摘要情景喜剧是大众喜闻乐见的艺术表现形式,言语幽默像是其生命。言语幽默,作为一种特殊的语言现象,在人们生活实践中起着举足轻重的作用。而通过违反格莱斯合作原则常常会产生夸张讽刺的幽默效果,因此本文作者在格莱斯的合作原则理论框架的指导下,对美国情景喜剧《老友记》中的言语幽默的产生做了进一步的分析。该研究有助于增进我们对美国情景喜剧和日常会话幽默的理解和欣赏,进而让人们了解到培养英语学习者语用能力的重要性以及幽默在英语课堂教学中应用的良好效果。 24817
毕业论文关键词:合作原则;幽默;情景喜剧;《老友记》
Abstract
Situation comedy is very popular all over the word, in which verbal humor is its life. Humor, as a special language phenomenon, plays a very important role. The violation of Grice’s Cooperative Principle can get the humorous effect of exaggeration and sarcasm. In this paper, such question as how verbal humor is generated will be exploited by the author from the perspective of Grice’s Cooperative Principle in pragmatics. The findings can help the English learners to comprehend and appreciate the verbal humor in English sitcoms as well as in daily communication. Furthermore, it allows people to understand the importance to cultivate the English learners’ pragmatic competence and highlight the good effect through applying humor to English teaching classroom.
Key words: the Cooperative Principle; humor; situation comedy; Friends
On Verbal Humor in the American Sitcom Friends from the Perspective of the Cooperative Principle
Contents
摘 要..i
Abstract...ii
I. Introduction.1
II. Background Information..2
2.1 Introduction to Humor2
2.2 Introduction to Situation Comedy.4
2.3 Introduction to the Grice’s Cooperative Principle5
III. Case Study of Friends7
3.1 Humorous Effect Realized by Violating the Quantity Maxim8
3.2 Humorous Effect Realized by Violating the Quality Maxim 9
3.3 Humorous Effect Realized by Violating the Relation Maxim.11
3.4 Humorous Effect Realized by Violating the Manner Maxim12
IV. Implications14
V. Conclusion16
Bibliography18
Acknowledgements 19
I. Introduction
Humor is a very intriguing and fascinating phenomenon of human society, which is ubiquitous multidimensional,complex and all pervasive.Therefore,many scholars and experts at all times and in all over the world have done profound research on humor. The significant functions of humor have aroused the interest of many scholars.About 2,000 years ago,people began the research on humor.However, the study of humor is not a simple task for the reason that it is an interdisciplinary science drawing upon a wide range of academic disciplines including anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, geography, history, linguistics, literature,education,family science,film studies and so on. The contemporary studies on humor focus mainly on the perspective of linguistics.Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo are two outstanding representatives of this field.Their distinctive theories on humor include Script-based Theory of Jokes (SSTH)by Victor Raskin in his Semantic Mechanisms of Humor and the General Theory of Verbal Humor(GTVH) by Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attard.
The purpose of this thesis is to exploit the mechanisms of the generation and perception of humor from the pragmatics perspective.It is carried out with the help of the application of Cooperative Principles and its maxims into explaining and analyzing the humor in American sitcom Friends. The author also wants to probe into the obstacles which prohibit the English learners from understanding and appreciating the humorous utterances in Friends as well as in daily life.Furthermore, the author wants to discuss the possibility and effects of using humor in English teaching classes.For people who are interested in humor and pragmatics or studying this topic,this thesis may be able to help them as a means of reference to study about English humor. What the author means is that mostly people observe the phenomena of language in serious or ordinary situation but in comedic situation,there is a different set of situation where people sometimes may act uncooperatively or impolitely to achieve the humorous scene.This kind of scene may look awkward and unusual,but it can also happen sometimes in real life,whether the people realize it or not. And the humorous teaching approach would make a contribution to the students of English learning by improving classroom atmosphere, reducing class tension and increasing the rapport between students and teacher. 合作原则视角下《老友记》中的言语幽默:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_18440.html