A Tentative Study On The Humor Of Everybody Loves Raymond From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Presupposition

The situation comedy Everybody Loves Raymond enjoys great popularity for its unique and rich humor in the United States as well as China, but it has not been accounted for any established linguistic theories. It is well acknowledged that situation comedies are always expected to create humorous atmosphere. What is the mechanism triggering the humor in Everybody Loves Raymond? On the basis of the previous studies on humor, this thesis will aim at analyzing the humorous examples in Everybody Loves Raymond from the angle of pragmatic presupposition to find out its triggering mechanism. Meanwhile, it will focus on searching out its linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors leading to the cancellation property which give rise to the humor.The previous researches on humor are reviewed first. They are introduced and followed by their limitations to account for humor in Everybody Loves Raymond. Then the research by presupposition is introduced, based on the analysis of humor in Everybody Loves Raymond. To justify the research, data collection and research methods are given prior to the detailed analysis from the perspective of presuppositions. Also the linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors leading to the cancellation property which give rise to the humor are drawn in the end.Pragmatic presupposition is closely related to the speaker, the context, the background information and the common knowledge, and it is highly sensitive to the shift of context and that of the shared knowledge. In other words, if an utterance is put in a certain specific context in which the context contradicts the presupposition, the shift of context leads to contradiction to previous context, or the utterance is not in line with background knowledge or common knowledge, its presupposition will be abandoned accordingly. It is just its sensitivity to context that endows pragmatic presupposition with the property of cancellation. And this cancellation property leads to a contradiction between the following utterance and the presumptions made by the audiences from previous utterances. In this way, it finally reaches unexpected results and makes the utterance sound humorous.Script-writers of Everybody Loves Raymond are very good at manipulating presuppositions to achieve humorous effect. Based on the study of a large collection of examples selected from Everybody Loves Raymond, this dissertation concludes the presupposition into four types, they are preserved presupposition, cancelled presupposition, false presupposition and contradicted presupposition. And this dissertation proves that the humor of this sitcom is mainly generated from the cancellation property of pragmatic presupposition; furthermore, it also finds out the factors resulting in the cancellation of pragmatic presupposition, which are linguistic factors including intra-sentential context, discourse context, the construction of reductio arguments, common knowledge, background knowledge, and body language.Researching on the mechanism of Humor in Everybody Loves Raymond reveals the quintessence of language arts and it may give some enlightenment to the creation of comedies in the future.