenness not uttering clearly
looks funny. Yet, it will not cause humor if it happens to disabled speak because it
is not something that we can laugh at.
Second, I found that the maxim of relation is the type of conversational
maxim which the speakers do mostly. The numbers of the maxims that the
speakers fail to observe are: maxim of relation (8 data), maxim of quantity (3
data), maxim of quality (2 data), and maxim of manner (1 data). Based on this
number, I conclude that the maxim of relation plays an important role in causing
laughter to the audience because the addressee’s answer is out of the topic which
the audience thinks at the first time. In terms of the maxim of relation, an
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addressee gives an answer which is irrelevant and unclear answer to what the
speaker needs. In other words, the audience does not expect the response of the
addressee. As a result, surprise appears and leads to a laughter.
Third, I analyzed some reasons that make the speakers fail to observe a
conversational maxim. And here is the number: the speaker wants to talk about
another thing (3 data), the speaker feels nervous (1 data), the speaker has an
imperfect language skill (1 data), the speakers feel uncomfortable to answer the
questions (1 data), the speaker just responds to an implicature (1 data), the speaker
wants to have a brief conversation (2 data), the speaker wants to use an
implicature in the answer (1 data).
I noticed that the reasons that build humor in the conversation are
connected with the second finding of my research which is maxim of relation. It is
because the speakers and the addresses have different ideas while having the same
conversation. It shows that having different ideas in a conversation is the main
reason why the addressee fail to observe a maxim.
The last finding of my thesis is the humor that is raised from failing to
observe the conversational maxim. Here are the causes why the humor appears: a
speaker’s answer to a question is not what the audience expects (5 data), a speaker
answers a question by repeating the question (1 data), talking about another things
which is irrelevant (1 data), being nervous or not speaking well (1 data), having an
imperfect language skill (1 data), not being straight to the point (1 data).
Once again, it is found that giving an unexpected answer is related to the
second and third findings. I can tell that giving an unexpected answer which often
appears really makes this television series funny. An unexpected answer makes
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the audience surprised because what the audience expects is just a general answer.
Besides, the way how the addressee replies to the speaker’s question is also funny.
It becomes ever funnier when the audience finds and understands the implied
meaning in the answer.
Finally, in my thesis I found a strong point that flouting a maxim of
relation really makes Joey television series become a successful comedy
television series. The script writers, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, deserve
credit for the success of Joey television series because these two writers have
written a great script. They have created humor by using linguistics. In my
opinion, a comedy television series can be successful due to the support of funny
gestures or stupid actions. Yet, as far as this television series is concerned, it uses
linguistics as their main focus of how they build a humor through conversation.
Thus, I conclude that by being aware of linguistic fields, people can understand
and enjoy this television series more.
I believe my analysis can be improved more by discussing it in another
way. In my thesis I have used the Gricean theory which only focuses on the verbal
utterances. On the other hand, it is shown that humor can arise from funny
gestures or stupid actions which and are non-verbal aspects.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thomas, Jenny. Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics.
Conversational Implicature. London and New York: Longman Group
Limited, 1995, 55-77
Primary Source:
Joey. By Sherry Bilsing, Kevin Bright, and Brian Buckner. Perf. Andrea Anders,
Jeniffer Coolidge, Ben Falcone, Madchen Amick, Matt Letscher, Alex Ball,
and Danneel Harris. Writ. Marta Kauffman and David Crane. Dir. Kevin
Bright, Sheldon Epps, and Grey Halvorson. NBC.
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