a study on implicature in english and vietnamese funny stories = hàm ngôn trong truyện cười tiếng anh và tiếng việt

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG A STUDY ON IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH AND VIETN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG

A STUDY ON IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FUNNY STORIES (Hàm ngôn trong truyện cười tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: M.A Đào Thu Trang

HANOI-2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG

A STUDY ON IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FUNNY STORIES (Hàm ngôn trong truyện cười tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: M.A Đào Thu Trang

HANOI-2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… ii

ABSTRACT……… iii

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURE……… vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION……… 1

1 Rationale……… 1

2 Aims of the Study……… 2

3 Scope of the Study 2

4 Method of the Study 2

5 Organization of the Study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

1.1 Overview of Discourse Analysis 4

1.1.1 Definition of Discourse 4

1.1.2 Discourse versus Text 4

1.1.3 Discourse Analysis 5

1.1.4 Context in Discourse Analysis 6

1.2 Word Meaning 6

1.3 Sentence Meaning 7

1.4 Utterance Meaning 8

1.5 Implicature 12

1.5.1 The Notion of Implicature 12

1.5.2 The Cooperative Principal and Maxims 13

1.5.2.1 The Maxim of Quantity 13

1.5.2.2 The Maxim of Quality 14

1.5.2.3 The Maxim of Relation 15

1.5.2.4 The Maxim of Manner 16

1.5.3 Non- Observance 16

1.6 Overview of Funny Stories 17

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 19

2.1 Research question 19

2.2 Data collection 19

2.3 Data Analysis 19

2.3.1 Maxim of Quantity 19

2.3.2 Maxim of Quality 24

2.3.3 Maxim of Relation 27

2.3.4 Maxim of Manner 30

2.4 Discussion 34

2.4.1 Result and Discussion of the Result……… 34

2.4.2 Similarities 35

2.4.3 Differences 35

PART C: CONCLUSION 37

1 Major Findings 37

2 Implications to Language Teaching and Learning 37

3 Limitation of the Study and Suggestions for Further Study 40

REFERENCES 42 APPENDICES……… I APPENDIX 1: ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES I APPENDIX 2: VIETNAMESE FUNNY STORIES V

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURE

Table 1: Breaking maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories………34 Figure 1: Breaking maxims in English and Vietnamese funny stories……

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 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

2 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

3 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

4 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

5 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

Chapter 1: Literature review

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

Part C: Conclusion

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

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

1.1.2 Discourse versus text

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

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

1.1.4 Context in discourse analysis

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

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

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

1.3 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

For example

Can you get me some water, please? Request

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

1.4 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

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

Locutionary act

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

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

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

1.4.2 Types of speech act

Austin’s classifications

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’ s classifications

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

The basic function of all the above utterances is a command/ request that the speaker wants the addressee not to stand in front of the TV However, only the imperative structure in (a) represents a direct speech act The interrogative structure in (b) is not being used only as a question, hence it is an indirect speech act The declarative structure in (c) and (d) are also indirect requests

1.5 Implicature

1.5.1 The notion of 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

For example:

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

For example

A: Am I in time for supper?

B: I’ve cleared the table

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

Or be helpful

(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

1.5.2.1 The maxim of quantity

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

Consider another example;

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

1.5.2.2 The maxim of quality

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

Thầy sờ vòi bảo:

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

Thầy sờ ngà bảo:

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

Thầy sờ tai bảo:

- 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

1.5.2.3 The maxim of relation

Be relevant

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

1.5.2.4 The maxim of manner

1 Avoid obscurity of expression

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

1.5.3 Non- observance

Any failing to observe a maxim may be referred to as “breaking a maxim” When a speaker breaks a maxim, the hearer looks for the implicature since he/she assumes the cooperative principle to be in operation Non-observance of maxims is often used intentionally in order to evoke humor Grice discussed five ways of not observing a maxim They are flouting (the speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim), violating (unostentatious non- observance of a maxim), infringing (the speaker fails to observe a maxim without any intentions), suspending and opting out (the speaker indicates unwillingness to cooperate in the way the maxim requires) of a maxim (Thomas, 1995: 64) As a result consequent upon non-observance of certain maxims, the speaker‟s utterance may communicate something completely different from what was said It leads to a breakdown of normal codes of cooperation and causes humor In this study, the author focuses on violating and flouting

1.5.3.1 Flouting

“A flout occurs when a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim at the level of what

is said, with the deliberate intention of generating an implicature” (Thomas 1995:65) When flouting a maxim, the speaker does not intend to mislead the hearer but wants the hearer to look for the conversational implicature, that is, the meaning of the utterance not directly stated in the words uttered Therefore, when the speaker intentionally fails to observe a maxim the purpose may be to effectively communicate a message

1.5.3.2 Violating

A: Where does Gerard live?

B: Somewhere in the South of France

B implicates that he does not know exactly where Gerard lives B violates quantity because

B gives less information than required

When violating a maxim the speaker intends to mislead the hearer The speaker speaks the truth but implies what is false

1.6 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

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 2.1 Research question

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

2.2 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

2.3 Data analysis

2.3.1 Maxim of quantity

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

That’s Why

A woman told her husband:

“It is sad when you are away!”

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

“Yes, that’s why…”

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

“Mất rồi”

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?”

- Tối hôm qua!

- Sao mà mất?

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,

“Lợn cưới, áo mới”

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

English version

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

Sợ chó

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

English version

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?”

The boy answered politely:

“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

"I'm sorry I'm afraid of your dog, so I stand here so far but I don't dare to come in" This made the story humorous The story censured snobbish people in society The readers had chance to laugh at man‟s bad habit and appreciated the boy's intelligence

And this situation also exists in English funny stories, the character gives too much information

Second Marriage

'If I were to die first, would you remarry?" the wife asked

"Well," says the husband, "I'm in good health, so why not?"

"Would she live in my house?"

"It's all paid up, so yes."

"Would she drive my car?"

"It's new, so yes."

"Would she use my golf clubs?"

"No She's left-handed."

The man‟s answer in the last sentence violated the maxim of quantity because he gave more information than necessary His implicature was that he had another woman already because he knew his mistress‟s habit

2.3.2 Maxims of quality

Breaking of the maxim of quality is often seen in hyperbole in funny stories, which is utilized to give ostensibly false statements, especially in Vietnamese funny stories, it accounts for 29% and in English funny stories, it accounts for 21% On the other hand, this principle is also violated if the speaker lacks adequate evidence The characters break the maxim of quality in order to create humor when claiming something that they lack evidence for When the maxim of quality is broken, it is obvious to the interlocutor that the speaker is telling a lie

For example, in this English funny story, the character gave false statement

Looking around

I was walking into the store the other day when I saw this blind man with his seeing eye dog Suddenly, the man grabbed the dog’s leash, and started swinging the dog around his head I walked up and said “Hey, what the hell are you doing"?

The blind man said “Oh nothing, just looking around."

The blind man in this story violated the maxim of quality because he said something that lacked evidence Neither he nor his dog could look around We know that blind people can not see, and they therefore use a guide dog to help them walk around and do other basic tasks The man was in a shop and, of course, he could not see anything He then started swinging the dog in the air and thought that it could help him find things, but we knew that it was not the truth It implied that the man did not know the limitations of his guide dog and thought it could do much more than it was capable of We laughed at the blind man‟s stupidity, and the image of a man swinging a dog in the air

The following case in Vietnamese funny stories, the characters tries to tell lies and mislead the hearer There are large amount of Vietnamese funny stories which violate this maxim These stories focus on boasting men For example,

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