An implicature analysis on “The Funniest Joke in The World” article in the “Reader’s Digest”

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on analyzing jokes using theory of implicature and cooperative principles proposed by Grice. This study aims to (1) identify kinds of implicatures as it is found in “The Funniest Joke in the World” article in the “Reader’s Digest”, and (2) discover how the implicatures are used in “The Funniest Joke in The World” article in the “Reader’s Digest”

This research applies descriptive qualitative method and Grice’s theory of implicature to analyze the data. The data were selected from “The Funniest Joke in the World” article in the “Reader’s Digest” published in September 2009.

This study shows several findings: (1) the implicatures used in “the Funniest Joke in the World” article in the “Reader’s Digest” could be categorized into conventional implicature and conversational implicature. Conversational implicature was divided into generalized conversational implicature and particularized conversational implicature. (2) Conventional implicature was used when the writer of the joke used conventional utterance to express the meaning behind utterance. The generalized conversational implicature was used when the writer made the utterance become context-free. The readers can guess the meaning behind the utterance with their general knowledge and did not have to refer to particular context in order to understand the utterance. Furthermore, particularized conversational implicature was used when the writer made the utterance become context-bound. The meanings behind the utterances depend on the context and the readers have to infer to special context and could not understand the implied meaning without reading the whole text (jokes).

From cooperative principle point of view, the writers of the jokes story usually obey maxim of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. However, the writer wrote some of the utterances that violate the maxims in order to provide the effect of humor of the jokes. The violations of maxims make the jokes look funnier and raise the readers’ curiosity to understand the meaning behind the utterances.

Finally, the researcher suggests to the future researchers to conduct further research concerning the study of implicatures used in other objects, such as: picture, sign, label, etc. They also can use other theory of implicature for analyze their data.