Humor in the Arabic comedy show, N2O

Abstract This study examines verbal humor in the Jordanian stand-up comedy show N2O. It identifies and analyzes how conversational maxims are flouted to create humor. To achieve this aim, 60 seven-minute episodes were taken from the channel of the show. The study showed that comedians flouted the maxims of quantity, quality, relevance and manner to create humor, aiming to make the audience look for implicature. It was also found that the maxims of quantity and quality were the most flouted. The comedians flouted the maxim of quantity by being regularly either less or more informative than required. They also flouted the maxim of quality by telling obvious lies and exaggeration. The study also revealed that the Jordanian comedians in N2O create the audience’s laughter by using satire, pun, exaggeration and mocking to flout Grice maxims of conversation while addressing different social practices or phenomena, such as the high increase in prices, addiction to the internet and Jordanians’ ignorance of some social issues.

Although several studies have investigated various types of discourse pertaining to the genre of humor, little attention has been paid to stand-up comedy within a Jordanian context. More specifically, to the best of the researchers' knowledge, no previous studies has examined how flouting Gricean Conversational Maxims (1975) would create humor in Jordanian Arabic Stand-up comedy. As such, the aim of the present study is to investigate how comedians flout Grice's maxims in order to evince humor in the Jordanian stand-up comedy show N2O. Started in 2011, it has become one of the most popular stand-up comedy shows in the Arab world. The participant stand-up comedians humorously address different social, political and economic issues that take place in Jordan to create their audience's laughter. The appeal of N2O's brand of comedy in Jordan is evident in the 726 K subscribers to their YouTube channel. As Dynel and Chovanec (2021) suggest, technology-mediated communication forms are popular on various types of social ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sara Al-sawaeer is a lecturer at Albalqa Applied University, Jordan. She holds an MA in Language, Culture and Communication from the University of Jordan. Her research interests are pragmatics and discourse analysis.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Humor is a universal phenomenon. In Jordan, stand up comedy has become an important means of addressing many social practices, aiming at creating their audience's laughter. This atudy identifies and analyzes how humor is enacted by flouting the Gricean's maxims of conversational.
media (e.g., Facebook, YouTube or Twitter) and their presence is "fertile ground for the emergence of humour" (p. 152).
Humor, which aims to provoke laughter and amusement, is a universal phenomenon. Gruner (1978) states that "Without laughter everyday living becomes drab and lifeless, life would seem hardly human at all. Likewise, a sense of humor is generally considered a person's most admirable attribute" (p. 1). Freud believes that humor helps people to release their emotions. Similarly, Meyer (2000) considers it an essential part of daily life as it unites people in shared laughter and it enables them to express opinions, and ideas, and can form an essential part of their identities. Humor may occur in our daily interactions, in work places, on televisions, in theatres, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and, more deliberately, in stand-up comedy shows, which is the main concern and focus of the present research paper (Berger, 1993). McIlvenny (1992) situates the beginnings of stand-up comedy in the allowed fool or court jester of medieval and renaissance royal courts. He views stand-up comedy as a live stage show hosted by a comedian who must constantly grab attention, acceptance and laughter in front of an audience. Marc (1989) places its origins as an entertainment sub-genre in nineteenth-century mountebank or medicinal tent shows where a monologue would be used simultaneously to entertain and to sell the health tonics. However, as a stand-alone entertainment it grew to prominence in the twentieth century as it started to be hosted in American theatre venues (Mintz, 2008). Stand-up comedians use a variety of techniques to generate their audience's laughter. One of these techniques is flouting Gricean Conversational Maxims (1975), i.e. the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner. In the following sections, we will present a definition of humor, explain how Grice maxims are unfulfilled to enact humor, and describe previous studies that have explored various aspects of humor and humor in different genres.

Definition of humor
Humor has a long history in scholarly writing, but for Plato it was not something worthy of inclusion in his ideal society. In the Republic (388e), Plato considers humor as mocking human weakness and vice (as cited in Attardo, 1994), but he did not think it apt or moral to take pleasure in people's flaws. Aristotle mentions it briefly in the Poetics (Ch. 5) in connection to tragedy. The two are the same in terms of our expectations and differ only in severity. If we want something and the opposite happens there are two possibilities: if it is serious then a tragedy has occurred, if it is ridiculous then comedy has occurred.
The word "humor" emerges as a technical term that covers anything that is (or may be) perceived as funny, amusing, or laughable (Attardo, 2020). According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, our sense of humor is "the ability to find things funny, the way in which people see that some things are funny, or the quality of being funny". Attardo (2017) divides humor into two types, namely referential and verbal. Verbal humor, the main concern of this study, "is comprised of puns, ambiguity-based humor, or humor that is based on repetition of parts of the signifier (for example, alliteration)" (p. 2). Raskin (1985, 2) views humor as "a universal human trait" adding that "responding to humor is part of human behavior." Berger (1993) also argues that "Humor is everywhere. It insinuates itself into every aspect of our lives and sticks its big nose in where we don't want it. It is delicious and yet, at the same time, often painful" (p. 1). In a similar vein, Oring (2011) views humor as a cultural and universal phenomenon, which represents one of the natural traits of human beings; thus, humor is considered an essential part of human life and people naturally participate in humorous situations. In terms of its utility, Attardo (1994), affirms the Freudian view that humor is a way to express oneself or to release inner feelings. Meyer (2000) similarly urges that humor, as a "social phenomenon", could be a tool of "clarification" that enables people to express their ideas in a creative way, and a tool of "differentiation" and "enforcement" to criticize people, or issues, through contradiction and sarcasm. Other researchers have shown that humor has several other functions, including obtaining social support (Moran & Hughes, 2006). This, in turn, reduces the effects of stress (Moran & Hughes, 2006;Plester, 2009), and it may also enhance the indirect process of persuasion (Strick, et al., 2013). Grice (1975) states that to structure a successful communication using language, our communication should have certain qualities. He proposes that in everyday conversations, speakers and hearers share the maxims of the Cooperative Principle (CP). As such, speakers must cooperate with each other by using Grice's principle to achieve their communication goals. On this basis, Grice (1975.45-46) proposed four maxims to be followed by speakers, i.e. quantity, quality, relation, and manner.

Flouting Grice's cooperative principle to enact humor
People unconsciously follow Grice's maxims; however, they do not always obey the Cooperative Principle for some communicative purposes. Grice (1975) includes several ways that people fail to observe a maxim, these include: violation, flouting, opting out, infringing, and suspending. This research paper focuses on how flouting Grice's maxims may create humor. H.P. Grice (1989) states that the flouting of conversational maxims may cause laughter. Moreover, Attardo (1990) suggests that a large number of jokes have at least one flouting of Grice's maxims. Similarly, Brock (2016) concludes that maxims of conversation are suspended in order to create laughter when the audience take into account different types of information and some contextual cues.
Flouting is a situation where one of the maxims is deliberately not observed by the speakers with the intent to generate implicature (Grice, 1975;Thomas, 1995). Raskin (1985) views implicatures as the intended meanings of an utterance, which can provoke a humorous effect. Table 1 shows how the maxims of conversations are flouted according to Grice (1975). Please note that these are our own examples.

Literature review
Numerous studies have been conducted on flouting Grice's cooperative principle in creating humor in stand-up comedy. For example, Yamazaki (2010) investigated the role of flouting Grice's maxims in creating humor in stand-up comedy performed by two Japanese comedians. Yamazaki's results showed no significant difference in how the two comedians flouted Grice's maxims to create humor. In a similar exploration, Pan (2012) also found that flouting Grice's maxims of quality, quantity, relevance, and manner contributes to the creation of humor. Again, Kehinde (2016) explored how violations of Grice's maxims are used to create humor in stand-up comedy. Here, he found that violations of Grice's cooperative principle created humor.
Other researchers have been interested in humor in TV sitcoms. For example, Chaipreukkul (2013) investigated the types of the non-observance of Grice's Cooperative Principle used in the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory, created by Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady, with Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, and Simon Helberg. By using Berger's (1993) theory of rhetorical techniques, he indicated that flouting was the most frequently used means of creating humor. Moreover, he also revealed that repartee, irony and misunderstanding were also regularly used in the sitcom for humor. Capkova (2012) tried to investigate the role of both the cooperative principles of Grice and the politeness principle of Leech (1983) in creating humor in the British sitcom The IT Crowd, written by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla. He concluded that the non-observance of Grice's Cooperative Principle creates humor. Caesillia (2015) investigated the role of Grice's Cooperative Principle in the humor of the second season of the sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. She concluded that there were four kinds of non-observance of Grice's maxims that contribute to the comic effect created in the series: violation, flouting, suspending and infringing. Similarly, Xue and Hei (2017) explored whether the non-observance of Grice's maxims (flouting, violating, infringing, opting out, and suspending) contribute to the creation of humor in the Chinese sitcom Home with Kids. The results of the study showed that flouting, violation and infringing were used in the sitcom to create a humorous effect; significantly, flouting was used the most among the other types of non-observance of Grice's Cooperative Principle.
Some researchers have studied the creation of humor through the Non-Observance of Grice's Maxims in Jordanian Arabic. To investigate the violation of Grice's maxims in cartoons found in Jordanian newspapers, Alkayed et al. (2015) found that, in order to address social, political and cultural issues in Jordan, Jordanian cartoonists do not observe all of Grice's maxims. Similarly, Bany Salameh (2015) examined the role of flouting Grice's maxims in creating humor in Emad Hajjaj's Caricature of Abu Mahjoob. She found that all the maxims were flouted to create a humorous effect. Moreover, the results of her study revealed that the maxim of relevance was the most flouted in the analyzed data. Alkayed (2019) conducted a study to identify the violation of Grice's maxims in six Jordanian jokes and to explore the implied meaning in those jokes. His study also explored the factors that contribute to understanding these jokes. The findings showed that Jordanian jokes violate Grice's Cooperative Principle to create humor. Al Kayed concluded that the humor of the jokes was used to soften criticism. Moreover, he found that cultural background plays a major role in interpreting jokes. Other studies were interested in violating Grice maxims to create humor in political discourse. For example, Mashaqi (2019) conducted a study on Arabic verbal political satire in As-Salit El-Ekhbari to explore the use of linguistics and paralinguistic strategies as well as the flouting of Grice's maxims in humorously criticizing political issues. The study adopted the General Theory of Verbal Humor by Attardo (1994) and Grice's maxims (Grice, 1975). Mashaqi (2019) found that personification, simile, metaphor, pun and exaggeration were used in addressing political problems humorously. Moreover, Mashaqi found that Grice's maxims were flouted in the analyzed data to create humor.
A review of the literature shows that many studies have investigated the non-observance of Grice's maxims to enact humor in sitcoms (e.g., Xue & Hei, 2017;Chaipreukkul, 2017). Some other studies have investigated the non-observance of Grice's maxims in newspaper cartoons (e.g., Alkayed et al., 2015), while others handled the flouting of Grice's maxims in caricature (e.g., Bany Salameh, 2015), and how the violations of Grice's maxims would create humor in jokes (e.g., Alkayed, 2019). Although research on humor in its numerous genres has been pursued for centuries, scant attention has been paid to research on flouting Grice's maxims to create humor in stand-up comedy. Moreover, to the best knowledge of the researchers, there is no such study that has studied how flouting Grice's conversational maxims creates humor and laughter in Jordanian stand-up. The current paper attempts to bridge this research gab by investigating how flouting Grice's maxims evinces humor in the Jordanian stand-up comedy N2O.

Corpus
The data of the present research was collected from the channel of the comedy show, N2O on YouTube 1 (Section 1.3). A total of 60 YouTube episodes (from between 2014 and 2017) of stand-up comedy routines (60x8 minutes = 480 minutes) were examined. They cover different topics related to Jordanian society. Each episode is around 7-10 minutes long. 2 N2O was chosen because it addresses in detail many social phenomena in Jordanian community and engages the behaviors of Jordanian men and women. The show also deals with issues that Jordanian society faces and in some cases suggests solutions. It was also chosen for its popularity as it has 725k subscribers.

Data analysis framework and procedures
Episodes were analyzed and categorized according to Grice's maxims of conversation (1975) to explore how humor is created in the Jordanian stand-up show, N2O. The script excerpts are first written in Arabic, which is then followed by their translation into English. The following is a step by step procedure: • The researcher watched each episode several times and paused a video, when needed, to better transcribe the situations in which humor exists.
• These humorous scripts were translated into English.
• The flouting of Grice's maxims was highlighted in context.
• To maximize the reliability of the researchers' classification of flouting Grice maxims, it was given along with the definitions and examples of each type to three professors of linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Jordan.
• The professors' comments were taken into consideration to arrive at a final classification.
• The researcher started her quantitative analysis by calculating frequencies and percentages and by tabulating the results related to the flouting of Grice's maxims.
• How Grice's maxims were flouted to enact humor and indicate implicature was finally discussed in context.

Flouting Grice maxims in N2O
The analysis revealed that the Jordanian comedians in N2O flouted Grice's maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner in order to create laughter. Table 2 shows the frequencies and percentages of flouting Grice's maxims to create humor in the show. It reveals that the maxim of quality was the most flouted (50 instances), followed by the maxim of quantity (23), and relevance (11). It was found that flouting the maxim of manner was the least use (2 instances).

Maxim of quantity
To observe the maxim of quantity, the speaker should be as informative as is required (Grice, 1975). Therefore, flouting the maxim of quantity involves being more (or less) informative than is required. Consider scripts 1-4 below.

Script 1
Context: Addressing a situation when a mother keeps asking her son to clean the house while preparing for the guests to come.

Script 1 Translation:
Mohammad: My mom starts cleaning the house one week before the guests come. "Clean the guest room and the sitting room. Clean above the stairs and under the stairs. Use the ladder and untie the curtains. Clean the curtains and then hang them. Remove the ladder. Go clean here. Clean under this and clean upstairs." In Script 1, the comedian uses parody to create humor. He copies, in a mocking way, verbally and physically what his mom does when they have guests, saying "clean" repeatedly. Using this strategy creates a comic effect. The parody in this script flouts the maxim of quantity by repeating "clean", which is in Arabic " ‫ﯾ‬ ‫ﻨ‬ ‫ﻈ‬ ‫ﻒ‬ ", seven times. Mohammad is being more informative than required, implying that the speaker wants to show his annoyance and resentment toward his mom's attitudes when guests come to their house. Being more informative than required in this example causes laughter.

Script 2
Context: Criticizing the fact that Jordanian public doctors prescribe Panadol for every illness.

Script 2 Translation:
In the world of medicine, there are millions of medications! Why does Panadol become the solution for any illness? "I have a headache, ok; I will take Panadol!", "I have a stomach ache; I will take Panadol", "My leg hurts; I will take Panadol", "My nose hurts; I will take Panadol", "My foot stinks; I will take Panadol." "Get off of Panadol, man!" The speaker in this script uses satire to address and criticize the overuse of Panadol in Jordan. The humorous effect in this comes from the comedian mockingly exaggerating the Jordanians' attitude when it comes to Panadol use, saying that they use Panadol for almost everything when in fact they do not. Further, there is absurdity in the suggestion that someone would take Panadol for something like a "hurt" nose or a "stink[ing] foot". Taking Panadol for such conditions is nonsense and does not have any medical benefits. This absurdity has a comic effect. The speaker repeats "Panadol", which is in Arabic " ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﻨ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫د‬ ‫و‬ ‫ل‬ ", seven times which clearly flouts the maxim of quantity. The speaker is more informative than is required, implying that Jordanians should stop taking Panadol for everything. Sometimes, I face certain situations that make me shocked by the amount of hatred that people in Jordan have for each other. I always share food with my friends and they only remember the time in which I did not do so, and they always use this against me. Someone behind the scenes asked the speaker, "is it the only time?" The only time I did not share my food with them, or should I tell you? I do not want to tell you what happened because these people are vindictive and they are waiting for any morsel to hate me.
In script 3, the comedian criticizes his friends, describing society as "vindictive" because he once refused to share his food with his friends, but they continually remind him of it. In saying, "people . . . are waiting for any morsel to hate me" he exaggerates the problem to comic effect. Criticizing his friends for this behavior, and his extreme resentment of the experience also involves a shortage in information in which Grice's (1975) maxim of quantity is flouted, for there is less information than the situation requires. Although he had initially suggested that he would explain something to his audience, the speaker suddenly changed his mind and said "I do not want to tell you what happened", which in Arabic is " ". This is less informative than the context requires because he refrains from telling the story he was about to tell. This implies that the speaker is really upset about the fact that his friends use the only time he did not share his food with them to mock him. Being less informative than required, perhaps hinting at something shameful, may provoke laughter.

Script 4
Context: Addressing a situation when the doctor asks his patient for a stool examination.

Script 4 Translation:
Now there is a test I really hate; it is stool examination. I hate the stool examination, stool examination. This stool examination happens when the doctor tells you to take the stool examination and you are like: "Ok, I will do the stool examination!" In script 4, the speaker clearly flouts the maxim of quantity since he repeats "stool examination", which in Arabic is " ", five times. Once would clearly be enough, but repeating the phrase again and again is more than we need to understand him. The repetition of something distasteful causes laughter.

Maxim of quality
Flouting Grice's maxims involves untruthfulness (Grice, 1975). The data has shown that comedians regularly flout the maxim of quality to leave the message's interpretation open to the audience in order to create humor, as shown in the following scripts.

Script 5
Context: Criticizing people who always pretend not to have change and who ask others to pay their bills. The most likeable group are those who do not have change, you feel like all their life is only about one bank note. If you search them you may find one bank note worth seven JD and sixty piasters because they cannot change it, and when his bill is 6 JD, he says "I don't have change."

‫و‬
Script 5 uses absurdity. Having seven JDs and sixty piasters as a single note is impossible, which makes it nonsense to say this beyond the comic effect and as an attempt to criticize and make fun of people who tend to wriggle out of paying on the basis of not having change. More significantly for this paper, the maxim of quality is flouted three times in this example. " ("if you search him you may find one bank note worth seven JDs and sixty piasters"). Not only is this absurd, but also when the bill is said to come to 6 JD there is an obvious lie in the addressee claiming not to have enough "change" from his 7.60. This implies that such people lie when they say they do not have change.

Script 6
Context: A layperson describes disk surgery. .

Script 6 Translation:
Man! Disk surgery is simple! You enter the right ear and penetrate the left ear.
In this script, the comedian uses the strategy of understatement when he says "Disk surgery is simple!" He is clearly understating a very serious surgery by saying it is "simple" to make the audience laugh. This flouts the maxim of quality twice since it appears that he lies, but in fact, he is using implicature to create humor. This utterance "Disk surgery is simple!" is untrue since disk surgery is complicated and dangerous. " ("You enter the right ear and penetrate the left ear"). Being untruthful flouts the maxim of quality, implying that some Jordanians pretend to know everything about medicine while in fact they know nothing as shown in this layperson's utterances. The aim of the untruth here is to provoke humorous effect.

Script 7
Context: Describing what happens on the cheat day (of the diet).
. In script 7, the comedian uses the strategy of overstatement when he says "After a while, I'll eat my family." The speaker here is clearly exaggerating his hunger for comic effect when he says that he would eat his family in the break day of the diet. Using exaggeration flouts the maxim of quality because what he says is untrue for the simple purpose of humor. It also implies how hungry he is and how much he likes food. He suggests that he would eat whatever he comes across on that particular day. Untruthfulness provokes humor.

Maxim of relevance
Flouting the maxim of relevance involves saying an irrelevant statement (Grice, 1975).

Script 8
Context: Explaining the process of digging for gold. We have, of course, alienation and digging (The speaker here turned the Arabic /r/ into /l/), I know I am a lisper. No comment, please! It is okay, take it easy. We have of course alienation and digging.

‫ﻃ‬
In this script, while explaining the process of digging for gold, the speaker turned the Arabic / r/ into /l/ and added an irrelevant statement " ".(Baby! Leave me! Your socks are gray and brown!). The comedian claims women are always winners in any discussion. Although the comedian's misogynistic portrayal of Jordanian women in relationships, as he describes them, is problematic and clearly only intended as caricature, the irrelevant statements attributed to his girlfriend flout the maxim of relevance to make the audience laugh.

Script 10
Context: Expressing anger toward people who say expressions related to months. The comedian counted all week days, but not Friday! Every now and then, he says 'Hey guys! Where is the seventh day? To make the audience laugh!

Script 10 Translation:
The ones that bother me are those who write "Hi October! Be merciful on us! Hello December! The most beautiful people are those born in February! Guys where is the seventh day?
The comedian addresses many topics; one of these is the names of the days and the reasons behind them. For instance, the reason why " ‫ا‬ ‫ﻻ‬ ‫ﺣ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ " (Sunday) is so called is that it refers to the number one, which in Arabic is ' ‫و‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ﺣ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ " (one), and so forth. However, he could not find a reason for naming the seventh day (Saturday). Therefore, he kept repeating, during the entire show, "Hey guys! Where is the seventh day?" This strategy of repetition, which is of course irrelevant, is known as an extended-, or running-gag and refers to an amusing situation or line that recurs throughout a story or performance. Repeating this line suddenly in the middle of talking about other things is not relevant, which flouts the maxim of relevance to cause a humorous effect.

Script 11
Context: Addressing the plight of men in saving money to get married. Why do I have to save money and spend a long time eating Indomie (Instant Noodle) only to save money and give it to you and you say "Yes". Work, work with me. Indomie is not a sponsored product but if you would like it to be sponsored, I am available! In this script, the comedian uses satire to criticize the fact that men in Jordanian society have to pay all the expenses for their weddings. He shows how much men suffer, and live a miserable life, just to cover the cost of this marriage by saying " " (Indomie is not sponsored here but, if you would like, I am available). The comedian flouts the maxim of relevance by offering his willingness to advertise products for the company that makes Indomie to make the audience laugh and create humor.

Maxim of manner
Flouting the maxim of manner involves being ambiguous and obscure (Grice, 1975).

Script 12
Context: Describing an event that happened to the comedian's little brother at school: . Since we are talking about intelligence, I would like to tell you that intelligence in our family is inherited along with height, blue eyes and blond hair. When my beloved little brother was 10 years old, he was learning mathematics. His math teacher was tough and it was my brother's turn to be tested:
My brother did not know the answer. So he was afraid, and as I told you the teacher was very tough.
Teacher: Come on! I do not have time! 9 times 3 equals?
My brother remained silent.
At this moment the teacher lost his composure and started yelling at my brother and saying multiply, multiply, multiply! You idiot! I do not know what my brother thought when the teacher said "multiply", but I remember that day the school called my dad because my brother hit the teacher. Now my brother is the biggest Falafel maker in Jordan! In script 12, the speaker uses pun to create a humorous effect when he says " ‫ا‬ ‫ﺿ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ب‬ " which, for an Arabic speaker, has two meanings: "multiply", or "hit". Using the word in this particular context causes ambiguity. Because of the teacher's shouting at his brother " ‫أ‬ ‫ﺿ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ب‬ , ‫أ‬ ‫ﺿ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ب‬ , the boy got confused and forgot the first meaning of 'multiply', so he hit the teacher. Humor lies both in the Arabic ambiguous word, which has two meanings (multiply and hit) and in flouting the maxim of manner, which causes laughter when his brother inappropriately hit his teacher as a result of confusion when he shouted " ‫ا‬ ‫ﺿ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ب‬ ", calling the child 'idiot!".

Script 13
Context: The troubles, which the comedian had at university: I was always a trouble maker at the university. Once I got expelled so I was beaten by my dad! He told me "What did you do, crazy?" I answered "I swear to God, I only shot the guy". My dad was about to have a heart attack and he lost his mind, then he beat me so badly that I still, until this moment, see the doctor frequently because of his punishment. I swear to God! My dad thought that I actually shot him. This script is taken from an episode that talks about how Jordanian colloquialism causes problems to its speakers because many words have multiple meanings. The comedian here uses pun when he says " ‫ﻃ‬ ‫ﺨ‬ ‫ﯿ‬ ‫ﺖ‬ " (shot the guy), which has two meanings in Jordanian Spoken Arabic: "shooting to kill", or "insulting someone". As a consequence, the father thought that his son killed someone when he meant only that he insulted him. The ambiguity, and the pun, in the word " ‫ﻃ‬ ‫ﺨ‬ ‫ﯿ‬ ‫ﺖ‬ " also flouts the maxim of manner and it causes laughter.

More maxims are flouted in an utterance
The data revealed that the subjects flouted more than one maxim at a time. For instance, quality and quantity maxims were flouted in many instances to create humor.

Script 14
Context: A situation when Jordanian families start calling their son, who is still a freshman in the College of Medicine, doctor. .

Script 14 Translation:
The family is happy for the fact that this is the doctor! Our doctor! Hey our doctor! Doctor Laith! Doctor Laith! Doctor Mohammad! To criticize the Jordanian families, who get ahead of themselves when their children have just started their BSc. in Medicine, the comedian satirically reports how they start calling them "doctor", imitating how they refer to him: "this is the doctor", "our doctor!", "Doctor Laith", "Doctor Mohammed", etc. To show how irritating he finds this Jordanian families' behavior, the comedian parodies them, humorously imitating them. As can be noticed, this example flouts the maxim of quality and quantity. The maxim of quantity is flouted in the repetition of the word "doctor", six times. The maxim of quality is also flouted because the so-called "doctor" is still a freshman. By being untruthful and more informative than is required, the speaker implies that the Jordanian community should curb their enthusiasm in such instances. By flouting the maxims of quality and quantity, the speaker provokes laughter.

Script 15
Context: The comedian demonstrates how Jordanian families react when they have guests, and neither the host nor the guest like each other. The fake smile implies that none of us can tolerate the other, but we both laugh. It is like: "Welcome, we are happy and honored to have you". It is all about welcoming. "Welcome, we are happy and honored to have you!" Spending four hours of welcoming and saying "We are happy and honored to have you!".

‫ا‬
In this example the speaker uses irony to criticize how insincere Jordanian families are in welcoming their guests, repeatedly expressing how happy they are to receive them, while, in fact, they are not. The repetition, three times, in the comedian's parody of Jordanian welcoming, flouts the maxim of quantity while the effusiveness of the welcome clearly flouts the maxim of quality, both of which are done for humor and to make the audience laugh. The host, as shown by the stand-up comedian, is clearly not as "happy and honored" as he claims.

Discussion
The present research has explored how the four maxims of conversation, proposed by Grice (1975), were flouted by the stand-up comedians in N2O to humorous effect. It showed that the maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relevance and Manner were flouted by the comedians to create humor. The study concluded that in order to create humor, Jordanian stand-up comedians flouted the Quantity Maxim either by providing more or less information than needed. This finding is in line with Alkayed, et al.'s study (Alkayed et al., 2015), which concluded that the maxim of Quantity is flouted by offering incomplete information or more words than needed. Regarding the maxim of Quality, this study found that comedians in the show flouted this maxim through the use of exaggerative, ironic and untrue statements. This finding lends support to Kehinde (2016) who showed that exaggeration is used to flout the Maxim of Quality, and Pan (2012) who found that irony is employed to flout this maxim. The current study also revealed that the Relevance Maxim was flouted by providing irrelevant information in order to create humor. This echoes the conclusions of Alkayed (2019), who also found that the maxim of Relevance was flouted by offering an irrelevant statement as a response. Finally, the researcher found that the Maxim of Manner was flouted by being ambiguous, i.e. by providing a word that has two possible meanings. This supports Mashaqi's (2019) findings that ambiguous words may be used to flout the Maxim of Manner. This also lends support to the findings of Bany Salameh (2015), whose study revealed that flouting Grice maxims (1975) creates humorous effects in Emad Hajjaj's Caricature of Abu Mahjoob. Flouting Grice's maxims generates implicature (Grice, 1975), which can contribute in evincing humor (Raskin, 1985). In support of this argument, the present study concludes that the Jordanian comedians in N2O flouted Grice's maxims to create humor in order to address different social phenomena. For instance, some routines talked about high increase in prices, internet addiction and the lack of awareness of some Jordanians of important matters. These maxims are flouted purposefully in order to encourage the audience to arrive at the intended message of the comedian. This conclusion supports Relief Theory, which claims that humor can be used to release suppressed feelings (Freud, 1963) to address certain issues as an attempt to overcome these problems. Elsayed (2016) in his study also concluded that humor is used to address problems in order to stop them. In support of Alkayed's (2019) suggestion that humor is used to soften criticism, we also conclude that the comedians of N2O flouted Grice's maxims, using humor to soften their criticisms of aspects of Jordanian behavior and society (e.g., lying). It is also concluded