Implicature in english funny stories

iii ABSTRACT This study is written in an attempt to uncover the implicature in English funny stories in terms of maxims.. English funny stories in terms of maxims analysis 34... The stu

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES

(HÀM NGÔN TRONG MỘT SỐ TRUYỆN CƯỜI TIẾNG ANH)

HOÀNG THỊ LIÊN

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES

(HÀM NGÔN TRONG MỘT SỐ TRUYỆN CƯỜI TIẾNG ANH)

XÁC NHẬN LUẬN VĂN ĐÃ CHỈNH SỬA THEO GÓP Ý CỦA HỘI ĐỒNG CHẤM LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ

1 Nội dung 1: Structure of chapter 3 and 4: The

methodology, finding and discussion were corrected in

line with the guided fomat

29-55

2 Nội dung 2: The objective of the study was mere

reiteration of the aims of the study

2

3 Nội dung 3: Review of previous study included the

similarities and differences between the studies review in

section 2.1 has been pointed out and met the answer for

the question the reason why there should be a study of

kind topic

The relevance of the content of section 2.2 was discussed

as request

5-27

4 Nội dung 4: The research question

Tôi xin cam đoan tôi đã chỉnh sửa theo góp ý của hội đồng

Hà Nội, ngày … tháng … năm …

HỌC VIÊN

(ký và ghi rõ họ tên)

GIÁO VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN CHỦ TỊCH HỘI ĐỒNG

(ký và ghi rõ họ tên) (ký và ghi rõ họ tên)

CỘNG HOÀ XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM

Độc lâp - Tự do - Hạnh phúc

i

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report

entitled IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES submitted in

partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2016

Hoàng Thị Liên

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Assoc Prof Ho Ngoc Trung, Ph.D

Date: ………

an academic researcher

A special word of thanks goes to lecturers in Hanoi Open University, without whose support and encouragement it would never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my friends for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

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ABSTRACT

This study is written in an attempt to uncover the implicature in English funny stories in terms of maxims The study is implemented with the investigation into selected English funny stories and collects data by writing down dialogues in which breakings of the four maxims occurred In the study, it is noticed to which of the four – quality, quantity, relation and manner is broken in each story and which are broken most frequently From that, the study points out some implications on the use of funny stories in teaching English as a foreign language so that the learners of English can understand and make full use of advantages of funny stories to make English learning less challenging

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 English funny stories in terms of maxims analysis 34

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II ABSTRACT III LIST OF TABLES IV CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the research 1

1.2 Aims of the research 2

1.3 Objectives of the research 2

1.4 Scope of the research 2

1.5 Significance of the research 2

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Review of previous studies 5

2.2 Theoretical framework 8

2.3 Theoretical background 10

2.3.1 Overview of discourse, text and context 10

2.3.2 Word meaning, Sentence meaning and Utterance meaning 12

2.3.3 Implicature 16

2.3.4 Overview of funny stories 27

2.4 Summary 28

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 29

3.1 Research-governing orientations 29

3.1.1 Research questions 29

3.1.2 Research setting 29

3.1.3 Research approach 30

3.1.4 Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis 31 3.1.5 Data analysis techniques 31

3.2 Summary 32

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 34

4.1 Findings and Discussion 34

4.1.1 Findings 34

4.1.2 Discussion 45

4.2 Pedagogical implication of the thesis 46

4.3 Summary 55

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 57

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5.1 Recapitulation 57

5.2 Concluding remarks 58

5.3 Limitations of the current research 59

5.4 Suggestions for a further research 61

REFERENCES 62

APPENDICES 65

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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the research

Language is an essential form of communication It allows people to convey and elaborate their perspectives However, there are many forms and styles of language Different countries and religions have different ancestral languages and styles of speaking Communication between individuals can occur in many ways, but the skill of communicating depends not only on the strength of one’s vocabulary, but also the ability

to express one's thoughts and ideas clearly However, in our conversational exchanges, people sometimes do not directly express their ideas According to Jenny Thomas (1995), the speaker frequently means much more than their words actually say

To point out what goes on in conversation, Grice provided four conversational maxims The speaker could have difficulty in observing a maxim but still understand the meaning through to the hearer Failing to observe a maxim is often referred to breaking a maxim In funny stories, these maxims are broken to create humor

“One of the best ways to understand people is to know what makes them laugh” (H Golden) Funny stories play an important role in social interaction A humorous story can break the tension in an awkward conversation Laughter may also relieve stress and distract people from pain Sometimes, it can be used as a means of weapon to fight again the negative things in the society

Being a student of English as a foreign language, I truely believe that the use of humor in funny stories would improve second language learning However, to understand the implicature in English funny stories

1.2 Aims of the research

The study aims at uncovering the implicature in terms of flouted conversational maxim

The study also points out the implication of the research in English teaching as a foreign language for Vietnamese learners by using funny stories

1.3 Objectives of the research

This study is carried out to

(i) point out the implicature in terms of flouting conversational maxim (ii) examine and investigate the contribution of implicature in English funny stories in learning and teaching English for English learners

1.4 Scope of the research

(i) Academic scope: The study analyzes implicatures in selected English

funny stories from reliable sources in books, on internet…of English authors

(ii) Social scope: the study focuses on one type of implicatures:

conversational implicature

1.5 Significance of the research

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The study helps readers to identify the importance of implicatures, and also give them deeper understanding about social, cultural…issues in English funny stories

By this study, they will come up with easier English It means that the output of this study is a source material that the teachers and learners can face less difficulty in teaching as well as learning English

The significance of the study is classified into two main points:

(i) Firstly, the theoretical significance helps to clarify the framework of

the study; to give suggestion for subsequent research arising from the findings for example: Comparising the implicature in English funny stories to Vietnamese funny stories…; to be meaningful to the practicing researchers in case of teaching English as a foreign language

(ii) Secondly, the practical significance of the results of the study helps to

have influence in training program; to contribute to the solution of education problems and to improve and give some better research

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis

The study begins with Certificate of originality, Acknowledgement, Abstract, and Table of contents The main body of the study consists of 5 chapters:

Chapter 1 is the Introduction This part provides a brief account of relevation information about the rationale, aims, objectives, scope, significance and Structural organization of the thesis

Chapter 2 is the Literature Review that consists of theoretical notions necessary for the study including review of previous studies and

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overview of theoretical background: discourse and text, word meaning, sentence meaning, utterance meaning, implicature and overview of funny stories

Chapter 3 is the Methodology This part includes: governing orientations and Research methods

Research-Chapter 4 focus on the Findings, Discussion and Implications of the research

The last chapter, chapter 5, is the Recapitulation, Concluding remarks, Limitation of the research and some recommendations for a further research

Apart from the three main parts, the references and the appendices of the study are also included

Firstly, the MA thesis: A study on implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories (Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung, 2010) was written in

an attempt to uncover the implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims To implement this study, 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 by violating and flouting The author looks at which of the four – quality, quantity, relevance and manner are broken in each story and which are broken most frequently

Furthermore, the author looks at the reason why and when the maxims are broken to create humor in funny stories As a result, the author draws out some similarities and differences between implicatures in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims

Secondly, the study by Yao Xiaosu, University Gent Academic year 2008-2009: Conversational Implicature Analysis of Humor in American Situation Comedy “Friends” analyzes samples on the theoretical basis of

Grice’s conversation maxims to see how the humorous conversation in

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sitcom varies from the basic rules we should obey in our daily conversation,

at the same time is also a kind of cooperative effect, and why conversational implicature is one of the mechanisms which cause the humor in sitcom Utterances only become meaningful in context When any utterance is analyzed, context always plays an important role for its interpretation This study, in the light of pragmatic approach, intends to discover the relationship between verbal irony and the cooperative principle proposed by Grice in the scripts of the American sitcom “Friends” (from episode 1 to episode 10) and unpack the great contributions of the art of flouting certain maxims to the appealing of this sitcom To provide the framework for the analysis, a more detailed account of Grice’s theory of implicature and the cooperative principle have been presented The study has been carried out

by combining both qualitative and quantitative methods After analyzing the scripts of this sitcom, 61 situations which flout certain maxims to generate verbal irony have been chosen for analysis and synthesis The data have been grouped and compared to find out which maxim is the most preferably flouted to generate verbal irony The findings of the study have proved that

in order to generate verbal irony, interlocutors can flout not only the maxim

of quality but also other three maxims

Another study named The role of conversational maxims, implicature and presupposition in the creation of huhour: An analysis

of woody Allen’s anything else ( Ramiro Nieto Álvaro, 2011; Department

of English Philology I, UCM) concentrates on the analysis of different instances of conversation, extracted from the film Anything Else, which give rise to humour Humour is a usual phenomenon but quite complex to analyse, from the linguistic point of view, due to the varied factors that come into play to create it The purpose of this paper is not to analyse all the resources used to create verbal humour but to show that the

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recurrent use of implicature and presupposition, functioning as linguistic mechanisms of humour and being combined with other rhetorical figures, generate humour and hilarious situations in the different scenes of Allen's comedy Although there is much literature and research on humour and conversational implicature in the analysis of everyday interaction (funny stories, casual speech, etc.), there has been less attention paid to the role of implicature and presupposition as humour generators in other realms such as cinema The present study will try to throw some light

on the field and provide suggestions for prospective research, by means of a substantial examination of humorous texts To this end, a quantitative analysis with a collection of empirical data has been followed to describe the characteristics and peculiarities of Woody Allen's humour from a strictly linguistic and pragmatic perspective Thus, three big different areas were brought together to elaborate this paper: humour, cinema and linguistics

All in all, the review of related studies has been made It was observed that the previous studies were focused on similarities and differences between implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims and the analysis of different instances of conversation which give rise to funny aspect It is for the reason that it is the way of bridging the perceived thing in line with the chosen course or field that is suited for them and to be able to enhance the knowledge and skills that can

be used as a weapon in creating humour Meanwhile, my study shows that maxims are important for writers in order to evoke feelings and reactions in their readers As being shown, the in-depth examination of the maxims, as well as the related implicature contribute to find out the linguistic mechanisms that help produce laughter when reading funny stories, and more generally, when talking in everyday conversation Besides, the limited scope of this study makes me not able to compare the implicature in English

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funny stories to the implicature in Vietnamese funny stories in terms of four maxims of Grice The study has been completed with my greatest efforts and to the best of my knowledge and understanding However, it is obvious that shortcomings and inadequacies are unavoidable Therefore, any comments or corrections from the readers for better work would be highly appreciated

2.2 Theoretical framework

Among modern studies in this field, a lot of explorations have been made from perspectives like semantics, syntax, pragmatics and rhetorics…… Pepicello (1983) summarizes the linguistic analyses of linguistic humor and riddles in particular He attached considerable importance to developmental changes in children’s linguistic humor, proposing that linguistic studies of humor and psychological studies of humor should be complementary In Hockett’s analysis of linguistic humor, funny stories are a variety of humorous vehicles with a bipartite structure: buildup and “punch line” (Quoted from Pepicello, 1983) Although semantic-oriented studies on humor prevailed in the early years of humor research, many recent studies have given attention to the social factors, especially in pragmatic oriented studies of humor and funny situation

According to Grice (1975), people assume that normal conversation should follow these rules, and they try to infer the underlying meaning of utterances in which the maxims are violated For example, someone who

enters a dirty room and says, “What a beautiful room this is!” violates the

rule that one should tell the truth A listener who can detect this violation may infer the speaker's underlying meaning to be sarcasm Understanding conversational rules is therefore fundamental for smooth communication, and conversational rules that are shared in society may contribute to mutual

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understanding during conversation However, people may have difficulty understanding some of these conversational rules Despite the importance of the Grice maxims, few empirical studies have examined people’s understanding of them, and the results have been mixed, and a few maxims have been examined only

Grice’s Cooperative Principle consists of several maxims that appear simple, straightforward, and commonsensical at first sight However, these principles can be observed at work on a highly technical level in language whenever spoken or written texts are analyzed And they can be found in any text of any genre in any language If a speaker violates one or more of these fundamental maxims, the communication breaks down In a successful discourse, you can relate this success to their observance When misunderstanding occurs, you can demonstrate that the breakdown is generally due to a violation of one or more of the maxims The degree to which these principles are obeyed and applied is a criterion for the evaluation of the quality of a text As can be seen in the following statement

by Benthan Davis (2000) :“It had been noted that at the discourse level there

is no one-to-one mapping between linguistic form and utterance meaning A particular intended meaning, which could be produced via a direct speech act, could in fact be conveyed by any number of indirect speech acts.” Grice (1975) is concerned with this distinction between saying and meaning How

do speakers know how to generate these implicit meanings, and how can they assume that their addressees will reliably understand their intended meaning? His aim is to discover the mechanism underlying this process Here is an example given by Jean Stilwell Peccei (2000):

(a)Tom: Are you going to Mark’s party tonight?

(b)Annie: My parents are in town

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In the above example, a competent speaker of English would have little trouble getting the meaning that by saying that “My parents are in town” Annie refuses the invitation Grice posits the Cooperative Principle and its attendant four maxims as a way of explaining this implication generating process

"Discourse: a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative" (Crystal, 1992)

Cook (1989: 156) shares his similar idea with Crystal that discourse is

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 events involving language in context” (1993:118)

In general, discourse is defined differently but had something in common Discourse is understood as language in use, which can reflect people’s point of view and value systems

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The relationship between discourse and text, context

The relationship between discourse and text was raised in the recent debate in Applied Linguistics between Widdowson and De Beaugrande involved a dispute about the relationship between text and discourse Widdowson sees the two as distinction My reading of his position is that discourse is text in use but that texts in corpora or presumably other linguistic collections of language are not discourse

Texts need to be “brought to life” to become discourse The texts which are collected in a corpus have a reflected the reality, they are only real because of the presupposed reality of the discourses of which they are a trace

As Crystal states: 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” 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 According to Nunan (1993:7),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

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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 The role of context in discourse analysis is considered as:

Eliminating Ambiguity: Ambiguity refers to a word, phrase, sentence or group of sentences with more than one possible interpretations or meanings There are two kinds of ambiguities: lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity

Indicating Referents: To avoid repetition, we usually use such words like: “ I, you, he, this, that” to replace some noun phrases, or words like: “

do, can, should” to replace verb phrases, or “ then, there” to replace adverbial phrase of time and place

Detecting Conversational Implicature: Grice found that when people

communicate with each other, they do not always adhere to the four maxims The violation of a maxim may result in the speaker conveying, in addition to the literal meaning of his utterance, an additional meaning, which is conversational implicature

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

2.3.2 Word meaning, Sentence meaning and Utterance meaning

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Words are regarded as “the smallest indivisible meaningful units of a

language which can operate independently.” (Nguyen Hoa, 2004) There are four major components of word meaning: denotation, connotation, structural meaning and categorical meaning:

Denotative meaning is the explicit, literal meaning 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 Connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content Connotations vary considerably according to culture, historical period, and personal experience It is undetermined and open-ended in a sense in which conceptual meaning is not

For example: The word “snake” in denotative meaning denotes an animal with a long tapering body and with salivary glands often modified to produce venom which is injected through grooved or tubular fangs, however, in connotative meaning, “snake” to people in general: neutral connotation: a cold-blooded, legless reptile, has little emotional content To

a snake-bitten person: negative connotation: horrible, dangerous, scary animal

A sentence is the largest unit of grammatical organization within which

parts of speech (For example: nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives…) and grammatical classes (For example: word, phrase, clause) are said to function In English a sentence normally contains one independent clause The meaning of a sentence is not the sum of the meanings of the words used

in the sentence It is more correct to regard it as a function of the meanings

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of the words used in the sentence, modality, and structural meaning signaled

by the way words are organized into sentences

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- Nguyen Hoa (2004) According to Halliday (1994), the semantic structure of the sentence incorporates three components: representational, interpersonal, and textual

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

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 An utterance is an act of speech or writing at a

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particular time and in a particular place An utterance contains the meaning

of the sentence, the meaning of the circumstances, the people involved, their back ground (Nguyen Hoa, 2004)

The term ‘utterance’ can be used in two different senses In the process sense, utterances are now known as speech acts In the product sense, utterances are referred to as inscriptions, the verbal records of utterances

For example: I would like to thank all of you for your help In the process

sense, uttering this sentence is considered as the act of thanking In the product sense, the utterance “I would like to thank you all for your help” is the verbal record of the act of uttering this sentence (Ho Ngoc Trung,

Searle (1969) also divides speech act into five types: 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

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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

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

2.3.3 Implicature

“Implicature” account for what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean,

as distinct from what the speaker literally says Implicature is one of the ways in which one proposition can be conveyed by (a speaker uttering)

another (under appropriate circumstances) For xample: Some of the students are intelligent Not all the students are intelligent Utterance

meaning + Implicatures = Intended meaning Implicature can be either conversational implicature or conventional implicature (Ho Ngoc Trung,

2014)

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Grice discussed two different types of implicatures, including the

conventional and the conversational implicature:

Conversational implicature is generated directly by the speaker depending on the context The same expressed meaning can have different

implications on different occasions (Grice, 1961)

There is a general idea that people involved in a conversation will cooperate with each other In most cases, the assumption of cooperation is

so pervasive that it can be stated as a cooperative principle of conversation and elaborated in four sub-principles called maxims Conversational implicatures are the implicatures that derive from the cooperative principle

of conversation and a number of maxims expected to be followed by participants in a speech event For example:

A: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese

B: Ah, I brought the bread

(Ho Ngoc Trung, 2014)

The conventional implicature has the same implication no matter what the context is It does not have to occur in conversation and does not depend

on special contexts for their interpretation (Grice, 1961)

In contrast to conversational implicatures, conventional implicatures are not based on the cooperative principle or the maxims They do not have to occur in conversation and they do not depend on special contexts for their interpretation Conventional implicatures are associated with specific words and result in additional conveyed meanings when those words are used For

example: Even John came to the party He even helped tidy up afterwards (Ho Ngoc Trung, 2014)

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The difference between the two lies in the fact that what a speaker conventionally implicates by uttering a sentence is tied in some way to the timeless meaning of part of the sentence, whereas what a speaker conversationally implicates is not directly connected with timeless meaning Grice's best-known example of conventional implicature involves the word

‘but', which, he argues, differs in meaning from the word ‘and' only in that

we typically conventionally implicate something over and above what we say with the former but not with the latter In uttering the sentence ‘She was poor but she was honest', for example, we say merely that she was poor and she was honest, but we implicate that poverty contrasts with honesty (or that

her poverty contrasts with her honesty)

Grice makes it clear that what a speaker conventionally implicates by uttering a sentence is part of what the speaker means in uttering it, and that

it is also closely connected to what the sentence means Nonetheless, what a speaker conventionally implicates is not a part of what the speaker says U's

doing x might be his uttering the sentence "She was poor but she was honest" What U meant, and what the sentence means, will both contain

something contributed by the word "but", and I do not want this contribution

to appear in an account of what (in my favored sense) U said (but rather as a conventional implicature) Grice did not elaborate much on the notion of conventional implicature, but many other authors have tried to give more extensive theories of it, including Lauri Karttunen and Stanley Peters Kent

Bach, Stephen Neale, and Christopher Potts…

The general principles Grice proposed are what he called the Cooperative principle and the Maxims of Conversation According to Grice, the cooperative principle is a norm governing all cooperative interactions

among humans

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Cooperative Principle: "Make your contribution such as it is required,

at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." (Grice 1989: 26) The conversational maxims can be thought of as precisifications of the

cooperative principle that deal specifically with communication

Conversational maxim is Grice’s second theory It is essentially a theory about how people use language In the theory, he developed the concept of conversational implicature Conversational implicature is realized through the four maxims under general principle of conversation (Nguyen Hoa,

2004)

(i) The maxim of quality

a) Do not say what you believe to be false, and

b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

The idea can be shown by the examples given by Levinson (1983):

A: John has two PhDs

It means that I believe he has, and have adequate evidence that he has Thus,

it explains why such an utterance as “John has two PhDs but I do not believe he has.” is impossible According to Levinson (ibid.), the sentence is pragmatically anomalous because it contradicts the standard Quality maxim that one believes what one asserts

B: Does your farm contain 400 acres?

We can paraphrase B’s utterance as “I do not know if your farm contains

400 acres, and I want to know if it does.” This example extends the scope of Quality maxim when viewing truth as a special sub-case of sincerity applied

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to assertion; when one asks a question, one may standardly be taken to be asking sincerely and hence to be lacking and requiring the requested information

In conclusion, Levinson (ibid.) states that “Normally then, in co-operative circumstances, when one asserts something one implicates that one believes

it, when one asks a question one implicates that one sincerely desires an answer and, by extension, when one promises to do x, one implicates that one sincerely intends to do x, and so on Any other use of such utterances is likely to be a spurious or counterfeit one, and thus liable to violate the maxim of Quality.”

Obviously, the two conditions are both subjective and make up a general condition that people should be sincere about what they speak out

For example:

John: I'm gonna flunk this course

Mary: Sure, just like you flunk every course you take

Suppose John has passed every course so far, and Mary knows this Mary is flouting quality by forcing John to think about other courses taken, Mary

conveys that John should be more optimistic

(ii) The maxim of quantity

a) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange)

b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

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The effect of the maxim is to add to most utterances a pragmatic inference

to the effect that the statement presented is the strongest, or more informative, that can be made in situation

For example:

Boys will be boys

Assuming that the speaker is being cooperative, the point may be to indicate that hearer should not expect some particular boy to behave otherwise

The maxim of quantity requires speaker to give sufficient information, which means not more or less than required by the situation Let’s look at the following situation given by Levinson (ibid.):

A: How did Harry fare in court the other day?

B must intend to convey that Harry only got a fine

(iii) The maxim of relation

a) Be relevation

Make your contribution relevation to the context and situation in which the utterance occurs This maxim points out that participants center about the same topic and avoid asserting something irrelevation

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For example:

John: Where's the roast beef?

Mary: The dog looks happy

Mary means something like the dinner has been eaten by the dog She doesn't say that - we work it out on the basis that what she says is relevation

to John’s question

This maxim directs speakers to organize their utterances in such a way that they are relevation to the ongoing context and situation in which the utterance occurs (Thomas 1995:70) For example:

A: I do think Mrs Jenkins is an old windbag, do not you?

B: I wouldn’t agree more

B’s utterance is considered relevation since when A asks a question about B’s opinion, B provides an answer showing his agreement with A’s idea

(iv) The maxim of manner

a standard sentence calls for

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For example:

John: Let's get the kids something

Mary: OK, but not I-C-E C-R-E-A-M

Mary is going out of their way to be a bit obscure, spelling out the words rather than simply saying them Mary flouts Manner so flagrantly that John can infer that there must be a special reason for her being so uncooperative (For example Mary does not want the kids to complain that they are being denied a treat.)

The maxim of manner is a matter of being clear and orderly when conversing The speaker describes things in the order in which they occurred and avoids ambiguity and obscurity (Thomas 1995:64) The idea can be proved by the following example:

A: Can you tell me the time?

B: It’s four o’clock

In this example, B sticks himself to the maxim of manner when he provides

a clear and brief response to A’s question about time

Grice’s four maxims have made it possible to explain how we interpret meaning in interactions If not committed ourselves into such certain conversational rules, effective communication would be impossible However, when introducing the Cooperative Principles, what Grice is actually aiming at is not telling speakers how they should behave in a conversation but only suggesting that in a normal successful conversational interaction, participants work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is

in operation, unless they receive indications to the contrary This doesn’t

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mean that breaking one or some of these maxims would necessarily lead to the breakdown of a conversation In fact, humans tend to break these maxims as much as they follow them The only explanation for this is that while choosing not to stick to one of the maxims, the speaker has decided to follow it in a deeper level This phenomenon will be discussed further in the following part of this paper

Non-observance of Grice's maxims

Violating a maxim is the “unostentatious non-observance of a maxim” If a speaker violates a maxim s/he will be “liable to mislead”- Grice (1975) Thomas (1995) talks about an intentionally misleading implicature that is generated He (1995) points out that these types of utterances are typically found in activities such as trials, parliamentary speeches and arguments

Flouting a maxim: A flout occurs when a speaker blatantly fails to observe

a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or misleading, but because s/he wants the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from, or in addition to, the expressed meaning A speaker flouts the maxim of Quantity by blatantly giving either more or less information than the situation demands For example:

The two friends Ross and Rachel get drunk one night in Vegas and make the mistake of getting married At the breakfast table Ross and Rachel’s friends ask them what they are going to do Ross has already been married twice before and knows the routine of divorce:

Rachel: Oh I guess we’ll just find a divorce lawyer

Chandler: I think, I think Ross already has one

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Chandler knows that Ross has a divorce lawyer and flouts the maxim

of quality when he claims to think Ross has one and does not say that he knows Ross does Everyone understands the implicature and the effect is

humorous

Opting out a maxim: when “the speaker is unwilling to cooperate in the

way the maxim requires” (Thomas, 1995) An example of opting out can be:

John is a doctor who has complete confidentiality regarding his patients He is asked by the press to reveal something about the patient that

he is treating and he replies:

John: I am sorry but I can’t tell you anything

John opts out of the maxim of quantity when he gives less

information than what is requested

Infringing a maxim: the speaker fails to observe a maxim with no

intention of generating and implicature and with no intention of deceiving This could occur because the speaker has an imperfect command of the language (a child or a foreigner), s/he is nervous, drunk or because of some cognitive impairment (Thomas, 1995) Let’s consider the following situation:

(Someone learning English as a second language speaks to a native speaker)

English speaker: Would you like ham or salad on your sandwich? Non-English speaker: Yes

The non-English speaker has not intentionally generated an implicature, he/ she has not understood the utterance because of his/ her unqualified English proficiency He has thought that this is a normal yes/

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no question and has not realized that this is a preference question Clearly,

in this situation, he does not give sufficient information which is required, which means that he fails to observe the maxim of quantity, or infringe the maxim of quantity

Suspending a maxim: This category may be culture-specific Instances of

the suspension of the maxim of Quality can be found in funeral orations and obituaries, of the maxim of Manner in poetry, of the maxim of Quantity in the case of telegrams, telexes some international phone calls and of all three maxims in the case of funny stories In many cases, the speaker chooses not

to say something or not to state the complete truth because that is something

he should not mention in moral or cultural respects This is called

“suspending a maxim” (Thomas 1995: 77) To illustrate with an example from Thomas (1995):

… They told he could not be cured, Biste’s daughter said in a shaky voice She cleared her throat, whipped the back of her hand across her eyes

‘That man was strong’, she continued ‘His spirit was strong He didn’t give

up on things He didn’t want to die He did hardly say anything at all I asked him I said, My father, why – she stopped…

“Never speak the name of the dead, Chee thought Never summon the Chindi to you, even if the name of the ghost is Father” (Thomas 1995:77)

Chee suspends the maxim of quantity when mentioning a name of a dead person, a taboo in her culture

Politeness as an explanation for maxim non-observance: Leech (1983) sees politeness as crucial in explaining “why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean” and as “rescuing the cooperative

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principle” in the sense that politeness can satisfactorily explain exceptions

to and apparent deviations from the cooperative principle (1983)

Grice follows his summary of the maxims by suggesting that "one might need others", and goes on to say that "There are, of course, all sorts of other maxims (aesthetic, social, or moral in character), such as "Be polite", that are also normally observed by participants in exchanges, and these may also generate nonconventional implicatures."

2.3.4 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 four theories for what people find humorous: incongruity theory, superiority theory, relief theory and play theory

Relief theories and Play theories tend to focus on the function humor serves in human life, though the functional question cannot be separated from characterizing amusement, or the humor response

Superiority theorists tend to focus on what feelings are necessary for there to be humor, or why we find some things funny

Incongruity theories have the most to say about the object of humor, though variants identify humor with the way we respond to a perceived incongruity Though the functional, stimuli, and response questions are not neatly separated, the differing schools tend to assume that one question is more basic than the others

There are four typical forms of funny story:

· eccentricity (against the authority of social convention)