An Analysis Of Verbal Humor In The Sitcom Modern Family From The Perspective Of Memetics

At present,an increasing number of American situation comedies are becoming extremely popular in China.Among them,Modern Family is welcomed for its novelty and humor.Verbal humor is a very important way to communicate in our daily life.Moreover,verbal humor can be seen as a kind of special linguistic form,which contains a simple and contagious language.So far,in linguistic field,the study of Modern Family and its verbal humor has been very rare,and now existing researches about the sitcom mainly concentrate on its humor from macro pragmatics.Meme originally appeared in the book,The Selfish Gene,written by Richard Dawkins in 1976.He created the term "meme" and defined it as the unit of cultural information for human beings.Memetics is a new theory based on Darwin’s evolutionary theory and aims to explain the law of cultural evolution.So far many scholars have applied this theory to other fields,such as sociology,psychology,and language science,etc.Based on the previous studies,this thesis tries to reveal how verbal humor is generated through the discussion on the replication and transmission of language meme.The thesis consists of five chapters:the introductory part,literature review,theoretical frame,an analysis of verbal humor in Modern Family from Memetics and conclusion.The first chapter mainly introduces the background,significance,methodology and structure of this study.The second chapter concentrates on humor,including its definitions,classifications,related theories and previous studies both at home and abroad.There are various definitions of humor from different standards,and the key point of humor is centered on those comic and laughable things.From previous studies,many scholars analyze verbal humor from rhetoric,semantics,pragmatics,and cognitive linguistics.Besides the causes of humor,they also focus on the interpreting process,participants and context of humor.Also,at the end of this chapter,the author introduces the development of memetics both at home and abroad.As a new theory,the theory of memetics developed more slowly in China compared with the foreign studies,and fewer scholars are studying meme,so that the studies of verbal humor from language meme are fewer.The third chapter is devoted to the theory of memetics.In this chapter,the author first presents general description of memetics,which covers its origin,definitions,classifications,properties and features,and then illustrates language meme,ways and types of replication and transmission,applications of language meme,and the relationship between meme variation and verbal humor in the last part.Meme is similar to gene in the way that gene is spread through inheritance,while meme is transmitted like virus through imitation.As a new discipline,many scholars in other disciplines try to connect memetics with other subjects to get a whole new inspiration,such as language meme and translation and so on.The fourth chapter is the main body of this thesis.The author analyzes specific examples of Modern Family to discuss the generation of verbal humor from language meme here.It is found that the types and ways of replication and transmission of language meme can produce verbal humor,and verbal humor contained in language meme can also promote the transmission of language meme.Language meme has two types:one is memetic genotype which is divided into same information transmitted directly and same information transmitted in various forms;the other is memetic phenotype which includes homophone,homograph and structural homonymy.These five categories of language meme have an impact on the generation of verbal humor.Through analyzing the data collected from Modern Family,it can be found that the incongruity or disharmony between default context and new context can generate verbal humor,and that the default context is the key to explaining humorous effects.Furthermore,language meme must go through four stages during the process of replication and transmission.From the angle of processes of replication and transmission of language meme,the stages of assimilation and retention are the preparation process of verbal humor;the stage of expression and stage of transmission are the process of generation and the process of appreciation of verbal humor respectively.The verbal humor in the sitcoms has many functions.The thesis mainly focuses on four functions:entertaining function,which is a basic function for American sitcoms;interpersonal function,which gives an inspiration for daily communication;activating atmosphere,which usually alleviates embarrassing and defends oneself;developing a national culture,which plays an important role in social and cultural development.All in all,both language meme and verbal humor are an indispensable part of life.The last chapter is conclusion.The memetic theory provides a new angle for the study of verbal humor.The author concludes that the genotype and phenotype of meme can produce humorous effects in the sitcoms,and verbal humor can be generated during the process of replication and transmission of meme as well.The language meme imitated can be a factor to make the audience laugh and entertain due to its familiarity and novelty.Thus humorous effects appear because of differences between original language meme and its new form,content,associative meaning,and emotion.Through analyzing and studying,the author hopes to enrich the study of verbal humor from the perspective of memetics and to show attractiveness of pragmatics.