| Situation comedy, as a form of drama, has been favored by the majority of peoplebecause of its comic content, to-life performances and widespread media, television andInternet. Humor has for centuries attracted the interest of scholars. As the mostimportant feature of situation comedy, numerous researches on humor in situationcomedy have been seen in recent years, however, in which turn-taking systematics isseldom applied by scholars. In order to remedy that gap, this thesis focuses on studyingthe features of humor turn-taking in American situation comedy The Big Bang Theory5Season in turn-construction, turn-allocation and turn-control aspects. The basicframework of the study is the simplest systematics for the organization of turn-takingfor conversation proposed by Sacks, etc and the Relevance Theory by Sperber. Andboth quantitative and qualitative method are applied in the study.The present study selects the first10episodes of The Big Bang Theory Season5asobjects. By watching videos, humor turns are marked in scripts. Background laughter inthe videos is regarded as the criterion of humor. In that way, the corpora consisting of890humor turns is built. Then, the author marks those humor turns by applying theclassification of turn-construction components and turn-control strategies in Sacks’turn-taking systematics. Those collected data are analyzed through qualitative method.The research on the turn-taking allocation rules depends on qualitative method. In orderto explain how humorous effects are produced in turn-taking processes, the author willutilize the Relevance Theory to analyze typical examples. This thesis tries to solve thefollowing research questions:(1) What are the characteristics of humor turn-construction component in The BigBang Theory5Season?(2) Is there any difference in turn-allocation rules between the daily conversationturn-taking proposed by Sacks and humor turns identified in The Big Bang Theory5Season?(3) Which strategy in taking turns is more frequently used to produce humorouseffects?(4) Which strategy in yielding turns is more frequently applied in the production ofhumorous effects? The results show that the main features of humor turn-taking in The Big BangTheory are as follows:(1) Similar with turn-construction components of daily communication proposedby Sacks, humor turns in The Big Bang Theory are also constructed by a word, aphrase,a clause, a sentence and the combination of them.The number of humor turnsconstructed by the combination is the largest accounting for56.63%. The percentage ofhumor turns consisting of a sentence is37.87%. The other5.50%humor turns areconstructed by a word, a phrase and a clause.(2) Compared with turn-allocation rules of daily conversation proposed by Sacks,the difference is that in The Big Bang Theory, if the turn-so-far is so constructed as toinvolve the use of a ‘current speaker selects next’ technique, then the party so selected isallowed but not required to speak; others also have rights to speak and transfer occurs atthat place. Humor turn may both exist in the turn-so-far and in the next turn. And thepossibility of the latter is higher.(3) Insertion，interruption and overlap are three strategies in taking turns. Amongthose800humor turns, excluding those90humor turns at the beginning of theconversation,779humor turns are taken by insertion, accounting for97.38%.Interruption and overlap strategy are seldom used, only accounting for1.00and1.63percent respectively.(4) Strategies in relinquishing turns consist of nomination, self-selection andcomplete self-selection. The number of humor turns caused by nomination is the largest,accounting for67.17﹪of792humor turns excluding those90humor turns at thebeginning of the conversation and8humor turns taken by interruption. Humor turnscaused by complete self-selection and self-selection account for26.39﹪and6.44﹪separately.On the whole, this paper regards the turns as the basic unit to find out features ofhumor turn-takting in The Big Bang Theory, and uses the Relevance Theory to explainhow humorous effects are produced in the progress of turn-taking, which enriches theresearch method on humor and guides the second foreign language learners tounderstand humor in the American situation comedy well. |
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