Research On The Verbal Humor In The Big Bang Theory From The Perspective Of Frame-shifting Theory

As an inseparable and special art of language in human's daily life,humor not only reduces people's psychological pressure and anxiety to achieve a psychological balance but also helps people alleviate embarrassment and improve social relationships.Meanwhile,humor is also a complicated linguistic phenomenon.To appreciate and make use of humor requires the comprehension of the unconventional use of language.As a result,humor attracts extensive attention from different research fields at home and abroad.Many psychologists,sociologist and linguists have devoted themselves to exploring the operational mechanism of humor from various perspectives.By reviewing the related linguistic studies on verbal humor,the author finds that numerous scholars interested in humor analyze humor by applying traditional linguistic theories,such as semantic theories and pragmatic theories.Although these researches contribute a lot to humor comprehension in a better way,their analyses do not fully reveal the psychological mechanism of humor production process.Therefore,it is necessary to apply cognitive linguistic theory to explain humor.With the development of cognitive linguistics in recent years,more and more scholars explain humor by using cognitive linguistic approaches,such as metaphor,metonymy,script,schema theory and Conceptual Blending Theory.Coulson(1997)believes that frame shifting out of expectations often cause humor.Frame-Shifting Theory can interpret the semantic leaps in humor comprehension and cognition.As a result,Frame-Shifting Theory emphasizes the dynamic mechanism of humor interpretation.The Big Bang Theory is a popular American scientific situation comedy.The wealth of amusing dialogues in this sitcom attract many researchers to the study it from various perspectives.This thesis chooses humorous utterances in The Big Bang Theory as the research object to probe into the frame-shifting involved in the process of comprehending verbal humor in the sitcom.Thus the effectiveness of Frame-Shifting Theory to interpret humor can be further tested.The thesis selects humorous utterances in The Big Bang Theory from Season One to Season Nine as the research data,and the humor effect is judged by background audience's laughter.Twenty-two dialogues are selected and then analyzed respectively from five perspectives(i.e.typical situation,default values,reinterpretation,goal presupposition and nonconventional meaning)of Frame-Shifting Theory.The humor production process and mechanism is researched from the five different perspectives.Through a deep study of humorous utterances in The Big Bang Theory from the perspective of frame-shifting,the current research concludes that frame-shifting has a powerful explanatory force in representing the meaning construction process of humor,and that applying different perspectives of Frame-Shifting Theory can better understand the appreciate humor and test its effectiveness in explaining the humor production mechanism,which is beneficial to the further development and application of the theory.Practically,it will also deepen one's comprehension and appreciation of humor in real life and help humor creators to create more works on humor.