A Study On Humor In Comedic Skits

Humor is the life of Comedic Skits. No Comedic Skits can survive without humor. Whether Comedic Skits can reach a climax depends on their humorous skills, in which language plays a key role. Considering Comedic Skits as a "conversational" art, the essay probes into the humorous strategies and the main factors of influencing the humorous effects in Comedic Skits.There are five chapters in the essay. The first chapter gives a general account of the study on Comedic Skits and introduces the goal that the essay will achieve, while the fifth chapter touches upon the problems of language in drama that need further research. Chapter two, three and four constitute the main body of the essay, among which Chapter three is the most important part.The second chapter explores that humor in Comedic Skits is humor of "common people" by examining the form and content in them with large numbers of lively examples. Besides, it sees through the social educational functions of Comedic Skits, and furthermore points out that humor in Comedic Skits is humor of satire. What's more, it makes clear that humor in Comedic Skits is humor of drama by comparing Comedic Skits with the other artistic forms such as cross talk, humorous music, humorous painting or humorous novels, etc.The third chapter deals with the humorous mechanism and the application of language rules in Comedic Skits, which employ many language strategies. On the phonetic level, there is rhyme, malapropism, changing of speaking speed and intonation, irregular pause and liaison, etc. On the lexical level, there is misunderstanding, changing of emotions or registers, etc., abbreviated expressions and supernormal collocations, etc. On the syntactic level, there is switch of word order, combination of complete and incomplete sentences and conversion of word class, etc. On the discourse level, there is sudden transition, intentional misunderstanding and breaking pragmatic principles, etc. Based on the Comedic Skits, especially the ones performed in the Special Spring Festival Programs on CCTV in the past twenty years, the essay intends to analyze the language mechanism of humor in Comedic Skits.The fourth chapter mainly solves the problems in carrying out the humorous functions in Comedic Skits. Since the public pursues the fine and high-quality art, thelanguage of Comedic Skits should have certain evaluation criterion and value orientation. Besides achieving the recreational function, we need deal with such relations well as between "refined" and "popular" tastes, "humor" and "ridiculousness", "dialects" and "community language" or "convention" and "innovation", etc., in Comedic Skits.