A Stylistic Analysis Of The Sitcom Friends

In recent years, there exists a great number of research of different varieties of English, such as novels, news broadcast, scientific readings, etc. Nevertheless, what cannot bear any of our negligence is that stylistics on sitcoms--a new type of language material, is in great scarcity. Hence, the author of this thesis intends to investigate Friends, a popularly shown English language sitcom from the perspective of general stylistics in terms of linguistic description, textual analysis and contextual analysis respectively.This thesis examines three randomly selected episodes by means of qualitative research, unfolding their stylistic features, namely some similarities as well as disparities among them in terms of stylistics.Through this research, the author has the following findings:At the phonological level, the swift tempo throughout the episodes and the frequent use of initial stress play a vital role.At the graphological level, the frequent employment of commas, uniqueness in spelling and emotion and action markers phrased in brackets are the most distinct stylistic features.At the lexical level, the employment of monosyllabic, informal, dynamic, colloquial, concrete and fluff words is typical of the selected episodes.At the grammatical/syntactic level, the overwhelming employment of simple sentences and active voice is the most distinct feature of the selected episodes.So far as textual analysis is concerned, this thesis has penetrated mainly into the lay-out of the selected episodes, discovering that all the three episodes share the same text lay-out, namely the prelude, the body as well as the ending scene.Contextual factors analysis is also conducted in this research. We have discovered that the fieldof discourse, the tenor of discourse and the mode of discourse are closely associated with the stylistic features found in linguistic description. In addition, the author has also explored the selected episodes by employing two speech theories of vital importance--Speech Act Theory and Cooperative Principle respectively, finding that the conversations in the selected episodes are in light with the former while always violating the latter.