Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS a study on implicature in english and vietnamese funny stories m a thesis linguistics 60 22 15

Rationale

Language is one of the most important areas of human development It is the mechanism by which people communicate, and the means by which people convey their emotion However, in our day-to-day conversational exchanges, for some reasons, people do not always directly express their ideas As Jenny Thomas states in her book “Meaning in Interaction” that speaker frequently means much more than their words actually say (Thomas 1995: 1) The hearer interprets a meaning that is not clearly stated in the utterance of the speaker Utterances, standing alone out of context, make us confused in our communication

However, being put into the context, words and phrases can be interpreted in a way that makes people understand the intentional meaning of the utterances The reason is that we as speakers and hearers, according to the American philosopher- linguistics Paul Grice, operate under the cooperative principal, which means that both speaker and hearer converse with good intentions In other words, the speaker utters words and phrases in order to deliver a message to the hearer, who interprets a meaning with the knowledge that there is a message behind the utterance

In order to show what goes on in conversation, Grice introduced four conversational maxims A speaker might fall to observe a maxim but still get the intended meaning through to the hearer Falling to observe a maxim is often referred to as “breaking a maxim” In funny story, these maxims are constantly broken to create humor

Funny stories are a crucial part of every culture and every society From the past to now, it has been an entertaining form to make people feel cheerful and happy Sometimes, it can be used as a means of weapon to fight against the negative things in the society

However, different types of humor are more appealing to different people based on their personal sense of humor and background And people from different countries have their own sense of humor, therefore understanding funny stories means that you have to uncover many things relating to their nations Sometimes we wonder why some unfinished and meaningless sentences can make people laugh To achieve this interpretation successfully, readers have to understand intended meaning from the characters and the authors

Being a teacher of English as a foreign language, I strongly believe that the use of humor in funny story would significantly improve second language learning However, to understand the meaning of implicature in English funny story is a challenging task In order to create more interests in the English learning and build a deep understanding of inplicature mechanism to English learners, the study on “ Implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories” is inspired and carried out .

Aims of the Study

The purposes of the research study could be clearly identified as followings:

-To provide background knowledge of implicature

- To uncover the implicature in terms of maxim conveyed in the English and Vietnamese funny stories under study

- To point out implicature in some English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims

- To draw out the implication in English language teaching and learning.

Scope of the Study

This research is limited to analyze implicature in some selected English and Vietnamese funny stories

This research only touches a small aspect of implicature: maxim Within the scope of the study, no attention is paid to any other features of funny stories.

Method of the Study

The main method of the study is qualitative one executed with descriptive and contrastive analysis with the following techniques:

+ Collecting data containing funny stories with mechanism of implicature + Basing on the data collected, we sort out the samples into categories in terms of maxims

+ On the basis of the analysis of mechanism of implicatures in English and Vietnamese funny stories, we predict the difficulties that Vietnamese learners have to deal with.

Organization of the Study

The study consists of three parts They are:

Part A: Introduction This part contains rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study, and methods of the study

Part B: Development This is the main part of the thesis and has two chapters

In this chapter, review on some field of semantics, pragmatics and discourse such are given in the first place Later part deals with concept of implicature and a brief background knowledge about funny stories

Chapter 2: The study This part gives the detailed description of the study, which includes data collection, data analysis and presents the results and discussion

This is the last part of the thesis which summarizes the major points and gives the implication as well as giving suggestions for further study

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Overview of Discourse Analysis

In the history of linguistics, different linguists use the term “discourse” in a number of different ways

According to Crystal (1992: 25) discourse is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, an argument, joke or narrative”

Cook (1989: 156) shares the similar idea with Crystal, he states discourse as

“stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive” Cook also suggests that “What matters is not its conformity to rules, but the fact that it communicates and is recognized by its receivers as coherent” Discourse is supposed to be meaningful and thus to be used to communicate with one person in a way that another person does not have the necessary knowledge to make sense of

In Nunan‟s opinion, discourse is considered “communicative event involving language in context” (1993:118)

In general, discourse is defined differently but they have something in common

Discourse is understood as language in use, which can reflect people‟s point of view and value systems

There has been a lot of confusion between the two terms discourse and text For some linguists, these two terms seem to be used almost interchangeably As Halliday & Hasan (1976: 2) state in their book “Cohesion in English”

A text is a unit of language in use, it is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence… A text is best regarded as a semantic unit: a unit not of form but of meaning Thus it is related to a clause or sentence not by size but by realization, the coding of one symbolic system in another A text does not consist of sentences; it is realized by, or encoded in, sentences

They use “text” to refer to “discourse” They see text as a “semantic unit” characterized by cohesion

Some other linguists draw a clear distinction between them They argue that discourse is language in action while a text is the written record of that interaction

As Crystal‟s point of view, he states that discourse is “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence” whereas a text is “a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed language identified for purpose of analysis”

Nunan (1993: 6) appears to share the same view when he uses “the term text to refer to any written record of a communicative event in context” and discourse refers to

“interpretation of the communicative event in context”

To sum up, it can be see that there is disagreement about the meaning of these two terms However, all seem to agree that both text and discourse need to be defined in terms of meaning and the coherent texts/ pieces of discourse are those that form a meaningful whole

Discourse analysis is developed by different works of different scholars One of the most prominent scholars is Yule (1997: 139), he states in his study of language that

“In the study of language, some of the most interesting questions arise in connection with the way language is used, rather than what its components are…We were, in effect, asking how it is language –users interpret what other language-users intend to convey When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we, as language users, make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers mean despite what they say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse, and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking what is known discourse analysis”

It is understood that discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the context in which it is used

In summary, discourse analysis considers the ways that the use of language presents different views of the world and different understanding It examines how the use of language is influenced by relationships between participants, as well as its effect on social relations

Context is an important concept in discourse analysis As Nunan (1993: 7) defines

“context refers to the situation giving rise to the discourse, and within which the discourse is embedded” In his opinion, there are two different types of context The first is linguistic context; it refers to the words, utterances and sentences surrounding a piece of text The second is non-linguistic or experiential context, it refers to the real- world context in which the text occurs Non-linguistic context includes the type of communicative event, the topic, the purpose of the event, the setting, the participants and the relationship between them

Non-linguistics also includes background knowledge and assumptions underlying the communicative event Background knowledge can be either cultural general knowledge that most people carry with them in their minds, about areas of life, or interpersonal knowledge, specific and possibly private knowledge about the history of the speakers themselves

In short, context plays a very important role in discourse analysis A discourse and its context are in close relationship, discourse elaborates context and context helps interpret the meaning of utterances in discourse.

Word Meaning

According to Nguyen Hoa (2004: 67), words are regarded as the smallest indivisible meaningful units of a language which can operate independently

Every word combines lexical and grammatical meanings The grammatical meaning can be defined as an expression in speech of relationships between words based on contrastive features of arrangement in which they occur The lexical meaning is the individual meaning that each word has in the system of language

In terms of component, lexical meaning is classified into denotative and connotative meaning

Denotative meaning is the explicit, literal meaning or in other words, it is dictionary definitions It involves a broader consensus That is, the denotative meaning of a sign would be broadly agreed upon by members of the same culture and by different cultures

For example, “dog” denotes a common animal with four legs, a tail that they are often kept as pets, and they can bark and bite

Connotative meaning , on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word It exists together with the denotative meanings Connotative meaning conveys value, judgments and evaluative implications behind literal meaning We might say it is the emotional meaning of the word

It is determined by the cultural codes to which the interpreter has access and the connotative meaning of a word can have strong emotional content

For example, the word “dog” has different connotative meanings in different cultures

In Arabic culture: it has negative connotation, dirty and inferiority but in British culture, it has positive one: friendship and loyalty

Sometimes two or more words will have the same or almost the same denotation (definition), but will have very different connotations Depending on how it is used, a word might have a positive, neutral, or negative connotation to it

All of the following words and phrases refer to "a young person" but their connotations may be quite different depending, in part, on the context in which they appear: youngster, child, kid, little one, small fry, brat, urchin, juvenile, minor Some of these words tend to carry favorable connotations (little one), others unfavorable (brat), and still others fairly neutral connotations (child) Calling a young person a brat lets our readers know at once how we feel about the rotten kid

In short, connotation can be regarded as an additional meaning to denotation.

Sentence Meaning

According to Nguyen Hoa (2004), a sentence is a construction of words according to certain rules (which we often call grammatical rules) Sentence meaning is what a sentence means regardless of the context or situation in which it may be used It means that sentence meaning is highly context-independent

According to Halliday, there are three components of sentence meaning including representational, interpersonal and textual meaning Halliday uses the term “semantic function” or just “function” to refer to them This is a way of representing the meaning of the sentence

Representational meaning may be defined in terms of experiential and logical functions

The experiential function is to communicate ideas It refers to people, objects, states of affairs, events, qualities, places, actions and circumstances The logical function (meaning) relates ideas to each other on an equal or subordinate basis

The experiential subcomponent of the representational meaning refers to processes, qualities and participating entities and circumstances

Let‟s look at the following example

The little boy is playing football

The participants realized by the noun phrases: the little boy and football

The process realized by the verb: playing

The interpersonal meaning is firstly to establish and maintain social relations, and secondly to influence people‟s behavior and get things done, and thirdly to express the speaker‟s feelings, attitudes and opinions The last is to express the speaker‟s attitudes or opinions towards, or assessment of, the representational content of sentence

Good morning Establish social relationship

Can you get me some water, please? Request What she said may be right Speaker‟s attitude

Textual meaning is to create texts It helps to give texts coherence and cohesion.

Utterance Meaning

Nguyen Hoa claims that an utterance is often regarded as any stretch of speech before which and after which there is a pause Utterance meaning is defined as what a speaker means when he makes an utterance in a certain situation In other words, utterance meaning is context-dependent and the meaning of an utterance is determined by the context in which it is used

Austin presents two kinds of utterances: constative and performative utterance A constative utterance is a statement-making utterance What it does is to represent a state of affair or experience In contrast, a performative utterance is one that performs an act of doing something rather than saying It brings about a state of affairs such as bids, blessings, firings, arrests, complaints, marrying A performative utterance is neither true nor false For instance, I say “I apologize for my behavior”, it may be right or wrong for me to do so because the utterance “I apologize” is used to perform rather than to describe an act

1.4.1 Related acts in producing an utterance

When attempting to express themselves, people not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words, they perform actions via those utterances

A: Would you like to go fishing tomorrow?

B: My father will visit me, tomorrow

In this conversation, A wants to invite B to go fishing, but B does not agree and he/she refuses A‟s invitation Both A and B‟s utterances are speech acts

John Austin in his book “How to do things with words” is the first to introduce the idea of speech act According to Austin, actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts, and on any occasion, the action performed by producing an utterance will consist of three related acts including locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act

Locution: The actual form of the utterance

Illocution: The communicative force of the utterance

Perlocution: The communicative effect of the utterance

(Nguyen Hoa cited 2003: 228) This can be illustrated in this example

Would you close the door, please?

The surface form, and also the locutionary act, of this utterance is a question with a clear content (Close the door) The illocutionary act conveys a request from the part of the speaker and the perlocutionary act expresses the speaker‟s desire that the hearer should go and close the door

It is understood that, “a locutionary act is basic act of utterance, or producing a meaningful linguistic expression” (Yule, 1996: 48) To perform a locutionary act is to produce an utterance with a particular form and a more or less determinate meaning according to the rules of a given language If you have difficulty with actually forming the sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance in a language, then you might fail to produce a locutionary act

Austin analyses the locutionary act into three sub-types Phonetic act is the act of producing an utterance in the phonetic medium of sound

Phatic act is the act constructing a particular sentences in particular language Rhetic act is the act contextualizing a sentence

Illocutionary act is considered the core of the theory of speech acts An illocutionary act is the action performed by the speaker in producing a given utterance The illocutionary act is closely connected with speaker‟s intentions, for instance, stating, questioning, promising, requesting, giving commands and so on As Yule (1996: 48) claims, the illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance which is also generally known as illocutionary force of the utterance Basically, the illocutionary act indicates how the whole utterance is to be taken in the conversation

The illocutionary act is communicatively successful only if the speaker‟s illocutionary intention is recognized by the hearer These intentions are essentially communicative because the fulfillment of illocutionary intentions consists in hearer‟s understanding However, there are cases when the hearer fails to recognize the speaker‟s intentions and he therefore wrongly interprets the speaker‟s utterance This misunderstanding may lead to funny situations and hence it is often unfailing source for various jokes

Perlocutionary act, Austin‟s last element in the three-fold definition of speech acts, is performed with the intention of producing a further effect on the hearer Sometimes it may seem that perlocutionary act does not differ from illocutionary act very much

For example, “Would you close the door?”

Considered merely as an illocutionary act (a request in this case), the act is successful if the hearer recognizes that he should close the door, but as a perlocutionary act it succeeds only if he actually closes it

According to Austin, speech acts are classified into five types Verdictives are typified by the giving of a verdict by a jury, umpire, arbitrator such as acquit, grade, estimate, diagnose Exercitives are the exercising of powers, rights, or influence such as appoint, order, advise, and warn Commisives commit the speaker to do something but also include declarations or announcements of intention such as promise, guarantee, bet, oppose

Behabitives concern with attitude and social behaviour such as apologies, criticize, bless, challenge Expositives clarify how utterances fit into ongoing discourse, or how they are being used argue, postulate, affirm, concede

Searl also divides speech act into five types as follow Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that commit the speaker to doing something in the future, such as a promise, or a threat Directives are those kinds of speech acts that have the function of getting the listener to do something, such as a suggestion, a request, or a command Declaratives are those speech acts that change the states of affairs in the world Expressives are those speech acts in which the speaker expresses feelings and attitudes about something, such as an apology, a complaint, to thank someone, to congratulate someone Representative are those speech acts which describe states or events in the world, such as an assertion, a claim, or a report

Speech act classified in accordance with the correspondence between structure and function of the utterance

In the discussion of speech act, Yule (1996: 55) states “whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a function, we have a direct speech act Whenever there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function, we have an indirect speech act” In English, there are three structural forms (declarative, interrogative, and imperative) and the three general communicative functions (statement, question, command/ request)

Thus, a declarative used to make a statement is a direct speech act, but a declarative used to make a request is an indirect speech act

When someone utters “Could you move over a bit?” The speaker does not expect hearer to answer these questions with “Yes or Yes, I could” The function of this utterance is a request, or in other word speaker asks the hearer to move over a bit

Different structures can be used to accomplish the same basic function, as the following example a) Move out of the way b) Do you have to stand in front of the TV? c) You are standing in front of the TV d) You’d make a better door than a window

Implicature

The term “implicature” is used by Grice to account for what a speaker can imply, suggest or mean, as distinct from what the speaker literally says In other words, the notion of implicature rests upon a distinction between what is actually said and what is implied in saying what is said

Consider the following example Yule (1996: 43)

Rick: Hey!, coming to the wild party tonight?

Tom: My parents are visiting

In order to make Tom‟s response relevant, Rick has to draw on some assumed knowledge that one college student in this setting expects another to have Tom will be spending that evening with his parents, and time spent with parents is quiet So, Tom implicates that tonight he will be busy and he cannot go to the party

Grice discussed two different types of implicatures, including the conventional and the conversational

The conventional implicature has the same implication no matter what the context is

It means that it does not have to occur in conversation, and they do not depend on special contexts for their interpretation

Even John came to the party

When “even” is included in any sentence describing an event, it means “contrary to expectation”

Conversational implicature, on the other hand, is generated directly by the speaker depending on the context The same expressed meaning can have different implications on different occasions

A: Am I in time for supper?

Speaker B‟s implication is that speaker A is late for dinner because as usual, after meal, we clear and tidy the table

1.5.2 The cooperative principal and maxims

In order to explain how hearers interpret the utterance implicature, Grice introduced the cooperative implicature (CP) The CP runs like this

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

(Kearns cited, 2000: 255) According to the cooperative principle both speaker and hearer converse with the willingness to deliver and interpret a message The speaker and hearer cooperate and that is why they communicate efficiently

In order to illustrate how we interpret, Grice presented four conversational maxims, to show how we communicate effectively in the light of rules

1 Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)

2 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

The maxim of quantity requires the speaker to give the right amount of information when he/she speaks, which means not to be too brief or to give more information than the situation requires During a conversation, the quantity maxim is often violated in directions, creating prolixity if we say too much and terseness if we are too brief

Woman to a friend: “We haven’t reached an agreement yet- I’d like a Bermuda honeymoon, and he doesn’t want a wedding”

The woman violated the maxim of quantity because she provided more information than necessary This led to humor, she mentioned “a Bermuda honeymoon”, but, as a matter of fact, her boy friend did not want a wedding at all

A farmer gave two city fellows permission to hunt on his land, asking only a small favour in return “You’ll find a still up yonder”, he said “I’d like you to bring me a jugful or two”

The hunter located the still easily enough, but as they approached, bullets started whizzing past their ears They fled down the hill and found the farmer “Your still is being raided”, they gasped

“Oh, that’s probably the old man Turner” the farmer said

“Who’s he “the hunter wanted to know

“My neighbour” the farmer replied “He owns the still”

In this example, the farmer violated the principle of quantity because he just gave the information on the existence of the still However, the person was actually not as informative as required, and as a result, caused misunderstanding on the part of his listeners

Try to make your contribution one that is true

1 Do not say what you believe to be false

2 Do not say that for which you lack evidence

The maxim of quality is a matter of giving the right information The speaker says nothing that he/she knows to be false or for which he/she lacks sufficient evidence The other maxims are dependent on this maxim, if a speaker does not convey the truth then the utterance is false, event if the right information is given or the speaker is clear and orderly when speaking

Consider the following Vietnamese funny story “Thầy bói xem voi”

Nhân buổi ế hàng, năm ông thầy bói mù chuyện ngẫu với nhau Thầy nào cũng phàn nàn không biết hình thù con voi nó ra làm sao Chợt nghe người ta nói có voi đi qua, năm người chung nhau tiền biểu người quản tượng xin cho con voi đứng lại để cùng xem.Thầy sờ vòi, thầy sờ ngà, thầy sờ tai, thầy sờ chân, thầy thì sờ đuôi Ðoạn năm thầy ngồi lại bàn tán với nhau

- Tưởng con voi nó thế nào, hóa ra nó dài như con đỉa!

- Không phải, nó cứng như cái đòn càn chứ!

- Ðâu có! Nó to bè bè như cái quạt thôi!

Thầy sờ chân cãi lại:

- Ai bảo? Nó sừng sững như cái cột nhà!

Thầy sờ đuôi lại nói:

- Các thầy nói không đúng cả Chính nó tua tủa như cái chổi xể cùn

Năm thầy, thầy nào cũng cho mình nói đúng, không ai chịu ai, thành ra xô xát, đánh nhau toạt đầu, chảy máu

These blind fortunetellers violated the maxim of quality because they said the things that lacked evidence Each person gave one definition of elephant The person who touched elephant‟s heliotrope said that “elephant looks like a leech” But another who touched elephant‟s tusk said “the elephant looks like a lever” The blind fortuneteller who touched elephant‟s ear said “ it looks like a paper fan”, etc Each blind fortuneteller created different images of elephant because they lacked evidence, they only touched a part of elephant As a result, they agued and fought each other, that caused humor

The maxim of relevant requires the speaker to be relevant to the context and situation in which the utterance occurs

A: I am out of petrol B: There is a garage round the corner

In this exchange, Grice suggests that B would be violating the maxim “Be relevant”

The implicature, derived from the assumption that speaker B is adhering to the cooperative principal, is that the garage is not only round the corner, but also will be open and selling petrol In order to understand implicature, we have to know certain facts about the world It is that garages sell petrol and that round the corner is not a great distance away A‟s utterance not only is a description of a particular state of affairs, but also as a request for help, for instance

The maxim of manner is a matter of being clear and orderly when conversing The speaker describes things in the order in which they occur and avoid ambiguity and obscurity

The plane took off to the west and taxied down the runway

This may confuse people as to what actually happened, so the requirement of being orderly is not carried out In fact, when describing things, we should make them in a good order in which they really occurred The above example should be changed into “The plane taxied down the runway and took off to the west”

In summary, what can be derived from the cooperative principal is the fact that maxims should be theoretical involved in every conversation However, in everyday communication, the conversational situation is not always ideal and that is why the maxims are often not fully observed These are several ways in which the speaker can fail to observe one or more maxims

Overview of Funny Stories

Funny story is story that is told to make people laugh (Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary) It is characterized by humorous phenomena There are two theories for what people find humorous, incongruity theory, superiority theory The most popular theory of why we find jokes funny revolves around the concept of „incongruity‟ The idea is that we laugh at things that surprise us because they seem out of place It‟s funny when clowns wear outrageously large shoes, people have especially big noses or politicians tell the truth In the same way, many jokes are funny because they involve ideas that run against our expectations A bear walks into a bar Animals talk And so on But there is more to this theory than such simple forms of incongruity In many jokes, there is an apparent incongruity between the set-up and the punch line Scientists refer to this as the „incongruity- resolution‟ theory We resolve the incongruity caused by the punch line, and the accompanying feeling of sudden surprise makes us laugh

The superiority theory also explains why we laugh at certain types of jokes Many jokes make us feel superior to other people In these types of jokes, people appear stupid because they have misunderstood an obvious situation, made a stupid mistake, been the hapless victim of unfortunate circumstance or have been made to look stupid by someone else

According to the theory, these jokes cause us to laugh because they make us feel superior to other people

Funny story may be based on four typical forms as follow

- eccentricity ( against the authority of social convention)

- wordplay ( against the authority of serious discourse)

- non sense ( against the authority of sense)

- black humor ( against the authority of moral) These forms are well-illustrated in some of the themes These are some typical themes First is the family matter It consists of love, marriage, relationship between parents and children, husband and wife Political satire is another theme in funny story The political and social backgrounds are the base for this form Superiors are criticized in terms of their lying, they are challenged by common people One of themes that amuses people is sex No doubt the people have always swapped dirty jokes in private or among friends and other themes.

THE STUDY

Research question

What are the implicature mechanisms in English and Vietnamese funny stories?

Data collection

The author chooses to collect data from some published books and some reliable websites in order to demonstrate how humor is created through implicature in funny stories

The samples are collected from “Reader‟s Digest” “Nụ cười nước Anh” (English funny stories) and “Tuyển tập tiếu lâm hay nhất”, “Tuyển tập truyện cười dân gian Việt Nam”

(Vietnam folkore funny stories), and websites laughlab (www.laughlab.co.uk), www.English-world.org

The samples have been carried out with funny stories whose humor mechanisms are based on the violation and flouting of the maxims of implicature

The non-oberservance the author finds out are flouting and violating The author investigates randomly 100 breakings of maxims in English and 100 breakings of maxims in Vietnamese funny stories

The author collects data by writing down dialogues where breakings of the four maxims occurred, mainly violating and flouting The author identifies which of the four – quality, quantity, relevance and manner are broken in each story and which are broken most frequently Furthermore, the author investigates why and when the maxims are broken in order to create humor in funny stories.

Data Analysis

This maxim is broken so as to bring readers humor when the characters do not want to reveal information that can get them into trouble or when they give too much unneeded information in the conversation In English funny story, this maxim accounts for 9%

Let‟s consider this English funny story

“It is sad when you are away!”

“Honey, I’ll be back sooner than you expected…”

The wife in this story flouted the maxim of quantity by giving less information than the situation requires, she did not finish the sentence she started She did not want to upset the listener, her husband She said that “Yes, that‟s why…” and she left out “You‟ll be back sooner than I expect that makes me sad because I can not go with another man”

The character is actually not as informative as required, and as a result, cause misunderstanding on the part of his listeners

For example, in an English funny story

There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a large dog lying on the ground in front of the bench A woman comes along and sits down on the bench

Man: Does your dog bite?

Woman: No (The man reaches down to pet the dog The dog bites the man’s hand.) Man: Ouch! Hey! You said your dog does not bite

Woman: He does not but that is not my dog

In the woman‟s first answer “No”, she gave less information than expected The problem was the man‟s assumption that his question “Does your dog bite?” and the woman‟s answer “No” both applied to the dog in front of them From the man‟s perspective, the woman‟s answer provided less information than expected In other words, she might be expected to pride the information stated in the last line

The following example taken from Vietnamese funny stories violates the maxim of quantity because less information than required

Một người sắp đi chơi xa, dặn con: Ở nhà có ai hỏi thì nói bố đi chơi nhé!

Sợ con mải chơi quên mất, nên cẩn thận lấy bút viết vào giấy, rồi bảo:

Có ai hỏi thì con đưa cái giấy này

Con cầm giấy bỏ vào túi áo cả ngày chẳng thấy ai đến hỏi Tối đến, sẵn có ngọn đèn nó lấy giấy ra coi, chẳng may vô ý giấy cháy mất

Hôm sau có người đến hỏi: “Thầy cháu có nhà không? Nó ngẩn ngơ hồi lâu sờ vào túi không thấy liền nói:

- Mất rồi! Khách giật mình hỏi: “Mất bao giờ?”

One man was about to go away for a long time He left a letter and asked his son to give it to the guest Unfortunately, the boy fired the letter When the guest visited , he asked:

The humorous effect in the above example was inspired by the violation of quantity

The guest and the son in this story indicated two different things, the father and the letter, because the boy and the guest gave too little information When the guest asked “Where is your father?” instead of answering “My father‟s letter was lost”, the son answered “Lost” because he thought of his father‟s letter and the misunderstanding between two people continued at the end of the story The guest asked the reason “Why?”, he referred to father, and the son answered “On fire”, he indicated the letter The violation of this maxim made the two characters misunderstand and it caused laughter

In some Vietnamese funny stories, the characters are portrayed as stupid people in that they do not know where to stop or they intentionally give too much information to show off something This maxim is broken in 7 times (7%) of 100 stories

For example, in a Vietnamese funny story,

Có anh tính hay khoe của Một hôm, may được cái áo mới, liền đem ra mặc, rồi đứng hóng ở cửa, đợi có ai qua người ta khen Đứng mãi từ sáng đến chiều chả thấy ai hỏi cả, anh ta tức lắm Đang tức tối, chợt thấy một anh, tính cũng hay khoe, tất tưởi chạy đến hỏi to:

- Bác có thấy con lợn cưới của tôi chạy qua đây không?

Anh kia liền giơ ngay vạt áo ra, bảo:

- Từ lúc tôi mặc cái "áo mới" này, tôi chẳng thấy con lợn nào chạy qua đây cả

A pig for wedding, a new shirt

There was a man who always showed off One day, he was wearing a new shirt and he was standing in front of the door so that every body could see and compliment Standing all day from morning to afternoon, there was no pride, he was very angry

Suddenly, there was a man running across, he shouted:

“Do you know where my pig for wedding is?”

The man touched his shirt and answered:

“I have not seen any pig running across here since I wore this new shirt”

The speaker flouted the maxim of quantity because they gave more information than necessary The first speaker asked, “Do you know where my pig for wedding is”? And the second speaker who was showing off replied “Since I wore this new shirt, I haven‟t seen any pig running across here” They were trying to talk too much and implied that “I am going to get married and I have a new shirt” Instead of asking and answering yes/ no question, two men took advantage of making boast The funny factor here was that the first speaker asked where his pig was, not necessary his pig for wedding The other ought to answer “No”, but as a matter of fact, he touched his shirt and said two unrelated things, a new shirt and a pig

This Vietnamese funny story not only caused laughter but also criticized some bad habits for example, showing off The laughter in these stories fought against bad attitude and actions for society

In some funny stories, the character does not know where to stop or intentionally give much information for other purposes These superfluous utterances cause laughter

For example, in an English funny story;

Room For Two For our honeymoon my fiancée and I chose a fashionable hotel known for its luxurious suites When I called to make reservations, the desk clerk inquired, "Is this for a special occasion?"

"Yes," I replied "It's our honeymoon."

"And how many adults will there be?" she asked

The desk inquired is this stoty violated the maxim of quantity, because he said an unnecessary sentence Obviously, the honeymoon is for couple Such a stupid question made readers laugh

As in this Vietnamese funny story, the humor causes by a superfluous utterance

Người kia nghèo nhưng lại muốn làm sang Một hôm, có khách đến chơi Anh ta lẻn sang hàng xóm nhờ một chú bé đến bưng cơm nước hộ Anh ta dặn dò cách thức xong rồi về nhà trước ngồi đợi Đợi cả buổi, vẫn chưa thấy chú bé sang, mãi mới thấy chú bé thập thò ngoài cửa Anh ta ra oai, gọi to:

- Sao không vào bưng cơm nước ra, kẻo khách đã đói bụng, còn chờ đến bao giờ nữa?

Lúc bấy giờ, chú bé mới lễ phép thưa:

- Xin lỗi ông miễn cho, tôi sợ con chó nhà ông nó dữ quá nên từ nãy đến giờ tôi đứng đây chưa dám vào

For fear of dog One poor person wanted to show off One day, a guest visited his house He went to his neighbour’s house secretly to resort a little boy in order to serve him He gave directions and then he came back home to wait the little boy He waited for a long time until he saw the boy in front of the door He shouted:

“Why don't you bring the meal? How long do I have to wait for you?”

“I am sorry I'm afraid of your dog, so that’s why I stand here so far but I don't dare to come in"

In this funny story, the boy broke the maxim of the quantity The poor man asked him for help He waited the boy for a long time When he saw the boy appear outside the door, the man said aloud “Why don't you bring the meal? How long do I have to wait for you?” The boy should have answered: “I‟m sorry" However, the boy said excessively that

Discussion

I investigate 100 breakings of maxims in English funny stories and 100 breakings of maxims in Vietnamese funny stories Here is the result

Maxim English funny stories Vietnamese funny stories

Table 1: Breaking maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories

Chart 1: Breaking maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories

As can be seen from the chart, both English and Vietnamese funny stories the maxim of manner is the most commonly broken, 44% for Vietnamese funny stories and 39% for English funny stories The characters break the maxim by creating obscure and ambiguous utterances The author can use metaphor, metonymy, homophone, idiomatic expression, etc to have ambiguous utterances Vietnamese as well as English also use ambiguity to cause misunderstanding to the hearer All in all, these jokes are meant to sound wise and intelligent

The second most frequently broken maxim is varied in English and Vietnamese funny stories The maxim of relation is the second most frequent maxim to be broken in English funny stories, it accounts for 31% From the observed funny stories, the characters try to avoid the subject and they do not want to straight out for some reasons The second most frequent maxim to be broken in Vietnamese funny stories is the maxim of quality, it occupies 29% They are often hyperbole stories and the maxim being broken is obvious to the interlocutor and it evokes humor

Breaking the maxim of quality ranks the third in English funny stories (21%) As well as in Vietnamese funny stories, the characters say something that is not true and the authors portray the characters as odd and weird The third most commonly broken maxim in Vietnamese funny stories is the maxim of relation (20%) The hearers do not understand speakers‟ utterances so they utter irrelevantly and this causes humor

The least frequently broken maxim in English and Vietnamese funny stories is the maxim of quantity They are lower than 10% The characters intentionally give too little the characters also say too much because they want to show off something as in Vietnamese funny stories or they are out of control as in English funny stories

The above observance is not absolute because some stories violate or flout several maxims concurrently, especially, the maxim of manner and the maxim of relevance The author has chosen to disregard that and looked at which maxim is most clearly being broken

Both English and Vietnamese share roughly the same humor mechanism based on flouting or violation maxims of implicature They are created by breaking four maxims, or in other words, it flouts or violates the cooperative principle The flouting of the first maxim of quantity is provided by utterances of tautologies Overstatement, understatement, irony and hyperbole are ways of breaking quality And the maxim of relation and manner are created by giving irrelevant and obscure utterances

Furthermore, the maxim of manner is violated the most in both English and Vietnamese funny stories This maxim is broken in order to create humor by portraying the characters as odd and stupid because of their obscure and ambiguous utterances Breaking the maxim of quantity is not popular in both English and Vietnamese

After investigating from the limited breakings of maxims, the author can draw out some differences between implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims

In terms of maxim of quality, Vietnamese funny stories account for 58% ( 29 stories) compared with 42% (21 stories) in English funny stories In Vietnamese funny stories, there are amount of stories in which the characters are portrayed as boasting men, or idiot, and they always say something that is not true or lack of evidence

In terms of maxim of relation, there are a lot of English funny stories violating this maxim, about 61% (31 stories) compared with 30 % (20 stories) of Vietnamese funny stories In English funny stories, the characters do not intentionally understand interlocutors, they do not want to say straight out the topic, or they misunderstand interlocutors All these things lead to irrelevant utterances and cause humor

In terms of maxim of manner, Vietnamese tend to use this maxim more than English, 53% in Vietnamese funny stories compared with 47% in English funny stories Ambiguity based on linguistics categories is popular in both Vietnamese and English funny stories

Major Findings

In this study, the author investigates some broken maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories The data analysis reveals that both English and Vietnamese funny stories have the same implicature mechanism It is based on flouting or violating the maxims The study shows that maxims are important for writers in order to evoke feelings and reactions in their readers I have seen that it is necessary for the readers to have the characters break maxims in order to create and develop humorous and dramatic situations in verbal interaction

Without the help of Grice‟s maxims, we would not be able to properly describe the dynamics of interaction and understand the phenomenon of cooperation and non-cooperation Here it is important to note that the conversational maxims are commonly observed in funny stories for various reasons The writers adhere to different maxims in order to get the intended meaning from one speaker to another In order to create humor as well as to bring out different characteristics and personality traits in the different character, it is necessary to break the maxims However, working out the implicature of native funny stories is not an easy task for non-native speakers The study indicates that in order to properly understand funny stories, the readers are required to have a considerable background knowledge

In summary, Grice's maxims and the cooperative principle are used not only to understand how we communicate but also why and when we are uncooperative When we converse we constantly fail to observe maxims in order to emphasize a message, create irony or to avoid unpleasant situations, in other words, to communicate effectively The different non-observances lead to different interpretations which are dependent on the context in which it occurs

2 Implications for language learning and teaching

Funny story can create humor in classroom which contribute a positive environment for learning The enhancement of enjoyment is probably the most important contribution that funny story makes in the teaching of English to language students The use of humor in classroom reduces tension, improves classroom climate, increases enjoyment and student- teacher rapport, and even facilitates learning

From the selected funny stories under story, different cultural values and aspect of life are illustrated Therefore, funny stories would be important sources to help non-native speakers be aware of the native country For instance, understanding English funny story can help learners to broaden knowledge about English culture We have more understanding about English sense of humor, seeing what and who English laugh at, learners can get some sense of English characters and English values This factor plays an important role to bridge the cultural gap between English and Vietnamese, which may minimize the possibility of miscommunication when members of the two groups interact

Furthermore, funny stories with implicature can be used as a meaningful vehicle to explain and illustrate complex linguistic notions Funny story can deal with hyponymy, polysemy, metaphor and metonymy, etc Violation of maxims of implicature based on linguistics categories is rather common The learners are expected to learn these linguistic categories better because they can see how they operate in every day situations where the language is played with The implication of the study is to help Vietnamese learners of English realize and avoid making themselves funny or non-sense Let us look at an example

-“Have you ever hunted bear?”

-“No, I always hunt with my clothes on”

The first speaker mentioned one kind of animal but the second misunderstood by interpreting the first‟s question by “bear” for “naked” instead of “one kind of animal”

After investigating some selected English and Vietnamese funny stories basing on implicature, the author can see that in order to understand funny stories and to explain why these stories are humorous, the readers have to understand implicature mechanism or which maxims the characters violate For example, when the readers find the maxim of manner violated, it means that the characters‟ utterances are obscure and ambiguous And basing on the context and background knowledge, the readers can explore the implicit meaning behind the story The background knowledge is something that joketellers often rely on for a successful operation of a joke Background knowledge of a joke includes a wide range of information from geographical names, historical events, famous people, patriotic lore, values and customs, etc Therefore, understanding implicature perhaps demands the most culture- specific information Let‟s consider the following example in Vietnamese funny story

Tiễn quan Một quan huyện ăn tiền rất bẫm, với dân rất tàn nhẫn Có giấy đổi quan đi nơi khác Đợi mãi chẳng thấy ma nào lên tống tiễn cả, bà huyện gọi nha lại trách :

-“Dân tình ở đây sao mà bạc thế ! Quan phụ mẫu sắp đổi đi nơi khác mà chẳng thấy đứa nào lên tiễn chân cả”

-“Bẩm bà lớn, cả làng huyện đã sắp sẵn đồ lễ tiễn quan rồi đấy ạ!”

Bà huyện mừng rỡ hỏi:

-“Họ lễ gì thế các thầy!”

Nha lại ân cần thưa:

See off the mandarin One mandarin loved maney but badly behaved to the people He had to move to another place Waiting for so long, he could not see any people to see him off His wife ccomplained:

- “How bad the people are! Their mandarin is moving to another place., why are not there any people to see him off?

- “Yes! Madam, the villagers are going to give him some presents”

The yamen‟s clerkdom violated the maxim of manner because his utterance was obscure Firstly, it is necessary to know one of Vietnamese customs to see the death off with rice and salt It meant that the people hated mandarin so when he left the village, they gave him rice and salt In the feudalism, the mandarin treated the people, especilly, farmers badly and they were very angry with the mandarin

This story derives from the culture of the nation, which may be so obscure or difficult to perceive Consequently, encyclopedia knowledge of traditional custom of the nation of the target language is very necessary to grasp their jokes or else their competence in understanding the jokes will fail To understand of this joke, the readers have the coincidence of participants‟s background knowledge For example, in English funny stories, there are amount of jokes about the elder, doctors and lawyers The elder are laughed at absent-mindedness, weakness Doctors and lawyers are criticized of their lying Following the systems of values, they are respected, so Vietnamese readers do not find these stories humorous, an a following example,

An old man is talking to the family doctor

-"Doctor, I think my wife's going deaf."

- "Well, here's something you can try on her to test her hearing Stand some distance away from her and ask her a question If she doesn't answer, move a little closer and ask again

Keep repeating this until she answers Then you'll be able to tell just how hard of hearing she really is."

The man goes home and tries it out He walks in the door and says,

- "Honey, what's for dinner?" He doesn't hear an answer, so he moves closer to her

- "Honey, what's for dinner?" Still no answer He repeats this several times, until he's standing just a few feet away from her

- "For the eleventh time, I said we're having MEATLOAF!"

The differences in culture between the two nations manifest themselves as a big challenge for Vienamese learners of English Therefore, Vienamese learners of English are aware of culture while studying, particularly exchanging ideas in English in order to avoid ambiguity and also make yourselves as clear as possible

In the Appendix, the author gives forties English and Vietnamese funny stories to help teacher of English and Vietnamese students to teach and study implicature basing on maxims The author divides these stories into different categories so that the teachers and students easily collect funny stories depending on the aims of lessons

3 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further study

All the above things, because of the limitation of time and sources of material, are not very good to meet the demand of the readers Because my material consists of a small amount of data, there can be no generalization as to which maxims are most frequently broken in funny stories in general Furthermore, the author only focuses on the humor mechanism basing on maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories, this study has just touched a small aspect of short funny stories The author is fully aware that there are some important matters remain unanswered Interesting points which need further research are:

- A contrastive analysis study on implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of themes

- A pragmatic study on humor in English and Vietnamese funny story

- Some major cross-cultural differences and similarities in phenomena which cause laughter in English and Vietnamese funny story

Although great efforts have been made on the research, shortcomings and mistakes are unavoidable The author with sincere gratitude will appreciate any comments and advices from the readers

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APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES

For our honeymoon my fiancée and I chose a fashionable hotel known for its luxurious suites When I called to make reservations, the desk clerk inquired, "Is this for a special occasion?"

The conjurer was arranging a new stage trick, and on the day before its introduction he asked his young son to help him

Limitation of the Study and Suggestions for Further Study