LINGUISTIC INCONGRUITY IN THE INTERNET MEMES: STUDY OF HUMOR

ABSTRAK Wicaksono, Langgeng Aji.2017. Linguistic Incongruity in the Internet Memes: Study of Humor. Undergraduate Thesis, English Department, faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang. Advisors: 1) Maria Hidayati, S.S, M.A. and 2) Dr. Johannes A. Prayogo, M.Pd, M.Ed. Keywords: linguistic incongruity, Internet meme, humorHumor has existed for quite long time with its unique characteristics. We cannot deny that humor is also a part of our social life. Through humor we socialize, communicate, criticize, even satirize about certain issues in our daily life. That shows how humor is close to our life. We can easily find humor in every place. With the advance development of technology, especially with the discovery of the Internet, humors nowadays give entertainment in the Internet as well. This created a new phenomenon of Internet meme. This study focuses on studying one particular meme known as pun dog meme. The aims are to analyze the linguistic incongruity, the puns and the forms of humor used in the pun dog meme.The research design of this study is descriptive qualitative. The data of this study are taken from the biggest and popular website named imgflip (imgflip.com). The researcher selected 20 data of pun dog memes out of 70 most recent postings in the website from January to February 2017. After getting the data, the researcher started to analyze and categorize the linguistic incongruity that occurs in the pun dog memes. The final step was concluding the types of incongruity, the forms of humor, and the placement of the puns.The findings and data analysis show that the most used type of linguistic incongruity is Phonology-oriented incongruity with the percentage of 80% and followed with Lexis-oriented incongruity with the percentage of 20%. Phonology-oriented incongruity manipulate sound strings of words or phrases and also the homophony and homonym of words. Meanwhile, lexis-oriented incongruity deals more with coinage word used to create humor. Moreover, the findings also show seven (7) data that use the one-liner form and thirteen (13) data use the riddle form of humor. In other words, the humor in pun dog memes are mostly constructed by using a question and an unpredictable answer since the most used form is the riddle form. Additionally, four data (4) are found to place the puns at the setup and sixteen (16) data found to place the puns at the punchline. It makes the punchline easier to identify and make it funnier. This study suggests the students of linguistics to take a closer look to the study of humor since there are many interesting aspects of it that can be studied. For people in general can also learn humor deeper because it helps them to understand humor better than before