Pragmatics in Comedy
Sven Jansson
Applied Linguistics
ENGB1
30/5 2011
Pragmatics in Comedy
I. Introduction.
Aim.
The aim of this paper is to see how characters in various shows flout, violate and infringe Grice’s four maxims in order to create humour. The shows I will be using are Little Britain, Bottom and Blackadder.
Terminology.
Herbert Paul Grice is considered one of the founders of the modern study of pragmatics, which deals with expressed meaning and implied meaning, in other words what is said and what is meant. Grice claimed that there are two kinds of implicature, in other words the part of an utterance that is meant but not strictly said out loud: conventional implicature and conversational implicature (Thomas 1995:57). Since this paper treats comedy it will mainly focus on conversational implicature.
Grice’s four maxims are, if not rules, but way of means to allow us to say things indirectly in order to avoid discomfort when saying uncomfortable things or to imply something without having to actually take a direct stand or viewpoint. By strictly following the maxims, the conversation in question is pretty straight forward and it is not hard to find the implicature. On the other hand, when one flouts one is more indirect and therefore generates an implicature.
Grice’s four maxims are:
Quantity: Information. Not too much, nor too little.
Quality: Truth. Do not lie.
Relation: Relevance. Stick to the topic.
Manner: Clarity. Be brief and orderly and avoid obscure expressions. Here the Cooperative Principle, which was also introduced by Grice, very important. The Cooperative Principle means that we assume that the person we are talking to speaks in good faith and has no intention of lying. So, when someone says something we know is untrue, as for example in Thomas’s example of the ambulance driver getting vomited on and exclaiming:
“Great, that’s really great! That’s really made my Christmas!” (Thomas 1995:55)
We know that hardly anyone enjoys getting vomit
Applied Linguistics
ENGB1
30/5 2011
Pragmatics in Comedy
I. Introduction.
Aim.
The aim of this paper is to see how characters in various shows flout, violate and infringe Grice’s four maxims in order to create humour. The shows I will be using are Little Britain, Bottom and Blackadder.
Terminology.
Herbert Paul Grice is considered one of the founders of the modern study of pragmatics, which deals with expressed meaning and implied meaning, in other words what is said and what is meant. Grice claimed that there are two kinds of implicature, in other words the part of an utterance that is meant but not strictly said out loud: conventional implicature and conversational implicature (Thomas 1995:57). Since this paper treats comedy it will mainly focus on conversational implicature.
Grice’s four maxims are, if not rules, but way of means to allow us to say things indirectly in order to avoid discomfort when saying uncomfortable things or to imply something without having to actually take a direct stand or viewpoint. By strictly following the maxims, the conversation in question is pretty straight forward and it is not hard to find the implicature. On the other hand, when one flouts one is more indirect and therefore generates an implicature.
Grice’s four maxims are:
Quantity: Information. Not too much, nor too little.
Quality: Truth. Do not lie.
Relation: Relevance. Stick to the topic.
Manner: Clarity. Be brief and orderly and avoid obscure expressions. Here the Cooperative Principle, which was also introduced by Grice, very important. The Cooperative Principle means that we assume that the person we are talking to speaks in good faith and has no intention of lying. So, when someone says something we know is untrue, as for example in Thomas’s example of the ambulance driver getting vomited on and exclaiming:
“Great, that’s really great! That’s really made my Christmas!” (Thomas 1995:55)
We know that hardly anyone enjoys getting vomit