HUMOR IN REGGY HASIBUAN’S STAND-UP COMEDY SHOW THROUGH ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
Abstract
HUMOR IN REGGY HASIBUAN’S STAND-UP COMEDY SHOW THROUGH ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS
Mochammad Miftachul Choiri
English Literature Study Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Surabaya State University
miftachul.choiri@gmail.com
Lisetyo Ariyanti, S.S., M.Pd.
English Literature Study Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Surabaya State University
lisetyo.a@yahoo.com
Abstrak
Humor biasa dikenal sebagai lelucon, komedi, lucu dan sesuatu yang bisa ditertawakan. Secara singkat, humor berhubungan dengan sesuatu yang tidak serius. Beberapa ahli bahasa menganalisa humor menggunakan teori semantik, pragmatik dan discourse analysis. Menurut Arthur Koestler humor adalah satu-satunya bentuk komunikasi di mana stimulus dalam tingkat kompleksitas tinggi menghasilkan stereotip, respon diprediksi pada tingkat refleks fisiologis (Suprana, 2013:11). Penelitian ini tentang humor dalam pertunjukan stand-up comedy oleh Reggy Hasibuan yang diadakan di Bandung. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana illocutionary act dapat menimbulkan humor. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dan teori dari Searle dan Raskin. Proses analisis datanya adalah 1) mengklasifikasikan data menurut jenis-jenis illocutionary acts, apakah itu declaration, representative, expressive, directive, atau commisive, 2) menghubungkan antara teori humor dan illocutionary act dan 3) menganalisis hubungan antara teori humor dan illocutionary act pada tiap data. Reggy menunjukkan bahwa dia kebanyakan menggunakan representative untuk membuat pendengar menerima opininya dan dia juga menggunakan ridicule untuk membuat lelucon.
Kata kunci: illocutionary acts, stand-up comedy, dan humor.
Abstract
Humor is usually known as joke, comedy, funny, and something that can be laughed. In a short way, humor correlates to something unserious. Some linguists analyze humor by the study of meaning including Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Analysis. According to Arthur Koestler, humor is the only form of communication in which a stimulus in a high level of complexity produces a stereotyped, predictable response on the physiological reflex level (Suprana, 2013:11). This research is about humor in Reggy Hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show held in Bandung. The purpose of this research is to find out how illocutionary act can create humor. This research uses qualitative approach and theories from Searle about illocutionary acts and Raskin about humor. The process of data analysis are 1) classifying the data to the kinds of illocutionary acts, whether they are declaration, representative, expressive, directive, or commisive, 2) correlating the humor theory and illocutionary act, and 3) analyzing the correlation between the humor theory and illocutionary act of every utterances. Reggy shows that he mostly uses representative to make the hearers accept what his opinion is and he also uses ridicule to create a joke.
Key words: illocutionary acts, stand-up comedy, and humor.
INTRODUCTION
Humor is usually known as joke, comedy, funny, and something that can be laughed. In a short way, humor correlates to something unserious. Some linguists analyze humor by the study of meaning including semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.
Speech act is one of pragmatics subjects. It is an utterance considered as an action, particularly with regard to its intention, purpose, or effect. Yule (1996:47) said that actions performed via utterances are generally called speech acts. Promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating are commonly included as speech acts. It is what Yule (1996:47) said that speech acts in english, are commonly given more specific labels, such as apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, or request. In addition, it is usual to recognize three basic types of speech act: locutionary acts, illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts.
Illocutionary act is one of speech acts discipline. Illocutionary act is the study that people can use to analyze utterances. It can be known whether it is promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting or congratulating using illocutionary acts theory.
Stand-up comedy is one of comedic styles that exists nowadays. This genre uses their knowledge to tell the funny story. The performer of stand-up comedy usually called as a comic or stand-up comedian. The comic stands in front of live audience and starts the monolog until he or she gets immediate laughs from the audience. Dean (2000:1) said that most people would define a joke as something someone says or does that makes others laugh. Stand-up comedy show often performed in comedy club, café, theatre, college, and also distributed in tv show or sell commercially via dvd and internet.
Started from 2009, reggy hasibuan tries to become a comic or stand-up comedian. He is the first indonesian comic who becomes a headliner in malaysia, and reggy is also the first ever-indonesian comic that uploaded his stand-up comedy video performance in youtube. Reggy as the member of the stand-up comedy malang started to use english as his main language to deliver the entire stand-up comedy material in 2011.
In this research, the writer wants to analyze reggy hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show in 3rd stand-up night held in bandung, west java. In his show, he criticizes the people’s habit in using chatting in his first bit. He criticizes the habit in using abbreviation while people use chatting applications. In his second bit, he tells about his experience moving from malang to jakarta. He saw the principled distinguish culture between malang and jakarta and he criticizes about culture in malang comparing with jakarta in the humor point of view. In his third bit, reggy tells about the urban mamas and urban papas. He criticizes about the habits of them, especially the funny habits. In the last bit, he tells about his sex life when he was in the senior high school in which his mother hesitating about his sex orientation.
In this research the writer wants to study about the illocutionary act types in reggy hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show. The writer wants to identify what kind of illocutionary act that reggy hasibuan uses and the correlation between illocutionary act and humor theory.
Illocutionary acts are acts that are used by the speaker when he or she wants to say something. It is usually called as the central of speech acts. Illocutionary acts are related to indirect speech acts as what Yule (1996:48) had said that the illocutionary act is performed via the communicative force of an utterance. So, in here the utterances are uttered for some communicative purposes.
Yule (1996:53-54: (following searle, 1979:12-17)) said that there are five types in illocutionary acts, those are declarations, representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives.
- Declarations
Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via utterance (Yule, 1996:53). In addition it is the defining characteristic that the successful performance of one of its members brings about the correspondence between the propositional content and reality (Searle, 1979:16).
- Representatives
Representatives are those kinds of speech act that state what the speaker believes to be the case or not (Yule, 1996:53). The other linguist, Searle (1979:12) said that representative is to commit speaker to something’s being the case, to the truth of the express proposition. Statements of fact, assertions, conclusions, and descriptions are the examples of representatives.
- Expressives
Expressives are those kinds of speech act that draw what the speaker feels. Searle (1979:15) stated that expressives are to express the psychological state specified in the propositional content. The utterances that include in expressives are pleasure, pain, like, dislike, joy, or sorrow.
- Directives
Directives are kinds of speech act that are used by the speaker to express his or her want. They are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something (Searle, 1979:15). Commands, orders, requests, and suggestions are the kinds of directives.
- Commisives
Commissives are those kinds of speech act that speaker uses to inform the hearer that the speaker would do something. Searle (1979:14) said that the aim is to commit the speaker to some future course of action. They are promises, threats, refusals, or pledges.
Suprana (2013:21) in his book entitled humorologi said that humor has no exact definition, humor is something that does not have to cause something, even laughter. Commonly humor can make listeners laugh but exactly it is not always like that. Humor can also make the listeners angry, cry, and upset. Humor is the form of communication that triggers the listener to laugh. According to arthur koestler humor is the only form of communication in which a stimulus in a high level of complexity produces a stereotyped, predictable response on the physiological reflex level (Suprana, 2013:11). In this case, because the physiological reflex level of each person is different so that can determine how fast the person understands jokes.
There are so many classifications about humor, but the writer only focused on the classifications by victor raskin.
Victor Raskin (1984) here classified the humor based on motivation and technique. Based on motivation, raskin divided humor into two kinds. They are intended humor and unintended humor. Intended humor is the humor that are produced spontaneously. This kind of humor produced when someone unintentionally does verbal or non-verbal act and the hearers think that is funny. On the other hand, unintended humor is humor that occurs when someone intentionally make a joke to mock someone or makes a fun of something. Both types of humor has various techniques, they are:
- Ridicule
It is the type of humor where someone makes fun of other people through teasing and mocking. Raskin (1984:24) stated that the jokes recorded were always on somebody else. They all embodied an idea of discomfort to somebody or something. So, that is why the main point of ridicule is mocking other people. This kind of humor can be done in verbal or non-verbal way. The verbal way is through making fun of other’s lack using words. It means that the humor is delivered in the form of speaking or writing. Ridicule also can be done in non-verbal way, it can be done by using physical movement. The example is imitating someone who has disability or has different physical body with others. Ridicule has two types, they are deliberate ridicule and affectionate ridicule.
- Humor at the speaker’s own expense
This is a kind of humor whose speakers usually sacrifice themselves to make hearers laugh by watching the speaker’s misfortunes. It is because sometime the best way of making fun is choosing yourself as the object. Raskin (1984:22) said that it is the ability to laugh humorously at oneself. In this definition, oneself is the speaker who delivers the humor.
- Riddle
This type of humor deals with a question which has surprising answer. It means that when the speaker utters this kind of question, the hearers may think the common or true answer of the question but in fact the answer can be out of that common answer. Moreover, it can produce unexpected answer. Riddle is type of humor as a manifestation of the contest of intelligence, imagination and of figuring things out.
- Conundrum or punning riddle
Because of conundrum is called punning riddle so there are similarities between conundrum and riddle. The main difference is conundrum contains more complex words because the speaker plays the words. This humor also uses question to deliver the jokes but the answer is like word puzzle. So in here the hearers should think first before he or she laughs.
- Pun
Pun is the word play too, but pun has more ambiguity. Pun is the sentence that has two or more meanings so that is why it can be funny. It means that one sentence can have more than one interpretation. Pun is the pure play of words.
- Suppression or repression
This type of humor often contains the sex, crime, ethnic, etc. Humor. It is because usually this humor occurs when someone feels under pressure by the authority or the society. This type of humor is the most modern of all the previous.
There are four mechanisms that can make humor becomes funny. These mechanisms are ways in which people might find something funny.
- 1. Superiority or disparagement
This mechanism deals with superiority of one man to another man. This mechanism includes “putdown” humor, satire, sarcasm, self-deprecation, and the display of stupid behaviors.
- 2. Incongruity
Incongruity is a kind of word play. The joy of humor derives from the “solving” of the incongruous puzzle (Neuendorf, 2010). This kind of mechanism involving wordplay, absurdity, and sight gags.
- 3. Arousal
Arousal has two different types. First is arousal boost and second is arousal jag. Arousal boost is a mechanism that operates when a pleasurable increased in generalized arousal results from a humorous stimulus (Neuendorf, 2010). Arousal jag is a mechanism comes when the person who creates humor reaches the punch line and he or she comes back into the pleasurable level once again. Slapstick, dark humor, sick humor, sexual humor are varieties of arousal.
- 4. Social currency
Social currency humor can be called as social interaction humor. This kind of humor can be inserted in our daily conversation. This kind of humor has been studied as a means of maintaining relationship between people. This social currency is including joking to fit in, joking around socially, and parody.
This research uses 2 research questions. They are what types of illocutionary acts used in reggy hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show and how illocutionary act creates humor in reggy hasibuan’s stand-up comedy tour. From those research questions this research have some purposes to identify the types of illocutionary act used in reggy hasibuan’s stand up comedy show and to analyze how illocutionary act creates humor in reggy hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show.
METHOD
In this research the approach that is used is qualitative approach because this research uses description and analysis rather than statistics. Wray, Trott, Bloomer, Reay, & Butler, (1998:95) said that these, by definition, involve description and analysis rather than, for example, the counting of features.
The qualitative approach is used to analyze the illocutionary act that Reggy Hasibuan uses in his stand up show. From the first research question in chapter one the writer wants to know what types of illocutionary acts that Reggy Hasibuan used, so that the writer only uses the transcription of the video to know what types of illocutionary acts. The second research question still uses transcription to answer the question about how illocutionary act creates humor in that stand-up comedy show.
The subject of this research is Reggy Hasibuan. He is the first ever comic in Indonesia who uploaded his stand-up comedy video performance on YouTube and also he is the only comics in Indonesia that consistently use English as his main language to deliver the entire stand-up comedy materials.
The data of this research are the monologue of Reggy Hasibuan when he held a stand-up comedy show in Bandung. The data are obtained from the video of one of his stand-up comedy show held in Bandung downloaded from the internet and also the transcription that the writer made by himself to help him in finding the illocutionary act.
Research questions one and two are collected by observation. In this case, the writer observes the data through taking notes of the object and without making interview or questionnaire as what Wray et al. (1998:96) had said that observing data is consisting of recordings, transcriptions, and notes relating to your subject’s behavior and language (spoken and or written). There are several steps to collect the data. First, watch the video. In this step, the writer watches the video and repeats the scenes that contain illocutionary acts in Reggy Hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show many times. In this step, the writer uses tools like soft file of the video taken from internet, notebook to play the video and headset to help the writer in hearing the monologue clearer. Second, transcript the stand-up comedy show’s monologue. The tool in this step is block note. In this step the writer finds the utterances or expressions that contain illocutionary acts and transcript them. The last step is make the data classification. Block note is still used as the tool in this step. After the writer classifies the utterances and expressions to the types of illocutionary acts and analyses the correlations between humor theory and the illocutionary acts. The writer uses table containing data, illocutionary acts, types of humor, and mechanisms of humor. In the illocutionary acts table, the writer writes the types of illocutionary acts of the utterances (declaration, representative, expressive, directive, and commisive). In the types of humor table, the writer writes the types of humor whether it is ridicule, riddle, conundrum, pun or suppression. In the last table, the writer writes the mechanism of humor whether it is superiority, incongruity, arousal or social currency. Here is the Table.
Table 1: Example of classification table
Data
Illocutionary Acts
Types of Humor
Mechanisms of humor
RESULTS
After analyzing Reggy Hasibuan’s stand-up comedy show, the writer found that Reggy uses various strategies to make a joke. The strategies are from illocutionary acts and the type of humor. In this research, the writer analyzes the type of humor from the types and the mechanisms of humor.
Table 2: Classification table
Data
Illocutionary Acts
Types of Humor
Mechanisms of Humor
Opening Bit
1.
Representative
Ridicule
Social currency
1st Bit: Abbreviation
2.
Representative
Ridicule
Superiority
3.
Representative
Suppression
Arousal
4.
Representative
Suppression
Arousal
5.
Representative
Pun
Incongruity
2nd Bit: Urban Parents
6.
Declaration
Humor at the speaker’s own expense
Superiority
7.
Expressive
Suppression
Arousal
8.
Expressive
Suppression
Arousal
9.
Directive
Riddle
Incongruity
10.
Expressive
Ridicule
Superiority
11.
Representative
Ridicule
Superiority
12.
Representative
Ridicule
Social Currency
13.
Representative
Ridicule
Superiority
14.
Directive
Ridicule
Superiority
15.
Commissive
Ridicule
Social Currency
16.
Expressive
Ridicule
Superiority
3rd Bit: Hemorrhoid
17.
Representative
Humor at the speaker’s own expense
Superiority
18.
Representative
Riddle
Incongruity
19.
Directive
Suppression
Arousal
20.
Representative
Suppression
Arousal
21.
Representative
Humor at the speaker’s own expense
Superiority
From the table above it can be seen that Reggy uses all of the illocutionary acts types, such as declaration, directive, expressive, commisive, and representative. He mostly uses representative as the illocutionary act type.
Reggy uses declaration in the illocutionary act strategy to declare that he is officially single and he make jokes about his singleness. The declaration about Reggy’s singleness is considered as declaration, as what Yule (1996:53) said that declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via utterance. From here it can be seen that Reggy tries to tell the people that he is single now, and he now is in an open relationship. Maybe before Reggy said that he is single now, the girls who watch the show do not have any idea to have a relationship with Reggy, but via his utterance about the singleness the girls will try to have a relationship with Reggy. In here Reggy’s utterance can change the world so that is why it supports the theory about declarations stated by Yule above.
Reggy uses directive because he orders the hearer or the audiences to listen to him and look at the Reggy’s ridicule victims. His commands to make the audiences listen to him and see at the Reggy’s ridicule victim supports the theory by Searle (1979:15) that they are attempts by the speaker to get the hearer to do something. In here it is true that Reggy’s aim in using directive is to command hearer to do something.
Reggy uses expressive in his stand-up comedy show because he expresses how sexy the girls in Jakarta are, especially mature girls. He uses expression too to mock the urban papas by feeling sorry and giving sarcasm to the Reggy’s ridicule victims. The theory that match with the statement above is the theory by Searle (1979:15) that expressive are to express the psychological state specified in the propositional content. In here Reggy express how sexy the girls in Jakarta as the psychological state of his admiration of the girls and also his apologize to the urban fathers that always beaten by their wife.
Reggy uses the commisive because he wanted to sing a song. The song that Reggy’s brought was “the only exception” by “Paramore”.
Reggy mostly uses representative in illocutionary acts strategy, he tells about his experience in chatting, which is his chatting friend, who uses abbreviation to laugh, moreover Reggy tells about his feeling after moving from Malang to Jakarta. Reggy tells that the mature girls in Jakarta are so sexy. Reggy tells about his experience when he was in senior high school in which he did not have any girl friend and his mother hesitated his sexual orientation.
Reggy also uses riddle to make a joke about the abbreviation of M-I-L-F. Reggy answers the question with another answer, it made the audiences get strange feeling and suddenly laugh.
Reggy uses pun to make another abbreviation, he makes his own abbreviation and word play to create a joke. The incongruity is the same function with the pun. Incongruity is the word play, so Reggy make his own abbreviation as a word play to get audiences’ immediate laugh.
The dirty joke is the other humor strategies that Reggy uses. In other word, dirty joke can be called as suppression in the type of humor and arousal in the mechanism of humor. In every bit Reggy always uses that strategy.
The song by Paramore that Reggy song is the kind of social currency. Social currency is the humor that usually parodying the movies, songs, music, products, etc. so in this research Reggy uses social currency for parodying a song by Paramore entitled The Only Exception.
Reggy mocks himself to get immediate laugh. Reggy mocks himself as the person who nerd and does not have any girl friend at all and then his mother hesitates his sexual orientation by asking some questions to know Reggy’s sexual orientation. This kind of humor usually called “humor at the speaker’s own expense” in the types of humor. Raskin (1984:22) stated that it is the ability to laugh humorously at oneself. This type of humor have a specialization to laugh at oneself, usually oneself here is the speaker itself.
Reggy mostly uses superiority or ridicule. In using ridicule he mocks the audiences who come to watch his show. Reggy hesitates the audiences’ reason for watching his show. In the second case Reggy mocks the life of urban mamas which still looks young even though their age have been around thirties and then Reggy mocks urban papas which is always lost and scared of their wife. Reggy is also mocks the married men who have so much handsome point in their body and turns to ugly and fat after they get married. Those case correlated to the theory by Raskin (1984:24) that the jokes recorded were always on somebody else. They all embodied an idea of discomfort to somebody or something. From that theory we can understand that the main purpose of this type is make somebody feel discomfort with the speaker’s idea and finally can get immediate laugh by the people around the speaker.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Conclusion
This conclusion is made based on the research questions one and two. After analyzing the data on chapter four, finally this research arrived in the conclusion of this research.
The type of illocutionary acts is the first research question of this research. The book entitled Pragmatics by George Yule (1996) is the theory that is used in this research to examine the types of illocutionary acts used by Reggy Hasibuan. Reggy Hasibuan in his stand-up comedy performance uses all five illocutionary acts types, such as declarations, representatives, expressives, directives and the last is commisives. Reggy uses all five types to create a joke. In applying declarations, Reggy declares that he is single now. Then Reggy uses representatives such as assertions, conclusions and descriptions. In using expressives, Reggy applies the strategies such as pleasure, like, joy and sorrow. Reggy’s ways in applying directives are by using questions, commands and orders. The last is the way Reggy applies commisives in his stand-up comedy performance is promises.
In the second research question, this research analyzes about how illocutionary act creates humor. This research question uses a theory by Victor Raskin (1985) in the book entitled Semantic Mechanism of Humor and Neuendorf (2010) in his journal entitled The Four Mechanisms of Humor. The combination between illocutionary acts types and how humor strategies can create humor is from the way Reggy forces his opinion becomes a comedy or Reggy turns the serious opinion becomes the funny opinion. In addition, Reggy can declare or state the embarrassing thing of his life. Reggy also can confidently say his opinion about something or mock the audience, or people habit in chatting and the life of urban parents.
Making a joke is easy, the speaker just needs confident and makes sure that his or her ideas can be accepted by the hearers in a funny way absolutely. Reggy shows that he mostly uses representative to make the hearers accept what his opinion is and he also uses ridicule to create a joke. Using ridicule may be an easiest way to make people around you and people around the people you mocked give immediate laughs.
Suggestion
Humor is the strategy that almost all the people used to communicate with other. Humor can be used for working, some entertainer in this era have a humor skill to entertain their fans or audiences. Humor also can be a strategy to make a relationship warmer and better because humor can make serious thing becomes funny thing. Only with humor people can laugh at each other appearance.
The writer hopes that this research can be a good guidance to make a thesis about humor. The next researchers can analyze other humor genres beside stand-up comedy, such as situation comedy, one-liner joke, parody film, humor novel, or even from the daily conversation in certain community that usually uses jokes as the way to communicate each other.
REFERENCES
Dean, G. (2000). Step by Step to Stand-up Comedy: Heinemann Drama.
Neuendorf, K. A. (2010). The Four Humour Mechanisms. 4.
Raskin, V. (1984). Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Dordrecht Reidel Publishing Company.
Searle, J. (1979). Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Suprana, J. (2013). Humorologi. Jakarta: PT. Elex Media Komputindo.
Wray, A., Trot, K., Bloomer, A., Reay, S., & Butler, C. (1998). Projects in Linguistics : A Practical Guide to Researching Language (third ed.). China: Edward Arnold.
Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Abstract Views: 183
PDF Downloads: 92
