Analysis From The Perspective Of Pragmatics In The Sitcom Humor Words

Humor is more and more pervasive in our daily life as a language phenomenon. For a longtime, scholars’ studies on humor have never stopped. Since the80s last century, with thedevelopment of pragmatics, more and more linguists started their research of verbal humorfrom this angle. The popularity of sitcom which is the one of successful carriers for humor hasprovided large numbers of materials for pragmatic research of verbal humor. Sitcom hasbecome one of the most popular programs in modern society because of its relaxed atmosphereand witty language.As one of the most popular Chinese sitcoms, Home with Kids is a wonderful work inChinese sitcom market; it has a distinct language feature for the verbal humor research.On the basis of previous researches on humor study, this paper intends to employ somepragmatic theories, including Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, Speech Act Theoryand Presupposition Theory, to analyze the examples of verbal humor in Home with Kids, andthen reveal the generation law of the verbal humor, which may help the audience to appreciateand understand the Chinese sitcoms better.This paper is divided into seven chapters:Chapter1, Introduction, introduces the reason in the title selections, the range og study andthe significance of this paper.Chapter2, Humor and Sitcom, in this part the author introduces the definition of humor,the function of humor, and then reviews the traditional humor theories and accomplishments ofprevious studies. In addition, the author introduces the definition of sitcom in this part. Also,writes a brief overview of Home with Kids.From Chapter3to Chapter6are subject of this paper. In this part the author analysis theexamples of verbal humor in Home with Kids from four areas, including Cooperative Principle,Politeness Principle, Speech Act Theory and Presupposition Theory. Through the analysis wecould find that, in the process of communication, humor effects could be achieved by thedeliberate flouting of Cooperative Principle, the deliberate flouting of Politeness Principle,could not understand Speech Act Theory correctly and Presupposition misplaying of one side orboth sides of the communication and so on.Chapter7, Conclusion, in this part, the author sums up the whole thesis, pointing out theinsufficiency and innovation of this paper, and making a speculation for further humor research.The research of this paper shows that, on the one hand, this study enrich the theories ofsitcoms. On the other hand, the findings make some contributions to the production and perception of humor to some extent in modern Chinese sitcoms and therefore may help theaudience better enjoy sitcoms.