An Analysis Of Verbal Humors In The Dialogues Of The American Sitcom The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

With the rapid development of information technology and the Internet, more andmore foreign situation comedies have been imported into China. The verbal humor isone of the most prominent characteristics exsiting in situation comedies. Through theanalysis of sitcom dialogues, people could better understand the generation mechanismof verbal humors, improve the ability to apply verbal humors in daily life, as well asenjoy the charm of language. Besides, people could improve their English in theprocess of appreciating and analyzing sitcom dialogues.Relevance Theory was formally proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson in1986. As an inferential theory of communication, the Relevance Theory aims toaccount for how the addressee infers the addresser‘s intended meaning orcommunicative intention. The most important concepts in the Relevance Theory aretwo kinds of relevance, i.e., the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance.Maximal relevance means that the addressee gains the greatest contextual effectsthrough spending the smallest processing efforts, while optimal relevance refers to thatthe addressee gains sufficient contextual effects with no unnecessary effort.The thesis firstly makes a brief introduction to the sitcom, The Big Bang Theoryand the conventional humor theories. Secondly, this thesis elaborates Sperber andWilson‘s Relevance Theory and some related concepts; Thirdly, this thesis analyzes theverbal humors of the dialogues in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory under theguidance of the Relevance Theory so as to make an elementary exploration of thegeneration mechanism and the interpretation of verbal humors. The resulting of thisthesis is that applying the Relevance Theory can help people better understand thegeneration mechanism of verbal humors and enjoy the charm of humorous language soas to improve the ability to apply verbal humors in daily life. This thesis makes somecontribution to the exploration of humor, the application of Relevance Theory and eventhe study of pragmatics. Meanwhile, this thesis provides latest corpus to help Englishleaners develop their English proficiency.