A Comparative Study of Cooperative Principal Violation in How I Met Your Mother and Phua Chu Kang

This comparative study examines how non observance of Grice’s Cooperative Principle generates humour in How I Met Your Mother and Phua Chu Kang, aiming to map breach types to strategies. The framework integrates Grice’s maxims (Quality, Quantity, Relation, Manner) with incongruity, superiority, and relief theories to explain how pragmatic choices cue audience inferences. The problem addressed is the lack of cross show, cross cultural evidence about which maxims are breached, why they are not observed, and how such breaches translate into coherent humour mechanisms. Using comparative content analysis, the sample comprised the three highest rated season one episodes from each sitcom, restricted to main cast utterances that show non observance. Data were collected through close reading and human coding, then analyzed via frequency profiling of breach types and discourse analysis of implicatures and joke functions. Findings show distinct breach profiles: one series favors information play and misdirection, the other strategic ambiguity and politeness tinged vagueness. Across both shows, incongruity leads most laughs, while superiority and relief vary with character dynamics and situational tension. Overall, pragmatic design—not merely topics or punchlines—shapes laugh timing and social meaning audiences quickly recognize. Implications include writer, translator, and educator guidance; future work should use multi season corpora, test audiences, and model multimodal cues robustly...

maxims, humor, discourse analysis

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