A study on how scriptwriters flout certain maxims of Grice's cooperative principle to create verbal irony through the sitcom Friends from episode 1 to 10

A study on how scriptwriters flout certain maxims of Grice's cooperative principle to create verbal irony through the sitcom "Friends" from episode 1 to episode 10 Đào Thị Vân Hồng Tr

A study on how scriptwriters flout certain maxims of Grice's cooperative principle to create verbal irony through the sitcom "Friends"

from episode 1 to episode 10

Đào Thị Vân Hồng

Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Assoc Prof Dr Trần Xuân Điệp

Năm bảo vệ: 2010

Keywords:

Content:

PART 1: THE INTRODUCTION 1.1.Rationale

Verbal irony is a common form of speech used in daily discourse The reason why irony

is deliberately chosen over its literal counterpart is because it serves several functions that cannot

be achieved through a literal utterance These functions are derived from the very nature of verbal irony that distinguishes it from a literal statement

There are many ways to create verbal irony Different approaches have different ways to clarify the mechanism in which verbal irony is generated, but none of which has reached their fulfillment This study, thus, is carried out in the light of pragmatic approach in which verbal irony is considered to be the product of the art of flouting certain maxims of Grice‟s cooperative principle (Grice, 1975) This theory helps to analyze not only the linguistic features of an ironic

utterance but also its functions in comparison with its literal counterpart This is the first reason why the author decided to choose Grice‟s cooperative principle the basis for this study

It is also necessary to provide an explanation for the choice of analyzing the scripts of the sitcom “Friends” According to Alison, “although British comedy has a high reputation and used

to claim a higher degree of subtlety and irony, some of the most popular recent sitcoms are from the USA” (2006: 91) Among all American sitcoms, “Friends” is considered to be one of the most typical and successful ones It was even so popular that it was rerun in 1997 as the beginning of Channel 4‟s night of comedy The success of the series can be attributable to many factors, among which, the great potential for verbal irony created by the language used itself plays an important part The verbal irony appeared in the series have not only attracted the young but also made “Friends” a sitcom for every family

In analyzing the scripts of the sitcom “Friends” from episode 1 to episode 10, this study aims to unpack the relationship between the verbal irony and the Cooperative Principle in the sitcom “Friends”, discover how scriptwriters flout certain maxims to create verbal irony and how the implied message behind the verbal irony is conveyed

1.2 Aims of the study

This study is carried out specifically to aim at:

(1) revisiting some theoretical background knowledge of implicatures, (especially conversational implicatures), Grice‟s cooperative principles and verbal irony

(2) investigating how verbal irony is generated by the art of flouting certain maxims

of Grice‟s conversational cooperative principles in the scripts of the sitcom “Friends” from episode 1 to episode 10

(3) identifying which of the maxims of Grice‟s conversational cooperative principle is more likely to be flouted to produce verbal irony

1.3 Research questions

This study is supposed to answer the following questions:

(1) How verbal irony is created by the art of flouting certain maxims of Grice‟s conversational cooperative principles in the scripts of the sitcom “Friends” from episode 1 to episode 10?

(2) Which of the maxims of Grice‟s conversational cooperative principle is the most likely to be flouted to produce verbal irony?

1.4 Significance of the study

1.4.1 In theory

This study is designed to enhance Grice‟s observation on how people use language to mean much more than the words they actually say It also tries to prove that in communication, when interlocutors aim to generate verbal irony, although the maxim of quality is the most likely

to be flouted as stated by Levinson (1984), other maxims are flouted as well Besides, by exploring the art of flouting certain maxims of Grice‟s cooperative principles to create irony, the author means to give evidence that linguistic features do contribute a great deal to the success of that sitcom

1.4.2 In practice

It is because language is for communication In other words, language is used to realize socio-cultural functions, some of which can be to save face or amuse people In these situations, in order to communicate successfully (in both production and reception), people should be more able to realize these functions Thus, this paper aims at facilitating interlocutors to be better-aware of the cases when speakers flout certain maxims with the intention of generating verbal irony, which helps interlocutors to be more successful in communication

1.5 Scope of the study

The research on non-observances of maxims of Grice‟s cooperative principle is so broad that it is impossible to cover all its aspects Therefore, this study narrows down the study only to the art of flouting certain maxims of Grice‟s cooperative principles to create verbal irony

Furthermore, the data are only collected from scripts of the American sitcom “Friends” in the first season (from episode 1 to episode 10) in regard with the limit of time

Also, this paper will not be able to deal with the cultural differences when analyzing ironic dialogues because of the limit of time although is also clear that, in many cases, the fact that people in non-English speaking countries cannot completely understand irony in English is due to cultural differences

Besides, in the scope of this study, figures‟ characters and traits which may have some effect on the style of humor and the change of voices which sometimes plays a important role in understanding irony will not be discussed The reason is that thorough studies on these subjects

will be too broad for this research

1.6 Design of the study

This thesis is divided into three main parts:

Part 1: Introduction This part is aimed at clarifying the rationale, objectives, research

questions, scope and outline of the study

Part 2: Development This part includes two chapters:

Chapter I: Literature review This chapter is supposed to provide the readers with the

frame of the theory of the study and some basic concepts

Chapter II: The study This chapter includes the methods employed by the study, data collection

and analysis procedures It also lays out the findings of the study

Part 3: Conclusion This part provides the recapitulation of the main ideas of the study, the

limitations of the study and suggestions for further research

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