| Humor, being regarded as a lubricant of human everyday communication, can becalled the epitome of human wisdom. Since its inception, many researchers indifferent academic fields, especially in linguistics, have done various researches on it.Verbal humor is a special language phenomenon in which implicit coherence andincomplete cohesive devices are widely used. Even though many linguists haveconducted a great variety of studies on discourse coherence, few have studied on orallanguage discourse coherence. The conventional research approaches, such as thesemantic method and the grammar method, cannot provide effective and persuasiveanalysis on oral language coherence in verbal humor for the reason that oral languagein verbal humor is in possession of strong dynamics and incomplete cohesionmechanisms. This thesis connects verbal humor with oral English discourse coherence,and analyzes discourse coherence in verbal humor from the perspective of cognitiveframe theory.Examples of verbal humor discourse in this thesis are all chosen from the famousAmerican situational comedy Friends which has been popular home and abroad. Thelines and humorous anecdotes in the sitcom provide typical verbal humor discoursecorpus. This thesis analyzes the coherent conditions and cohesive devices of verbalhumor in the sitcom from the perspective of frame theory effectively, and has widenedto a degree the application scope of the frame theory. The research shows that adistinctive feature of English verbal humor is incoherence in structure and coherencein meaning. Frame theory emphasizes the importance of cognitive situation andassociation of meaning, so it is an ideal tool for analyzing verbal humor, not only inFriends, but also in many other humorous discourses and situations. The authorbelieves that the study results can also help people understand English humor, raiselearners· interest in learning English, and promote oral English teaching and learning. |
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