An Analysis of Humor in American Sitcom Friends through Cooperative Principle

1、从合作原则看美国情景喜剧老友记的幽默摘要：1967年美国语言学家h. p. grice首次指出会话中的“合作原则”这一概念。这一原则是使会话正常，顺利进行的前提。但有时人们会刻意打破合作原则中某一条或几条规则，以期能在特定语境中传递特殊的会话含义，而幽默就在对会话含义的猜测和推理中产生了。情景喜剧在西方广受欢迎,尤其是美国的情景喜剧,不仅在美国收视率很高,在全球的电视剧市场也占据了重要地位,而1994年老友记作为美国情景喜剧的典范之作,十多年来一直受到全球观众的热捧,可谓影响深远。而本文将举例介绍并分析老友记中由于违反合作原则各项准则而产生幽默的具体情况。关键词：合作原则；老友记；幽默an a

2、nalysis of humor in american sitcom friends through cooperative principleabstract: in 1975 the philosopher of language h. p. grice published a seminal article entitled “the cooperative principle” which created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generated a large number of linguistic publicatio

3、ns that are built on grices postulates. this principle is the basic element to have a normal conversation. but sometimes people would deliberately break one or a few terms of the cooperative principle in order to deliver some particular meanings in some special situations, thus humor was produced in

4、 the process of speculation and inference. situation comedy is popular in the western market, especially the u.s. situation comedy; they own not only the high ratings in america, but also play an important role in the global tv market. while the 1994 "friends" as a model of the u.s. sitcom

5、 has been favorable for a global audience for more than a decade, it had a far-reaching implication. this paper will illustrate humor producing cases in friends, which are caused by being against the cooperative principle. key words: cooperative principle; friends; humorcontents1. introduction12. re

6、search description13. literature review23.1 about friends23.1.1 studies on sitcom23.1.2 introduction to friends23.2 researches on humor 33.2.1 studies on humor in the west 33.2.2 studies on humor in china43.3 cooperative principle53.3.1 introduction to cooperative principle 53.3.2 four maxims of coo

7、perative principle54. analysis of the violation of cooperative principle in friends64.1 violation of the maxim of quantity64.2 violation of the maxim of quality84.3 violation of the maxim of relevance94.4 violation of the maxim of manner105. conclusion12references1313an analysis of humor in american

8、 sitcom friends through cooperative principle1. introductionsome people recognize that english has a sense of humor in itself. as to our chinese, its not an easy work to get familiar with these funny ideas. with the development of our country, we have more and more contact with foreigners, and for o

9、ne thing, its our tradition besides good manners to have a better understanding of the background of the partners. for another, learning other peoples culture would benefit not only the individual but also the whole society. as we can learn that being humorous is a strategy when we are communicating

10、, reading, or even dealing with the international affair. it plays an important role in our life. then how is humor produced? in 1975 the philosopher of language h.p. grice published a seminal article entitled “the cooperative principle” which created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generat

11、ed a large number of linguistic publications that are built on grices postulates. the basic assumption of the theory is that any discourse, whether written or spoken, is a joint effort. both the speaker and the hearer have to follow certain pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic rules in order to commun

12、icate effectively. anyone of them breaks one or a few terms of cooperative principle would cause humorous effects. thus this paper focuses on analyzing one of the most popular american situation comedyfriends, by cooperative principle, and illustrating the inside humors when they are against this pr

13、inciple.2. research description like other common measure to write a thesis, my way of study is to gather the information and arrange materials. but my main target is friends, which contains 10 seasons, almost 200 sets. so its not an easy work to pick out my examples. thus i learnt the former studie

14、s related with friends, finally i decided by borrowing other peoples examples besides adding my own examples to fulfill my paper.3. literature review 3.1 about friends3.1.1 studies on sitcomsituation comedy is tv series; each episode has fixed actors, shows and similar daily scene. its mainly played

15、 in studio with a number of machines at the scene before the audience. in some way, the sitcom is more like drama. because it is a directly in front of audience show, the laughter can immediately tell the actors the reaction of audience, which means a lot to the actors. program creator and director

16、will reset the characters, locations, and time of every new episode of each week. from the last century forty years to now, sitcom was popular all around the world. as time goes by, the core characteristic of sitcom has not change. the most obvious feature of situation comedy is that it contains a l

17、ot of humorous lines to make the audience laugh frequently. a successful and popular situation comedy should have a higher level of meaning, not just satisfied with amusement. the audience should taste some memorable things instead of vulgar tacky words, and then the play can be called a classic. th

18、e dialogue of sitcom often shows paradox with environment, actions, and common sense, and then to give our humor. so the humorous and ironical words among people become the main way to create characters and promote plot.3.1.2 an introduction to friendsfriends is a long-running american television si

19、tuation comedy centering on the lives of six twenties who share neighboring apartments in manhattan. the three male “friends” are ross geller, chandler bing and joey tribbiani; and the three female friends are rachel green, monica geller and phoebe buffay. the program was produced by bright/ kauffma

20、n/crane productions in association with warner bros. in the united states, its first episode was aired on september 22, 1994 and the last was aired on may 6, 2004. friends has been one of the top television series since its debut on nbc. it has been nominated for “american comedy reward” for many ti

21、mes and actually won the reward in 2000. it is also the most successful situation comedy of all time in the united states in monetary terms. as the show beginning, rachel leaves her fiancé barry at alter and moves in with her childhood friend, monica. they live across the hall from chandler and

22、 joey. they hang out with monicas brother, rosswho has recently divorced his lesbian wifeand phoebe, the “free spirit” of the bunch and monicas old roommate. rachel is a spoiled daddys girl who gets her first job as a waitress in the coffee house “central perk” and later becomes a personal shopper a

23、t blooming dales, then a buyer for ralph lauren. monica is a chef, who, for the first several seasons struggles for success, and later becomes the head chef of a fancy restaurant. chandler is a data processor who eventually switches to a career in advertising. joy is a struggling new york actor. ros

24、s is a paleontologist who first works at a museum and in later years becomes a college professor. phoebe ekes out a living as a singer-songwriter and a masseuse. a constant story line throughout the series is the on-again/off-again romance between rachel and ross, and later in the series, the develo

25、ping relationship between monica and chandler. the main settings for the show include monicas apartment, chandler and joeys apartment and the coffee house downstairs, “central perk”. 3.2 researches on humor3.2.1 studies on humor in the westthe studies on humor in the west can date back to early time

26、s. even in todays life, it has an important role. there are three theories, which have significant influences on the humor research. incongruity theory, it can be seen easily that incongruity theory has been widely accepted to explain humor. kant, lived in the eighteenth century, pointed out that la

27、ughter was born when the tense expectation suddenly disappeared, which means laughter was coming from the sudden resolve of the tense mind. the basic view of incongruity theory is, if one thing, idea or social phenomenon, has difference with commonsense, or is considered out of mind or even without

28、logical, then its a discord, the important element of laughing.relief theory has specific physiological or psychological implications. floyd believed that people are sometimes eager to escape the real world in many aspects from the moral and legal restraints, and return to his easy, free childhood.

29、relief theorys basic view is that people, through humor and laughter, release their feelings, whether psychologically or physiologically. disparagement theory is originated of classical rhetoric theory in ancient greece and rome, including those humor theories based on hatred, hostility, ridicule, a

30、ttack, contempt and superiority. hobbes believed that laughter is a "sudden sense of pride". plato pointed that humor is malicious from common people to those relatively incompetent people. aristotle in "poetics" chapter v also wrote: "the role of comedy is less than the ave

31、rage person's character . funny thing means those ugly or incongruity no harm to others and not to cause pain". the main point of superiority is that those who laugh by laughing at the misfortune of other people or things, or by contempt for someone or something to show their superiority.th

32、e above three theories, disparagement can best explain the humor of irony and mockery; as to the nifty, vulgar jokes, the relief theory is more reasonable; when come to the interpretation of pun, its more ideal using the incongruity.3.2.2 studies on humor in chinahumor research in china started in t

33、he late 20th century. the publication of hu fanchous linguistic humor had a great influence on the academic field. wu tugen had a "vocabulary elements and humorous speech", which from various aspects discusses the elements of speech and the composition of verbal humor. from the cognitive p

34、sychology point, there is “session the role of humor in the process of semantic analysis”. from the pragmatic part, liu fuchang had "from the cooperative principle of english humor". there are run tiehuang and wang jinling who had “on humor pragmatic semantic features” from the semantic as

35、pect to analysis humor. at last there are researches from the rhetoric and stylistics view. from the above statement, we can see that the study on humor has presented a multi-angle multi-level structure. on one hand, its a signal to show us the great progress on humor; on the other hand, we can see

36、the phenomenon of repeating study at the same time. 3.3 cooperative principle3.3.1 introduction to cooperative principlein 1975 the philosopher of language grice published a seminal article entitled the cooperative principle, which created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generated a large n

37、umber of linguistic publications that are built on grices postulates. the basic assumption of the theory is that any discourse, whether written or spoken, is a joint effort. both the speaker and the hearer have to follow certain pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic rules in order to communicate effect

38、ively. they have to cooperate. however, these principles can be observed at work on a highly technical level in language whenever spoken or written texts are analyzed. and they can be found in any text of any genre in any language. if a speaker violates one or more of these fundamental maxims, the c

39、ommunication breaks down. in a successful discourse, you can relate this success to their observance. when misunderstanding occurs, you can demonstrate that they are generally due to a violation of one or more of the maxims. there are four maxims encompassed in cooperative principle. in cooperative

40、conversation, it is reasonable for the participants to follow the four maxims. but they need not always do so; a participant can violate them on purpose for some reasons. the speaker employs this way which seems to be against the cooperative principle to reinforce the communicative effect. rhetoric,

41、 hyperbole, paradox, euphemism and satire are specific examples of this case. the result of violating any of those could be humorous.3.3.2 four maxims of cooperative principlegrices cooperative principle consists of several maxims that appear simple, straightforward, and commonsensical at first sigh

42、t. grice (1975, 45-46) proposes four maxims for attaining cooperation.maxim of quantity: make your contribution as informative as required; do not make your contribution more informative than is required.maxim of quality: do not say what you believe to be false; do not say that for which you lack ad

43、equate evidence.maxim of relevance: be relevant.maxim of manner: avoid obscurity of expression; avoid ambiguity; be brief; be orderly.grice (1975) holds that “the first of these maxims is known as the quantity maxim, which states ones contribution should provide sufficient, but not too much informat

44、ion.” the second maxim states that ones contribution to a conversation should be truthful. you violate the quality maxim when you deliberately lie or communicate in a way that does not reflect an honest intention (grice, 1975). relevance is such an important principle. “in the context of h.p. grice

45、s cooperative principle, the demand for relevance simply means that the speaker should only include information in his communication that is relevant to the topic under discussion”（bethan davies,2000）. as to the manner maxim, truthfulness and politeness are of philosophical and moral rather than gra

46、mmatical significance in linguistics.4. analysis of the violation of cooperative principle in friends4.1 violation of the maxim of quantityviolation of maxim of quantityit can be grouped into two categories: providing information less than required and providing more information than needed.e. g. jo

47、ey: monica, when i look back over our time togetherchandler: yeah?joey: i cant do all of it. look back over your time together!in this dialogue, joey was against the first term of quantity maxim. chandler turned to joey just for he didnt know how to write wedding vows. he thought that joey could hel

48、p him a lot, but joey only gave an easy short starting and told chandler theres no excuse for him to do all of it. then laugh was caused for the speaker didnt give enough information. the second example is against providing more information.e. g. chandler: where is the book you are reading?monica: i

49、ts in the living room where there is also light and no one will kick you in the shin.chandler: what?its about chandler who couldnt fall asleep at night, and turned on the light, asking monica to give him some of her romantic novel, because he thought those boring books would help him to fall sleep.

50、but at the same time, monica was about to sleep, when chandler turned on the light, she was startled, and she told him that book was lying on the drawing room where the light was on and he would not get a kick. monicas answer violated the quantity maxim. for chandler “its in the living room” thats e

51、nough, but monica added more information to tell chandler that he had disturbed her sleep, and some one would kick him. as to the person, we can tell that was monica from chandlers screaming.e. g. rachel: all right. what's your news, amy?amy: oh! well im getting married.rachel: what? oh, my god!

52、 to who?amy: this guy!this conversation was between rachel and her sister amy. when rachel asked whom amy would marry. amy just introduced by words “this guy”. this response was definitely not the expected answer that rachel wanted. usually, people are always very serious when introducing their futu

53、re family members, but amy was an exception, so she violated the maxim of the quantity. later we can see that amy married this guy just for the sake of his big house. and this caused laughter.e. g. chandler: oh, because we love kids. love them to death. well, not actually to death, thats just a figu

54、re of speechwe love kids the appropriate amount. as allowed by law.in the above speech, we know that chandler wanted to adopt a child, but he was afraid of being misunderstood, so he talked a lot, which added some unnecessary information. the words “as allowed by law” may mislead person, as a result

55、, the more he explained, the more people couldnt understand.4.2 violation of the maxim of qualityin terms of the maxim of quality, number one, people often mock others by deliberately saying something that they do not believe is true; and number two, the speaker might say something stupid on purpose

56、 then make the hearer derive some positive or negative meaning.e. g. chandler: i dont know if youve looked up the term “goof around” in the dictionary. i have. the technical definition is: two friends care a lot about each other and just want to spend more time with each other. but if you have this

57、dictionary that annoys you, then we have to get you my original one.monica: you are cuter than you think you are.at first chandler and monica began to have a date, and they didnt tell anyone. but when chandler heard rachel introduce a boyfriend to monica, he thought monica was willing to date with s

58、omeone else. in order to maintain face, he pretended to be indifferent to monica and told others they were just dating for fun. monica received the arrangement after knowing how chandler talked about their relationship. but when he knew that its not monicas willingness, chandler was so regretful and

59、 wanted to make it up. now we know that he didnt tell the truth, and the explanation on the so called original dictionary was totally invented. but monica knew his real aim was to get back to their happy old days. so chandlers violation gave us lots of laughing. e. g. (scene: chandler is at a restaurant and gets the food prepared differently from had ordered. h