(1) Husband: Your nagging goes right in one ear and out the other.
Wife: That's because there is nothing between to stop it. (Kotthoff 2006:274)
In example (1) the addressee utters That's because there is nothing between to stop it to respond to her husband’s comment. Here she is not deliberately trying to deceive her husband; what she is implying is that her husband has no brain. This actually means that the husband does not listen to his wife's constant nagging and therefore she says something that is obviously not true in order for him to look for another set of meanings. Flouting for comic effect is the focus of this paper. The aim of the paper is to identify instances of floutings of the four conversational maxims and see how they are used for comic effect in eight episodes of the comedy series Community. This will be done by means of the following research questions:2
1. How often are the conversational maxims flouted to create comic effect in the comedy series Community?
2. What conversational maxims do the main characters in the series flout, and how often?
3. What are the functions of these flouts?
In comedy series the dialogue between characters is constructed and is not authentic use of language. On the other hand, the scriptwriters do construct spoken interactions in a way that conversations might occur in real life, which the audience of the series understands.