Analysis Of Humor In Sitcom Mahua Funage Theatre From The Perspective Of Intertextualtiy

Humor, as a pervasive phenomenon in human society and an interdisciplinary research subject, has attracted many scholars'attention in many fields. Since sitcoms contain large quantities of humor, they arouse many scholars'great interest in recent years. So far, there have been numerous studies on humor from different perspectives, such as semantics, pragmatics, etc. but little research has been done from the perspective of intertextuality. Intertextualtiy at the same time brings at least two contexts of each text, which will further conduce to humor research. This thesis aims to explore the mechanisms of generation and appreciation of humor through intertextualtiy with the help of context theory and try to answer the following questions:1. What specific features of intertextuality can be found in the humor of the sitcom? And what kind of intertextual resources are commonly used in achieving humorous effect?2. What types of generic intertextuality are found in the humor of the sitcom?3. How do specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality respectively help generate humor in the sitcom with the help of context theory?In order to answer the questions above, the author takes the sitcom, Mahua FunAge Theatre as an example and collects humorous utterances in all its three seasons and transcribes them. Then based on Xinbin's classification of intertextuality combined with Fairclough's theory, humor as reflected in the sitcom is analyzed. Qualitative method is adopted in illustrating how humorous effect can be achieved.Major findings of this thesis will verify that intertextuality with the help of context theory possesses an effective interpretative power in analyzing humor. It is sincerely hoped that the research in this thesis will be helpful in providing a new perspective for humor research.