A Pragmatic Analysis of Verbal Humor in Friends1.doc

老友记中言语幽默的语用分析a pragmatic analysis of verbal humor in friendscontentsabstract in chinese iabstract in english .ii1. introduction.2. literature review2.1 the definition of humor.2.2 humor studies abroad.2.3 humor studies at home3. theoretical framework.3.1 grices cooperative principle.3.2 leechs politeness principle4. analysis of humor in friends 4.1 a brief introduction to the sitcom friends. 4.2 humor analysis from the cooperative principle perspective.4.2.1 humor created by flouting the maxim of quantity. flouting the first maxim of quantity. flouting the second maxim of quantity.4.2.2 humor created by flouting the maxim of quality. use of irony. use of metaphor. use of hyperbole.4.2.3 humor created by flouting the maxim of relation.4.2.4 humor created by flouting the maxim of manner. use of paradox use of parody. use of pun. .1 homonymous pun .2 homophonic pun.4.3 humor analysis from the politeness principle perspective.4.3.1 humor created by observing politeness principle.4.3.2 humor created by flouting politeness principle. flouting the tact maxim. flouting the generosity maxim. flouting the approbation maxim. flouting the modesty maxim. flouting the agreement maxim. flouting the sympathy maxim.5. conclusionbibliography11123335779101010111212121313141626内容摘要幽默在生活中起着举足轻重的作用。它能缓解矛盾，愉悦人们的心情，调节社会关系。幽默是一种特殊的语言现象。对幽默，特别是英语幽默的鉴赏力主要取决于对语言的反应能力。幽默的话语被说成是语言中最难的，可能就是这个道理。欣赏英语幽默的语言当然要比欣赏普通的英语语言要难。“只闻其声，不解其意”的人数有很多。因此对言语幽默的解读也成为言语研究中的一个重要课题。本文选取深受我国广大观众喜爱的美国情景喜剧老友记中的部分幽默言语事例，从合作原则和礼貌原则两个角度探讨言语幽默, 并分析得出违反合作原则及礼貌原则是英语幽默产生的重要源泉。其中涉及到的英语修辞的应用更是老友记中言语幽默生成的重要机制。本文对人们的笑声背后幽默系统如何运作进行了尝试性的论述, 它可以增进我们对美国情景喜剧和日常会话幽默的理解和欣赏。关键词：幽默；合作原则；礼貌原则；老友记abstracthumor plays a very important role in life. it can relieve stress, keeps people in good mood, and adjust social relationship. it is a special kind of linguistic form. in addition, appreciation of humor, especially english humor, depends upon the ability to respond to language. this is perhaps why humorous utterance has been regarded as the most difficult to understand of all utterances. certainly, it is more difficult to understand humorous english language than to comprehend plain english language. many people can understand the sentence in words but cannot the meaning between the lines. the interpretation of humor, therefore, becomes one of the intensely researched areas of language study. this thesis intends to analyze the examples of verbal humor in the american sitcom friends with the help of pragmatic theories involving cooperative principle and politeness principle. it finds that applying the cooperative principle and politeness principle is the important source of english humor. moreover, the rhetoric applied to flout the cooperative principle is the crucial mechanism of the production of humorous utterances in friends. based on these analyses, the deep structure of english verbal humor has been tentatively explored. the findings of this thesis can help the english learners to comprehend and appreciate the verbal humor in english sitcoms as well as in daily communication.key words: humor; cooperative principle; politeness principle; friends1. introductionhumor is a very interesting and absorbing phenomenon of human society. it is pervasive in our life. we can almost see it everywhere, in literature, in ads, in films, on television, etc. humor has so significant functions that it has aroused the interest of many scholars. what causes humor has always been a major concern of humor studies. for centuries, scholars from various disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, rhetoric and linguistics, have been working on it.within the 20th century, linguistic studies on humor have extended substantially to social, cultural, and pragmatic concerns. it is not long before scholars apply pragmatics into humor analysis. for example, victor raskin (1985) argues when people tell jokes, they engage themselves in non-bona-fide communication. their purpose is not so much of conveying information contained in the text but rather to create a special effect, namely to make the hearer laugh.the purpose of this thesis is to explore the mechanisms of humor from the pragmatics perspective in which found its insufficient study at the present time. it is carried out with the help of the application of cooperative principle and politeness principle into explaining and analyzing the humor in one of the most successful american sitcom friends. it is sincerely hoped that the discussion and analysis will help people express humor and understand humor effectively. the data comprises the script of the whole show (altogether 238 episodes) and the dvds. the script is downloaded from the internet through the address: http:/.the thesis consists of five chapters. chapter one is the introduction, which briefly touches upon the rationale, the purpose and overall organization of the thesis. chapter two is the literature review, which provides the definition of humor, followed by accounts on previous humor studies at home and abroad, including the three basic conventional theories on humor and the contemporary linguistic study on humor. chapter three is the theoretical framework of the thesis, which offers a brief overview of the data resource sitcom friends, and presents a general description of two theories in pragmatics, including grices cooperative principle and its maxims, leechs politeness principle. chapter four is the main part of the thesis, which applies two pragmatic theories into humor study. it includes humor created by flouting cp and its maxims, and by flouting pp. the humorous utterances in friends are analyzed in detail to explore the mechanism of humor. chapter five is the conclusion of the whole thesis. it sums up the main findings.2. literature review2.1 the definition of humorhumor has been the study of multi-disciplines, but a generally agreed definition of humor has never been put forward.etymologically, according to attardo (1994), “humor” is derived from the latin word for “liquid” or “fluid” and has much to do with the “theory of humors” of medieval medicine. through centuries, it gradually lost its original sense and came to refer to a specific mood or quality to understand, enjoy, and express what makes people laugh.generally, dictionary definition of the modern meaning of humor fall into four categories: 1) a quality or capacity of the interlocutor, 2) a feature of the discourse or situation, 3) the objective manifestation (in the form of literary works or other discourses or the event or situation itself) and 4) a technique of expression. (徐立新, 2003:16)chinese scholar lin yutang, is the first one who translated “humor” as “you mo” into chinese in early 20th century, and he held the view that “humor is a popular art form to express ones viewpoint and even perceptions of the real world” (胡范铸, 1987:7- 8).although definitions might be different, we can still find something in common: humor is laugh causing and needs peoples deep thinking. therefore, as far as the author is concerned, humor is kind of advanced activities of human intelligence which can make people feel funny and light-hearted. thus, the author will apply this meaning to the analysis of humor in american sitcom friends.2.2 humor studies abroadthe ultimate cause or motivation of humor has been the concern of over 200 theories from different disciplines (holland, 1982: 24), mainly psychology, philosophy, aesthetics and linguistics. a commonly accepted classification divides traditional theories of humor into three groups (attardo, 1994: 47): superiority theory, release theory and incongruity theory. attardo (1994) labeled these three theories as “social”, “psychoanalytical,” and “cognitive” respectively. generally, they are called “three basic conventional humor theories”. on the basis of these classic theories, many new accounts for humor keep emerging, especially from linguistic approach.with the development of modern linguistics, linguistic study of humor began to flourish in the late 20th century. studies of humor in this field mainly focus on the semantic aspects of humor such as the semantic structure, the rhetoric devices, genres, etc, with some later attention to pragmatic aspects. among these studies, semantic-script theory of humor (ssth), general theory of verbal humor (gtvh) developed by raskin and attardo is considered the most prominent modern linguistic theory of humor.recent years, various studies of humor from the pragmatic perspective are fruitful. pepicello (1983) summarizes the linguistic analysis of genres of linguistic humor and riddles in particular. nash (1985) maily sets out to link the content of humor to the perception of its linguistic or stylistic structure, particularly in locative or formulaic jokes. chiaro (1992) explores the pragmatics of word play and examines the narrative structure of various joke forms. norrick (1993, 2003) puts his research focus on humorous conversation. to him conversation is the natural home of various forms of humor. attardo (1994) conducts an extensive and comprehensive review on linguistic literature on humor. davies (2003) takes a different perspective on the performance of humor. davies sees joking as a speech activity and component of ones communicative competence.2.3 humor studies at homemany chinese scholars begin to apply the linguistic theories to the study of language humor in early 1980s. the famous linguist hu fanzhou (1987) in his book linguistics of humor explores humor mainly from the perspective of rhetoric devices, which contributes a great deal to humor research in china.most of the researches of humor done by chinese scholars are based on the pragmatic theories. these scholars apply pragmatic notions such as presupposition, implicature, and speech acts to the analysis of humorous utterances. among these researches, a notable area is the application of grices cooperative principle (cp) to the analysis of humor, which can be found in lv guangdan (1998) and he wenzhong (2003), etc.through a brief literature review, a conclusion can be drawn that many recent studies have attached importance to humor from the pragmatic perspective, but most of the studies focus on the social functions of humor. as for the research of humor with the application of pragmatic theories, especially the newly developed ones, has been just unfolding. therefore, we should apply them sufficiently to humor study to explore the generation and appreciation of humor.3. theoretical framework3.1 grices cooperative principleconversation is a very significant means to give and receive information. grice finds that “our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. they are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extant, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction” (grice, 1975: 45). however, the speaker always means a lot more than what is said literally. so, the problem arouses. how to explain how the speaker can manage to convey more than what is said and how the hearer can get the speakers meaning. grice believes that to make successful and happy interaction, people are actually observing a certain cooperative principle. he describes a general principle, which is expected to be observed by participants in conversation as follows:“make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”and this is what he calls the cooperative principle or cp for short. to further specify the cp, grice introduces four categories of maxims that underlie the cooperative principle. here are the four maxims:the maxim of quantity) make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange);) do not make your contribution more informative than is required.the maxim of qualitytry to make your contribution one that is true, i.e.) do not say what you believe to be false) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.the maxim of relation (later called relevance)be relevant.the maxim of mannerbe perspicuous.) avoid obscurity of expression;) avoid ambiguity;) be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity);) be orderly (grice, 2002: 26- 27)in communication, people are generally required to obey these maxims to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, and cooperative way. they should speak sincerely, relatively and clearly, while providing sufficient information (levinson, 1983: 102). however, in some special context, for certain reason or special purpose, a participant in a conversation may violate some of these maxims intentionally, which could result in what grice calls “conversational implicature”. the term “implicature” is used by paul grice to explain what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as different from what the speaker literally says, by flouting certain maxim of cp. by doing this we want to get some kind of pleasure and achieve some special effect in conversation. we do not aim to cooperate, and thus humor is created in special situation after being artistically and logically processed.3.2 leechs politeness principlein different social situations, we are have to change our use of words to fit the occasion. besides grices cooperative principle, there is another concept that serves when people are talking. it is called the politeness principle which has been proposed by leech.the politeness principle is viewed as complement to grices cooperative principle. politeness is sometimes the motivation of using humor in communication. leech (1983) says that the cooperative principle regulates what we say so that it contributes to some assumed illocutionary goals, while the politeness principle helps to maintain the friendly relations which enable us to assume that our interlocution are cooperative in the first place. leech formulates his politeness principle and its maxims as follows:minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs and maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs.maxim of tact (in directives and commissives) minimize cost to other) maximize benefit to othermaxim of generosity (in directives and commissives) minimize benefit to self) maximize cost to selfmaxim of approbation (in expressives and assertives) minimize dispraise of other) maximize praise of othermaxim of modesty (in expressives and assertives) minimize praise of self) maximize dispraise of selfmaxim of agreement (in assertives) minimize disagreement between self and other) maximize agreement between self and othermaxim of sympathy (in assertives) minimize antipathy between self and other) maximize sympathy between self and otheraccording to these maxims of politeness principle, (a) in each of the following groups of utterances is polite whereas (b) is less acceptable in terms of politeness.(1) (a) i can lend you my car.(b) you can lend me your car.(2) (a) a: her performance was outstanding! b: yes, wasnt it!(b) a: your performance was outstanding! b: yes, wasnt it!(3) (a) how clever of you!(b) how stupid of you!(4) (a) a: a reference will satisfy everybody. b: yes, definitely.(b) a: it was as interesting exhibition, wasnt it? b: no, it was very uninteresting. (leech, 1983: 85)these maxims can help to explain, among other things, why certain forms are acceptable than others. it is argued that when the cp and pp are in contradiction, it is generally the cp maxims that get sacrificed.4. analysis of humor in friends4.1 a brief introduction to the sitcom friendsfriends is an american sitcom centered on the lives of six good friends who share neighboring apartments in manhattan, new york. it shows different aspects of american society and different kinds of people. as the show begins, rachel runs away before her wedding and moves in with her friend, monica. they live across the hall from chandler and joey. they hang out with monicas brother, ross, who has recently divorced with his lesbian wife and he is loyal to his love for rachel. and phoebe, the “free spirit” of the bunch and monicas old roommate. rachel is a pampered girl who gets her first job as a waitress in the coffee house and later becomes an assistant buyer for ralph lauren. her sense of humor is naive. monica is a chef, who tries to make everything perfect. and she has always been teased to have a “fat past” by her friends. therefore, her sense of humor is cranky. chandler is an expert in data analysis and later