A Comparative Study Of Verbal Humor Generation In Chinese And American Situation Comedy

Humor is a flavoring material for life,which can not only relax the people’s body and mind,but also keep a cheerful mood.In recent years,sitcom has become increasingly popular because of its’ characteristics of humorous and closeness to life,at the same time,American sitcom has gradually taken an important place in the Chinese market.Although the cultural background of sitcoms between the two countries is different,Chinese and American sitcoms merge and develop with each other in the continuous communication,and sitcoms are sought-after by more people,which is inseparable from their humorous language style.Therefore,verbal humor in sitcoms has also attracted the attention of many scholars.Numerous scholars have studied humor from different aspects such as philosophy,psychology,sociology,linguistics and so on,especially the pragmatic study of humor is a major research direction in recent years.Although they have studied sitcoms using different theories(such as the Principle of Cooperation,the Principle of Relevance and the Principle of Politeness and etc.),these studies only explore verbal humor in Chinese sitcoms or American sitcoms with a certain theory or angle.The comparative studies of Chinese and American sitcoms especially in the field of pragmatics are rare.Therefore,this thesis will select the most popular Chinese sitcom My Own Swordsman and American sitcom Friends to study,from which 5 and 10 episodes of lines are selected respectively as the corpus of this thesis.For one episode of Chinese sitcoms lasts about 40 minutes,while one episode of American sitcoms plays about 20 minutes,so the author randomly selects 5 episodes from My Own Swordsman and 10 episodes from Friends(Season Ten)to ensure that the two sitcoms are selected for equal duration.The author uses Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods to analyze the humorous language in each sitcom.The thesis tries to answer the following questions: What are the similarities in humor generation by violating the CP and PP in My Own Swordsman and Friends? What are the differences in humor generation by violating the CP and PP in My Own Swordsman and Friends?The research shows that the CP and PP are of profound significance to the generation and interpretation of humor.In Chinese and American sitcoms,there are some similar and different ways of generating verbal humor.The similarities of humor are summarized as follows: First of all,according to statistical analysis,most verbal humor in Chinese and American sitcoms is realized by violating the maxims of CP and PP.Compared with PP,most humor in Chinese and American sitcoms is realized by violating the maxims of CP.Second,in violation of the CP,the verbal humor in Chinese and American sitcoms is mainly produced by violating the Maxim of Quality most frequently and the Maxim of Quantity second frequently.Third,in the terms of PP,the verbal humor in Chinese and American sitcoms is produced by the most frequent violation of the Maxim of Approbation and the least violation of the Maxim of Modesty.The differences of humor are summarized as follows: First,in the aspect of CP,the Maxim of Relation is the least frequently violated in Friends.However in My Own Swordsman,the maxim of Manner is the least frequently violated.Second,the use of humor in American sitcom,Friends that violates the PP is less than in Chinese sitcom,My Own Swordsman.To be exactly,in American sitcom,the frequency of violating the Maxim of Agreement is higher than that of violating the Maxims of Tact and Generosity when violating the PP.In Chinese sitcom,the frequency of violating the Maxim of Agreement is lower than that of violating the Maxims of Tact and Generosity frequency.The results of the thesis help Chinese people who learn English and Americans who learn Chinese better understand and appreciate each others’ sitcoms and verbal humor through understanding and analyzing these characteristics.At the same time,this thesis is useful for language learners to further explore the deep roots of verbal humor,cultural diversity and modes of thinking between China and America.