A Study On Verbal Humor In The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Register Theory

Born in wit,humor is the unique phenomenon in our society.As the distinctive features of human being(Nash,1985,p.1-12),the occurrences of humor always bypass a conventional thinking pattern and bring about unexpected turns which lighten the mood,soothe the nerve and reduce the stress in our daily life.Attracted by the charisma of humor,experts from various fields tried to unveil the generation mechanisms of humor.Studies of humor have been carried on in various subjects including linguistics,psychology,anthropology,and aesthetics in recent years.Among the flourished humor studies,register theory which serves as the variations of language under different contexts of situation(Halliday,1978,p.32)is of great power in explaining verbal humor phenomena in different social settings.The situation comedies which are often briefly called the sitcoms are a colossal collection of verbal humor phenomena.As the core of sitcoms,language undertakes the responsibility of revealing the conflicts between characters,proceeding the story and depicting the roles.(Zhao,2012)Therefore,using both the quantitative and qualitative methods,this study aims to adopt register theory as the framework and take the classical humor theories which are superiority theory,incongruity theory and release theory as the guiding theories to analyze the verbal humor phenomena in the first ten episodes in the 12~thh season of The Big Bang Theory.Quantitative methods are used to calculate the appearance of verbal humor that caused by the register variables in the lines of The Big Bang Theory to figure out the distribution characteristics of register variables in causing verbal humor.Qualitative methods are used to fully describe and explain how the register variables influence the generation of verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory.There are two questions for the study:1.What are the distributions of register variables in causing verbal humor?2.How do these register variables affect the production of verbal humor?The study found that the verbal humor phenomena can be reasonably explained by register theory.Certain influence of register variables on the generation of verbal humor was found in the study.From the research result(see table one),the field of discourse has influenced the generation of humor mostly while the mode of discourse impacted the verbal humor phenomena least.Specifically,the change,extension,comparison and conflict of subject matter and the inappropriate behavior against settings are the main reasons that account for the verbal humor phenomena in the field of discourse.The abnormal frequency of contact,the irregular emotional behavior and the contrast between power and language are the main influence in causing verbal humor in the tenor of discourse.From the perspective of mode of discourse,lacking of speaking plans and the unnatural feedback influenced the generation of verbal humor mostly.The research result has showed the integral role of register variables in generating and explaining verbal humor.Therefore,it's of great significance to analyze the verbal humor phenomena under the framework of register theory.