A Study On Chinese Humorous Discourse Of Comic Sketches On TV

Humor plays an important role almost in all kinds of cultures. In daily communication, humor can ameliorate human relations, improve the communicative atmosphere, and also be endowed with the symbol of personal wit, glamour and education. As a kind of art, TV comic sketches focus its essence on humor. Although many scholars have paid great attention to the nature of humor from different perspectives, little attention has been paid to how verbal humor works to elicit laughter out of comic sketches from the perspective of Hallidayan theory. Therefore, this paper will mainly focus on the study of the humorous discourse by applying Hallidayan theory of context. It aims at a profound analysis of the humorous discourse in comic sketches and revealing the factors attributed to the production of the humor in comic sketches. What is to be discussed is the context formed by linguistic factors in humorous discourse, which may include two aspects: context of culture and context of situation.Humorous discourse, especially humorous genre, is a significant part of a culture. According to Halliday's notion of"little text", humorous genre can find its support of the concept. The humorous discourse of comic sketches is actually a complex of humorous genres, which may be identified by puns, riddles, irony, satire, joke, quips and so on. To define genre functionally, Halliday and Hasan identify the structure potential of a genre or the generic structure potential, shortened as GSP, which can be stated as a formula consisting of obligatory and optional elements of structure, their sequence and iteration. The generic structure potential of the humorous discourse in comic sketches may include the following four obligatory elements:1) opening– signaling the humorous intention, start of humorous discourse;2) creating a"language wrap", leading the audience to puzzlement;3) unwrapping the"knot", identifying the punch line and making sense of the puzzlement;4) bringing laughter. The other goal of the generic structure study of humor is the description of what GSP features contribute to the humor in comic sketches, which involves the elements and their different GSPs in a sequence of a generic structure, termed"mismatches"of GSPs. According to the study, the mismatches of generic structures in the humor discourse in comic sketches may fall into the following categories:1) extra elements are inserted into the normal generic structures;2) the normal sequence of the GSP is disrupted and the elements misplaced;3) the juxtaposition of two generic structures of different natures is incongruent.The meaning potential to which the members of a culture have access in their language can be characterized in two ways, according to Malinowski's distinction between the"context of situation"and the"context of culture". In 1964, Halliday set forth the concept of"register"which was defined as the configuration of semantic resources that the member of a culture typically associates with a situation type. According to Halliday, the semiotic structure of a situation type is formed out of the three socio-semiotic variables of field, tenor and mode.As a TV program for entertaining, the field of discourse of comic sketches tends to be more casual and non-technical. The purpose of the program is to create a delightful atmosphere for the audience to have a happy time, and to get some useful and instructive enlightenment naturally; therefore, lively performance and easily understandable languages are more acceptable. In terms of field, the subject matters of humorous discourse in different comic sketches cover a wide range: politics, economy, education, science, sports, entertainment, family, and friendship, etc. Some of them may be quite serious matters, however, most of the comic sketches are reflections of the realities of common lives and easily understandable by the common audiences.Humorous discourse in comic sketches can be either informal or somewhat formal according to the relationship of the participants. Participants here not only refer to each character on the stage, but also include the audience who appreciate the amusing scenes as receivers. Relationships between each character can be intimate or very formal according to each subject matter of different stories; however, the relationship between the actors and the audience is usually very casual and cordial due to the special purpose of the comic sketches.In terms of mode, the scripts of the comic sketches are the fruits of playwrights with great efforts, therefore, humorous discourses in comic sketches actually are pieces written for speaking. Although languages in comic sketches are more similar to the casual conversation, they are usually well-prepared before the performance. The verbal humor in comic sketches is mainly served as a tool to amuse the audience along with some instructive thoughts, which can be easily perceived by the audience.Mismatches of situational features occur in the forms of mismatches of fields of discourse, that of modes of discourse and that of tenors of discourse.Finally, as a text variety formed in a special context, the general linguistic features of the comic sketch have been studied from different levels: the phonological level, the lexical level, the grammatical level. Phonologically, changing the tones, misinterpreting words of same pronunciations, and frequently using strong rhythm, pause and uneven tempo are the typical characteristics of the humorous discourse. Lexically, comic sketches tend to use more vocabulary like idioms, onomatopoeias, dialects and so on. Grammatically, lines of humor discourses in comic sketches are usually short and elliptical sentences, and sometimes the alteration of word order can also produce humorous effect.