A Study of the flouting of conversational maxims in Srimulat show, Sampek Engtay - Digital Collection of Petra Christian University

Conversation is very important in communication. When people have
conversation, there is a risk that one could misunderstand the others. Thus, Paul Grice
(1965), propose a principle called "Cooperative Principle" in conversation. This principle
has to be followed so that people could have a smooth conversation. To fulfill this
principle, Grice states four maxims to be followed. However, from some investigations,
the flouting of maxims could create humorous effects in certain situation such as comedy.
This phenomenon interested me to investigate the flouting of maxims in Srimulat
comedian group. Thus, I began to investigate the flouting of Conversational Maxim that
happened in one episode of Srimulat?s performances, entitled "Sampek Engtay" and
performed in Indosiar on October 2 nd 2001. I chose Srimulat because besides it is the
most famous comedian groups in Indonesia, the characters in the group are witty people,
and they are very clever in playing with words. I chose the episode "Sampek Engtay",
because the setting of the story in Chinese, so I assume that there would be many chances
for the characters to play with words, especially in mixing Indonesian, Javanese and
Chinese. Besides Grice?s theory, I also used some theories about humor from Raskin
(1985), Norrick (1986), and Attardo (1993). In this investigation, I wanted to know what
maxims were flouted and what maxim was flouted the most by the characters in Srimulat.
From the study, I found that the characters in Srimulat comedian group flouted three
maxims, namely Maxim of Relevance, Maxim of Manner and Maxim of Quality while
Maxim of Quantity was never flouted. The most flouted maxim was the Maxim of
Relevance, the second was the Maxim of Manner and the third was the Maxim of
Quality. The flouting of the maxims showed that in a certain conversation, people might
flout the maxims to cause humor, and that what was used by Srimulat as one of their
strategies to make the audience laugh. However, it might be difficult to achieve smooth
conversation if we deliberately flout the maxims. It can cause misunderstanding or
conflict. This flouting that causes humorous effect only can be done in certain situation
such as in a comedy.

Contributor
• (84-001) Nani Indrajani Tjitrakusuma
• (94-029) Aylanda Hidayati Dwi Nugroho

Keyword
discourse analysis, indonesian language, semantics, srimulat, sampek engtay, conversational maxims

Category
s1 - Skripsi/Undergraduate Thesis (Program Studi Sastra Inggris S-1)

Rights
Undergraduate Thesis No. 01011296/ING/2004; Fanny (11499097)
The resource(s) is/are owned by the Creator/Contributor.Reproduction & distribution for non-commercial purposes is permitted provided that the credit for the Creator/Contributor and the source are explicitly stated,and no alteration are made

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