A Discourse Approach To Humor In American Situation Comedy Friends

This thesis is a tentative endeavor to investigate the linguistic mechanisms of humor from the perspective of discourse analysis, and carries out an analysis of humor in American situation comedy Friends on formal links, conversational principles and contextual dimensions of discourse.To construct the theoretical basis for the whole research, the thesis first introduces three traditional theories of humor — the incongruity theory, the hostility theory and the release theory — and previous studies on humor with different approaches, including psychological approaches, sociological approaches and linguistic approaches. After the literature review, the author points out that a discourse as a whole plays an important role in the generation and perception of humor and thus the investigation of humor at discourse level will hopefully give new insights into the interpretation of humor mechanisms. Then four theories of discourse analysis are introduced. The theory of cohesion introduces formal devices that build texture; the Speech Act theory and principles of conversation study discourse as social act and interaction; the context of discourse, including situational context and cultural context, stresses contextual aspects of meaning which are negotiated by the social relations and identities of the participants in communication.Pervasive as it is, humor challenges a convincing definition to all. Scholars of different disciplines have studied humor from various points of view, and the notion of humor varies considerably. This thesis adopts a relatively broader definition and assumes that whatever evokes laughter or has a laughter-evoking potential is humor.After defining humor, the thesis provides a brief introduction of the television genre — situation comedy and a brief overview of the show under the research — Friends.