| The Big Bang Theory is a very popular sitcom. The show has set off a “scientist’s boom†in the United States and in China. The theories which have been introduced are forefront and also are close to people’s life. They are both of positive meanings. The show’s success is not only due to its metaphorical use of humor, but also its application of puns, making the audience have correct values and positive attitudes towards life in the laughter. The amusement of this sitcom is transmitted through education.Puns usually have been studied from the perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, and pragmatics, etc, but rarely from cognitive linguistics. Also there is little study on the dynamic construction of puns, how their dual meanings are generated and cognized by people and how their various functions are produced.This study adopts Conceptual Integration Theory as the theoretical basis, aiming to reveal the dynamic process of how meaning is constructed and how the various functions are generated in people’s mind. The thesis introduces eight types of puns: homophonic pun, antalaclasis pun, paronomasia pun, syllepsis pun, asterismus pun, grammatical pun, mimetic pun and contextual pun. In addition, this thesis explains the meaning construction of puns with the help of three network models of Conceptual Integration Theory in The Big Bang Theory. The author collects 188 puns from 65 episodes of all the former seven seasons of the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory as the sources of research subjects. And then all these pun are listed according to their users, types and functions. Finally, the data and the results of the thesis are analyzed.Three research questions are put forward in this thesis: what are the distributions of puns in The Big Bang Theory? How meanings of the puns are constructed based on the Conceptual Integration Theory? What are the functions of the puns in The Big Bang Theory?Through qualitative analysis, this study has made the following conclusions:(1) First, among the many characters, Sheldon is the one who uses puns the most. These fully reflect his characters of showing off and arrogance. Second, contextual puns appear the most in the series. It means the sitcom has a close link with daily life. Last, among the three kinds of functions in The Big Bang Theory, proportion of humorous functions is the biggest one, followed by sarcastic, persuasive and aesthetic functions. It shows that the puns’ functions of humor and sarcasm are more than the other expressions.(2) The meaning construction of puns cannot be conducted through simplex network model, but the other three models(mirror network model, single-scope network model, and double-scope network model) all could be used to construct meaning.(3) Puns have three kinds of functions in The Big Bang Theory. The main functions of pun are humorous and sarcastic. But we cannot ignore the aesthetic and persuasive functions. |
