Adaptation Theoretic Approach To Verbal Humor In Sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond

As a special type of pragmatic phenomenon, humor plays an indispensable part inpeople’s communication, since it can not only release people’s tension and harmonizeinterpersonal relationship, but also demonstrate its users’ meritorious personalities.Since ancient times, humor has constantly been a hot topic as an interdisciplinaryobject of research, covering sociology, physiology, psychology and other fields. Sincethe use of humor is closely related with the situational, social-cultural and cognitivefactors of the communication, it is necessary to take a comprehensive perspective onhumor.In light of Adaptation Theory, this thesis takes a qualitative approach to theanalysis of the verbal humor in the American sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.Within the framework of AT, this research is intended to answer the followingquestions:(1) What are the preferred linguistic, stylistic and strategic choices for theconstruction of verbal humor in Raymond?(2) How are the three properties oflanguage use (variability, negotiability and adaptability) revealed in the verbal humorin Raymond?(3) What kinds of contextual factors should the linguistic, stylistic andstrategic choices be adapted to for the construction of verbal humor in Raymond?(4)How should these adaptations be concretely made?The present research has arrived at the following findings:(1) the speakers inRaymond make variable linguistic choices respectively at phonetic, lexical, syntacticand discourse levels to realize verbal humor;(2) verbal humor in Raymond is alsoachieved by certain communicative strategies such as deliberate misinterpretation,presupposition and shift of topic;(3) the property of adaptability is fully revealed inthe rhetorical and stylistic choices for the construction of verbal humor in Raymond,including the choices of irony, parody and anticlimactic method of narration;(4)verbal humor in Raymond results from the adaptation to the communicative context,which is composed of situational context (i.e. spatial variables, temporal variables andtopics), social context (i.e. cultural variables, common knowledge and social relationships) and mental context (i.e. the interlocutors’ motives, personality andemotions);(5) the Adaptation Theory is effective in the analysis of characteristiclanguage use such as the verbal humor in sitcoms.This thesis is concluded by pointing out the pedagogical implications of thepresent research:(1) in language classroom, the teachers’ talks should be interestingenough to be adapted to the situational context of language teaching and learning andmeet the students’ psychological expectation of learning in a relaxed environment;(2)teachers’ choices of input should be adapted to the students’ cognitive environmentssuch as their language proficiency, comprehension ability, background knowledgeabout the culture, historical facts, customs, conventions, social values and the like;(3)teachers might make diverse linguistic, stylistic and strategic choices so as to maketheir directive talks humorous and impressive.Although the present study has some theoretical and practical significances, itstill cannot avoid inadequacies. It is suggested to the future researchers of verbalhumor that the adaptation theoretic approach be combined with some other theories intheir further exploration of the questions unanswered by the Adaptation Theory.