Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)

An Analysis of the Causes of Verbal Humor in American Sitcom from the Perspective of Pragmatics—Take The Big Bang Theory as an Example

Authors
Yixuan Liu1, *
1China Foreign Affairs University, Beijing, China
*Corresponding author. Email: Lyx_seveneleven@163.com
Corresponding Author
Yixuan Liu
Available Online 9 September 2023.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_159How to use a DOI?
Keywords
verbal humor; sitcom; cooperative principle; pragmatic analysis
Abstract

Sitcom has been a popular comedy show across the world. Funny can be the biggest reason for its popularity. So how can the conversations in sitcom be so humorous? The paper makes a pragmatic analysis of the verbal humor in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory (Season 1). Pragmatics focuses on the relationship between the context and the meaning of discourses. Cooperative principle is one of the famous theories under the framework of pragmatics. Therefore, cooperative principle and the concept of implicature closely associated with it would be the main theory in the analysis. With the help of existing research on them, this paper would dig deeper into the process and the mechanism of making humorous effect and offer some help for people to understand and appreciate verbal humor in English. And it is found that humor is generated by deliberately or unconsciously violating the CP and giving rise to conversation implicature. Through this paper, we can have a better knowledge of the wonder of language and command some talking skills.

Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
9 September 2023
ISBN
978-2-38476-092-3
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_159How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

TY  - CONF
AU  - Yixuan Liu
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/09/09
TI  - An Analysis of the Causes of Verbal Humor in American Sitcom from the Perspective of Pragmatics—Take The Big Bang Theory as an Example
BT  - Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1250
EP  - 1258
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_159
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_159
ID  - Liu2023
ER  -