(9) There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a large dog lying on the ground in front of the bench. A man comes along and sits down on the bench.
Man: Does your dog bite?
Woman: No.
(The man reaches down to pet the dog. The dog bites the man’s hand.)
Man: Ouch! You said your dog doesn’t bit.
Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog. [8]
This is about the violating of the maxim of quantity. In example, the man asked the woman if her dog bit. The man took it for granted that the dog staying with the woman belonged to the woman. But the women only told him that her dog didn’t bite. She concealed the information that the dog nearly was not her dog. She could anticipate the consequence that the dog might bite the man. The woman didn’t make her contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of exchange. As a result, what she said violated the quantity maxim. The man used this way to create the humor and make the man not know whether to laugh or to cry.
(10)After a two-week vacation, a man returned to his office and one of his fellow workers asked him what kind of time he’d had.
“I spent the whole two weeks helping my wife paint the rooms in our house.” he groaned.
“Does she do that often?”
“Well,” the man answered, “when we moved in a few years ago, the guest room was nine by twelve. Now it’s eight by eleven!”
The maxim of quality requires the speaker not to say that for which he lacks adequate evidence. In this story, it was no doubt that the husband didn’t measure up the area of the guest room. He was complaining. He felt dissatisfied not to have a relaxed and happy holiday. He was fed up with the painting that his wife always asked him to do. So when his colleague asked him about his holiday, he said something exaggerating to release his anger. Definitely, it is a good example to explain how violating the maxim of quality produces humor.
(11) “What do you think of our two candidates for mayor?” “Well, I’m glad only one can be elected.”
Sometimes, irrelevant replies given imply another meaning, and at the same time, they successfully create an ironic and funny effect. This example has this feature. In the conversation, the second person doesn’t answer the question, but he actually implies that “both of them are unacceptable”.
(12) Girl: You remind me of the ocean.
Boy: wild, romantic and restless.
Girl: No, you just make me sick. [9]
In this dialogue, if the girl directly told the boy that she didn’t like him. He would be sad and discouraged; at least he knew that it’s hopeless to be friends with the girl. He wouldn’t imagine himself with the characteristics of the ocean. The ocean leaves the impression of wild, romantic and restless. Almost everybody loves it. When people talk about the ocean, they will unconsciously imagine its good side. But because the girl’s words were ambiguous, the boy couldn’t explore the implication of her words. Hence, violating the maxim of manner caused such humor.
2.1.6 Politeness Principle and English humor
Politeness principle can be understood to be that during a conversation the speaker should consider his utterance maybe face threatening to his interlocutors. Comic effects can be produced both by observing politeness principle and by flouting it. Let’s look at an example:
(13)A lady and her baby get on a bus. The bus driver looks at the lady, and then her baby, and then screams, “AHHHH！That’s the ugliest child I’ve ever seen in my life！”The lady then, totally disgusted, marches up to the back of the bus to sit down. As she was sitting there absolutely furious, a man asks, “Are you OK, dear?” The lady replies, “I’m so angry, the bus driver just insulted me.” The man says, “You go back up there and give that bus driver a piece of your mind, and I’ll watch your monkey.”
At the end of the story, seemingly the man comforted the lady, defending the lady against injustice. In this way the man observed the sympathy maxim in the politeness principle. But finally he said “monkey” to refer to the lady’s baby, which severely violated the approbation maxim and the sympathy maxim. The word “monkey” was more harmful and humiliated to the lady. From this aspect, we can say abiding by the politeness principle seemingly, but actually violating the politeness principle also can create humor.
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