A Speech Acts Analysis of the Misunderstanding in

in Abbott & Costello's classic routines “Who’s on first?”

Ignasia Yuyun
Indonesia University of Education
Email: ignasiayoen@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
Speech acts is the basic unit of communication. If the addressee cannot catch
what actually the addresser means or the addressee cannot catch the speech act humor.
Speech act and language function cannot be separated because language function is
used to highlight speech acts.
In this study, the writer wants to analyze the type of speech act of the utterances
in the illocutionary acts. The writer is also curious to know what makes the dialogue
between Abbott and Costello “Who’s on first?” becomes humorous. It is assumed that
the humorous utterances caused by misunderstanding between the participants. Thus,
the writer uses Searle’s Theory (1976) of speech acts to classify the illocutionary act.
The data got from http://www.phoenix5.org and then analyzed the jokes that were in
the form of dialog by describing the type of speech acts. Finally, the writer explained the
cause of humour of this dialogue.
The findings revealed that the types of illocutionary acts occurred were
assertives, directives, and expressive. Moreover, the cause of humour was because the
hearer failed to catch the intended meaning of the speaker.

Key words: speech acts, humour, misunderstanding

INTRODUCTION
Language has an important role in human’s life. According to Wardhaugh (1977),
language has several roles; ”language as a system, language as arbitrary, language as
vocal, language as symbol, language as human, and the last is as communication.” The
last role is one of the important roles of language. Language allows people to say things
to each other and to express their communicative needs. Moreover, language is the
cement of society, allowing people to work, and play together, to tell the truth but also
to tell a lie, or lies (Wardhaugh, 1977).
Communication, in this case, is a social activity requiring the coordinated efforts
of two or more individuals. Through communication people can express their idea or
opinion toward someone or something. To make communication lively, people need
something interesting or funny to be heard or seen. Humor is one way of
communication, which can entertain and make people laugh. Moreover, people like to
hear humor for their relaxation after they face stressful experience in their daily life. The
humor sometimes occurs because of the misunderstanding that happens in the
conversation between the speakers and the addressees.
Misunderstanding can be funny because when the speaker utters something to
the addressee and the addressee cannot catch what actually the speaker means, but the

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addressee feels that he/she understands it or has his/her own interpretation of one
speech and replies it with the answer which is unconnected to the speech. Thus, the joke
occurs by the time the answer is spoken.
“A locutionary act is the production of sounds and words with meanings, an
Illocutionary act is the issuing of an utterance with conventional communicative force
achieved “in saying”, and a Perlocutionary act is the actual effect achieved “by saying”
(Schiffrin, 1994, p. 51). In this research, those three acts were used to analyze the
utterances that contained humor. The locutionary act was the utterance itself, the
illocutionary act was the intended meaning of the speaker’s utterance, and the
perlocutionary was the response of the listener. Moreover, the reason why the writer
used speech acts theory to analyze humor was because speech acts deal with
interpretation. Speakers expect listeners to recognize the functions of the sentences they
speak and to act accordingly. Whenever they ask a question, for example, they expect
their listeners to realize that it is a request for information. If the listeners fail to
appreciate this intention, they are judged as having "misunderstood," even though they
may have taken in everything else about the utterance (Clark and Clark, 1977, p. 25)

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
Speech Act Theory
According to Austin, speech act is an action that is performed through utterance
(as cited in Schriffin, 1994, p.49). “A locutionary act is the production of sounds and
words with meanings, an Illocutionary act is the issuing of an utterance with
conventional communicative force achieved “in saying”, and a Perlocutionary act is the
actual effect achieved “by saying” (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 51). In this study, those three acts
were used to analyze the utterances that contained humor. The locutionary act was the
utterance itself, the illocutionary act was the intended meaning of the speaker’s
utterance, and the perlocutionary was the response of the listener.
Moreover, Searle (1976) posits five types of speech act:
1) Assertives: statements that may be judged true or false because they purport to
describe a state of affairs in the world (paradigm cases: asserting, claiming, reporting,
classifying, generalizing, defining, explaining, describing, exemplifying, predicting,
advising, warning, comparing, and concluding)
2) Directives: statements that attempt to make the auditor´s actions fit the propositional
content (paradigm cases: asking, suggesting, inviting, requesting, ordering,
commanding, and questioning)
3) Commissives: statements which commit the speaker to a course of action as
described by the propositional content (paradigm cases: promising, threatening,
undertaking, offering)

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4) Expressives: statements that express the “sincerity condition of the speech act”
(paradigm cases: apologizing, agreeing, conceding, denying, welcoming, complaining,
thanking, complimenting, congratulating, approving, disapproving, reprimanding,
consoling)
5) Declaratives: statements that attempt to change the world by “representing it as
having been changed” (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, firing from
employment).
According to Kennedy (2003), “Each of these categories requires something of
the listeners. Informatives are associated particularly with ideas (cognitive matters),
whereas directives, expressive, commissives are more interactional, or deal with feelings
(affective matters) (p. 313).

The Concept of Humor

Humor is the phenomenon when somebody hears and sees something and the
laughs. It means that the person finds the audial or visual stimulus funny. Laughter can
be heard frequently in most societies though its exact meaning may differ from occasion
to occasion and from culture to culture. Different people will not necessarily find the
same things equally funny. However, Raskin (1985) wrote that “the ability to appreciate
and enjoy humor is universal and shared by all people; even if the kinds of humor they
favor differ widely” (pp. 1-2). It means, “Every humor act occurs within a certain culture
which belongs to a certain society” (as cited in Raskin, 1985, p.5).
In his Semantic Mechanism of Humor, Raskin (1985, pp 3-5) formulates that
there are some factors that characterize humor:
1. There should be human participants in the act. These human participants are
labeled the speaker and hearer.
2. Something must happen in a humor act. An utterance has to be made, a situation
has to develop or to be perceived. In short, a new stimulus should be presented
and responded to humorously. The natural term for this obligatory factor is the
stimulus.
3. The life experience or an individual is an important factor. The term used for
this is experience. An important factor in the experience of the speaker and the
hearer is their familiarity with humor as a special mode of communication.
4. The next factor is psychological type of individual participating in the humor. In
this case, the speaker and or hearer’s predispositions to humor are quite
important. For this factor, Raskin gives the term psychology.
5. Situational context or situation. Every humor act occurs in a certain physical
environment, which serve as one of the most important contextual factors of the
humor act.

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 6. Finally, every humor act occurs within a certain culture, which belongs to a
certain society. The term used for this factor is society.

METHODOLOGY
The methodology employed in this study is descriptive qualitative. A
qualitative study is an inquiry process of understanding a social or human problem,
based on building a complex, holistic picture, formed with words, reporting detailed
views of informants, and conducted in a natural setting. (Cresswell, 1994). The objective
of this study is to analyze pragmatically the speech acts of a conversational humour.
More specifically, the conversational humor are discussed with respect to the theory of
speech acts itself, how the theory is used to analyze misunderstanding in comedy, and
how the theory is used to explain in what way the utterances are humorous. The scope
of this study is on discourse analysis, since it focuses on the relation between utterances
and the interpretation of the utterances through the analysis of locutionary, illocutionary,
perlocutionary acts. Moreover, the writer focused on analyzing the conversation through
the speech acts. Thus, the writer used Searle’s theory about speech acts, which stated
that utterances perform five types of speech act: assertive, directives, commissives,
expressives, and declaratives. The writer would like to analyze their speech act, “the
distance between what is said and what is meant, and the multiple layers of meaning
between the literal prepositional meaning of an utterance and the act which is performed
in context “(Stubb, 1983, p. 147).
Moreover, the data were taken from conversation transcript of “Who’s on first?”,
“Who’s on first?” was selected since it is a humor dialogue that tells about classic routine
of Abbott and Costello about baseball positions. The writer chooses this dialogue because
the writer is interested in the way the characters (Abbott and Costello) deliver the humor
or jokes through their speech. The process of data analysis comprises describing the type
of speech acts produced by the participants in “Who’s on first?” by using speech act theory
focused on illocutionary. Then, classifying them into the types of language functions. The
next step is describing what made those conversations become humorous. Then, putting
the answer in the tables below in order to ease the reader in reading findings. The first
table shows the result of speech acts and language function analysis. The second table
shows misunderstanding in the dialog.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

As mentioned earlier, based on the theoretical framework, we proceed to analyze
the type of speech acts from the transcription of “Who’s on first?”. There are 179 turns
excerpts which are taken from conversation transcript of “Who’s on first?”. They were
analyzed based on Speech act theory. The findings are drawn as follow:

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TABLE 1: The result of Speech Acts analysis
No Types of No of turn Frequency
speech acts (%)
1 Assertives 1,4,5,7,8,9,10,12,13,14,15,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,33,45,4
6,47,48,50,56,57,58,60,63,66,78,80,86,88,94,97,103,104
,105,107,109,115,117,121,123,129,131,137,138,141,143, 39
144,150,152,154,156,157,159,161,162,163,164,165,168,
170,171,174,175,178 (69)
2 Directives 2,6,11,16,18,22,34,36,38,40,42,44,52,55,59,61,68,71,75,
77,81,82,83,85,89,90,91,92,93,96,100,102,106,114,118,
120,122,124,126,127,128,134,136,140,142,146,147,149, 30
151,153,155,169,172,176 (54)
3 Commisives 0
4 Expressives 3,17,19,20,21,23,31,32,35,37,39,41,43,49,51,53,54,62,6
4,65,67,69,70,72,73,74,76,79,84,87,95,98,99,101,103,10
8,110,111,112,113,116,119,125,130,132,133,135,139,14 31
5,148,158,160,162,166,167,173,177,179 (56)
5 Declaratives 0

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 Based on the table above, there are three types of speech acts are used by the
participants (Abbott and Costello). Assertives is the most frequently used by the
participants (39%). Here, the participants use assertives to show their claims,
conclusion, explanation, definition, description, exemplification, advice, and warn. The
second type is frequently used is expressive (31%). The participants use expressive in
showing their agreement, denial, complaint, approval, and disapproval. The lowest rank
is occupied by directives (30%). The participants use directives to ask, question, and
suggest their interlocutor. Meanwhile, no participant here use commissives and
declaratives.
Moreover, the writer tries to explore more why the dialogue becomes humorous.
The result shows that the humorous happens because of the misunderstanding that
happens in the dialogue between the speakers (Abbott) and the addressees (Costello).
Both speakers have different interpretation of each speech. The further information
provided below:

Table 2: The result of misunderstanding

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Number Speaker Number Listener
of turns of turns
25 Goofe' Dean. Well, let's see, we have 26 That's what I want to find out.
on the bags, Who's on first, What's on
second, I Don't Know is on third...
34 Well then who's on first? 35 Yes
36 I mean the fellow's name. 37 Who.
43 Who is on first! 44 I'm asking you who's on first.
64 Who's wife? 65 Yes.
75 All I'm trying to find out is what's the 76 No. What is on second base.
guys name on first base.
76 No. What is on second base. 77 I'm not asking you who's on second.
83 I'm only asking you, who's the guy on 84 That's right.
first base?
87 What's the guy's name on first base? 88 No. What is on second.
89 I'm not asking you who's on second. 90 Who's on first.
90 Who's on first. 91 I don't know.
91 I don't know. 92 He's on third, we're not talking about
him.
95 If I mentioned the third baseman's 96 No. Who's playing first.
name, who did I say is playing third?
97 What's on base? 98 What's on second.
99 I don't know. 100 He's on third.
104 Now who's playing third base? 105 Why do you insist on putting Who on
third base?
106 What am I putting on third. 107 No. What is on second.
109 Who is on first. 110 I don't know.
118 Then tell me who's playing left field. 119 Who's playing first.
120 I'm not...stay out of the infield!!! I 121 No, What is on second.
want to know what's the guy's name in
left field?
122 I'm not asking you who's on second. 123 Who's on first!
123 Who's on first! 124 I don't know
126 The left fielder's name? 127 Why.
127 Why. 128 Because!
128 Because! 129 Oh, he's center field.
133 Tomorrow. 134 You don't want to tell me today?
137 Tomorrow! 138 What time?
138 What time? 139 What time what?
140 What time tomorrow are you gonna tell 141 Now listen. Who is not pitching.
me who's pitching?
142 I'll break your arm if you say who's on 143 What's on second.
first!!! I want to know what's the
pitcher's name?
143 What's on second. 144 I don't know.
170 So I pick up the ball and I throw it to 171 No you don't you throw the ball to
Naturally. Who.
171 No you don't you throw the ball to 172 Naturally.
Who.
177 You throw it to Who. 178 Naturally.
182 I throw the ball to who? 183 Naturally.

Based on the table above, the writer found out that there were misunderstandings
in the conversations between Abbot and Costello in ‘Who’s on first?’ that caused humor
and the misunderstandings that happened in the conversations were often caused by
different interpretation between the characters in Who’s on first?. This exchange involves
two instances of misunderstanding on the part of Costello.

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 First, the exchange in ‘Who’s on first?’ is interesting in that it contains a string of
misunderstandings based on the local homonymy of ‘who, what, I don’t know, why,
because, tomorrow, naturally’. They are all triggered by the ambiguity between the
different discourse spaces Abbott’s words are thought to belong to: the actual interaction
between Abbott and Costello. In this first misunderstanding occurs because Costello fails
to recognize ‘who, what, I don’t know, why, because, tomorrow, naturally ’ as nouns
referring to the names of baseball players. In other words, Costello construes an obviously
wrong causal inference on the basis of Abbott’s speech in the previous turn (‘‘I say
Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.’’) through homonymic
confusion. The result can be seen as follows:
• First, misunderstanding on the word ‘who’ found in turn 34 and 35, 43 and 44, 64
and 65, 83 and 84, 89 and 90, 90 and 91, 95 and 96, 104 and 105, 116 and 117, 118 and
119, 122 and 123, 123 and 124, 140 and 141, 171 and 172, 177 and 178, 182 and 183.
• Second, misunderstanding on the word ‘what’ found in turn 75 and 76, 76 and 77,
87 and 88, 97 and 98, 106 and 107, 120 and 121, 142 and 143, 143 and 144.
• Third, misunderstanding on the word ‘I don’t know’ found in turn 90 and 91, 91 and
92, 99 and 100, 109 and 110.
• Fourth, misunderstanding on the word ‘why’ found in turn 126 and 127, 127 and
128.
• Fifth, misunderstanding on the word ‘because’ found in turn 128 and 129.
• Sixth, misunderstanding on the word ‘tomorrow’ found in turn 133 and 134, 137
and 138.
• Finally, misunderstanding on the word ‘naturally’ found in turn 170 and 171, 171
and 172, 177 and 178, 182 and 183.
Moreover, the second misunderstanding occurs when Costello misconstrues Abbott’s
intonation which indicates whether it is a question or a statement when he is saying. In this
case, utterances (who, what, and why) can be ambiguous with respect to the illocutionary
intention it expresses. The misunderstandings are at least partially triggered by the
failure of a character (Costello) to identify the correct speech act underlying the other
speaker’s utterance (Abbott). Consequently, misunderstanding cannot be avoidable as
happened in turn 34 and 35, 43 and 44, 64 and 65, 75 and 76, 76 and 77, 83 and 84, 87
and 88, 90 and 91, 95 and 96, 97 and 98, 104 and 105, 106 and 107, 109 and 110, 118
and 119, 120 and 121, 122 and 123, 123 and 124, 127 and 128, 142 and 143, 171 and
172, 177 and 178.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

Speech acts plays pivotal role in any kinds of communication. Here, speech acts
theory is used to analyze humor was because speech acts deal with interpretation.

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Speakers expect listeners to recognize the functions of the sentences they speak and to
act accordingly. Whenever they ask a question, for example, they expect their listeners
to realize that it is a request for information. If the listeners fail to appreciate this
intention, they are judged as having "misunderstood," even though they may have taken
in everything else about the utterance.
Moreover, misunderstanding can be funny because when the speaker utters
something to the addressee and the addressee cannot catch what actually the speaker
means, but the addressee feels that he/she understands it or has his/her own
interpretation of one speech and replies it with the answer which is unconnected to the
speech. Thus, the joke occurs by the time the answer is spoken.

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