Abstract—The main purpose of this research is to explore the
ways that humor is expressed, taking into account linguistic
strategies used. Speech act categorization, cooperative principle
and implicatures are the frameworks applied in this research.
The source of data for analysis is five Thai situation comedies.
From a speech-act theoretical perspective, the findings
demonstrate that there are six categories of humor-related
speech acts: expressing condescension, boasting, blaming,
threatening, satire and teasing. These strategies, on the whole,
indicate that humor in Thai situation comedies is closely
associated with an emotion of superiority and aggression
created by the speaker. The study also shows that humor can be
carried out by non-observance of the cooperative principle in
two ways: violating a maxim and flouting a maxim. In the first
case, the maxim was found to have been flouted and revealed
instances of conversational implicatures. In the second case,
furthermore, conversational implicature were generated, but as
a result of maxim violation. What is peculiar to the findings of
the study is that humor can be brought about by a speaker
intentionally telling a lie to confuse the hearer or audience.
Later, when the speaker reveals that he/she him/herself is held
responsible for a maxim violation, laughter and thus humor
ensue. Aside from this, there is only one example of
humor-related conventional implicaturesfound.
Index Terms—Humor, Thai situation comedies, speech act,
implicature, pragmatic analysis.
ChantimaWangsomchok is with the Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University,
Thailand (e-mail: chantima.wa@ssru.ac.th).
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Cite: Chantima Wangsomchok, " A Linguistic Strategies to Express Humor in Thai Context," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 462-465, 2016.