Abstract

As a kind of special type of television program, the situation comedy has widely attracted the interest of many researchers abroad. In addition, as the American sitcom in Chinese is gradually heating up, Chinese researchers have also studied the American situation comedy from different perspectives. Some of them focus on the characteristics of its text, artistic style and script writing. Others study the humor in the dialogue from the pragmatic perspective. According to the existing literature, the studies on verbal humor in American situation comedy by using cooperative principle and politeness principle are not much. Therefore, this paper intends to explore the conversation in Friends by resorting to the cooperative principle and politeness principle to study the verbal humor in the contemporary American sitcom. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the verbal humor in American sitcom and to analyze the production mechanism of it in order to help the Chinese audience to have a better appreciation of American sitcoms.

Key words: situation comedy, cooperative principle, politeness principle, generation mechanism

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1.-Introduction-1

2.-Literature Review-1

2.1 Studies on Humor Abroad-2

2.2 Studies on Humor at Home-2

2.3 Researches on Humor with Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle-3

3. Methodology-4

3.1 Study Object-4

3.2 Main Study Methods-4

4. Pragmatic Analysis of Humor in Friends-4

4.1 Cooperative Principle and Humor-5

4.1.1 The Cooperative Principle-5

4.1.2 Humor Created by the Violation of the Cooperative Principle-5

4.2 Politeness Principle and Humor-8

4.2.1 The Politeness Principle-8

4.2.2 Humor Created by the Violation of the Politeness Principle-8

4.2.3 Humor Created by the Observation of the Politeness Principle-10

5. Conclusion-11

References:-12