Gender Differences In Humor Application

The paper concentrates on gender differences in humor application. The GTVH theory is used as theoretical basis, and a conversatinal analysis is made, which combines sociolinguistics together. It focuses on teasing and self-directed joking in informal conversations and that relate to sexuality among male and female friends. Teasing has certain social impact. It can diffuse conflict and reinforce human relation. For the people with a bad relation, teasing can be thought as assault. However, for the intimate ones, teasing may be regarded as enhancement. The thesis concentrates on the positive note, and made a discussion of construction of gender through humor.Humor in the sitcom Friends offers us a unique opportunity to study the relation between gender and humor. Teasing and self-directed jokes occur most frequently. Moreover, due to gender composition of characters, the relationship between gender and humor is interesting to explore.This paper makes 30 episodes from Friends the corpus. It investigates whether there is much difference or similarity in male and female humorous talks and if there are, what are they. Then in detailed analysis, this paper explains the results with function of conversational joking,and realize the construction of interpersonal relation.It also examines how conversational joking between male and female eventually serves the construction of gender. In the end, according to results of the data, the difference of humor between male and female is discused.Through the data analyses, we find that the relationships between actors are connected with their laughing target, the close ones makes more jokes on each other's expense. Moreover, according to the statistics about humor referring to target, there are differences between the conversation of men and women, women reduces the chances of self-mockery, and increase the jokes on men's expense, while men reduces the jokes on others expense, while makes more jokes on their owns' expense; while in humor concerning to sexuality, men are more often both the initiator and target than women.