英语学习分析情景喜剧老友记中的语用幽默

1、Analysis of Humor in Sitcom Friends from Pragmatic Perspective7111102赵畅Analysis of Humor in Sitcom Friends from Pragmatic Perspective1.Introduction2.The Definition of Humor3.Theoretical Framework 4.Pragmatic Study on Humor in Friends5.Conclusions 3.1. Speech Act Theory 3.2. The Cooperative Principle

2、 3.3. Relevant Theory 3.1.1. Austins Model of Speech Act 3.1.2. Searles Classification of Speech Act 4.1. The Definition of Sitcom 4.2. A Brief Introduction to Friends 4.3. Speech Act Theory and Humor 4.4. Cooperative Principle and Humor 4.5. Relevance Theory and Humor 4.3. Speech Act Theory and Hum

3、or 4.3.1. Humor Created by Representatives 4.3.2. Humor Created by Directives 4.3.3. Humor Created by Commissives 4.3.4. Humor Created by Expressives 4.3.5. Humor Created by Declaratives 4.4. Cooperative Principle and Humor 4.4.1. Humor Created by Running against Maxim of Quantity 4.4.2. Humor Creat

4、ed by Running against Maxims of Quality 4.4.3. Humor Created by Running against Maxims of Relation 4.4.4. Humor Created by Running against Maxims of Manner What is humor?In Cambridge Dictionary of American English, humor is “the ability to be amused by something seen, heard, or though about, somethi

5、ng causing you to smile or laugh, or the quality in something that causes such amusement.In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, humor is “the quality in something that makes it funny amusement or “the ability to understand and enjoy funny situation or to laugh at things.In Oxford Advanced Le

6、arners English-Chinese Dictionary, humor equals to humour. It puts the general meanings of humor together. First, humor is just like Cambridge Dictionary of American English said; second, humor is the state of your feelings or mind at a particular time; third, humor is one of the four liquids that w

7、ere thought in the past to be a persons body and to influence health and character. As an important part of conversation, humor is a particular amusing and fascinating phenomenon of human society. Humor often happens in our conversation, in other words, it is created by language. Therefore, to appre

8、ciate humor, especially English humor, depends on the responsiveness of language. Perhaps, that is the reason why the language of humor is regarded as the most difficult to understand. In order to solve this problem, humor should be analyzed from linguistic perspective, especially from pragmatics vi

9、ew. And the author takes the American situation comedy Friends, which give us a better understanding of the relationship between humor and pragmatics, as a case study. How humor is created?There TheoriesSpeech Act Theory Conversational TheoryRelevant Theory Speech Act Theory Speech act theory is an

10、important theory in the pragmatic study of language. It is also the first major theory in the study of language in use, which originated with the British philosopher John Austin in the late 50s of the 20th century. It aims to answer the question “what do we do when using the language? The first opin

11、ion of Austins theory is the claim that there are two types of sentences: performatives and constatives. Searles Classification of Speech Actsrepresentatives: stating or describing, saying what the speaker believe is truedirectives: trying to get the hearer to do somethingcommissives: committing the

12、 speaker himself to some futures course of actionexpressives: expressing feelings or attitude towards an existing statedeclarations: bringing about immediate changes by saying somethingPhoebe yelled to two man David. And uh, while Daryl Hannah is beautiful in a conventional way, you are luminous wit

13、h a kind of a delicate grace. Then, uh, that-that-thats when you started yelling. Sit down Phoebe. Okay, were gonna take a short break. Goes over to their table Joey. Hey, that guys going home with more than a note.Ross walks into the Central Park with Marcel on his shoulder. Monica encourages Rache

14、l to live independently, but Rachel does not think she can handle it. Monica. All right, you ready? Rachel. No. No, no, Im not ready! How can I be ready? “Hey, Rach! You ready to jump out the airplane without your parachute? Come on, I cant do this!Cooperative Principle and Humor The theory of conve

15、rsational implicature, proposed by Oxford philosopher Herbert Paul Grice. To specify the Cooperative Principle further, Grice introduced four categories of maxims as follows: The Maxim of QUANTITY The Maxims of Quality The Maxim of RELATION The Maxim of MannerThe maxim of quantity requires your cont

16、ribution as informative as it needed, not too much, not too little. Just like Grice says, Ones contribution should provide sufficient, but not too much information. If the speaker runs against the maxim on purpose, he might bring about humorous effect. In the drawing roomRachel. Suppor You wanna tal

17、k supportive? You didnt even come and visit me when I was in the hospital having the baby!Amy. Oh, yeah? Well, you didnt come to see me in the hospital when I was getting my lips done!Rachel. I did the first time!In this conversation, when Amy complained Rachel didnt come to see her in the hospital,

18、 Rachel answered “I did the first time! This runs against the maxim of Quantity. She can just answer “Yes, but not stress “the first time. Audiences can know that Amy had more than one operation on face-lifting. Too much information is where the humor happens. The Maxims of Quality is a common thing

19、 in the humorous utterance. Many figures of speech, such as irony, metaphor, hyperbole, can express the real meaning by using unreal utterance. Joey is very proud of how much he has eatenMonica. Well Joey, were all Were all very proud of you.Chandler. Yes, I believe we can expect a call from the Pre

20、sident any moment now. Relevant TheoryRelevant theory was formally proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in the book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986. They claim that all Gricean maxims, including CP itself, should be simplified to a principle of relevance, which is defined as: Ev

21、ery act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance. What is so-called “ostensive communication? Sperber and Wilson agreed Grices opinion: Communication is not simple a matter of encoding and decoding, it also involves inference. But they believe that inferen

22、ce has the relation only with hearer. From the speakers side, communication should be seen as an act of making clear ones intention to express something. This act they called ostensive act. In other words, a complete characterization of communication is that it is ostensive-inferential. And “ostensi

23、ve communication, or “inferential communication, is a shorthand. (Dai Weidong, He Zhaoxiong, 199)What is “presumption of optimal relevance? The presumption of optimal relevance can be explained like this:The set of assumption I which the communicator intends to make manifest to the addressee is rele

24、vant enough to make it worth the addressees while to optimal the ostensive stimulus.The ostensive stimulus is the most relevant one the communicator could have used to communicate I.That is, every utterance comes with a presumption of the best balance of effort against effect. On the one hand, the e

25、ffects achievable will never be less than is needed to make it worth processing. On the other hand, the effort required will never be more than is needed to achieve those effects. In comparison to the effects achieved, the effort needed is always the smallest. This amounts to saying “of all the firs

26、t interpretation s of the stimulus which confirms the presumption, it is the first interpretation to occur to the addressee that is the one communicator intended to convey (Sperber & Wilson, 168-169). Example: Tom has a big cat.The first interpretation of this sentence to occur to the hearer will us

27、ually be that Tom has a big domestic cat. As the word cat is ambiguous, it may also refer to other animals of species felid in some situations. That is, the sentence can mean Tom has a tiger, a lion and so on. But Sperber and Wilson argue that even if the second meaning is right, it just satisfied t

28、he first theory of the presumption of optimal relevance, not the second. Because the effort increase when they regard the sentence as the second meaning. If the second meaning is what speaker wants to express, he should say Tom has a tiger, or Tom has a felid. Hence, Sperber and Wilson assure that t

29、he first interpretation consistent with the principle of relevant is always the best hypothesis. Rachel is answering his dads call Rachel, Cmon Daddy, listen to me! Its like, its like, all of my life, everyone has always told me, Youre a shoe! Youre a shoe, youre a shoe, youre a shoe!. And today I j

30、ust stopped and I said, What if I dont wanna be a shoe? What if I wanna be a- a purse, yknow? Or a- or a hat! No, Im not saying I want you to buy me a hat, Im saying I am a ha- Its a metaphor, Daddy!Thesis StatementAs an important part of conversation, humor brings pragmatics into full view and enables us to comprehend language itself profoundly. Works CitedCambridge Dictionary of Ame