Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Educational Management and Administration (CoEMA 2017)

Dissecting Humor on David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day by Applying General Theory of Verbal Humor

Authors
Sujono Sujono
Corresponding Author
Sujono Sujono
Available Online August 2017.
DOI
10.2991/coema-17.2017.34How to use a DOI?
Keywords
humor, me talk pretty one day, GTVH
Abstract

Understanding and perceiving humor in narrative text is not unproblematic. This is not only we have to know the background knowledge of the humor but also understanding the structure of humor in narrative text. As the winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor at 2001, David Sedaris 'Me Talk Pretty One Day must be very funny. However, a humor can never achieve its intended effect unless the basic elements of the humor are completely self-evident. So this study is endeavored to know (1) the parts of text in David Sedaris 'Me Talk Pretty One Day that is humorous, and (2) how David Sedaris delivers the humor in this his autobiography. The research is done by descriptive qualitative. Seven very funny chapters of 27 chapters in David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day then are analyzed by Miles-Huberman's data reduction, data display and conclusion. In the data reduction, there are the narrative leveling and the selection-description of the data in terms of GTVH knowledge resources. The text is levelled into narrative level/storyline (leveln), micronarrative level (leveln-n), and metanarrative level (leveln>n). The GTVH knowledge resources applied are script opposition (SO), logical mechanism (LM), situation (SI), target (TA), narrative strategy (NS), and language (LA). The data then displayed in such a matrices so that the conclusion can be drawn. From the seven chapters analyzed, it is found that 457 parts of text are humorous (457 script oppositions). The type of script opposition are normal/abnormal (68.05 %), Good vs. bad (13.57%), Obscene vs. non-obscene (5.25%), Possible vs. impossible (4.16%), Correct/incorrect (2.63%), Real vs. unreal (2.41%), clear/unclear (1.53%), Honest/dishonest (1.53%), Crime/non-crime (0.44%), realistic/unrealistic (0.22%). serous/unserious (0.22%). Those script oppositions are presented various logical mechanism. They are ignoring the obvious (18.16%), analogy (13.79%), juxtaposition (12.47%), parallelism (11.38%), inferring consequence (6.56%), potency mappings (6.35%), faulty reasoning (5.47%), exaggeration (5.25%), vacuous reversal (3.28%), Coincidence (3.28%), role-reversals (2.63%), self -undermining (2.63%), almost situation (2.41%), vicious circle (1.97%), garden-path (0.88%), implicit parallelism (0.88%), proportion (0.44%), field restriction (0.44%), false analogy(0.44%), cratylism (0.44%), referential ambiguity (0.44%), role exchanges (0.22%), and figure-ground reversal (0.22%). The humor are delivered through diffuse disjunction 59.74%, ending with punch line (28%), using metanarrative disruption (8%), and coincidences (3.7%). From the findings, it can be concluded that David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day is funny. However, as it is dominated by normal/abnormal opposition and delivered through diffuse disjunction, readers of David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day may find difficulties in perceiving the humor, especially non-native speaker.

Copyright
© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Educational Management and Administration (CoEMA 2017)
Series
Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research
Publication Date
August 2017
ISBN
10.2991/coema-17.2017.34
ISSN
2352-5428
DOI
10.2991/coema-17.2017.34How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Cite this article

TY  - CONF
AU  - Sujono Sujono
PY  - 2017/08
DA  - 2017/08
TI  - Dissecting Humor on David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day by Applying General Theory of Verbal Humor
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Educational Management and Administration (CoEMA 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 193
EP  - 200
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/coema-17.2017.34
DO  - 10.2991/coema-17.2017.34
ID  - Sujono2017/08
ER  -