Analysis of Jokes in 'Reader's Digest' Using Syntax and Semantics.

iii Maranatha Christian University

ABSTRACT

Dalam Tugas Akhir ini, saya mengkaji penggunaan linguistik murni dalam cerita-cerita lucu. Beberapa area linguistik murni yang saya gunakan adalah Fonologi, Morfologi, Sintaksis, dan Semantik.

Salah satu fitur linguistik murni yang paling sering saya temukan dalam cerita-cerita lucu adalah homonim. Fitur itulah yang menurut saya paling efektif digunakan dalam cerita lucu, karena Bahasa Inggris memiliki banyak kata yang mengandung makna berbeda namun ejaan dan pelafalannya persis sama.

Fitur linguistik lain yang sering digunakan adalah ambiguitas. Terkadang orang mengatakan suatu kalimat yang bisa diinterpretasikan menjadi dua arti karena tidak jelasnya kalimat tersebut. Fitur lingusitik yang paling jarang saya temukan adalah homofon karena orang-orang harus berpikir keras untuk mengerti apa yang dimaksud oleh pembicara saat dia mengatakan kata tersebut.

Penggunaan homonim, ambiguitas dan homofon dalam cerita lucu cukup efektif, karena cerita-cerita lucu memiliki nilai lebih karena mereka dapat diteliti bukan hanya untuk dinikmati sebagai hiburan saja. Ini membuat kita sebagai pembaca harus lebih kritis dalam membaca sesuatu yang berhubungan dengan bahasa, contohnya cerita lucu, karena bacaan kita mungkin saja memiliki makna yang lebih dari yang kita mengerti.

Maranatha Christian University ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... i

TABLE OF CONTENTS ... ii

ABSTRACT ... iii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ... 1

Background of the Study ... 1

Statement of the Problem ... 4

Purpose of the Study ... 4

Methods of Research ... 5

Organization of the Thesis ... 5

CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK... 6

CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF JOKES IN READER’S DIGEST USING PURE LINGUISTICS ... 13

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ... 29

1 Maranatha Christian University

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Language is the object of linguistics. As seen from its function, language is important for people, because language helps people to communicate with each other and helps them to express what they want, their feelings, and also to express their ideas in the society. Every country has their own first language for people to communicate with each other in their country.

Language plays an important role in human and country relationship. As time goes by many people try to learn other languages besides their mother tongue because of the necessity to communicate with people outside their country, to understand other countries and their people, and to learn culture.

Furthermore, language supports conversations to happen. According to

The Free Dictionary, conversation is “the spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions,

and feelings; talk” (“Conversation”). Yet, in the process of communication, people

2 Maranatha Christian University often fail to understand what other people mean when they talk to each other. When this happens in a conversation, humour sometimes occurs.

“Humour is the quality in something that makes it funny or amusing”

(“Humour”). Some humours happen because the speaker does it on purpose when the speaker wants to liven the atmosphere up between the speaker and the people around them. And some others happen because they fail to understand what other people mean.

There is the significance of this topic, which is explaining how a linguistic feature in a word or a sentence can create the humour in a joke. It is hoped that the result of this study will help the reader to understand how a word can create the joke and how a linguistic feature can help reader to be able to understand.

The topic of this thesis is Analysis on Jokes in Reader’s Digest using Syntax and Semantics. This topic is chosen because it helps me to be more aware of how linguistics is used in everyday’s life conversation especially in jokes. Analyzing jokes with linguistics also helps me to understand what a joke means and why a word can make the whole conversation humourous. I take interest in analyzing school and campus jokes categories because I am still a college student so I think I can understand the jokes related to school and campus better than the other jokes categories.

Most people in this world love jokes or even love making jokes. Jokes are needed in our daily life because it is impossible to build a relationship with someone who never makes you laugh or who never laughs at the jokes you tell.

3 Maranatha Christian University Not only are there individual differences in how humor is appreciated but there are also differences between men and women, between people with different educational background, between social classes, between old and young people, and of course differences between people from different cultures, languages and countries. What people think is funny – or not funny – is strongly determined by how they were brought up and the company they keep.

Jokes can be interpreted in many ways like for insulting people, for making fun of people or cheering people. That is why this topic is interesting because by analyzing it, the meaning of the jokes can be known and it makes the jokes easier to be interpreted. These jokes can be analyzed using some branches of Linguistics. In this thesis the type of jokes that will be analyzed is in the form of a conversation.

In this thesis I will analyze the jokes using pure linguistics like Phonology, Semantics, Syntax and Morphology and the importance of the linguistic features in creating the joke itself. I also use Raskin’s theory of script incongruity to analyze these jokes as it is the most suitable theory for me to use in this thesis.

I chose to analyze jokes by using pure linguistics because for me this is the most suitable area to be used. Analyzing jokes by using Phonology usually deals with the sound, about what the speaker says and what the hearer hears. Semantics usually deals with many things, for example homograph, homonym and homophone. In Syntax, we deal with how words are arranged to form a sentence.

4 Maranatha Christian University And in Morphology, for example, the jokes deal with suffixes in a word eventhough not all jokes deal with it.

The source of the data which will be analyzed in this thesis is jokes taken from Reader’s Digest website. I choose fun jokes then as for the jokes categories, I chose Tales Out of School and Campus Comedy because this source has many data that are suitable for my thesis.

(753 words)

1.2 Statement of the Problem

In this study the problem that will be analyzed are: 1. What linguistic feature can be found in the joke?

2. How does Raskin’s theory of script incongruity help explain the occurence of humour in the joke?

1.3 Purpose of the Study

Based on the statement of the problem above, I want to: 1. Specify the linguistic feature that is found in the joke.

2. Explain how Raskin’s theory of script incongruity helps reveal the occurence of humour in the joke.

5 Maranatha Christian University 1.4 Method of Research

In the process of completing this thesis, I gathered the data from the Reader’s Digest website as it has the things that I want to analyze for my thesis. The second step after I found data is sorting out which linguistic theories that is in

the jokes. Then I tried to find out the relation between the joke and Raskin’s

theory of script incongruity. After both the data and the theories have been gathered, the third step was started to analyze the data according to the statement of the problem. Once the data were analyzed, the last step was writing the paper and finishing thesis.

1.5 Organization of the Thesis

This thesis consists of four chapters: Introduction, Theoretical Framework, data analysis and Conclusion. Chapter One consists of Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research and Organization of the Thesis. Chapter Two consists of theories about Pure Linguistics which are Phonology, Morphology, Semantics and Syntax and

Raskin’s theory of script incongruity which are used to analyze the jokes. Chapter

Three contains the analysis of the jokes that is important in this thesis. Chapter Four, which is Conclusion, consists of my comments, opinions and suggestion for further research. And last is Bibliography that is presented at the end of this thesis.

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to state some concluding remarks based on the analysis of jokes from Reader’s Digest’s Funny Jokes that I have found in the Internet.

Generally speaking, jokes are made to entertain people but then some jokes use linguistic features that can be analysed. I conclude that humours are not only made to entertain the readers but humours can be analysed by using some linguistics features. Sometimes humour happens when people want to liven up the atmosphere around them but sometimes it happens because they fail to understand what other people mean. This point can be proven by seeing Chapter III.

There are eight jokes that are analysed by using some linguistics features and a theory from Raskin. From the eight jokes that I have found in the Internet and analysed, the linguistic features that are used are homonyms, ambiguity and homophones. There are five homonyms, three ambiguities and one homophone.

30 Maranatha Christian University The most common linguistic feature that is used in the jokes is homonyms. As we know, there are many English words that have more than one meaning. That is why sometimes when someone utters an English word, the hearer may respond with an irrelevant answer. This happens because the hearer thinks of the other definitions of that word. Using a homonym in a joke is effective because the different understanding of some words can bring laughter to the readers of the joke. The narrator usually uses a word with multiple meanings and stirs the hearer to one meaning of the word. Sometimes the readers even forget that a word can have so many meanings. When this happens and they realise it, laughter happens. That is why using homonym is effective. The use of a homonym in a joke reminds people that a word may have more than one meaning. For example, the word can.

Can means “be able” (“can,” entry 1) and can means “a metal container in which

food and drink is sold” (“can,” entry 2).

The second linguistic feature that is used in the jokes is ambiguity. The type of ambiguity can be either syntactic, lexical or semantical ambiguity. It is pretty effective to use ambiguity in a joke because sometimes people misunderstand what a person says because they use the form that has potential to create more than one meaning. It is either because of the words or because of the sentence formation that makes their sentence can be interpreted two ways. Ambiguity in a joke can bring laughter to the reader because of the different interpretations of a sentence or question.

31 Maranatha Christian University The last linguistic feature that is found in the joke is homophone. English has so many words that sound exactly the same with the other words despite their different spellings and meanings. Sadly, it is the rare one to be found in the jokes. As seen in Chapter III, none of the jokes use Phonology nor Morphology. The jokes with Phonology are rarely found maybe because it is more effective to be said than to be written as people will understand more about the Phonological jokes that are said.

In this thesis, I found Raskin’s theory of script incongruity the most suitable for me to use because Raskin’s theory of script incongruity helps me to explain what makes the joke funny. The theory shows that how can a different context in a conversation can make the conversation become humourous. It also makes the reader aware of how some words can be more important than the other words in a conversation and how different words can trigger different scripts.

If someone tells a joke which uses ambiguity, usually just few people understand it. This happens because the words or expression in the sentence can be interpreted in two or more possible ways, and not many people are aware of the possibilities. People need to think harder to get what the sentence means, why it is funny and what the other meaning of that sentence is.

Here I can conclude that many jokes are made using linguistic features. The linguistic features that are found in a joke are the ones that make the joke humorous. Without using linguistic features, the joke might be too plain and may not even be funny at all. That is why I believe using linguistic features in a joke is effective.

32 Maranatha Christian University I think the jokes that are easy to understand are jokes with homonyms. This is so because in this kind of jokes, the words that are used are words that are often used in our daily life. Therefore, people will not need to consult the dictionary to look up what that word means.

A joke with ambiguity is sometimes easy to understand but it is sometimes quite hard to understand too. People need to think extra and sometimes need other people to explain to them why the sentence is ambiguous. The hardest ones to understand are the jokes with homophones because people need to think hard to understand what the speaker means by that particular word.

For other students of the linguistic specialisation be critical while reading something that is related with language. Do not read something like jokes for entertainment only. Be smart to understand what the context of the joke is, because if you do not understand the context of the joke, you will not understand the joke and will not find it funny. You can also widen your knowledge by reading those jokes because many jokes have deeper meaning than what it is seen if they are analysed like what I have done in this thesis. The words that are used in the jokes can also be the ones which make the joke funny. I do hope that the next researcher will find other linguistic features that are used in jokes, like Phonology and Morphology that I did not find in this research, because I am sure that joke will be more various as time goes by.

Making a joke is not easy as the maker should make it easy enough for people to understand. Sometimes, however, we have to be critical to understand what the maker of the jokes wants people to understand. That is why by

33 Maranatha Christian University understanding some linguistic features, we could understand the joke easier as we can understand what the joke maker wants us to get from the joke.

34 Maranatha Christian University

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Data Sources

“Tales Out School of School.” Funny Jokes. Reader’s Digest, n.d. Web. 18 Mar.

2013.

“Campus Comedy.” Funny Jokes. Reader’s Digest, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.

References

“Conversation.” The Free Dictionary, n.d. Web. 1 May 2013.

Cook, Guy. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Crane, L.B.et al.1981. An Introduction to Linguistics. Boston: Little, Brown & Company Ltd.

“Elliptical Clause of Comparison.” Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert, 9

Mar. 2006. Web. 18 Aug. 2014

Hornby, A.S. “Bank.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Can.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Egghead.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

35 Maranatha Christian University

Hornby, A.S. “Homonym.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Humour.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Hyponym.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Idiom.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Match.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Metonymy.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Polysemy.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Pool.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Problem.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Snake.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Spare.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Virus.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

“Lexical Ambiguity.” The Free Dictionary, n.d. Web. 11 November 2013. “Pool Hall.” Oxford Online Dictionary,n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2014

36 Maranatha Christian University

“Syntactic Ambiguity.” LAWnLinguistics, n.d. Web. 31 August 2013. “Shop Class.” The Free Dictionary, n.d. Web. 16 September 2013.

31 Maranatha Christian University The last linguistic feature that is found in the joke is homophone. English has so many words that sound exactly the same with the other words despite their different spellings and meanings. Sadly, it is the rare one to be found in the jokes. As seen in Chapter III, none of the jokes use Phonology nor Morphology. The jokes with Phonology are rarely found maybe because it is more effective to be said than to be written as people will understand more about the Phonological jokes that are said.

In this thesis, I found Raskin’s theory of script incongruity the most suitable for me to use because Raskin’s theory of script incongruity helps me to explain what makes the joke funny. The theory shows that how can a different context in a conversation can make the conversation become humourous. It also makes the reader aware of how some words can be more important than the other words in a conversation and how different words can trigger different scripts.

If someone tells a joke which uses ambiguity, usually just few people understand it. This happens because the words or expression in the sentence can be interpreted in two or more possible ways, and not many people are aware of the possibilities. People need to think harder to get what the sentence means, why it is funny and what the other meaning of that sentence is.

Here I can conclude that many jokes are made using linguistic features. The linguistic features that are found in a joke are the ones that make the joke humorous. Without using linguistic features, the joke might be too plain and may not even be funny at all. That is why I believe using linguistic features in a joke is effective.

32 Maranatha Christian University I think the jokes that are easy to understand are jokes with homonyms. This is so because in this kind of jokes, the words that are used are words that are often used in our daily life. Therefore, people will not need to consult the dictionary to look up what that word means.

A joke with ambiguity is sometimes easy to understand but it is sometimes quite hard to understand too. People need to think extra and sometimes need other people to explain to them why the sentence is ambiguous. The hardest ones to understand are the jokes with homophones because people need to think hard to understand what the speaker means by that particular word.

For other students of the linguistic specialisation be critical while reading something that is related with language. Do not read something like jokes for entertainment only. Be smart to understand what the context of the joke is, because if you do not understand the context of the joke, you will not understand the joke and will not find it funny. You can also widen your knowledge by reading those jokes because many jokes have deeper meaning than what it is seen if they are analysed like what I have done in this thesis. The words that are used in the jokes can also be the ones which make the joke funny. I do hope that the next researcher will find other linguistic features that are used in jokes, like Phonology and Morphology that I did not find in this research, because I am sure that joke will be more various as time goes by.

Making a joke is not easy as the maker should make it easy enough for people to understand. Sometimes, however, we have to be critical to understand what the maker of the jokes wants people to understand. That is why by

33 Maranatha Christian University understanding some linguistic features, we could understand the joke easier as we can understand what the joke maker wants us to get from the joke.

34 Maranatha Christian University

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Data Sources

“Tales Out School of School.” Funny Jokes. Reader’s Digest, n.d. Web. 18 Mar.

2013.

“Campus Comedy.” Funny Jokes. Reader’s Digest, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.

References

“Conversation.” The Free Dictionary, n.d. Web. 1 May 2013.

Cook, Guy. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Crane, L.B.et al.1981. An Introduction to Linguistics. Boston: Little, Brown & Company Ltd.

“Elliptical Clause of Comparison.” Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert, 9 Mar. 2006. Web. 18 Aug. 2014

Hornby, A.S. “Bank.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Can.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Egghead.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

35 Maranatha Christian University

Hornby, A.S. “Homonym.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Humour.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Hyponym.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Idiom.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Match.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Metonymy.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Polysemy.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Pool.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Problem.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Snake.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005.

Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Spare.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

Hornby, A.S. “Virus.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. 7th ed. 2005. Print.

“Lexical Ambiguity.” The Free Dictionary, n.d. Web. 11 November 2013. “Pool Hall.” Oxford Online Dictionary,n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2014

36 Maranatha Christian University

“Syntactic Ambiguity.” LAWnLinguistics, n.d. Web. 31 August 2013. “Shop Class.” The Free Dictionary, n.d. Web. 16 September 2013.