A Study Of Verbal Humor In Two Broke Girls From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Humor has been studied and explained in many fields, particularly, the study in psychology, aesthetics, philosophy and sociology fields. Until the late 1970 s, the linguistic researchers began to study verbal humor from the angle of semantics,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. In the study of humor, Speech Act Theory,Semantic Script theory of humor, the general theory of verbal humor and so on have provided theoretical framework for the generation and interpretation of verbal humor.With the completion of cognitive linguistics, more and more researchers attempt to study verbal humor by applying the cognitive linguistics theories.This thesis applies Conceptual Integration Theory as the theoretical framework.Conceptual Integration Theory is put forward by American linguist Fauconnier, which has a great impact on the research of verbal humor. The conceptual integration networks are very essential in Conceptual Integration Theory, which refer to mental space networks. The mental space networks are structured by the framework which is constructed by the speaker’s background information. Fauconnier & Turner argued Conceptual Integration Network includes four mental spaces, namely input space I,input space II, a generic space and a blending space. Conceptual Integration Networks can also be categorized into four sub-networks, namely simplex network, mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network. The dynamic cognitive process of verbal humor can be explained and analyzed with the four sub-networks.Situation comedy is originated from America, which is one of the most popular TV shows. It has attracted more and more Chinese audiences, and many students attempt to improve their listening and speaking ability through watching and imitating American sitcoms. This thesis chooses the American popular sitcom Two Broke Girls as the corpus. The Conceptual Integration Theory is applied as the theoretical framework to explain and analyze the generation and interpretation of verbal humor.This study attempts to explore the following two questions:(1) How are the four types of verbal humor distributed in American sitcom TwoBroke Girls?(2) By using Conceptual Integration Theory, how is the dynamic integration process of verbal humor realized in American sitcom Two Broke Girls ?The scripts of this thesis are selected from 25 episodes in the second and the third season of the American sitcom Two Broke Girls randomly. In total, 77 scripts are selected as the corpus. These 77 scripts can be categorized into four types: the personification humor, the displacement humor, the analogy humor and the self-deprecating humor. In the thesis, both quantitative approach and qualitative approach are applied to analyze the scripts. The quantitative approach is applied to show the distribution proportion of the four types of verbal humor. And the qualitative approach is adopted to explain the dynamic cognitive process of verbal humor.Through the study of verbal humor in sitcom Two Broke Girls, we conclude that personification humor can be explained by the simplex network, and it is the simplest and the easiest one in the four networks. Therefore, the personification humor is used for the most times. The self-deprecating humor can be analyzed by the double-scope network, and it is the most complicated one and very complex to understand.Therefore, the self-deprecating humor is used for the least times.