A Comparative Study Of Verbal Humor In Chinese And American Sitcoms From The Perspective Of Cross-cultural Pragmatics

Humor, as a universal language phenomenon, is an important part in people sdaily life，which can ameliorate human relations, bring pleasant feeling to people.Western scholars tend to apply the three conventional humor theories, thesemantic-script theory of humor and the general theory of verbal humor to studyhumor，while Chinese scholars mainly analyze verbal humors in cross talks, novelsand sitcoms from the perspective of rhetoric, cognitive linguistics, and pragmatics. Atpresent, there are few comparative researches on Chinese and English humor at homeand abroad.A sitcom, short form for a situation comedy, consists of a large quantity ofhumors, and is one of the best carrier forms of humor. In recent years, as thecommunication between China and America becomes more and more frequent, moreand more American sitcoms are introduced to China. Friends is one of the mostsuccessful American sitcoms. Ipartment, which imitates Friends in many aspects suchas characters, plots and lines, and enjoys great popularity in recent years in China, isconsidered as the “Chinese version of Friends”. However, influenced by culturaldifferences between China and America, there exist differences in verbal humorbetween these two sitcoms.This thesis adopts the qualitative and quantitative research methods, selectingfive episodes with similar topics respectively in Ipartment and Friends as corpus. TheCooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle are applied to classify verb humorsand the High-context&Low-context Culture theory is used to explore the reasonsbehind the differences in verbal humor generation between Chinese sitcoms andAmerican sitcoms. The thesis aims to explore the following two questions: First, whatare the similarities and differences in humor generation by violating the CooperativePrinciple and the Politeness Principle between Ipartment and Friends? Second, howdo High-context and Low-context culture influence verbal humor generation inChinese and American sitcoms respectively?The thesis concludes that most verbal humors in Chinese and American sitcomsare generated by violating the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle.There exist similarities as well as differences in verbal humor generation betweenChinese sitcoms and American sitcoms. The differences can mainly be attributed tothe influence of high-context and low-context culture. The major findings of the study may help Chinese and American audiences appreciate each other s sitcoms better. Inthe meantime, the study is expected to shed light on how to localize American sitcomsand how to transmit Chinese humor abroad through Chinese sitcoms.