A Study Of Verbal Humor In Friends Under The Theoretical Framework Of Grice’s Cooperative Principle

As a distinctive and essential way of human communication, humor has long attracted attention of scholars from a variety of disciplines. Recently, language, as a natural carrier of humor, became the focus of humor study. However, it seems that exclusive study of language itself can not adequately explain how humor is produced and appreciated. Therefore, it is necessary to involve context in humor study and to carry out humor research from the perspective of pragmatics. Sitcom serves as a right candidate for humor study in context.The present research is a case study of verbal humor in An American sitcom Friends under the theoretical framework of Cooperative Principle with the purpose of probing into the scriptwriters’strategy of verbal humor production.The author got access to this great sitcom by downloading both of its video and transcript from the internet. While watching the video, the author identified each humorous utterance in the transcript with the help of background laughter as an indicator of humor existence. These identified humorous utterances are then analyzed and grouped according to the four maxims of CP. Finally, a conclusion is made that scriptwriters create verbal humor in Friends mainly by violating CP, especially by violating quantity maxim and quality maxim of CP.This research finding validates the statement that violation of CP may lead to humor. It can also, as is hoped, help people to better enjoy verbal humor in Friends. Moreover, it may provide reference for Chinese play writers in their creation of sitcom.