A Comparative Research Of British And American Humor In Sitcoms From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Verbal humor is a common language phenomenon which plays an important role in our daily life. It can resolve conflicts, avoid embarrassment, reduce stress, make interpersonal communication more pleasant and enjoyable. Although similarities are shared in human’s psychology and their ways of thinking, different characteristics still exist in British humor and American humor because of their different values and historical and cultural backgrounds. As classical British and American situation comedies, The IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory have similar theme and both have won millions of fans around the world. In this thesis, the two sitcoms are taken as the research subjects to study the generation of verbal humor from the perspective of cooperative principle (CP). On this basis, characteristics of British and American humor are explored.Both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis have been applied in this research.12 episodes that containing typical examples will be selected from The IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory respectively. The humorous utterances in the two sitcoms are identified by the background laughter. The author divides them into non-verbal humors, the humors violating the CP and other verbal humors. And humors which violate the CP are classified into four categories including the violation of quantity maxim, quality maxim, relation maxim, and manner maxim. The author analyzes the amount and types of humors in both sitcoms and presents the causes of their different distributions. Then the representative cases from the four categories are analyzed in detail in order to explain the generative mechanism of verbal humor. At last, the characteristics of British and American humor and the underline reasons are discussed through the quantitative and qualitative analysis. The main findings are summarized briefly as follows:1). The humorous utterances by violating the CP account for about 50% of the verbal humors in both sitcoms which means violation of the CP is one of the main methods to achieve humorous effect. Distributions of humors by violating the four maxims of the CP in the two sitcoms share some similarities as well as differences. It perhaps due to the different styles of British and American humor and the slightly different personalities and status of the characters in the two sitcoms.2). Violating each maxim of the CP intentionally or unintentionally can result in humorous instances. It is also found that violations of the maxims are interdependent in some examples.3). British humor is more subtle, negative and British people like using irony and self-deprecation while American humor is more obvious, positive and diverse. The difference is caused by many factors including the genetic differences, historical and cultural backgrounds and the climate condition.This comparative research of verbal humors in The IT Crowd and The Big Bang Theory is expected to help people better comprehend and appreciate British and American humor. Thus, we can feel the charm of English humor more deeply. At the same time, it may promote intercultural understanding and exchange as well.