A Rhetorical Analysis Of Verbal Humor In The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

Humor is the most common language phenomenon in daily life. Verbal humor often appears innewspapers, magazines, television programs as well as situation comedies. These verbal humors havespecific features, and have pragmatic effect which makes people feel relaxed and comfortable, helps peoplewho are in embarrassing conditions, and improves the social communications. The study of verbal humorbegan in the times of Plato, and as the development of the Pragmatics, the study of verbal humor havebecome multi-disciplinary. In the previous study of verbal humor, researchers often study on the pragmaticfeatures of the discourse. And this thesis takes the verbal humor from the American situation comedy TheBig Bang Theory as data, analysis on them in terms of the Cooperative Principles and its four maxims.The Cooperative Principle is a key theory in Pragmatics, which was first proposed by H. P. Grice in1967, and then he drew it into his article which named as The Cooperative Principle. This theory includesfour maxims: the maxim of Quantity, the maxim of Quality, the maxim of Relation and the maxim ofManner. Rhetorical devices are an important way of expression which frequently appeared in verbal humor.Therefore, this study is built on the Cooperative Principle, analyzing the rhetorical devices in verbal humor,and doing the detailed analysis based on Cooperative Principle.The present research aims to find out the most violated maxim of Cooperative Principle in generatingverbal humor and to explore the most often used rhetorical devices in generating verbal humor. Accordingto the research objectives above, this study puts forward the following research questions:(1) Whichmaxim of CP is the most violated in generating verbal humor?(2) What rhetorical devices are mostfrequently used in generating verbal humor?According to the research objectives and questions, this study centers upon the quantitative analysis onthe data. The procedures of the research can be summarized as follows. Firstly, the data are selected fromten episodes from the five seasons randomly (two episodes each season) according to the backgroundlaughter. Secondly, all the data are grouped according to the violation of maxims of CP, analyzed based onthe violation of each maxim, and it finds out the most violated maxim of the four. Lastly, the rhetoricaldevices are taken into consideration. The author analyzes each example with the rhetorical devices and finds out the most frequently used one, then gives a particular explanation and cencus them with Excel.The results show that, among all the data, the most often violated maxim is the maxim of Quantity,then, follows the maxim of Quality, the maxim of Relation and the maxim of Manner. Of all the calculatedrhetorical devices, Irony, Paradox and Hyperbole are the most often used. Meanwhile, in the maxim ofQuantity, Irony is the most often used rhetorical devices. Irony is also frequently used in the maxim ofQuality and the maxim of Relevance, while Pun and Paradox are frequently used in the maxim of Manner.The significance of this present study is: it can broaden the range of verbal humor study, from SpeechAct Theory to Cooperative Principle, from the verbal humor in books and television programs to thehumors in situation comedies; secondly, this present research proposed a new angle for the application ofEnglish verbal humor; at last, this study will also improve the diversity of English verbal humor and of helpto the English learners’ better understanding of the English verbal humor.The whole thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One makes a brief introduction to the whole thesis. It includes the research background,research significance, research objectives and of course, the organization of the whole thesis.Chapter Two provides the literature review, which includes the definitions of the related terms, thetheoretical frame cooperative principles and its four maxims, the rhetorical devices, as well as theresearches of verbal humor at home and abroad.Chapter Three presents the research questions, data collection, research methodology and procedures.Chapter Four is Results and Discussion, the central part of this study. The data are analysed and theresults are presented and discussed based upon the Cooperative Principle. It is classified into four partsaccording to the theoretical frame CP and its four maxims. Besides, the rhetorical devices are discussed indetails with examples.Chapter Five is the conclusion part of this study which first summarizes the major findings of thisstudy, presents the implications. And then it points out the limitations as well as the suggestions for furtherresearch.