An analysis of non-observance maxims in humorous conversation in How I Met Your Mother season 2.

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vi ABSTRACT

Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.

Linguistically, humor in TV-shows often arises from the verbal interaction that often emerges in daily life conversation. The humorous fragments are often found in the characters’ utterances when the conversation technically does not work as is supposed to be. The similar cases can be found in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2. In this case, humor was attributable to violation of normal conversation, also the comic characters. As is known, Grice’s Cooperative Principle governs the daily conversation based on principle of cooperation. Accordingly, this research aims to gain the sight of the language humor process in

perspective of Grice’s CP and describe the involvement of the non-observances of CP in creating humorous effects.

The research focus was framed within two questions: 1) What are kinds of the non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations in the sitcom

How I Met Your Mother season 2? And 2) How do the violations maxim take place in creating humorous effects in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?

To discover the findings, qualitative research was conducted with the pragmatic understanding by employing discourse analysis as a method. The research data are taken from the situation comedy How I Met Your Mother season 2. To gain the findings of the first focus, the humorous utterances in How I Met Your Mother season 2 were identified and classified according to the four categories of non-observance maxims, namely flouting, violating, infringing and suspending; without an exclusion of basic conversational structure theory. The second focus findings were gained with the guidance of the GTVH associated with the incongruity theory.

The analysis resulted two main findings. First, there were four kinds of non-observances maxim of CP employed in humorous conversation: flouting, violating, infringing and suspending. Furthermore, exploiting multiple maxims were discovered as well. Second, humor was attributable to violation of four maxims. Violation maxims done by employing the non-observance maxims became script opposition as knowledge resource for humor production -- when the violation conflicted to the audiences’ normal conceptual patterns. However, violation maxims were insufficient in the context of audiovisual humor. It needed to be combined with other resources knowledge to be perceived that the situation is supposed to be funny in the context given.

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vii ABSTRAK

Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Universitas Sanata Dharma.

Secara linguistik, humor di sitkom sering muncul dari interaksi lisan dalam percakapan sehari-hari. Humor sering ditemukan pada ungkapan-ungkapan yang diucapkan oleh tokoh ketika secara teknis percakapan tersebut tidak berjalan semestinya. Kasus serupa dapat ditemukan di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Dalam kasus ini, humor berasal dari pemain sitkom dan percakapan yang dilanggar. Seperti yang diketahui, prinsip kerjasama oleh Grice mengatur mekanisme percakapan sehari-hari berdasarkan asas kerjasama. Sesuai hal tersebut, penelitian ini ditujukan untuk menganalis proses bahasa humor dari perspektif prinsip kerjasama oleh Grice dan mendiskripsikan keterlibatan cara-cara penyimpangan maksim dalam menciptakan efek humor.

Penelitian ini fokus pada dua perumusan masalah: 1) Macam cara-cara penyimpangan apakah yang diterapkan dalam percakapan humor di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2? Dan 2) Bagaimanakah penyimpangan-penyimpangan maxim tersebut berperan dalam menciptakan efek humor di sitkom

How I Met Your Mother season 2?

Untuk menemukan hasil, penelitian kualitatif dilakukan melalui pendekatan pragmatik dengan menerapkan analisis percakapan sebagai metode. Data penelitian diambil dari sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Rumusan masalah pertama dijawab dengan mengidentifikasi dan mengklasifikasi ungkapan-ungkapan lucu di sitkom How I Met Your Mother season 2 dengan arahan teori struktur dasar percakapan dan 4 macam cara penyimpangan:

‘flouting’, ‘violating’, ‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Rumusan masalah kedua

dijawab dengan mendiskripsikan hasil penyimpangan maksim dengan berpedoman pada teori humor verbal secara umum yang dikaitkan dengan teori humor.

Hasil penelitian menunjukkan 2 penemuan utama. Pertama, 4 macam cara penyimpangan diterapkan dalam percakapan humor: ‘flouting’, ‘violating’,

‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Selain itu, penyimpangan maksim bersamaan juga

ditemukan. Kedua, humor muncul dari penyimpangam maksim. Penyimpangan maksim dari penerapan cara penyimpangan menjadi teks oposisi, yakni sebagai element sumber untuk pembuatan humor -- humor muncul ketika terjadi ketidakserasian antara penyimpangan dengan konsep sehari-hari penonton. Namun, penyimpangan-penyimpangan maksim tersebut tidak cukup dalam konteks humor secara audiovisual. Suatu kombinasi tertentu perlu ditambahkan agar humor dalam situasi yang diberikan dapat tangkap oleh penonton.

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AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN

HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN

HOW I MET YOUR

MOTHER

SEASON 2

A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

Caesilia Carolina 101214142

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

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AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN

HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN

HOW I MET YOUR

MOTHER

SEASON 2

A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

Caesilia Carolina 101214142

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

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AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN

HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN

HOW I MET YOUR

MOTHER

SEASON 2

A SARJANA PENDIDIKAN THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements to Obtain the Sarjana Pendidikan Degree

in English Language Education

Caesilia Carolina 101214142

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND ARTS EDUCATION FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA

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STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY

I honestly declare that this thesis, which I have written, does not contain the work or the parts of the work of other people, except those cited in the quotations and the references, as a scientific paper should.

Yogyakarta, September 10, 2015

The writer

Caesilia Carolina

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LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN

PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS

Yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini, saya mahasiswa Universitas Sanata Dharma:

Nama : Caesilia Carolina

Nomor Mahasiswa : 101214142

Demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma karya ilmiah saya yang berjudul:

AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER SEASON 2

beserta perangkat yang diperlukan (bila ada). Dengan demikian saya memberikan kepada Perpustakaan Universitas Sanata Dharma hak untuk menyimpan, mengalihkan dalam bentuk lain, mengelolanya dalam bentuk pangkalan data, mendistribusikan secara terbatas, dan mempublikasikannya di Internet atau media lain untuk kepentingan akademis tanpa perlu meminta ijin dari saya maupun memberikan royalty kepada saya selama tetap mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis.

Demikian pernyataan ini yang saya buat dengan sebenarnya.

Dibuat di Yogyakarta

Pada tanggal: 10 September 2015

Yang menyatakan,

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vi ABSTRACT

Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Sanata Dharma University.

perspective of Grice’s CP and describe the involvement of the non-observances of CP in creating humorous effects.

The research focus was framed within two questions: 1) What are kinds of the non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations in the sitcom

How I Met Your Mother season 2? And 2) How do the violations maxim take place in creating humorous effects in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?

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vii ABSTRAK

Carolina, Caesilia, 2015. An Analysis of Non-Observance Maxims in Humorous Conversation in How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Yogyakarta: Universitas Sanata Dharma.

How I Met Your Mother season 2?

‘flouting’, ‘violating’, ‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Rumusan masalah kedua

dijawab dengan mendiskripsikan hasil penyimpangan maksim dengan berpedoman pada teori humor verbal secara umum yang dikaitkan dengan teori humor.

Hasil penelitian menunjukkan 2 penemuan utama. Pertama, 4 macam cara penyimpangan diterapkan dalam percakapan humor: ‘flouting’, ‘violating’,

‘infringing’ dan ‘suspending’. Selain itu, penyimpangan maksim bersamaan juga

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“Every time you find

some humor in a

difficult situation,

you win.”

DEDICATED TO:

The man upstairs, myself, big families, PBI C 2010, readers.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Praise to Jesus, begotten Son of God. I truly thank God for every second of breath I breathe. Uneven for not leading me into temptation but lessons learnt. For me, everything may fail but Him. Even most rhymed, most beautiful, most meaningful sentence in any language would fail to describe my gratitude.

The great gratitude goes to Carla Sih Pribandari, S.Pd., M.Hum. Her favor, her patience support me during the process of accomplishing this thesis. Moreover, her advice, comments, suggestions, and corrections were very valuable for me. I also thank all lecturers, especially Henny Herawati, S.Pd., M.Hum. as my academic advisor and Drs. Barli Bram, M.Ed., Ph.D. for spreading smile in PBI district. I thank to my big families who always make me feel blessed. For every support and companion, I favorably thank PBI C 2010 for being the living hilarity and relentless supporters.

For the irresistible moments, I thank Ginger and Alto. For the amusing and incongruous behavior, I thank Sendi. For the pleasurable timeline, I thank

Pandhu for the weeks of cinema and being annoying. I thank Disa, Mega, Ijah,

Kapuk, and Doci for being inside the time glasses with. I also thank Nut-nut,

Amel and Tiwi for the hilarious chats and engaging disturbing pictures. Last but not least, I thank all friends around who met me for reasons.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TITLE PAGE ... i

APPROVAL PAGE ... ii

STATEMENT OF WORK’S ORIGINALITY ... iv

PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI ... v

ABSTRACT ... vi

ABSTRAK ... vii

DEDICATION PAGE ... viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS ... x

LIST OF FIGURES ... xiv

LIST OF TABLES ... xv

LIST OF APPENDICES ... xvi

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ... 1

A.Research Background ... 1

B. Research Problems ... 4

C.Problem Limitation ... 4

D.Research Objectives ... x

E. Research Benefits ... 6

F. Definition of Terms ... 7

CHAPTER II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ... 10

A. Theoretical description ... 10

1. Humor Theory ... 10

a.General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) ... 14

b.Pragmatic of Humor ... 16

2. Conversation Theory ... 16

a.Basic Structure of Conversation ... 17

b.Grice’s Cooperative Principle ... 21

1) Types of Maxims ... 22

2) Non-observance Maxims ... 25

B. Theoretical Framework ... 28

CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 32

A.Research Method ... 32

B.Research Setting ... 34

C.Objective of Study ... 34

D.Instrument and Data Gathering Technique ... 35

E. Data Analysis Technique ... 36

F. Research Procedures ... 37

CHAPTER IV. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ... 40

A. Non-Observance Maxims of CP in Humorous Conversations Taken from Sitcom How I Met Your Mother Season 2 ... 40

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1. The Analysis on a Situation which Flouts Maxims ... 42

a. Flouting maxim of quality ... 42

b. Flouting maxim of quantity ... 46

c. Flouting maxim of relevance ... 49

d. Flouting maxim of manner ... 51

e. Flouting multiple maxims ... 54

2. The Analysis on a Situation which Violates Maxims ... xi5

a. Violating maxim of quality ... 55

b. Violating maxim of quantity ... 59

c. Violating maxim of relevance ... 62

d. Violating maxim of manner ... 63

e. Violating multiple maxims ... 68

3. The Analysis on a Situation which Infringe Maxims ... 69

4. The Analysis on a Situation which Suspend Maxims ... 71

B.Contribution of Non-observance Maxims in Creating Humorous Effects in Sitcom How I Met Your Mother Season 2. ... 72

1. Maxim of quality ... 72

a. Flouting ... 72

b. Violating ... 74

c. Infringing ... 75

2. Maxim of quantity ... 76

a. Flouting ... 76

b. Violating ... 78

3. Maxim of relevance ... 79

a. Flouting ... 79

b. Violating ... 80

c. Infringing ... 81

4. Maxim of manner ... 82

a. Flouting ... 82

b. Violating ... 83

c. Infringing ... 84

5. Multiple maxims ... 86

a. Flouting ... 86

b. Violating ... 87

c. Infringing ... 88

d. Suspending ... 90

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ... 92

A. Conclusions ... 92

B. Implications ... 95

C. Recommendations ... 95

REFERENCES ... 96

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xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 Correlation of Content and Format in Adjacency Pair Sequences ... 19 2.2 Variety of response tokens ... 21 4.1 Distribution of violations based on the non-observance maxims’ types ... 41

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xiii

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix Page

A 4.1 Table of Flouting Maxim of Quality ... 102

B 4.2 Table of Flouting Maxim of Quantity ... 105

C 4.3 Table of Flouting Maxim of Relevance ... 108

D 4.4 Table of Flouting Maxim of Manner ... 110

E 4.5 Table of Flouting Multiple Maxims ... 112

F 4.6 Table of Violating Maxim of Quality ... 113

G 4.7 Table of Violating Maxim of Quantity ... 118

H 4.8 Table of Violating Maxim of Relevance ... 120

I 4.9 Table of Violating Maxim of Manner ... 122

J 4.10 Table of Violating Multiple Maxims ... 126

K 4.11 Table of Infringing Maxim ... 127

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the introduction of the research is deliberated into six parts, namely the research background, the research problems, the problem limitations, the research objectives, the research benefits, and the definition of terms. The research background discusses the underlying reasons why the topic is chosen by the researcher. As well as an introduction of an analysis of the non-observance of cooperative principle in humorous conversation from the situation comedy How I Met Your Mother season 2.

A. Research Background

Humor is a universal phenomenon which represents an important part of human experiences (Raskin, 1985, p. 47). Humor, especially verbal humor often happens in everyday interactions. Sometimes, people interact and express their opinion and ideas either in written or spoken form with concise, humorous, dramatic, exaggerating and sarcastic way to successfully get certain aimed effects, as the consequences some people find it funny, and even get enlightenment. People laugh at something pleasurable. However,

“different people will not necessarily find the same things funny – many things which will strike one group as funny may bore another group; some jokes are private or individual [but] the ability to appreciate humor is universal and shared by all people” (Raskin, 1985, p. 2).

In addition, humor has its features of practicability which reflect intrinsic rules (e.g. techniques, mechanism, types, function) and characters of English language from various aspects and different points (Pan, 2012). It is no wonder that

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it has been the subject of various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, aesthetic and linguistics. For that reason, this research have an attempt to appreciate humor.

There are many forms and sources of humor which can meet people’s sense of humor, current popular audiovisual humor such as stand-up comedy, comedy films, and TV comedy series. One of the most popular humorous genres in television, situation comedy is often shortened to sitcom. It is a form of humor which attracts many people and also researcher. Sitcom has continuous storyline and interesting composition technique, beside its joke content and audiovisual form. Besides, sitcom has factors of humor generally: participants (speaker and hearer), stimulus, life experience of individual, psychological type of individual, certain physical environment and/or situation (context provided), and society (cultural context). Apart from this, there are some remarkable and unusual humorous phenomena in sitcoms. Besides, the conversations of sitcom often show contradiction with the environment, action and common sense which elicits humor. Verbal humor in situation comedy is the most important feature of sitcoms and also the main mechanism to proceed. Characters interaction is one of the key functions to build comedy in a sitcom which this research is interested in.

In this research, the characters’ interaction explicitly, the conversations in

How I Met Your Mother season 2 were preferred as the source data. How I Met Your Mother season 2 has a humor which is not too long, not too short, and not too hard to understand; has an element of surprise; adequate amount of detail situation; and accompanied by gestures and facial expression. Accordingly, the research intends

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to analyze the conversations which are humorous. Thus, the research places pragmatic understanding as the baseboard of the research with the method of discourse analysis.

In an attempt to build up the background, communicative theories are the closest approach to discuss the conversation. Conversations that trigger audience’s laughter will be alert, since situation comedy involves the same characters in various day-to-day situations. There are many humor theories such as Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH) by Raskin (1985), General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) by Attardo and Raskin (1991) and violation theory by Veatch which give insight into what lies beneath the surface of humor behavior, such as an in-depth look at the resource elements of humor. Communicative theories such as local organization within conversation (turn-taking, adjacency pairs), cooperative principle by Paul Grice (1975) in which they are interrelated especially within conversation are essentially considerable to screen verbal interaction, in the circumstance of conversation, which source funny conversational scene. It is assumed that in exchanging information via conversation, the participants are following certain principles. Grice’s Cooperative Principle is proved to be effective in many instances of analysis of conversation. In the connection with humor, Hancher (1980) states that humor comes out by violating speech act in appropriate condition or related conversational implicature theory. Attardo (1994) argues, the violation of Cooperative Principle can give rise to humorous instances. He states the assumption that “large number of jokes involves violations of one or more Grice’s maxims” (p. 355). Holmes and Marra (2002) suggest and complete

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Attardo’s explanation that humor which resulted from the violation maxims of cooperative principle often occurs in the conversation among friends and colleagues. By the same token, this research tries to discover humor which is elicited from the violations of cooperative principle maxims by inspecting the employment of non-observance maxims, and how the violations take part in creating humorous effects.

B. Research Problems

The formulated problems of the research are:

1. What are kinds of the non-observance maxims employed in humorous conversations in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?

2. How the non-observance maxims of CP take place in creating humorous effects in sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2?

C. Problem Limitation

The research examines and underlines the indication of violation maxims of cooperative principle which is performed by employing the non-observance maxims in humorous conversation in How I Met Your Mother season 2. The discussion of which will be the first layer of the operation for the research findings with the guidance of basic structure of conversation theory, cooperative maxims and categories of the non-observance. Accordingly, the function of the conversation among friends, conversational implicatures, and humor which is not governed by cooperative principle will not be alert as the object discussion. Next stage, the second layer will profoundly explore and analyze the contribution of

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non-5

observance maxims employed in conversation in the episodes of How I Met Your Mother season 2. Grice’s Cooperative Principles proposed by Paul Grice (1975) is considered as the closest reference to limit the discussion, without an exclusion from the most related theory of humor, namely incongruity theory and General Theory of Verbal Humor.

D. Research Objectives

For the reason that there is a room to capture the answers of sort based on the formulation of the problems, the research focuses on analyzing examples after examples of the humorous conversation appeared in the humorous scenes of the episodes. With the intention of examining the systematic properties of the sequential organization of talk, the data, explicitly humorous conversations, shall be firstly concerned with the guidance of the theory of basic structure of conversation. Subsequently, four maxims which are failed to be observed within conversation are identified and categorized by using non-observance maxims of CP terms of reference. In order to capture the obvious regularities of sort which answers the second problem, those humorous conversations employing the non-observance maxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principle (CP) will be a room to figure out how the violations maxims of CP take place as a knowledge resource for humorous conversations. The data will be taken from American sitcom episodes How I Met Your Mother season 2.

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E. Research Benefits

Some research has been conducted to analyze the language. Since this research applies linguistic theory especially pragmatic theory, this research analyzes language in relation to the speakers, conversation and context based on the humor theories. The research is expected to have benefits for some parts.

Academic Benefits:

1. This research will contribute to pragmatics study, especially related to Cooperative Principle and verbal humor.

2. The research findings will enrich the theories of pragmatics related to Cooperative Principle.

3. This research can be used as an academic reference about a pragmatic analysis in the language based on comedy movies.

Practical Benefits:

1. The students would be able to learn how pragmatic theories take part in the creation of verbal humor in TV-sitcoms / comedy movies.

2. The teachers would know better about the implementation of Grice Cooperative Principle maxims in creating verbal humor on purpose.

3. For both teachers and students, the introduction of American sitcoms will also promote the understanding of American cultures and help to cultivate the interest in English.

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F. Definition of Terms

For perceiving a clear understanding upon the discussion, it is better to know the meaning of terms used throughout the discussion:

1. Verbal humor

Verbal humor is when an aspect of language, such as structural ambiguity, is exploited in order to achieve humorous effects (Jensen, 2009, p. 1).

2. Humorous conversation

In this research, a humorous conversation refers to a conversation which the humorous situation occurs for the reason that one or more logical maxims of CP are violated.

3. Grice’s Cooperative Principle

The basic description of Grice’s cooperative principle governs how people ordinarily react in conversation: be true, be brief, be relevant and be clear. Cooperative Principle according to Grice is to ‘make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’ (Mooney, 2003, p. 1)

4. Conversational maxims

The maxims are the sub-principles of the cooperative principle. According to Grice’s theory, the conversational maxims try to explain how listener might get from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning (Asher, 1994, p. 754). Grice proposed four maxims that are maxim of quality, maxim of quantity,

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maxim of relation, and maxim of manner. Usually the maxims are regarded as unstated assumption in the conversation (Yule, 1996, p. 37).

5. Non-observance conversational maxim

According to Grice, non-observance is defined as either blatant or unostentatious failing to observe the maxims i.e. corresponding to ‘flouting’ or ‘violating’ of maxims (Brumark, 2004, p. 13). The rest of which are infringing, opting-out and suspending. Non-observances are ways that the participants use to make a distinction between what is said and what is meant which then generate implicature (Kalliomaki, 2005, p. 24).

6. General Theory of Verbal Humor

Shortened to GTVH, a humor theory which isproposed by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo in the article “Script theory revis(it)ed: joke similarity and joke representation model” (Raskin & Attardo, 1991, p. 293). It integrated Raskin’s ideas of Script Opposition (SO), developed in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor [SSTH], into the GTVH as one of six levels of independent Knowledge Resources (KRs): Script Opposition (SO), Logical Mechanism (LM), Situation (SI), Target (TA), Narrative strategy (NS), Language (LA) (Attardo, 1991).

7. American sitcoms

How I Met Your Mother

Based on IMDb, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) is one of the finest late comedy series in United States, admittedly when there are not many great ones around. HIMYM first aired on September 19th_{, 2005, created by David Letterman.}

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from the vantage point of 2030. The genre of this sitcom is romantic-comedy with narrative format in the past tense. HIMYM is well-known for its unique structure and eccentric humor.

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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter explores a set of well-developed concepts related through statements of relationship, which together constitute interrelated theories which can be used to explain and predict phenomena. The theories, which constitute the research, include the theory of humor which can be used in the view of pragmatics and theory of conversation are discussed in theoretical description. The theoretical framework depicts the links among the concepts of theories which are used to discover the findings from research problems.

A. Theoretical Description

In the sub chapter, some theories are sketched out in order to expose the territory of the discussion. The first discussed theories are humor theories, pragmatic of humor and the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). The first set theory is used jointly to answer the second question of research. The second theories will concern on the local organization within a conversation and Cooperative Principle by Herbert Paul Grice which are used to answer the first question stated in the problem formulation.

1. Humor Theory

Dozens of different definitions of humor arouse from time to time. In wide-ranging term, humor is whatever evokes laughter or felt to be funny (Spanakaki, 2007). The following are two representative ones. Crawford (1994) defines humor as any communication that generates a ‘positive cognitive or affective response

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from listeners’ (p. 57). Romero and Cruthirds (2006, p. 59) define humor as ‘amusing communications that produce positive emotions and cognitions in the individual, group, or organization.’ There is no single universally accepted and all-encompassing theory of humor. The following theory is the most commonly discussed. The research comes to an agreement which states “humor primarily consists of jokes (spoken or written words) and actions (describable through words) which elicit laughter or generate merriment.” (Critchley, 2002; Ritchie, 2004). Attardo (1997) is increasingly explicit to define humor, he states “laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage (p. 396). Another humor theory which highlight and meet this research focus and previous theory comes from Audrieth. According to Audrieth (1998, p. 5), humor is defined as ‘the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous absurdly incongruous. Ludicrous is an adjective, meaning amusing or laughable through obvious absurdity, incongruity, exaggeration, or eccentricity (Anthony, 1998). Traditionally, there are three traditional notions of humor theory which define what humor is:

1) Superiority Theory

Superiority theory of humor was originally proposed by the British philosopher, Thomas Hobbes in 1651. It states that what makes the people laugh is the sudden glory of realizing or imagining the misfortunes of disagreeable attributes of others, which make ourselves seem superior to them although people especially the speaker is aware of his own defect (Smuts, n.d). Within this theory, people

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possess the fun parts by pointing out their perceived weaknesses, misfortunes, or defects, such as the fun from joking people who have different social classes, or social groups. Typically, the humor is generated from ethnic jokes, sexist jokes, and mother-in-law jokes. In this research, this theory is not matched with the humorous characteristic possessed from the research data since the data contains the exploitation aspect of language.

2) Relief theory

In this theory, humor is perceived when someone faces a situation where the tensions are created within the perceiver (Smuts, n.d). This theory is also used in the movie, especially plots that deal with thriller and adventure. It is as a technique used when the audience in a movie is experiencing a high tensions which include the comic relief at the right times. The tension or the suspense is built up as much as possible and then breaks it down slightly with a side comment, allowing the viewer to relieve himself from the high-tension emotions. In this research, this theory is not exactly relevant for the analysis since it is a generally psychological scope to discuss the plot of humorous story rather than the mechanism within the humorous utterances.

3) The Incongruity Theory

According to Cooper (2008), incongruity theory focuses on the object that is the source of the humor, for example joke and cartoon. This theory is the leading approach. It sees humor as a response to an incongruity, a broadly term used to include ambiguity and inconsistence. It focuses on the element of surprise. It states that humor is created out of a conflict between what is expected and what actually

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occurs in humor. This gives detail for the most obvious feature of much humor: an ambiguity, or double meaning, which deliberately misleads the audience, followed by punch line. Incongruity theory is the dominant theory of humor, since it seems to work in most cases of humor, which is partly because “incongruity” is something of an umbrella term (Latta, 1998, p. 106). Humor is said to have the following elements:

• A conflict between what is expected and what actually occurs in the joke • An ambiguity at some level of language with semantic or pragmatic

meaning or both.

• A punchline which resolves the conflict.

According to Morreal (1987), the incongruity theory creates humor from the violation of an expectation. For humor resulted from the unexpected results, the event must have an appropriate emotional climate, comprised of setting the characters, prior discourse, relationship of the characters, and topic. Morreal (1987) gives sort of incongruities under incongruity theory:

• Moral shortcoming, a violation of an understood social code; • Ignorance, a violation of understood knowledge;

• Impersonation, pretending to be someone or something that you are not; • Physical deformities, a violation of how we view the way in which we ought

to appear;

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a. The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH)

The General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) is a tool for analyzing and explaining humorous text (both spoken and written) formulated by Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin. This theory explain that verbal humor is a construction of knowledge resources. Raskin and Attardo (1991) jointly combined Semantic Script Theory of Humor proposed by Raskin with five levels of joke representation (developed by Attardo, 1987), turning them into the six-hierarchical representation model of verbal jokes, described as follows:

1. Script opposition (SI)

Seen as the incongruity of the SSTH (Attardo, 2008). The one parameter that every joke will contain (Attardo, 1994). In this research, the script opposition is seen as the violation of Grice’ maxims (Attardo, 1997, p. 108)

2. Logical mechanism (LA)

The parameter that brings the two opposing scripts together (Attardo, 1994).

3. Situation (SI)

Includes all the “‘props’ of the joke: the objects, the participants, instruments, and activities.” (Attardo, 1994, p. 24). In this data of research, the data emphasize humorous effects (Attardo, 1994).

4. Target (TA)

The individual/object/idea being made fun of – the “butt of the joke” (Attardo 1994, p. 224)

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5. Narrative strategy (NA)

Divided into three general types: descriptive, dialogue, combination (combination of first two types (Aromaa, 2011))

6. Language (LA)

Linguistic choices supporting the decisions made in other Knowledge Resources (Attardo, 2008). The parameter which is in charge of not only the wording and syntax but also how the different elements are arranged (Attardo, 1994).

The GTVH posits script opposition as the necessary condition for humor. It is necessary to note the definition of script. Attardo (1997) partly altered the definition of script:

[Scripts are]… collections of semantic information pertaining to a given subject… [embodying] the sum total of the cultural knowledge of a society, which can be represented as a set of expectation and/or weighted choices. (p. 402)

This research has a motivation to use this knowledge resources to inspect and examine the violation of cooperative maxims as the knowledge resource contained in humorous conversation. LM, NS, LA are groups which is tool-oriented and the others are “content oriented” (SO, TA, SI). Specifically, “tool-oriented” groups helps to analyze the analytic construct within the incongruity resolution. Language (LA) and logical mechanism (LM) are accounts for manner. Attardo stressed, the production of a joke can be triggered by any knowledge resource, with the rest of them being filled in and the levels presented here ‘do not correspondent to the consecutive stages of actual production’ (Attardo and Raskin, 1991, p. 327).

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b. Pragmatic of Humor

The pragmatic constituent of humor in this research is constructed when there is a violation of Grice’s cooperative maxims. Humor can be seen as conversational implicature (Hassan, 2013). Conversational implicature is a type of pragmatic inference in which the meaning is conveyed through non-conventional means (Grice, 1975). Humor in linguistic level has three levels, derived from linguistic devices: vocalization, lexis, syntax. Those devices are important to construct humor. The linguistic levels of humor are phonetic levels, lexical level, discourse level (He, 2008). This research has a tendency for humor at discourse level since it focuses on humor which resulted from rule-breaking, explicit or implicit meaning conveyed through the speakers’ utterances in conversation. As Dolitsky (1992) said humor is based on the bending and breaking of rules. Thus, it is necessary to understand some basic underlying theories of conversation.

2. Conversation Theory

According to Brown and Yule (1983) there are two main forms of conversation which are transactional and interactional. However the discussion in this research zooms in the theory of interactional conversation to meet the research finding as founded in the subject data. Interactional conversation, according to Brown and Yule (1983), refers to a form of spoken language used to allow people to interact with each other – which features a phaticuse of language whose purpose is to establish an atmosphere and allow people to socialize.

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a. Basic Structure of Conversation

In a conversation, there is always local management organization operating within every conversation. Sequence and structure within conversation can be summarized below.

1) Opening Conversations

Opening takes place in the first slice of conversation which most common example of opening usually chances in telephone conversation. For example, first expression to utter is a summons (i.e. call by name), the second is an answer to the summons in return. The pair establishes an opening channel for talk.

(1) Child: Mommy summons

Mom: Yes, dear. answer

Child: Can I have chocolate? reason for summons

In the telephone conversations, the ringing of the telephone acts as the summons. Additional potential problems are identification or recognition.

(2) A: (call B) summons

B: Hello answer + display for recognition

A: Hi greeting 1 claim that A has recognized B + claim that B can recognize A

B: Oh hi! greeting 2 + claim that B has recognized A 2) Closing Conversations

Closing conversation can be done by saying, ‘ok, bye, anyway, or other parting phrase like see you, bye.’

3) Turn Taking

Turn taking is a basic finding which characterizes conversation at where one participant, A, talks, stops; another, B, starts, talks, stops; and it will be obtained A-B-A-B-A-B distribution talk across two participants (Levinson, 1983, p. 296). Every time the participant has the right to speak, they are called as having the floor

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and can attempt to get the floor. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), proposed basic rules about turn-taking, includes:

(1) If current speaker selects next speaker, he’s obliged to take the next turn (2) Otherwise, any speaker may self-select the next turn

(3) Otherwise, the current speaker may continue

In having the conversation, there are two possible phenomena which sometimes the participants try to speak at the same time, which is called overlap

(Yule, 1996, p. 72). As the reverse of overlap, sometimes there is an absence of vocalization between the participants which is called as silence or gaps (Cutting, 2002). Silence is an absence of vocalization between the participants. It is a lengthened transition space results in a silence in the talk. If any speaker actually turns over the floor to another and the other does not speak, which produce a silence, intending to carry meaning, the silence is called as an attributable silence (Cutting, 2002, p. 29). When a silence occurs at the end of a completed action in the talk, such as after the answer to a question, the silence is not attributable to any particular speaker. Some others may interpret it as ignorance. Silence is sometimes interpreted as distance, or the absence of familiarity.

(3) A: Is this seat taken? (2 seconds)

A: Excuse me, is this seat taken?

B: Oh, no. (Grab her bag) You may sit here.

For many (younger) speakers, overlapping the utterances appears to function like an expression of solidarity or closeness or excitement in expressing similar opinions. Also, overlap can communicate competition.

(4) Joe: When they were in // power las -- wait CAN I FINISH? Jerry: // that’s my point I said –

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4) Adjacency Pairs

According to Paltridge (2008), adjacency pairs are utterances produced by two successive speakers in a way that the second utterance is identified as related to the first one as an expected follow-up to that distance. The pairs of utterances normally occur together automatically and help to structure a conversation. There is a consistent match between format and content found across a number of adjacency pair seconds which is described in the following table:

Table 2.1 Correlation of content and format in adjacency pair sequences First pairs

Second pairs

Preferred Dispreferred Request Acceptance Refusal

Offer/invite Acceptance Refusal

Assessment Agreement Disagreement

Question Expected answer Unexpected answer / no answer

Blame Denial Admission

(Levinson, 1984, p.336)

Based on the table, therefore, when a speaker makes a request, as the first part of a whole sequence of conversation, a listener can give two possible response upon the request. This response is the second part of the sequence in which the listener can give the response either in a preferred structure, which is by accepting the request or complementing the question with an expected answer. Another responses which in dispreferred structure, which is by refusing the request (opt out maxim), not answering the question, or to answer at inappropriate length, either too short or too excessive length, or to answer the question with another question and tend to interrupt the smooth flow of a conversation. These pairs can be repeated in

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the sequence. A pair can also initiated with statements, complaints, greetings, introductions. The preferred responses for these utterances respectively are: recognition, replies and exchange of greeting. If the rules are ignored, these patterns are broken by means of floutingwhich it immediately call forth a response. There are some ways to provide dispreferred second parts:

Table 2.2 Variety of response tokens Variation Tokens

Delay/hesitate pause; err; em; ah

Preface well; oh

Express doubt I’m not sure; I don’t know Token acceptance that’s great; I’d love to

Apology I’m sorry; what a pity

Mention obligation I must do X; I’m expected in Y Appeal for understanding you see; you know

Make it non-personal everybody else; out there Give an account too much work; no time left Use mitigators really; mostly; sort of; kind of Hedge the negative I guess not; not possible

5) Feedback (Backchannels)

Feedback or backchannels is the way speakers show that they are attending what being said. It indicates that they are understanding, listening, or simply following the other speakers’ utterances. This can be done by the use of ‘response tokens’ such as ‘mmm’ and ‘yeah’, by paraphrasing what the interlocutor has just said or through body position and the use of eye contact. Backchannel gestures offer

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feedback to the speaker that the message is being received, they indicate that the listener or following and not objecting.

6) Repair

Repair is the way the speakers correct things which has been said, and check what they have understood in a conversation (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 1977). There are two types of repair:

a) Self-repair

(5) Charlotte: I saw her with a man yesterday. I mean, I saw her with a middle aged man who looks like her uncle.

b) Other-repair

(6) Miranda: But you have to introspect yourself! Cintya: Excuse me? Shouldn’t it be you?

b. Grice’s Cooperative Principle

In the field of linguistics, even more specifically in the area of pragmatics, an important concept was introduced: maxims of conversation. It is unwritten rules that govern people to make an appropriate conversation. The Cooperative Principle were first formulated by Herbert Paul Grice which refers to the assumption of a basic conversation which is made when the speaker speaks to one another that are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. As stated in H.P. Grice’s “Logic and Conversation” (1975):

Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (p. 45).

In the other words, the speakers try to contribute meaningful, productive utterances to further the conversation. It then follows that, as listeners, interlocutors

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assume that the conversational partners are doing the same. There will be times when speakers operate the same conversational norms as the interlocutors deliberately mislead the speakers’ utterances and cause the occurrences of the mistakes and misunderstandings (Thomas, 1995, p. 62). Some reasons why someone might be uncooperative in conversation. Some assume that participants conceal the interrogated information they do not want to give up. Speakers become uncooperative to person they hate. Another of some cases is the participants are just being crazy.

1). Types of Maxims

Grice came up with the maxims of conversation. Maxims is kind of a rule of thumb which is general rules the speakers follow in conversation. Those maxims are:

1. Maxim of Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: 1) do not say what you believe to be false 2) do not say that for which you lack of adequate evidence. This maxim states that one’s contribution to a conversation should be truthful and that the speaker should have adequate and sufficient evidence to back up what is being said. For example:

Andi’s mom expect a truthful answer from his son, after she noticed Andi’s bad mark.

(7) Mom: Did you study last night? Andi: I did not study last night.

In linguistic term, the maxim truthfulness refers to the importance of making only statements we believe to be true. The reason is that if we get caught making false statements we lose our credibility, which is the important social

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assets a person can hold. In real life, this maxim is often violated in order to deceive the addressee. In less serious context, it can be violated in obvious manner when the speaker tries to be humorous or teases the addressee. Grice shows four examples to illustrate how the first maxim of quality is flouted: irony, metaphor, hyperbole (Martinich, 1984).

2. Maxim of Quantity: 1) make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange 2) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. The meaning of this maxim is that the speaker should avoid including unnecessary, redundant information in the contribution. For example:

(8) Lius: Do you know where Alto is? Linda: He’s sunbathing in the sandbox.

According to Thomas Ritter, if the speaker rambles on without saying anything new or informative, the addressee will lose interest in the discourse very quickly and stop paying attention (Davies, 2000). In multi-agents conversation process in which the social relationship between participants is, to some extent, intimate, such as relatives, lovers, good friends, if someone says something other persons do not need and are not interested in, this redundant information will disturb the path the communication will develop, which is one of the sources of humor production in sitcom.

3. Maxim of Relevance: make your contribution relevant. “In the context of H.P. Grice’s Cooperative Principle, the demand for relevance simply means that the speaker should only include information in his communication that is relevant

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to the topic under discussion” (Davies, 2000). For example, Mom asks if her daughter knows who she is talking to in the telephone:

(9) Mom: Who you’re talking to? Lita: Umm, my new friend Ana.

In the purpose of creating humor, Giora (1991) states that “The joke’s marked constituent is least relevant but not irrelevant, that is, not entire distant or unrelated” (p. 470).

4. Maxim of Manner: be perspicuous, and specifically, 1) avoid obscurity, 2) avoid ambiguity, 3) be brief, 4) be orderly. (Grice 1989, p. 26). For example, a teacher ask about how to replace the:

(10)A: Can you show me where the common room is? B: Yes. It is next to K.12.

Under this category, the general idea is what is said should be expressed in a direct, clear, brief and orderly way without any other communicative intention involved and without thinking whether our behaviors will affect other person’s feeling. If we put this kind communicative way into the coordinate, it will possess the zero position. Different direction and different distance from this zero point will make the communication achieve different effect. Actually, people usually communicate in an “ambiguous” way, which violates manner maxim. The speaker provides only some information hints for the hearer to infer all what the speaker should say. Violations of the maxim of manner can take many forms: order of presentation of information; vagueness and ambiguity; volume and pace; choice of words; attitude; even facial/gestural expressions (Cheung and Winnie, 2009).

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2) Non-Observance Maxims

Maxims of CP can be exploited for communicative purpose. There are many occasions which the conversational interaction between speakers do not happen as what expected. In certain situation, people fail to observe the maxims for some purpose. As the example, the speakers observe the maxim but pretend to fail rather than cooperate. Other examples, they are incapable of speaking clearly or because they deliberately choose to lie. According to Grice in Thomas (1995), there are five ways of failing to observe a maxim which are flouting, violating, opting out, infringing and suspending maxim. However, the territory of the discussion is narrowed down explicitly into four ways of failing maxims discovered in this research, described as follows:

1) Flouting Maxims

A flout occurs when a speaker obviously fails to observe a maxim at the level what is said, with the deliberate intention of generating implicature (Thomas, 1995, p. 65). According to Grice (1975), this additional meaning is called Conversational Implicature and the way by which such implicature is called flouting a Maxim (p. 71). For example:

A lecturer speaks to a student who arrives late more than ten minutes to the class:

(11)A: Terrific! You’re such a punctual fellow! Welcome to the class.

B: Sorry, Miss! It won’t happen again.

The lecturer flouts maxim of quality to deliver implicitly a sarcastic tone. Furthermore, speaker may flouts maxim of quantity when s/he intends to be humorous.

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(12)A: Where are you now? B: I’m in my clothes.

Or, the speaker may flout maxim of relevance to avoid hurting someone’s feeling:

(13)A: What are you and C talking about?

B: Oh well… why don’t we go get something to drink?

Moreover, the speaker flouts maxim of relevance when s/he utters slang or ambiguous utterance:

(14)A: Let’s play emoji tennis. B: Ok.

The word ‘emoji tennis’ is ambiguous. However, it is a slang, meaning texting nothing but emoticon back and forth between a friend or partner.

2) Violating Maxims

According to Grice (1975), the speaker violates a maxim when the speaker will liable to mislead the hearer to have such implicature. The speaker deliberately tries to make the hearer misunderstanding the truth meaning of speaking. The hearer is misled to look for the surface meaning. This make the hearer infers an implicature. People in real life tend to tell lies for different reasons, hide the truth, save face, feel jealous, satisfying the hearer, cheer the hearer, building one’s belief, avoid hurting the hearer, and convincing the hearer (as cited in “Non Observance of Grice Maxims”, 2013). As said by Tupan and Natalia (2008), people believe that a lying is the natural tool to survive and to avoid from anything that may put the speaker in an inappropriate condition (p. 64-66).

A speaker violate maxim quality when s/he lies to cover the truth: (15)A: Who was with you last night?

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Furthermore, a speaker violates maxim of quantity to limit the exposure of a truth:

(16)A: Where have you been? I called you thirty times. B: I wasn’t around. What’s the big deal?

Or, the speaker violates maxim of relevance to evade current situation or topic being discussed:

(17)A: Why did you not come to class today? B: (pointing away)Is that Mr. Carla?

3) Opting out Maxims

Thomas (1995, p. 73), defines opting out as a situation when a speaker “chooses not to observe a maxim and states an unwillingness to do so”. For example, a new friend asks about personal life:

(18)A: I heard your boyfriend ran away and dumped you, is it true? B: I’m sorry I can’t say it to you. Privacy area.

There are some conversations in How I Met Your Mother season 2 which the speakers opted out certain maxim and stated her unwillingness to do so clearly.

(19)Robin was hiding the reason why she does not go to the Mall. Robin: Sorry, I just don’t like Malls.

Barney: Why not?

Robin: I’d rather not say.

However, the above example in the situated condition does not appear to be humorous. Rather it appeared to be a disappointment or curiosity for the hearer.

4) Suspending Maxims

This condition occurs when there is a certain circumstances or as part of certain event which does not expect the participant or any participant to observe one or several maxim (and no fulfillment does not generate any implicatures) (Thomas, 1995, p. 76). For example:

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Discovered data has the suspension of maxim within a joke uttered by Ted in the following excerpt:

S0208/SP01

(20)Barney: A cougar. An older woman, usually in her 40s or fifties, single and on the prowl for a younger man,

Ted: What’s a women in her sixties or 70s—a turtle?

5) Infringing Maxims

Infringement occurs when a speaker fails to observe the maxim, although the speaker has no intention of generating an implicature and deceiving the hearer. Thomas (1995, p. 74) explains that generally infringing rooted from imperfect linguistic performance (in the case of a young child or foreigner) or from impaired linguistic performance triggered by nervousness, drunkenness, excitement, disability. The following excerpt exemplifies an account of infringement triggered by nervousness:

(21)A: Do you have any difficulties in conducting the research?

B: Emm… a little. But there is a when understand, I mean when I try understand the meaning of words.

Moreover, drunkenness infringes maxim of manner as appeared in the following humorous conversation:

(22)Robin (talking to the waiter): I’d take you with gravy. If my boyfriend wasn’t sitting right here. – Just kidding. I’m good.

Lily: What are you so chirpy about? Ted: She’s still drunk from last night. Robin: I don’t think so. Whoo!

B. Theoretical Framework

The research lays the emphasis on the contribution of the non-observances maxim in connection with humor -- fashioning the humorous situation as seemed in TV-series How I Met Your Mother Season 2. Although, not all humorous

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phenomena can be explained by the cooperative principle (e.g. humor from physical behavior) and even when we are dealing with the conversational jokes (e.g. humor at lexical or phonetic levels). Nevertheless, several linguists (Attardo, 1997; Norrick, 1993; Raskin, 1985) have been trying to make a general pragmatic explanation on humor with reference to Grice’s theory. Raskin (1985) suggested that joke-telling mode of communication (non bona fide) is still governed by the cooperative principle because he believed that humor is communicative functions.

This research takes the pragmatic view to discuss humorous conversational interaction. Thus, conversation is to be the model of interpretation. Fundamentally, this research put the language into a context-through with a more full contextual analysis of humor which the context of conversation is given. Although, the built characters in recorded data of conversation vary in characterization, background knowledge, interests and concerns, still, conversation is a flexible text negotiated between the various participants in a conversation as found in the data. In this research, laughter serves as the most identifiable signal for identifying humor in the text (cf. Archakis & Tsakona, 2005). Hay (2001, p. 56) adds that the presence of laughter is used to characterize an utterance or a text as humorous.

Since the humor in situation comedy lays on its narration, the script is styled and fashioned to be so much alike with natural language in order to illustrate daily life conversation. The amusement itself is found from conversational interaction among the characters. Accordingly, it is necessary to hire conversation theories: cooperative principle from Paul Grice and basic structure of conversation. The cooperative principle, which derived into four maxims principle, helps to evaluate

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the conversations that is humorous. In this research, the conversation will be placed and situated at the basic rules within conversation and how the characters negotiate and exchange the information which give arise to humor in form of comedy and intend to amuse the audience. This involves noting the role of joking regarding 1) language games: turn taking, intruding, parting, greeting, closing, questioning, bridging uncomfortable gaps, “winding down the conversation”, encouragement, warning, etc. 2) intention of the speaker, e.g. to relieve embarrassment, save face, etc. With the knowledge of Grice maxims, the humorous conversations are evaluated by using known building blocks: adjacency pairs, turns and other standpoints from basic structure of conversation. Since the research focuses its concern in humorous conversation resulted from the violation of cooperative maxims, it is oblique to examine how the speakers violate those maxim. Here, the categories of the non-observance maxims take place. Those set of theories are helpful to explain phenomena of violation maxims in humorous conversation and answer the first research question.

It is noted that humor depends on the interactants’ negotiation of values in a similar to Veatch’s description of verbal humor. Veatch (1998) determines a funny violation of normal situation (or a subject moral order) by incorporating an affective component into his theory. One important vehicle for humor production is the generation of conversational implicature originating in some form of flouting or violation of maxims (Grice, 1978): in humorous talk, speakers code and decode messages and publicly display their knowledge of what is going on. This complex interactional work (or, as Grice calls it, “Conversational game”) is also visible on

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the level of exchange structure. In usual events, the conversational moves are usually concurrently predicted, and or, paired between the inquiry and the exchange boundaries. In conversational humor, however, results to blurred exchange boundaries. Explicitly, the humorous effects resulted from flouting of basic formal language rules (Vandaele, 2002, p. 150).

Standing under a concept of incongruity theory, the humorous conversations are appreciated. Humor which arises from the violation of maxims resulting from unusual conversation is still a dependent idea of humor production (Raskin, 1985; Morreal, 1987 and Attardo, 2007, p. 108). In sitcom, there are some ‘props’ supporting the idea of humor (the violation maxims) which help the audiences to understand that the text is supposed to be funny such as visualization of current situation (Morreal, 1987 and Trizenberg, 2008, p. 536). By using the GTVH, the elements (knowledge resources) are inspected. This theory later will shows the contribution of the non-observance maxims as the idea for condition of humor production in creating humorous effects. Attardo (1997) compares the GTVH with the incongruity-resolution theories and points out that LM (one of the knowledge resources) is in fact the resolution of the incongruity.

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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the methodology helps the researcher to conduct the designed research. The research is to discuss how maxims are violated (viz. flouting, violating, infringing, suspending) by the characters of sitcom in the conversation with the reference of cooperative maxims principle, and how the violation maxims took place in creating humorous effects. The scope of this chapter includes research methodology, object of study, instruments and data gathering technique, data analysis technique, and research procedures.

A. Research Method

Humor analysis is also in the same kind of conventional qualitative research in other respects, which is characterized by a naturalistic orientation to the investigation. The instance or setting in which the data is collected is expected to be as close to the natural state as possible. Sen (2012) conveys, the analysis of humor can also be naturalistic in its orientation. If the specific instances of humor which mostly are jokes are gathered from regular conversations (i.e. spontaneous and unscripted), then the data can be classified as those from naturalistic setting. Sen adds, if the jokes are embedded in the script of movies, as the research does, then there is still an air of quasi-naturalness about them and that can provide insightful information about humor that is publicly acceptable in the society. Humor analysis can follow the same method of inductive analysis. Instances of humor are

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mined from conversations or printed matter such as movie scripts and then analyzed for common themes or pattern.

This research observed how the humorous utterances occurred by discovering the violations of cooperative maxims principle, which later were linked to incongruity theory and the GTVH. Discussing how humor was built up in the movie, this research identified conversations among characters at the discourse level. The research employed the approach of discourse analysis (a spoken discourse analysis) in relation to disobedience maxims using non-observances of CP terms of framework to create humorous effects.

According to brown and yule (1983)in general, a tape-recording of an event is the data to work on, from which then it is transformed into a written transcription, annotated according to the research interests on a particular occasion. However, since this research took the data from movie series, which then the verbal interaction is presented using normal orthographic conventions; any details of intonation, non-verbal interaction (setting) and rhythm which supports the analysis would be verbalized as well. In discourse analysis, the data is treated as the record (text) of a dynamic process in which language was used as an instrument of communication in a context by a speaker to express meanings and achieve intentions (discourse). Then, the researcher seeks to describe the regularities in the linguistic realizations used by people to communicate those meanings and intentions.

Discourse analysis takes the communicative function of language as its primary area of investigation and consequently seeks to describe linguistic from, not as a static object, but as a dynamic means of expressing intended meaning. In

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this research, the discourse was treated as a process view (Widdowson, 1979, p. 71, Brown and Yule, p. 24). The words, the phrases and the sentences which appear in the textual record of a discourse to be the evidences of an attempt by a producer (speaker) to communicate his message to a recipient (hearer). This research focused on the productions of utterances which logically elicited humorous effects. The data then experienced the process interpreting. These involve computing the communicative function (how to take the meaning, message), using general socio-cultural knowledge (facts about the world) and determining the inferences to be made.

B. Research Setting

The setting of the research refers to the setting in which the research was conducted. The researcher conducted this research during the period of August 2014 to July 2015. The research experienced the process: analyzing the scripts; categorizing the utterances into each proper type of maxims; identifying and describing the utterances with the references of local management within conversation theory and non-observance maxim theory; describing the role of disobedience maxims in creating humorous effects; and the last was summing up the findings.

C. Objective of Study

The object of the research was the episodes of sitcom How I Met Your Mother season 2. Season 2 of How I Met Your Mother aired from 18 September, 2006 to May 14, 2007 and contained 22 episodes. Thesubject was selected because

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the series was a comedy TV-show, also it was popular. Importantly, the series had many unexpected situations which led to the even more unexpected reactions of other characters and thus not only entertained but at the same time offered a great data for this research. The data as the primary sources of the research were the script obtained from the conversations among the characters which appeared to be humorous.

D. Instrument and Data Gathering Technique

The research employed two instruments, human instrument and document instrument. Human instrument functioned as the primary agent to collect the data in qualitative research (Merriam, 2002; Berg and Galls, 2007; Ary, et.al, 2010). Human instrument was the researcher who conducted the analysis the document instrument employed to answer both research problems was the printed-out movie script from the episodes of movie series How I Met Your Mother season 2. In collecting the data, this research experienced some steps. First, the researcher did close watching the selected episodes for several times with the help of English subtitles available on http://www.tvsubtitles.net. Second, the researcher listened the conversations and observed them. Third, after watching, listening, and observing the movie, the writer made documentation of the data. The data were transcribed orthographically from the episodes which then the transcribed data was compared with the script provided in the internet. Thus, the prepared data could be accessed at a time convenient to the researcher and an unobtrusive source of information (Creswell, 2003:187). Some dissimilarities between the movie and the script obtained from the internet befell during the transcription process. The

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dissimilarities, then, were accorded with the movie. To the extent of analyzing, supplementary extracts were necessary to describe the situation in own words because there were little of none verbal communication extracts available.

The researcher selected the humorous conversations were carefully by using criteria: occurrence of laughter track; humorous effects in form of conversation; and detection of one or more maxims of cooperative principles violated by the characters. The indication of humorous conversations were detected and pinpointed by the sign of canned laughter in the scenes which might come from the speaker while producing his/her utterance or from the audiences as a reaction to what is being uttered.

E. Data Analysis Technique

According to Miles and Huberman (1994), qualitative research is outlined in three flows of activity: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing or verification. This research hired those three flows.

a. Data reduction

In this research, the data reduction refers to selecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting and transforming the humorous conversation from the transcriptions. The transcription of the movie conversations, which was compiled from data from internet and movie itself, was printed. Afterward, the humorous conversations were detected by using laugh tracks as the indicators of the occurrence of humorous effects. Further, this research experienced to code and make the clusters and partition (Miles & Huberman, 1994). A numbers of collected humorous conversation was coded by using conversational maxims proposed by Paul Grice

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(1975) with an assistance of basic structure of conversation theory in order to sort the data into some categories in which four maxims as the categories. Then, the proceeding coded data were clustered into proper kinds of non-observance maxim and collected into partitions. At this stream, the researcher noted the regularities, patterns and explanation transpired from the humorous conversation in order to solve the research problems.

b. Data display

After reduction of data, the clustered data in this research was displayed into tables (see appendices). It was aimed to assemble the information needed to analyze the analytic construct of humor resulting from conversations and draw the conclusions.

c. Conclusion drawing

In this research, the vague conclusion was prefigured during the analysis. However, the final conclusion was verified from the elaboration of discussion after it was over. This research sum up the violation (viz. flouting, violating, infringing, suspending) of maxims occurred in humorous conversation and the general analytic construct of humor which was increasingly grounded and explicit.

F. Research Procedures

The research took some ordered steps in conducting the research. The steps were as follow:

1. The Steps of Segmenting the Transcription Based on Its Speech Events.

By using the theory of basic structure of conversation and the cooperative principle, the maxims used in conversation which reflected humorous effects were

(1)

4. S02E07/MN/VL4

Druthers: Normally, I would scream at everyone until my voice goes, but maybe that’s the wrong reaction here.

Lily: (low voice to Ted) Interesting.

Druthers: Instead, I’m giving my baseball until the end of the day to decide he’s homesick, or, tomorrow morning, I’ll begin firing three people an hour. And if the thief doesn’t believe me, well, then you are gambling more than Pete Rose – major league baseball’s all-time hit leader, a man whose absence from the Hall of Fame is a travesty to the entire sports world – ever “allegedly” did!

Being not brief

5. S02E08/MN/VL5

There are the gang but Barney seems could not read the situation. He should’ve not said that to Marshall while there is Lily next to him.

Lily: We’re going to Atlantic City to Elope right now!

Barney: Oh, congratulations, Lily. Marshall, you’re getting married? What the hell?

√ Obscure

expression

6. S02E10/MN/VL6

Barney was talking to his nephew.

Barney: hey, buddy. Your parents are married. Now you listen. Just because you’re being raised by married people doesn’t mean you have to choose that lifestyle. High-five. – Luckily you got me. In 20 and a half years you’ll be 21, and I will be…. Well, I haven’t decided how old I’ll be yet. But we are gonna bro out, uncle and nephew style. Stick with me kid. I am gonna teach you how to live.

√ Obscure

expression

7. S02E12/MN/VL7

Down at the bar, Barney drops some knowledge that according to him relationships are like a freeway. In fact, in previous month, he told Marshall that relationships are like a travelling circus.

Barney: Freeways have exits. So do relationships. The first exit, my personal favorite, is six hours in. you meet, you talk you have sex, you exit when she’s in the shower.

Robin: So every girl you have sex with feels the immediate need to shower? Actually yeah I get that.

√ Ambiguous language

8. S02E12/MN/VL8

(Robin never been this longer in the relationship and she never felt so in love like she feel with Ted. It turns out that she choked to say I Love you to Ted in ‘falafel’. And lily, though she dumped Marshall over summer, they get back together eventually.)

Robin: So I’ve never been on the freeway this long before. I mean, usually by now I find out the guy has some weird personality thing that makes me want to take the next exit.

Lily: Yeah, been there. I once dated a guy who could only go to the bathroom when classical music was playing. --- Okay it was Marshall.

√ Being indirect

9. S02E14/MN/VL13 Superbowl in 2006, apartment, annual inner party, Robin get invited.

Ted: How cool is Robin? √

Obscure expression

(2)

Marshall: I can’t believe you invited this girl we’ve only known for a few months to our sacred day. Now, she’s gonna be in all the pictures.

Barney: Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll give you the Seahawks plus six points for five hundred bucks. Marshall: Are you crazy? Maybe for fifty.

Barney: Fifty $! What fun is fifty $! Why don’t we just bet air?! God, Marshall! (rapid changeable expression) Okay, fifty.

10. S02E15/MN/VL10

The gang are down at the bar. Marshall came with broken leg

Barney: Here’s how you run a marathon. Step one, you start running. (pause) there is no step two.

√ Being unordered

11. S02E18/MN/VL11

In apartment, barney doesn’t want Ted and Robin living together. He tried to convince them by asking made-up questions.)

Barney: So? We all agree? We move Ted’s stuff back up here? Ted: Mm.. no. we’re still moving in together.

Barney: Why? This is crazy. Ted, you’re throwing your life away. This girl is blinding you. With her shinny hair and her boobed shaped boobs. This is bad for you, too, you know.

Obscuring expression

12. S02E19/MN/VL12

(On the way to bachelor party)

Barney: Hi. Ted: Hi,

Barney: we’re still going to Atlantic City, right?

Ted: Oh, did I not tell you? Yeah, we switched it. We’re going to Foxwoods.

Barney: Foxwoods? But I’ve got an ipperstray waiting in tlanticaay itycay. What the heck’s in Foxwoods?

√ _expressionObscuring

13. S02E14/MN/VL12

In a bar,friends has been sitting even before he came.

Ted: What is ruined? Why, why is this such a big deal? Barney: Okay guys…sit down, I’ve got to tell you something.

√ _expressionObscuring

14. S02E10/MN/VL14

Robin: Do you have a brother?

Barney: Yes, He’s the “awesome-est,” most best “looking-est, “greatest guy ever.

Lily: He’s exactly like Barney. Barney: That’s what I just said.

(3)

APPENDIX J

4.10 Table of Violating Multiple Maxims in

How I Met Your Mother Television Season 2

NO EXCERPT EXCERPT TYPE OF MAXIMS INDICATION QL QN RL MN

1. SE02EP09/QL-MN/VL6

Barney: Fine. Do you wanna know what Robin’s secret is? Ted: you know?

Barney: Of course I know. She couldn’t look at us, her face got flushed, that shame, my friend. Our friend Robin used to do porn, what for it… ography.

Ted: Yeah, we didn’t really need to wait for that.

√ √ Giving less evidence and

obscuring expression

2. SE02EP11/MN-RL/VL6

At the bar, Robin, Ted and Barney. Barney got fever but he denied.

Ted: No, I meant do you have a cold?

Barney: I’m fine. – I’m fine. My nose is just overflowing with awesome and I had to get some of it out. – Now, if you’ll excuse me, the holidays are a time when people are lonely and desperate. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

√ √ Obscuring expression and uttering irrelevant topic

3. SE02EP12/QL-QN/VL6

Barney: The next exits are four days, three weeks, seven months – that’s when you guys are gonna break up, mark your calendars.(talk to both Robin and Ted)

Ted: hey!

Robin: what? (talk in the same time)

√ √ Giving less evidences and

giving more information

4. SE02EP19/QL-MN/VL6

Ted: Look, I know you have some stuff planned for Marshall’s bachelor party, but he really doesn’t want strippers.

Barney: Yes, he does.

Ted: Uh, well, he told me he doesn’t. Barney: Uh, well, he told me he does. Ted: When?

Barney: Every minute of every day as his inner animal thrashes against the cage of his own puritanical upbringing. – Or do you guys not like naked girls.

√ √ Obscuring expression and

(4)

APPENDIX K

4.11 Table of Infringing Maxims in

How I Met Your Mother Television Season 2

NO CODE EXCERPT TYPE OF MAXIMS INDICATION

QL QN RL MN

1. S02E02/QL/IF1

Lily, Ted and Robin were having breakfast at the restaurant. Robin was still drunk when the waiter served the menu.

Robin (talking to the waiter): I’d take you with gravy. If my boyfriend wasn’t sitting right here. – Just kidding. I’m good.

Lily: What are you so chirpy about? Ted: She’s still drunk from last night. Robin: I don’t think so. Whoo!

√ Drunkenness

2. S02E20/MN/IF2

Barney was demonstrating how he would appear in TPIR. Rather telling Marshall and Ted what he is going to do, he left them clueless.

Barney: So which one, “A” or “B”?

Marshall: What was that?

Barney: I have to decide how to run to contestant’s tow when they say, “Barney Stinson, come on down!”

Oh, I didn’t realize that’s what it was. Can you do them again? Barney: Yeah, of course.

√ Excitement

3. S02E02/MN/IF3

Lily, Ted and Robin were having breakfast at the restaurant. Robin was still drunk when the waiter served the menu.

Robin (talking to the waiter): I’d take you with gravy. If my boyfriend wasn’t sitting right here. – Just kidding. I’m good.

Lily: What are you so chirpy about?

√ Drunkenness

4. S02E09/RL/IF4

Lily agreed to what Barney’s presumption about Robin’s past life.

Lily: I don’t know. He could be right. She does have the fake orgasm noises down.

(5)

Robin: Katie, I’ll admit, maybe I’m not in any place to lecture you on romantic relationships, but – but I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes that I’ve made.

Katie: Oh, believe me, Kyle is not gay.

(6)

APPENDIX L

4.12 Table of Suspending Maxims in

How I Met Your Mother Season 2

NO CODE EXCERPT TYPE OF MAXIMS INDICATION

QL QN RL MN

1. S02E06/SP1

At the bar

Robin: A what?

Barney: A cougar. An older woman, usually in her 40s or fifties, single and on the prowl for a younger man,

Ted: What’s a women in her sixties or 70s—a turtle?

√ √

Joking

2. S02E06/SP2

Lily get ambitious to get married today.

Marshall: Baby, anyplace we go, we’re gonna need a marriage license.

Lily: Except international waters. So-so let’s find a ship captain. A ship captain can marry us. There’s boats all over this place.

Ted: Oh, is that what those wooden things are floating between the garbage?

√ √

Joking

3. S02E14/SP3

At the apartment, ready for funeral.

Ted: Okay here’s the plan: record the game, go to the funeral, pay our respects to Matt… Lily: Mark.

Ted: Mark, and start watching only an hour late.

Marshall: Okay, that’s great, but just to make sure it records, maybe we should bow our heads and say a quiet prayer to the TiVo gods.

Ted: Almighty TiVo, we thank you for all the gifts you have given us: the power to freeze live TV to go take a leak is nothing short of Godlike. Let’s not forget fast-forwarding through commercials. It seems greedy to ask anything more from you, O Magic bos, but if you malfunction and miss the Super Bowl, we will destroy you in the alley with baseball bats.

Marshall, Ted:Amen.

√ √

Praying

Barney: You can be Slap Bet Commissioner. Lily: Ooh, I love it. What are my powers?

An analysis of non-observance maxims in humorous conversation in How I Met Your Mother season 2.

AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN

HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN

HOW I MET YOUR

MOTHER

SEASON 2

AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN

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MOTHER

SEASON 2

AN ANALYSIS OF NON-OBSERVANCE MAXIMS IN

HUMOROUS CONVERSATION IN

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MOTHER

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