AN ANALYSIS VIOLATION OF GRICE’S COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE IN HUMOR AS FOUND IN THE AMERICAN SITCOM “SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH”

Abstract

Humor is a kind of communication which tends to break cooperative principle. Humor which
resulted from the violation of cooperation principle often occurs in the conversation among
friends and colleague (Holmes and Mara,2002). Based on these phenomena the writer
described how the characters in the American sitcom “Sabrina the teenage witch” violate the
cooperative principle in order to cause funniness. In this research the writer uses contextual
meaning and pragmatig theories. The writer also uses observation method and note taking
technique in collecting data, then uses pragmatics identity method to analyze the data. In
presenting the data uses informal method. SFrom the analysis, it was found the violation
cooperative principle consists of violation maxim of quality by being lying, ironical and
exaggerating. Maxim of quantity violate by being economical with the truth, too much
unnecessary information and less informative response intentionally. Maxim of relevance
violate when speaker makes some irrelevant comment in order to refuse to answer some
question. And the last, maxim of manner violate by saying something extremely long winded
and ignoring the issue, topic and occasion. Maxim that commonly violate in order to causes
funniness in sitcom “Sabrina the teenage witch” is maxim of quality, the second highest
frequency is maxim of relevance and the third position is violation maxim of quantity.
Violation maxim of manner is the rare occur.
Key word : Cooperative principle, Conversational maxim, Violation conversational
maxim, Context, “Sabrina the teenage witch”.