Pragmatic Analysis Of The Verbal Humor In American Sitcom Two And A Half Men

Sitcom, as one of the most popular programs, is widespread around the world andin it humor plays an important role. Humor is one of the active and conscious utilize ofthe verbal word, and is the consequence of the verbalactivity in a certain communicativeenvironment. In other words, humor depends on the context, which is the key point ofthe pragmatics. And the sitcom is the humorous soap which is on the prototype of thereal life and strongly depends on the context as well as the successful carrier of theverbal humor. The popularity of the American sitcom has provided plenty of materialsfor pragmatic research of verbal humor. As one of the newly popular sitcoms, Two and AHalf Men, is full of witty, humorous, vivid dialogues.This thesis tends to analyze the numerous examples of the verbal humor in theAmerican sitcom Two and a Half Men in the employment of the three pragmatic theorieswhich are the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle, and the PragmaticVagueness. The analysis which is made on plenty of dialogues shows that the humorouseffects could be achieved by the deliberate flouting the four maxims of CooperativePrinciple, exploiting the theory of the Pragmatic Vagueness, and deliberate flouting ofthe six maxims of the Politeness Principle. This thesis briefly take the research on thebasis of qualitative and quantitative analysis. The verbal humor in48episodes which arerandomly selected from the sitcom Two and a Half Men are taken as the research data.The process of the research is above all, to derive the verbal humor example s from thesitcom and, then classify it to different categories in terms of the pragmatic theoryapplied and the last step analyze them elaborately.This research attempts to employ the pragmatic theories such as CooperativePrinciple, Politeness Principle and Pragmatic Vagueness, to analyze the verbal humor inAmerican sitcom Two and a Half Men. The objectives of the thesis accounts for thefollowing: to further explore and develop the research on the mechanism of creatinghumor and, to a large extent, to rich the theory on the generation of verbal humor in theperspective of pragmatics; and further explore the inner mechanism of the humorgeneration with the employment of the pragmatic vagueness.Humor plays an important role in practice and our life, whic h can smooth the social relationship and make enjoyment and produce more entertainments. The findings of thisresearch have provided many useful suggestions for us to comprehend and appreciatethe verbal humor and will bring light on our study and social life.