Humor in The Stand-Up Comedy You Wanna Hear Something Crazy?: A Universal Pragmatic Study

Abstract

Humor is an interesting phenomenon that has been studied widely, yet it is considered a universal trait that cannot be an old subject for a study. This study is conducted to investigate humor from a universal pragmatic lens in a stand-up comedy show, namely, You Wanna Hear Something Crazy?. It aims to study humor as a coin with two sides, the production side and the understanding side. To achieve the aim of the study, the researchers use an eclectic contains Grice’s CP model (1975) and Habermas’s UP model (1979, 1984, 1987, 1998). The study has noted that while using the observance and the non-observance of the cooperative maxims to produce humor, the universal validity claims of truth, sincerity, and normative rightness for reaching a mutual understanding with the audience are raised. The study concludes that more than one maxim can be used, whether it is observed or non-observed, to produce humor. Besides, humor can be produced through the combination sequence of the observance and the non-observance of maxims. It is also shown that humor has adhered to the universal validity claims of truth, sincerity, and normative rightness. On the whole, humor is used communicatively to get the hearer into a mutual understanding.