A STUDY OF HUMOR: THE OUTCOME OF FLOUTING THE MAXIMS IN YES MAN MOVIE UTTERANCES

Abstract

In daily conversation, people do not always say what they mean explicitly. It is sometimes larger than what they say. People tend to make their conversation run smoothly. Therefore, in expressing their intentions and ideas people occasionally use humor to reduce the tensions which potentially ruin their communication. By using humor, it is possible for people to say the truth softly without disturbing someone else’s feeling. However, in daily conversation, the use of humor does not always run well. Some people may misunderstand and draw wrong inference. Hence, the more comprehensive the study on humor language in linguistic perspective, the better it will be, particularly from pragmatic outlooks. Considering the phenomenon above, this thesis analyses the use of Flouting the Maxims of Cooperative Principles construct humor in Yes Man movie utterances. This study applies the mixed methods (both qualitative and quantitative methods) to analyse the data. Qualitative method is applied to describe the data in the form of sentences in the movie script and quantitative one is used to know the percentage of the result. The data are taken from Moviesubtitle.org website (http://www.moviesubtitles.org/movie-2098.html) accessed on February 24, 2015 at 7:30 pm. The data are collected by using purposive sampling. The findings of this thesis show that the Flouting the Maxims of Cooperative Principles construct humor. The dominant Flouting the Maxims is Maxim of Quantity with 52.6 % (10 utterances), whereas the least Flouting the Maxims is Maxim of Relation 5.2 % (1 utterance). Maxim of Quality and Maxim of Manner respectively follow Maxim of Quantity with 31.5 % (6 utterances) and 10.5 % (2 utterances). Besides, there are 4 utterances that flout double Maxims (Maxim of Quantity and Maxim of Manner). The result shows that the characters in Yes Man movie blatantly flout the Maxims to indicate that they have intended meanings in their conversation.