A CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE ANALYSIS ON THE VERBAL HUMOR OF THE SELECTED EDITIONS OF THE BORN LOSER COMIC STRIPS

Abstract

In our daily communication, people tend to convey their intentions implicitly for some particular reasons. This phenomenon also happens in The Born Loser comic strips in which the cartoonist presents the humor implicitly to create the funny effect. This makes the humor of The Born Loser comic strips difficult to be interpreted. Considering this, the writer use the implicature theory as the frame work of this thesis to analyze the humor of the comic, with the following problems to discuss; How implicature analysis gives contribution to the readers in understanding the humor of the comics, and how comic strips should be interpreted. From those problems this thesis is aimed to describe how implicature analysis gives contribution to the readers in interpreting the humor of the comic as well as to describe how to interpret comic strips. The writer also uses the theory of humor in order to form the more comprehensive interpretation. The data of this thesis are qualitative data. The data are in the form of dialogues of The Born Loser comic strips obtained from the selected editions of The Jakarta Post News Papers. This thesis employs descriptive analysis. In the descriptive analysis, the writer does not merely describe the data but also make interpretation on them. Thus, in this thesis the writer analyze the data by using descriptive method with the theory of implicature and the theory of humor as the frame works. The result of analysis shows that all of the comic strips fail to observe the cooperative principle and generate implicature. In this way, the cartoonist tries to create the funny effect that can evoke the readers to produce laughter. This reveals that the theory of implicature gives the significant help in interpreting the comic strips. For the readers, the writer has some tips about how to interpret the humor of comic strips; first, read the comic strips carefully. Next, identify when and where the comic takes place (the context). Third, try to remember the important moment happened on the publication date of the comic because the comic strips are usually talking about the actual event happened on their publication dates. Lastly, identify the implied message that the cartoonist wants to convey to the readers by correlating the text with the context and the background knowledge.

Key words: implicature, humor, maxim, cooperative principle.