A Multimodal Analysis Of Humor-

The study of humor has emerged in an endless stream and achieved countless"rich fruit" through the ages.However,most studies mainly focus on verbal humor Indeed,language is the main element constituting a humorous effect,and language and humor are compatible like water and milk.They are interdependent and inseparable.The expression of humor relies on the variation of language use.With the development of science and technology,new technology has brought in "new words"and multimodal analysis of discourse has caught the more and more attention of experts and scholars.Multimodal discourse is a new type of text that uses a variety of sensory pathways such as hearing,vision to communicate with and constructs meaning through various means,such as text,voice,image and symbolic resources.The multimodal analysis of discourse changes the ways of discourse analysis from analyzing the language system and semantic structure to other forms of meaning-expressing besides semantic meaning,such as images,sound,etc.This thesis aims at analyzing humorous phenomenon in Chinese contemporary sitcom Ipartment in a multimodal way,not only analyzing verbal humor,but also taking into account non-verbal factors along with verbal language like sounds,gestures,movements,expressions,and images.In the process of humor generation for sitcoms,the uses of verbal and non-verbal modes are complementary and indivisible The information of non-verbal modes can promote the understanding of verbal information,as well as strengthen,complement,adjust,and cooperate with the verbal information so as to express the meaning more fully or try to express as fully as possible,which makes the interpretation of multimodal humor more comprehensive and accurate.