A Pragmatic Study On Verbal Humor In Ipartment

As a special kind of charming language phenomenon, humor has attracted attention of numerous scholars from various fields ranging from philosophy, anthropology, sociology to linguistics since ancient times. Sitcom, with its humor-oriented feature, also enjoys great popularity among scholars. In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have conducted pragmatic studies on humor in sitcoms, which mainly focus on American sitcoms. While the majority of the rare pragmatic studies on humor in C hinese sitcoms tend to employ Adaptation Theory as theoretical support, but seldom mention other pragmatic theories. Therefore, to enrich pragmatic studies on humor in C hinese sitcoms, it is es sential to involve more relevant theories.This thesis aims to carry out a pragmatic analysis on verbal humor in Ipartment, one of the most popular Chinese sitcoms, with CP(Cooperative Principle) and PP(Politeness Principle), another two influential pragmatic theories, so as to figure out the features of humorous utterances and help the audience to have a better understanding and appreciation of the humorous elements in this sitcom. The research methods and procedures are as follows: first of all, the related theoretical knowledge of CP and PP is introduced, providing theoretical foundation for the present study. Then, all the humor cases produced by employing CP and PP are selected with qualitative analysis. Altogether, 776 cases are collected. In additio n, the frequency distribution of the two theories and their maxims is explored with both quantitative and qualitative approaches. At last, some typical conversations are analyzed to show how CP and PP are adopted to produce humor and elicit laugh among audience.With the above analysis, the following findings can be concluded : 1) CP is more frequently utilized than PP in producing verbal humor in Ipartment. 2) The frequency of CP applied in this sitcom presents a gradual rising trend from the first to the fourth season while PP does the reverse. 3) The majority of the employment of CP in producing humor in this sitcom is realized by violating Quality Maxim and Quantity Maxim, and that of PP is realized by flouting Self-denigration and Other-elevation maxim. 4) The most outstanding language feature of Ipartment lies in its full use of rhetorical devices of hyperbole, metaphor, irony and pun.This thesis enriches pragmatic studies on C hinese sitcoms and broadens the research area of CP and PP to some extend. Besides, the exploration of the relations between pragmatic principles and humor serves as a theoretical reference for scriptwriters of Chinese sitcoms in their future creation; the revealed features of humorous utterances enlighten people to grasp more la nguage skills in daily interactions. In spite of the above implications, humor in C hinese sitcoms still deserves for more analysis in the future.