Flouting Gricean Maxims for Comic Implicatures in Hassan El Fad’s Sitcom Comedy Tendance Forth Episode

Abstract

This paper explores how the flouting of the Gricean maxims is used to bring about comedy and humorous effect in Hassan El Fad’s 4th episode of Tendance sitcom. Therefore, it aims at finding out what maxims are flouted the most to create comedy and what maxims the two main characters disobey for the sake of making people laugh. To reach the study objective, the paper is based on the analysis of the fourth episode transcription. That is, the study relies on a qualitative descriptive method as it aims at exploring the flouting of Grice’s cooperative principle in Moroccan Arabic comedy and describing how such flouting generates humour and comedy. The results show that the most frequently flouted maxim was the maxim of quantity (39.3%), followed by the maxims of quality (29.6%), manner (26.2%) and the least maxim flouted was relevance (4.9%). The results suggest that the use of flouts has to do with their different moods and personalities, which is why the main characters did not use as many flouts in order to create comedy, since it would not be in line with their personalities. Furthermore, the study shows that most of maxim flouts that create comic implicature are perceived via the use of obscure overstatement and personification, use of misleading conventional-coded expressions, irrelevant oddness of conversation-established ideas, and flouting of Moroccan communication patterns. The study concludes that the use of urban accent of Marrakech city alongside maxims flouting generated humorous effect.