A Pragmatic Study Of Humor Based On The American Sitcom The Big Bang Theory

The use of humor is a complicated and intriguing aspect of human behavior, which playsan important role in the process of communication. Humor has constantly been a hot topic inphilosophical and linguistic fields. Among the western classical humor theories, SuperiorityTheory, Relief Theory and Incongruity Theory are the most typical ones, which interprethumor respectively in terms of the relative status between the humorist and the subject beinglaughed at, the psychological-affective function of humor, and the cause of humor creation.The premise for this thesis is that other than causing amusement and laughter, the humoristalso intends to achieve special communicative purposes. The present study aims atinvestigating the illocutionary aspect of humor primarily based on the speaker’s intention inthe hope of shedding light on the perception of humorous speech acts in American sitcomfrom a pragmatic perspective.Based on previous researches, this thesis makes a tentative exploration and provides atool for categorizing illocutionary act types according to the humorist’s communicativeintention. In this light, the present study presents and highlights statistically some interestingfacts about what humor is used to do in the popular American sitcom The Big Bang Theoryand a taxonomy of illocutionary act types is also provided.The humor instances collected in The Big Bang Theory were analyzed in terms of thehumorist’s communicative intention, according to which three major illocutionary act typesof humorous utterances were identified, including solidarity-intended, power-intended anddefense-intended. Further distinctions within these labels are also made.The results show that power-intended humor is most often employed, which is areflection of the pursuit of dramatic tension of the sitcom. Solidarity-intended humor is justless frequently used than the power type. In particular, jesting is a most important strategy forboth of these two illocutionary act types of humor, revealing that American sitcom heavilyrelies on witticism for the humor effect. Moreover, the geeky guys typically highlightinappropriate information to show friendliness or enhance solidarity while controlling and fostering conflicts are often employed to exert power. Relatively speaking, the ratio fordefense-intended humor is less striking than the other two illocutionary act types. To defendthemselves, the characters usually confess or conceal a weakness of their own before anyoneelse identifies it, or at other times, offer a self-directed joke to avoid embarrassment.