Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1.Background of The Study

Humor brings two kinds of benefit for people, psychologically and socially.

According to Melinda in Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter (2013),

psychologically, humor helps people to stay emotionally healthy because it has

power of changing moods by taking out of depression. Socially, humor strengthens

relationship by triggering positive feelings because when people share humor, a

positive bond is created (Ziv, 1986:176).

One of this humor perfomance is stand up comedy. Stand up comedy is a

show in which a comedian performs in front of a live audience, usually speaking

directly to them, but sometimes the show could be recorded and post in youtube,

therefore people can enjoy the show too. The performes is commonly known as a

comic, stand-up comic, stand-up comedian. In stand up comedy, the comedian

usually recite a grouping of humorous stories, jokes and monologue. The performer

is not about simply convincing an audience that you are funny, although that is

neccessary; it is also teaching the audience that there is a different way to think

about it. (Sankey, 1998).

Jim Jefferies known as one of the best stand up comedian in America.

Coming from Sydey, Australia and the he moved to America. He knows as good

comic with his Australian accent and sarcastic style proved to be major hit in

America. In 2009, he also have his own show at HBO. He also known as most

famous stand up comedys in 2016. His stand up comedy performances already

filmed and become famous. One of his successful film is Freedumb in 2016. This
film contains of many sarcastics jokes that related to peoples life, the way he told

his joke is really attract audience to get laugh, the way he use rhetoric techniques

for drive the audience to get laugh is very interesting. There is fact that he is one of

good comic, the researcher would like to analyse his rhetoric technique in

Freedumb film.

He becomes a good stand up comedian because he has really good rhetoric

structure in order to persuade the audience, triggered audience to get laugh with his

jokes. Within this fact that he has really good rhetoric skill in humor, the researcher

would like to analyse his rhetoric structure under the Labovs model that known as

generic structure of text narrative. Humor is one of language art, that is would

become a narration.

There are two kinds of previous study that give contribution along the

process of understanding the case and lead the researcher to relevant theories.

Firstly is Rhetorical Analysis of Donald Trumps Presidential Candidacy

Announcement Speech by Yusri (2016). This research aim to analyse the way

someone persuade other, on how audience put attention on someone speech. It

focused on rhetorical proofs and speech delivery in Donald Trumps presidential

candidacy announcement speech in 2015. Rhetorical proofs in here knows as logos,

pathos, and ethos.

The second research, An Analysis of Rhetorical Structures of The Grand

Final of World Debating Championship in 2009 by Ishara (2017). This research

aimed to describe the structure of rhetorical speech which is studied based on the

generic structure of text. He analysed the way of each speaker in debating

championship structurize their speech for convincing the judge.

 Each of these research above has the same similarity that they are focusing

on rhetorical analysis of spoken language that should have a narration in order to

make people understand within the speaker explanation. Stand up comedy is one of

the spoken language that could be analyse in this case, and also there is still few

research that focusing on stand up comedy. The researcher would like to analyse it

as an object of the research.

Humor is one of language art that has same generic structure of narration.

Generic structure of narrative text is a model that developed by Labov (1972), that

consist of Abstract, Orientation, Complication, Resolution, and Coda. This model

would be helpful for the researcher in order to analyse how far the structure of Jim

Jefferiess rhetoric and style that used by him especially in stand up comedy.

Therefore the jokes that told by Jim Jefferies can trigger the audience to get laugh.

1.1.Research Questions

Based on the background of the research, the research questions can be

formulated as follow :

1. What are the rhetorical structures of Jim Jefferies at his stand up comedy

show in titled Freedumb in 2016?

1.2.Limitation of The Research

This research focus on rhetorical structure that used by Jim Jefferies on his

stand up comedy show titled Freedumb.

1.3.Objective of The Research

The objecive of this research can be formulated as follow:

1. To describe rhetorical structure of Jim Jefferies stand up comedy show

in titled Freedumb in 2016.

1.4.Significance of The Research

Theoretically, the findings of the research could enrich the study in

linguistics, especially in discourse analysis.

Practically, the findings may be useful for the following parties:

a. The students of English Department study program. The research is

expected to give some contributions to discourse analysis concerning on

rhetorical analysis.

b. The other researchers, hopefully, this can be a motivation to conduct other

research in linguistics concerning humor, since this study is least conducted.