Verbal Humor Interpretation From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Humor research gives the exploration of the mutual relationship of language,logic, cognition, emotion and reveals the mystery of human language, thought andemotion. It has a significant role on the further understanding of human beings.Humor research can be dates back to the times of Plato and Aristotle. From then on,scholars make great effort on humor study from different disciplines, such aslinguistic, psychology, sociology, aesthetics, philosophy and rhetoric, etc. Westernscholars study humor from three typical traditional theories (Superiority Theory,Incongruity Theory and Relief Theory), The Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH)and the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH). With the development ofpragmatics, more and more scholars study verbal humor from the perspective ofapplied linguistics, in which a great number of theories can be used to analyze verbalhumor phenomenon authoritatively and comprehensively, such as Grice’s Cooperativeand its maxims.In this thesis, the author used the classical theory of pragmatics---CooperativePrinciple as the theoretical framework.“Cooperative Principle” was first proposed byHerbert Paul Grice, as a famous philosopher and linguist in America, his work onconversational implicature was publicly presented in the William James Lectures atHarvard University in1967. Cooperative Principle which provides new idea for thelanguage communicative phenomenon in many aspects, it has far–reachingimplications for the pragmatics development and it has become a central issue ofresearch.H.P.Grice finds that the conversation usually does not include the exchange ofdisconnected or irregular parts, and if they did it would not be rational, to some extentat least, the participants have a common or disposed of purpose, or at least one mutually direction which can be accepted in conversation. Cooperative Principle canbe divided into several specific maxims, they are:“Quality”,“Quantity”,“Relation”and “Manner”. In order to achieve the most effective communication people shouldobserve them. But people may not always do that, although they are expected tofollow all the maxims when they have a conversation with others. Once these maximsare violated or flouted for various reasons, the extra meanings we generated fromutterances what is called “conversational implicature”.Sitcom first produced in1920s, today it has become the main part ofentertainment and a popular type of TV shows all over the world. It includessituational humor and verbal humor which plays an irreplaceable role. Situationcomedy “Good Luck Charlie” is selected as the paper corpus, it has been welcomedby the majority of the audience since it was premiered on Disney Channel in theUnited States. It takes credit for its ubiquitous humor. The series focuses on theDuncan family，who are still adjusting to the birth of their fourth child, Charlotte"Charlie" Duncan. The events in each episode become material for a video diaryTeddy is making for Charlie. Teddy hopes the videos will provide useful advice forCharlie after they have both grown up and Teddy tries to show Charlie what shemight go through when she is older for future reference.The following two questions are designed in this research:First: how to achieve the verbal humor by violating the Cooperative Principleand its sub-maxims in this sitcom? Second: which maxim is more often violated tocause humorous effect in this sitcom?In this thesis, the data entirely derived from the famous American situationcomedy “Good Luck Charlie”. It is an American sitcom which originally aired onDisney Channel in2010. The funny plot and idiomatic English provide data for us tostudy. Therefore, this study is an empirical research which based on the case ofhumorous discourse of “Good Luck Charlie”. There are30episodes in the secondseason of “Good Luck Charlie”,15of them are randomly selected and the scripts thatare downloaded from the internet. According to the scene audience’s “backgroundlaughter” or “canned laughter”, the humorous dialogue will be recorded. Then, the verbal humor will choose be isolated from the whole corpus, furthermore, the numberof verbal humor from the violation of Cooperative Principle will be counted.The main research methods are Qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.Quantitative analysis is mainly used to collect the whole corpus verbal humor, as wellas the percentage rate is calculated from the violating of CP and each maxim.Qualitative analysis is mainly used to classify the verbal humor, and tried to analysisthe cause of verbal humor by the violation of the sub-maxim. Finally, the authorselected the corpus analysis of typical examples using Principle of Cooperation. Aftera great of data collection and analysis, the author concluded that: in this situationcomedy verbal humor is closely related to the Cooperative Principle, the characters inthe sitcom achieved the purpose by violating the maxims of the CP. The authoranalysis of the examples which selected from the corpus, and obtained that the maximof quantity is the most and the least is manner maxim, sometimes the characters in thesitcom violate several of the maxims at the same time.Finally, the author further discusses the implications of verbal humor in Englishteaching. The situation comedy is rich in English language, culture and social values,providing the most direct language materials for learners and strengthening theirlanguage understanding by a real language environment. At the same time, humorousdialogue and exciting plot can greatly improve learners learning enthusiasm andinterest.Teacher lead the situation comedy into English class is a shortcut to help studentsbreak deaf and dumb English. Each episode often last for24minutes, the length oftime is better for teacher to operate in class, moreover, it can let students enjoy fullepisode, discussion, watch carefully and cultural analysis after watching.