a study on implicature in english and vietnamese funny stories ham ngon trong truyen cuoi tieng anh va tieng viet

This thesis was written in an attempt to uncover the implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims. The study is in three parts and the main part consists of three chapters. The first gives literature reviews on semantics, pragmatics and discourse issues, the second is about methodology and the last is findings and discussion. To implement this study, the author investigates randomly 100 breakings of maxims in English and 100 breakings of maxims in Vietnamese funny stories. The author collects data by writing down dialogues where breakings of the four maxims occurred, mainly violating and flouting. The author looks at which of the four – quality, quantity, relevance and manner are broken in each story and which are broken most frequently. Furthermore, the author looks at the reason to why and when the maxims are broken to create humor in funny stories. As a result, the author draw out some similarities and differences between implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims. Finally, the study puts forward some implications for the English teaching and learning so that the learners of English can understand make full use of advantages of funny stories to make English learning less challenging.

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG

A STUDY ON IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FUNNY STORIES (Hàm ngôn trong truyện cười tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: M.A Đào Thu Trang

HANOI-2010

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HỒNG NHUNG

A STUDY ON IMPLICATURE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FUNNY STORIES (Hàm ngôn trong truyện cười tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: M.A Đào Thu Trang

HANOI-2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP……… i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… ii

ABSTRACT……… iii

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURE……… vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION……… 1

1 Rationale……… 1

2 Aims of the Study……… 2

3 Scope of the Study 2

4 Method of the Study 2

5 Organization of the Study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

1.1 Overview of Discourse Analysis 4

1.1.1 Definition of Discourse 4

1.1.2 Discourse versus Text 4

1.1.3 Discourse Analysis 5

1.1.4 Context in Discourse Analysis 6

1.2 Word Meaning 6

1.3 Sentence Meaning 7

1.4 Utterance Meaning 8

1.5 Implicature 12

1.5.1 The Notion of Implicature 12

1.5.2 The Cooperative Principal and Maxims 13

1.5.2.1 The Maxim of Quantity 13

1.5.2.2 The Maxim of Quality 14

1.5.2.3 The Maxim of Relation 15

1.5.2.4 The Maxim of Manner 16

1.6 Overview of Funny Stories 17

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 19

2.1 Research question 19

2.2 Data collection 19

2.3 Data Analysis 19

2.3.1 Maxim of Quantity 19

2.3.2 Maxim of Quality 24

2.3.3 Maxim of Relation 27

2.3.4 Maxim of Manner 30

2.4 Discussion 34

2.4.1 Result and Discussion of the Result……… 34

2.4.2 Similarities 35

2.4.3 Differences 35

PART C: CONCLUSION 37

1 Major Findings 37

2 Implications to Language Teaching and Learning 37

3 Limitation of the Study and Suggestions for Further Study 40

REFERENCES 42

APPENDICES……… I APPENDIX 1: ENGLISH FUNNY STORIES I APPENDIX 2: VIETNAMESE FUNNY STORIES V

ABSTRACT

This thesis was written in an attempt to uncover the implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims The study is in three parts and the main part consists of three chapters The first gives literature reviews on semantics, pragmatics and discourse issues, the second is about methodology and the last is findings and discussion

To implement this study, the author investigates randomly 100 breakings of maxims

in English and 100 breakings of maxims in Vietnamese funny stories The author collects data by writing down dialogues where breakings of the four maxims occurred, mainly violating and flouting The author looks at which of the four – quality, quantity, relevance and manner are broken in each story and which are broken most frequently Furthermore, the author looks at the reason to why and when the maxims are broken to create humor in funny stories As a result, the author draw out some similarities and differences between implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories in terms of maxims Finally, the study puts forward some implications for the English teaching and learning so that the learners of English can understand make full use of advantages of funny stories to make English learning lesschallenging