The Interpretation Of Verbal Humor In The Sitcom The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Adaptation-Relevance Model

Humor is a widespread phenomenon which plays a very important role in every part of our daily life, especially, verbal humor which is mainly carried by language use in a certain context to achieve a humorous effect. It can not only make people’s interpersonal relationship better but also can ease embarrassment and transform conflict to harmony. Since400, B.C., many scholars have been working on humor from various subjects. In recent decades researchers and scholars at home and abroad have begun to study humor from linguistic angles and they have made great achievements in the linguistic interpretation of verbal humor which promote further development of humor research.As a special carrier of humor, sitcom, which is a type of comedy performance, has attracted millions of audiences with humorous utterances all over the world. The American sitcom The Big Bang Theory has been one of the most popular American sitcoms in China within these years which largely rely on verbal humor to create humorous effect in the play. And its original material and large number of humorous and interesting dialogues make it an ideal source of data of the humor research in this thesis.Based on the achievements made by previous researchers, the present study explores the verbal humor in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory in the light of a new model—Adaptation-Relevance Model and adopts the qualitative and descriptive research methods to analyze the randomly selected examples of humorous conversations by using the data in that sitcom so as to reveal its interpretive power of humor and its feasibility in analyzing verbal humor in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Obviously, Adaptation Theory and Relevance Theory both have their own advantages, while each one has its demerits in the process of interpreting verbal humor. Therefore, the present study integrates these two influential pragmatic theories together as the theoretical framework so that this new model can make good use of each theory to interpret verbal humor better. The new model emphasizes that contextual adaptation-relevance plays an essential part in the process of humorous communication, which includes both the production and interpretation processes. The Adaptation-Relevance Model is used as the theoretical framework based on the following four claims:firstly, communication is relevance-oriented in Adaptation-Relevance Model; secondly, the speaker’s presumption of relevance determines his choice making in language use; thirdly, the process of adaptation-relevance is a dynamic inter-adaptation between linguistic choices and contextual correlates; fourthly, the process of adaptation-relevance in language use is also a process of choosing strategies.Through the research it is easy to get a conclusion that this Adaptation-Relevance Model which is an integration of two powerful pragmatic theories:Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory holds the interpretive power for verbal humor and has feasibility in analyzing verbal humor. Also the research further investigates Adaptation-Relevance Model and extends the application scope and interpretive power of this model. And at the same time English learners can have a better understanding of American culture and American humor in the process of analyzing dialogues in the sitcom which might offer some help to English learners in their English education.