An Analysis of humourous effects caused by the flouting of Grice's conversational maxims in the comedy "the Nanny"

Tan, Siali (1999) An Analysis of humourous effects caused by the flouting of Grice's conversational maxims in the comedy "the Nanny". Bachelor thesis, Petra Christian University.

Abstract

The Cooperative Principle is the principle that should be obeyed by a speaker and a hearer so that their conversations can become smooth. The principle is implied in the fulfilling of the Conversational Maxims. There is an assumption, however, that the flouting of the Conversational Maxims may not bring the communication to an end, but it may instead cause humour. Based on the assumption, this thesis was then written to find out the relationship between the humour in comedy and the flouting of the Conversational Maxims. As the objects of her study, the writer used the comedy entitled "The Nanny", which was broadcasted by SCTV in January and February 1999. There were three episodes chosen by the writer to be analyzed. They were "The Kibbutz", "Is Fran Looking Old?", and "The Cantor Show". The analysis was based on the theory of Grice (1975) about The Cooperative Principles and some theories about humour from Raskin (1985), Norrick (1986), and Attardo (1993). After analyzing the data, the writer found out that there were indeed the floutings of maxims in the comedy, and that the flouting could cause humour. Moreover, the maxim that was flouted the most often was the Maxim of Manner, then the second most flouted maxim was the Maxim of Quality. The Maxims of Relevance and Quantity were not frequently flouted, but their floutings had also the humourous results. The flouting of maxims showed that in a conversation, people might flout the maxims to cause humour. Moreover, by flouting the maxims, the characters showed their close relationship. From the findings and implication, the writer concluded that the initial assumption about the flouting of the Conversational Maxims was found out to be true. It meant that the flouting of the maxims in a conversation does not always break tire communication, but it might be used to cause humour.

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