An Analysis Of Verbal Humor In The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Presupposition

Humor phenomenon has attracted much attention of scholars in various fields. Domestic and foreign scholars have studied humor from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, sociology, rhetoric, anthropology, etc. In the1980s, domestic and foreign scholars started their researches on humor from linguistic perspective. Since then, more and more domestic scholars started to apply pragmatic theories to study humor.Situation comedy can reflect culture, livelihood, and customs of a country. As one of the carriers of verbal humor, sitcom provides a rich corpus for the pragmatic study of humor. The latest American sitcom The Big Bang Theory is selected by the author as the research corpus in this paper. Because of ubiquitous humor in The Big Bang Theory, it becomes one of the most popular sitcoms all over the world. It centers on daily life of four geniuses and a waitress.After the statistic analysis on verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory from the CNKI data base, the author finds out that the linguistic research on verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory has limitation. There is still room for further research.Chapter one is the introduction, which includes research background, research objectives, research methodology and the structure of the paper.The standard for the selection of the corpus is that, the author chooses the previous four seasons of The Big Bang Theory as the study corpus.40episodes are randomly selected with the script which are downloaded from the Internet. The author takes the conversations with canned laughter as humorous examples, then coordinates and analyzes these materials to get the final suitable examples for the paper.Chapter three combines presupposition and incongruity theory, one of the most influential humor theories, to analyze the production mechanism of verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory. It analyzes the presupposition-based incongruity against actual situation and presupposition-based incongruity against general knowledge. Then the reasons for the presupposition-based incongruities are further explored. Presupposition-based incongruity against general knowledge, in some cases, the presupposition of the utterance of one speaker contradicts general knowledge, or the common sense shared by most people. Presupposition-based incongruity against actual situation is that the underlying reason of the conflict is the incongruity between the original presupposition of the speaker’s statement and the actual situation. Presupposition-based incongruities can be result from several main reasons, like the thinking pattern of the speakers, the speakers’ ignorance of certain information, the ambiguity of language, as well as the speakers’ special intentions.Chapter Four is an elaborate analysis of verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory based on the four presupposition manipulations, that is, preserved presupposition, cancelled presupposition, contradicted presupposition, as well as false presupposition. Preserved presupposition, means that presupposition could be preserved in the negation of a sentence or an expression with factual predicates. Sometimes when social barriers or embarrassment occur in verbal exchange, speaker may reorganize the utterance, but the original presuppositions that lead to the social barriers or embarrassment may still survive, therefore, the congruities appear between the meanings of reorganized sentences and the actual connotations of words. The manipulation of cancelled presupposition is to some extent the opposite of preserved presupposition. Cancelled presupposition refers that certain linguistic structure produces certain presuppositions, which could be cancelled by the conflicts between the original presuppositions and the background information, particular context, or connotation of utterance. Usually cancelled presupposition is influenced by certain context factors. About false presupposition, it is a kind of supernormal manipulation of presupposition, produced in concrete communication, which is different from the normal one. The supernormal aspect lies in the fact that a speaker takes uncommonly shared knowledge as presupposition information. The difference between the contradicted presupposition and false presupposition is that the former one is always done purposefully and the latter one is demonstrated by speakers unconsciously.Moreover, this paper studies the obstacles for the appreciation of verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory, and gives some implications to improve communicative competence for the audience.The last part is the conclusion, which makes a summary based on the preceding analysis, and points out the main purpose of this thesis, which is to explore the production mechanism of the verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory by presupposition analysis. Although The Big Bang Theory wins much popularity among people, there has been little relatively comprehensive analysis from the perspective of presupposition. In this thesis a systematic survey is conducted from two perspectives, the presupposition based incongruity and the presupposition manipulation. The two forms of explorations are from two different angles, conducted in parallel with a lot of examples provided for detailed explanation. The following conclusions are drawn based on the analysis:(1) The application of presupposition is a significant way to account for verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory;(2) Through using presupposition, the sitcom The Big Bang Theory succeeds in producing humorous and witty effects of comedy, which is full of sarcasm, banter and ridicule;(3) Culture differences and lack of general knowledge are the obstacles to appreciate verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory, and the verbal humor in the sitcom can help people to improve their communicative competence.