An Analysis of Humor in American Sitcom Friends through Cooperative Principle

1、從合作原則看美國情景喜劇老友記的幽默摘要：1967年美國語言學(xué)家h. p. grice首次指出會話中的“合作原則”這一概念。這一原則是使會話正常，順利進(jìn)行的前提。但有時人們會刻意打破合作原則中某一條或幾條規(guī)則，以期能在特定語境中傳遞特殊的會話含義，而幽默就在對會話含義的猜測和推理中產(chǎn)生了。情景喜劇在西方廣受歡迎,尤其是美國的情景喜劇,不僅在美國收視率很高,在全球的電視劇市場也占據(jù)了重要地位,而1994年老友記作為美國情景喜劇的典范之作,十多年來一直受到全球觀眾的熱捧,可謂影響深遠(yuǎn)。而本文將舉例介紹并分析老友記中由于違反合作原則各項準(zhǔn)則而產(chǎn)生幽默的具體情況。關(guān)鍵詞：合作原則；老友記；幽默an a

2、nalysis of humor in american sitcom friends through cooperative principleabstract: in 1975 the philosopher of language h. p. grice published a seminal article entitled “the cooperative principle” which created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generated a large number of linguistic publicatio

3、ns that are built on grices postulates. this principle is the basic element to have a normal conversation. but sometimes people would deliberately break one or a few terms of the cooperative principle in order to deliver some particular meanings in some special situations, thus humor was produced in

4、 the process of speculation and inference. situation comedy is popular in the western market, especially the u.s. situation comedy; they own not only the high ratings in america, but also play an important role in the global tv market. while the 1994 friends as a model of the u.s. sitcom has been fa

5、vorable for a global audience for more than a decade, it had a far-reaching implication. this paper will illustrate humor producing cases in friends, which are caused by being against the cooperative principle. key words: cooperative principle; friends; humorcontents1. introduction12. research descr

6、iption13. literature review23.1 about friends23.1.1 studies on sitcom23.1.2 introduction to friends23.2 researches on humor 33.2.1 studies on humor in the west 33.2.2 studies on humor in china43.3 cooperative principle53.3.1 introduction to cooperative principle 53.3.2 four maxims of cooperative pri

7、nciple54. analysis of the violation of cooperative principle in friends64.1 violation of the maxim of quantity64.2 violation of the maxim of quality84.3 violation of the maxim of relevance94.4 violation of the maxim of manner105. conclusion12references13an analysis of humor in american sitcom friend

8、s through cooperative principle1. introductionsome people recognize that english has a sense of humor in itself. as to our chinese, its not an easy work to get familiar with these funny ideas. with the development of our country, we have more and more contact with foreigners, and for one thing, its

9、our tradition besides good manners to have a better understanding of the background of the partners. for another, learning other peoples culture would benefit not only the individual but also the whole society. as we can learn that being humorous is a strategy when we are communicating, reading, or

10、even dealing with the international affair. it plays an important role in our life. then how is humor produced? in 1975 the philosopher of language h.p. grice published a seminal article entitled “the cooperative principle” which created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generated a large num

11、ber of linguistic publications that are built on grices postulates. the basic assumption of the theory is that any discourse, whether written or spoken, is a joint effort. both the speaker and the hearer have to follow certain pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic rules in order to communicate effectiv

12、ely. anyone of them breaks one or a few terms of cooperative principle would cause humorous effects. thus this paper focuses on analyzing one of the most popular american situation comedyfriends, by cooperative principle, and illustrating the inside humors when they are against this principle.2. res

13、earch description like other common measure to write a thesis, my way of study is to gather the information and arrange materials. but my main target is friends, which contains 10 seasons, almost 200 sets. so its not an easy work to pick out my examples. thus i learnt the former studies related with

14、 friends, finally i decided by borrowing other peoples examples besides adding my own examples to fulfill my paper.3. literature review 3.1 about friends3.1.1 studies on sitcomsituation comedy is tv series; each episode has fixed actors, shows and similar daily scene. its mainly played in studio wit

15、h a number of machines at the scene before the audience. in some way, the sitcom is more like drama. because it is a directly in front of audience show, the laughter can immediately tell the actors the reaction of audience, which means a lot to the actors. program creator and director will reset the

16、 characters, locations, and time of every new episode of each week. from the last century forty years to now, sitcom was popular all around the world. as time goes by, the core characteristic of sitcom has not change. the most obvious feature of situation comedy is that it contains a lot of humorous

17、 lines to make the audience laugh frequently. a successful and popular situation comedy should have a higher level of meaning, not just satisfied with amusement. the audience should taste some memorable things instead of vulgar tacky words, and then the play can be called a classic. the dialogue of

18、sitcom often shows paradox with environment, actions, and common sense, and then to give our humor. so the humorous and ironical words among people become the main way to create characters and promote plot.3.1.2 an introduction to friendsfriends is a long-running american television situation comedy

19、 centering on the lives of six twenties who share neighboring apartments in manhattan. the three male “friends” are ross geller, chandler bing and joey tribbiani; and the three female friends are rachel green, monica geller and phoebe buffay. the program was produced by bright/ kauffman/crane produc

20、tions in association with warner bros. in the united states, its first episode was aired on september 22, 1994 and the last was aired on may 6, 2004. friends has been one of the top television series since its debut on nbc. it has been nominated for “american comedy reward” for many times and actual

21、ly won the reward in 2000. it is also the most successful situation comedy of all time in the united states in monetary terms. as the show beginning, rachel leaves her fianc barry at alter and moves in with her childhood friend, monica. they live across the hall from chandler and joey. they hang out

22、 with monicas brother, rosswho has recently divorced his lesbian wifeand phoebe, the “free spirit” of the bunch and monicas old roommate. rachel is a spoiled daddys girl who gets her first job as a waitress in the coffee house “central perk” and later becomes a personal shopper at blooming dales, th

23、en a buyer for ralph lauren. monica is a chef, who, for the first several seasons struggles for success, and later becomes the head chef of a fancy restaurant. chandler is a data processor who eventually switches to a career in advertising. joy is a struggling new york actor. ross is a paleontologis

24、t who first works at a museum and in later years becomes a college professor. phoebe ekes out a living as a singer-songwriter and a masseuse. a constant story line throughout the series is the on-again/off-again romance between rachel and ross, and later in the series, the developing relationship be

25、tween monica and chandler. the main settings for the show include monicas apartment, chandler and joeys apartment and the coffee house downstairs, “central perk”. 3.2 researches on humor3.2.1 studies on humor in the westthe studies on humor in the west can date back to early times. even in todays li

26、fe, it has an important role. there are three theories, which have significant influences on the humor research. incongruity theory, it can be seen easily that incongruity theory has been widely accepted to explain humor. kant, lived in the eighteenth century, pointed out that laughter was born when

27、 the tense expectation suddenly disappeared, which means laughter was coming from the sudden resolve of the tense mind. the basic view of incongruity theory is, if one thing, idea or social phenomenon, has difference with commonsense, or is considered out of mind or even without logical, then its a

28、discord, the important element of laughing.relief theory has specific physiological or psychological implications. floyd believed that people are sometimes eager to escape the real world in many aspects from the moral and legal restraints, and return to his easy, free childhood. relief theorys basic

29、 view is that people, through humor and laughter, release their feelings, whether psychologically or physiologically. disparagement theory is originated of classical rhetoric theory in ancient greece and rome, including those humor theories based on hatred, hostility, ridicule, attack, contempt and

30、superiority. hobbes believed that laughter is a sudden sense of pride. plato pointed that humor is malicious from common people to those relatively incompetent people. aristotle in poetics chapter v also wrote: the role of comedy is less than the average persons character . funny thing means those u

31、gly or incongruity no harm to others and not to cause pain. the main point of superiority is that those who laugh by laughing at the misfortune of other people or things, or by contempt for someone or something to show their superiority.the above three theories, disparagement can best explain the hu

32、mor of irony and mockery; as to the nifty, vulgar jokes, the relief theory is more reasonable; when come to the interpretation of pun, its more ideal using the incongruity.3.2.2 studies on humor in chinahumor research in china started in the late 20th century. the publication of hu fanchous linguist

33、ic humor had a great influence on the academic field. wu tugen had a vocabulary elements and humorous speech, which from various aspects discusses the elements of speech and the composition of verbal humor. from the cognitive psychology point, there is “session the role of humor in the process of se

34、mantic analysis”. from the pragmatic part, liu fuchang had from the cooperative principle of english humor. there are run tiehuang and wang jinling who had “on humor pragmatic semantic features” from the semantic aspect to analysis humor. at last there are researches from the rhetoric and stylistics

35、 view. from the above statement, we can see that the study on humor has presented a multi-angle multi-level structure. on one hand, its a signal to show us the great progress on humor; on the other hand, we can see the phenomenon of repeating study at the same time. 3.3 cooperative principle3.3.1 in

36、troduction to cooperative principlein 1975 the philosopher of language grice published a seminal article entitled the cooperative principle, which created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generated a large number of linguistic publications that are built on grices postulates. the basic assum

37、ption of the theory is that any discourse, whether written or spoken, is a joint effort. both the speaker and the hearer have to follow certain pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic rules in order to communicate effectively. they have to cooperate. however, these principles can be observed at work on a

38、 highly technical level in language whenever spoken or written texts are analyzed. and they can be found in any text of any genre in any language. if a speaker violates one or more of these fundamental maxims, the communication breaks down. in a successful discourse, you can relate this success to t

39、heir observance. when misunderstanding occurs, you can demonstrate that they are generally due to a violation of one or more of the maxims. there are four maxims encompassed in cooperative principle. in cooperative conversation, it is reasonable for the participants to follow the four maxims. but th

40、ey need not always do so; a participant can violate them on purpose for some reasons. the speaker employs this way which seems to be against the cooperative principle to reinforce the communicative effect. rhetoric, hyperbole, paradox, euphemism and satire are specific examples of this case. the res

41、ult of violating any of those could be humorous.3.3.2 four maxims of cooperative principlegrices cooperative principle consists of several maxims that appear simple, straightforward, and commonsensical at first sight. grice (1975, 45-46) proposes four maxims for attaining cooperation.maxim of quanti

42、ty: make your contribution as informative as required; do not make your contribution more informative than is required.maxim of quality: do not say what you believe to be false; do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.maxim of relevance: be relevant.maxim of manner: avoid obscurity of e

43、xpression; avoid ambiguity; be brief; be orderly.grice (1975) holds that “the first of these maxims is known as the quantity maxim, which states ones contribution should provide sufficient, but not too much information.” the second maxim states that ones contribution to a conversation should be trut

44、hful. you violate the quality maxim when you deliberately lie or communicate in a way that does not reflect an honest intention (grice, 1975). relevance is such an important principle. “in the context of h.p. grice s cooperative principle, the demand for relevance simply means that the speaker shoul

45、d only include information in his communication that is relevant to the topic under discussion”（bethan davies,2000）. as to the manner maxim, truthfulness and politeness are of philosophical and moral rather than grammatical significance in linguistics.4. analysis of the violation of cooperative prin

46、ciple in friends4.1 violation of the maxim of quantityviolation of maxim of quantityit can be grouped into two categories: providing information less than required and providing more information than needed.e. g. joey: monica, when i look back over our time togetherchandler: yeah?joey: i cant do all

47、 of it. look back over your time together!in this dialogue, joey was against the first term of quantity maxim. chandler turned to joey just for he didnt know how to write wedding vows. he thought that joey could help him a lot, but joey only gave an easy short starting and told chandler theres no ex

48、cuse for him to do all of it. then laugh was caused for the speaker didnt give enough information. the second example is against providing more information.e. g. chandler: where is the book you are reading?monica: its in the living room where there is also light and no one will kick you in the shin.

49、chandler: what?its about chandler who couldnt fall asleep at night, and turned on the light, asking monica to give him some of her romantic novel, because he thought those boring books would help him to fall sleep. but at the same time, monica was about to sleep, when chandler turned on the light, s

50、he was startled, and she told him that book was lying on the drawing room where the light was on and he would not get a kick. monicas answer violated the quantity maxim. for chandler “its in the living room” thats enough, but monica added more information to tell chandler that he had disturbed her s

51、leep, and some one would kick him. as to the person, we can tell that was monica from chandlers screaming.e. g. rachel: all right. whats your news, amy?amy: oh! well im getting married.rachel: what? oh, my god! to who?amy: this guy!this conversation was between rachel and her sister amy. when rachel

52、 asked whom amy would marry. amy just introduced by words “this guy”. this response was definitely not the expected answer that rachel wanted. usually, people are always very serious when introducing their future family members, but amy was an exception, so she violated the maxim of the quantity. la

53、ter we can see that amy married this guy just for the sake of his big house. and this caused laughter.e. g. chandler: oh, because we love kids. love them to death. well, not actually to death, thats just a figure of speechwe love kids the appropriate amount. as allowed by law.in the above speech, we

54、 know that chandler wanted to adopt a child, but he was afraid of being misunderstood, so he talked a lot, which added some unnecessary information. the words “as allowed by law” may mislead person, as a result, the more he explained, the more people couldnt understand.4.2 violation of the maxim of

55、qualityin terms of the maxim of quality, number one, people often mock others by deliberately saying something that they do not believe is true; and number two, the speaker might say something stupid on purpose then make the hearer derive some positive or negative meaning.e. g. chandler: i dont know

56、 if youve looked up the term “goof around” in the dictionary. i have. the technical definition is: two friends care a lot about each other and just want to spend more time with each other. but if you have this dictionary that annoys you, then we have to get you my original one.monica: you are cuter

57、than you think you are.at first chandler and monica began to have a date, and they didnt tell anyone. but when chandler heard rachel introduce a boyfriend to monica, he thought monica was willing to date with someone else. in order to maintain face, he pretended to be indifferent to monica and told

58、others they were just dating for fun. monica received the arrangement after knowing how chandler talked about their relationship. but when he knew that its not monicas willingness, chandler was so regretful and wanted to make it up. now we know that he didnt tell the truth, and the explanation on the so called original dictionary was totally invented. but monica knew his real aim was to get back to their happy old days. so chandlers violation gave us lots of laughing. e. g. (scene: chandler is at a restaurant and gets the food prepared differently from had ordered. he jokes with