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So far, specific researches based on the theory of CI are mostly focused on discovering various types of implicature in different texts, such as implicature in daily conversations and in practical communications (Liu Fuchang, 1987). However, it is a pity that few people have adopted this theory to the effect of humor in sitcoms, especially those popular American sitcoms.
American sitcoms are famous all around the world. Ever since the first complete American sitcom was on public release in China (Growing Pains in 1985), they have attracted millions of Chinese audience by their exotic atmosphere, elaborate plots, educational meaning, and maybe above all, their effect of humor. Although being enjoyed by Chinese audience, American sitcoms seem to fail to draw enough attention from the academic fields. This paper will attempt to explain how humor is created from the perspective of CI by examining the famous American sitcom Friends.
1.2 Approach
Based on the theory of CI, this study will adopt both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods, while the former will be used as the main means. It is due to the fact that this study is by nature a descriptive one, so that many conclusions drawn in it will be reached through answering the descriptively qualitative question, like “how does the violation of the Cooperative Principle (henceforth CP) contribute to the effect of humor in Friends?” However, in the main body part, some simple methods, like figures will be used to support the author’s point of view with more details, with the hope to make the findings more convincing.
2 Conversational Implicature and Friends
2.1 Development of Conversational Implicature
CI is the guiding theory which tries to discover the underlying rules in the research of implicature; it aims at understanding implicature, discovering how it is created, and analyzing its pragmatic effect.
CI has undergone many stages of development: in 1967, Paul Grice raised his CP theory which has been proved to be a practical tool in finding implicature. However, there were many flaws in the CP theory, such as no clear distinction and connection among the four maxims; so, in 1986, Sperber and Wilson established their theory of Relevance, which was an improvement of Grice’s CP since the four maxims in CP were combined into one, called Relevance. The theory of Relevance tries to answer the question that why people talk in one way rather than another by advocating that when a person is communicating with others, he would like to spare the least efforts to achieve the best “relevance” in a conversation, and as a result, for the sake of the best “relevance”, some maxims in CP have to be violated; in 1983, Leech came up with his famous theory of Politeness. Leech believed that in many cases, people have to violate some maxims in CP for politeness; in 1991, Levinson published his paper called Neo-Gricean pragmatic apparatus, in which he strengthened Grice’s theory by reorganizing the four maxims in a more practical way. So, it is easy to make a conclusion that many important theories on CI have been developed on the basis of CP, which proves that for the research of implicature, CP is a useful means.
2.2 Cooperative Principle
2.2.1 Emergence of Cooperative Principle and its General Conception
Paul Grice made three speeches at Harvard University in 1967 and he mentioned that in order to ensure that conversation moves smoothly, both the speaker and the listener will obey some basic principles, especially the Cooperative Principle (He Ziran & Ran Yongping, 2006: 67). Grice believed that the reason why they would do so is because people who are communicating with others usually have the same purpose: to be understood by their audience. It is this same purpose that explains why people will work together in communication.
Although CP tells how people’s conversations will be conducted generally, it does not lay down the rules of how a conversation should be carried out. Sometimes, people will find that one does not respond according to the rules of CP.