A Study Of Humor From The Perspective Of Regiester Theory

As a distinctive characteristic of humanity, humor has rich content and wideapplication range. People have done a lot of research into this common and peculiarphenomenon in various fields，however，the scholars are unable to agree on humor.As a type of the language art form to convey humor, sitcoms are popular amongpeople. The core of the sitcom is humor, which is the key factor to determine sitcomquality. The sitcom not only makes people laugh, but also inspires wisdom. It is aperforming art and also a type of humorous language art.The study makes the discourse analyses of humor in the sitcom from the perspectiveof functional linguistics. We trace the origin and development of humor, explore the natureof humor, comment on, revise and make supplement to the definitions of humor and give adetailed description and analysis of the multidimensional interpretations of humor frommultiple subjects and fields, which includes building process of humor, the mechanism inunderstanding humor and linguistic and non-linguistic features of humor, etc. in order tofind their basic laws and weaknesses. Then, based on the traditional humor theories and thenew research results of functional linguistics, the study takes " friends", the representativeof the American classic situation comedy as the example, reanalyzes how humor worksunder the framework of register theory and constructs a preliminary formal system ofhumor from the perspective of the register theory of functional linguistics by giving adetailed illustration of the realization forms of humor in" friends".The study of humor from the perspective of register theory has theoretical andpractical significance. Firstly, the research picks out the English sitcom which showsreality as the subject to analyze the living language and to explore the application ofregister theory; Secondly, this research provides a new thought for building andappreciating humor; Thirdly, it discovers a new approach to appreciate and analyze humorapart from the traditional rhetorical and pragmatic approach, which may be an effectiveway to make a discourse analysis under the framework of functional linguistics.In terms of the research purpose, there are the following points: firstly, it is hoped thatthe connection between humor and the register resources will be found and that this study attempts to build up their corresponding relationship and to explore how humor worksfrom the perspective of register theory. Secondly, it is hoped that this study will improveEnglish learners in their abilities in understanding and using English humor. Thirdly, it ishoped that this research will expand the applications of register theory, providing somebeneficial enlightenment for the development of register theory.The first chapter is an introduction, which consists of two aspects: firstly, the authorpresents the genesis of the research by dating back the origin and development ofAmerican sitcoms. Secondly, the author sets out significance and purpose of the research,research methods and the layout of this study.The second chapter is the literature review, giving a panoramic survey of humorresearch analyses (mainly linguistically related), from the dictionaries to the famouscelebrities, from classical to modern study and from linguistics to other subjects, exploringthe building process, nature, characteristics and roles of humor further, and focusing onhumor features in sitcoms, so that people have a better understanding of the basicconnotation, features, functions, forms of humor and humor features in sitcoms. Throughthe review of related research, the study points out the problems, insufficiency andlimitation of the studies in existence and puts forth the direction and necessity of ourresearch.The third chapter summarizes the main points of view of register theory and putsforward the theoretical starting point of the research. It mainly includes: the origin ofregister theory, the implications of register, multidimensional variables of register, thesignificance of register variations, the metafunctions of language and the realization formsof metafunctions in language system.The fourth and the fifth chapter are the application studies of the theory. Based onregister theory, these chapters make multidimensional discourse analyses of humor in“friends”, the American classic sitcom, trying to give a detailed description and illustrationof the realization forms of humor.In the fourth chapter, the study makes multi-dimensional, systematical interpretationsof the diverse samples from “friends” at the situational level in order to examine thevariation features of different situational variables, their expression significance and their functions in the construction of humor in a detailed way. Register is associated with threesituational variables: field of discourse，tenor of discourse and mode of discourse. Theanalyses at the situational level consist of three-dimensional register variables given aboveand their multiple-dimensional sub-categories.The fifth chapter discusses the humorous phenomena in the sitcom “friends” at thelexico-grammatical level, where the study is made to explore discourse characteristics ofverbal humor from the perspective of multiple realization forms corresponding to threemetafunctions. The realization forms mainly include the following several aspects:transitivity system, mood system, modality system, thematic structure and informationstructure. The study explores the specific realization forms at the lexico-grammatical level,variation features in forms and their reasons, and examines the effect of situationalvariables on lexico-grammatical realization forms and some laws in using language inconstructing humor.The sixth chapter is the conclusion, summarizing the main points of the whole study,pointing out the problems in existence and discussing the direction of future research onhumor.