The Conceptual Blending Of Multimodal Humors In American Sitcom-Two Broke Girls

As a main form of comedy in the multimedia era, American sitcom gains its popularity among a variety of audiences from leisure-oriented to language acquisition-oriented type. The puzzles about the way of Chinese audiences’cognition of humor trigger the formation of this thesis.Traditional researches on humor focus on verbal humors literally or orally. Little attention was paid to the multiple audio-visual modality humors in the films and television series. Nevertheless, humor is not confined to traditional forms of word play in static text, such as jokes, palm-talks or funny stories, etc; rather it attracts audience in more modern dynamic art form via audio-visual media. The humors in sitcoms differ from the traditional humors in terms of constitution and transmission. This thesis explores the underlying mechanisms and mentality of cognitive humors of Chinese audience under conceptual blending theoretical framework in perspective of multimodalities.This thesis applied both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Questionnaires have been made among the Chinese subjects of different ages, genders and education degrees to discover their motivation of sitcom watching and attention to different modalities. Concrete analyses of Chinese audiences’humor blending in multimodal context are also conducted, which go beyond the merely verbal modality to explain the Chinese audiences’cognitive state while sensing the humors in American sitcoms.According to the research, the situational modality contributes the most in the process of Chinese audience’s perception of humors in American sitcoms. Traditional verbal modality is always combined with other modalities with the emphasis still on verbal ones. In cross-cultural cognition, sound modalities are rarely blended by audiences.