A Comparative Study Of American And British Humor Based On The Register Theory

Verbal humor is an ubiquitous language phenomenon,it is not only presented in daily communication,but also reflected in films and television programs or literary works.As one of the prevailing language art forms producing humor,sitcom is widely loved by ordinary people.Meanwhile,humor is an inter-disciplined concept,scholars from every field have shown keen interest in it and made researches about it.Not until 1970 s,humor has widely acquired attention by linguists,but most of linguistic studies on humor mainly from aspects of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics,there are few studies from aspect of functional linguistics,as well as comparative studies of humor in American and British sitcoms based on this perspective.Based on the research background of humor study,this thesis adopts register theory in functional linguistics as the theoretical framework,taking verbal humor in American and English sitcoms with similar topic as data,and selects four seasons in British sitcoms,28 episodes in all,two seasons in American seasons,24 episodes in all.The thesis firstly makes text transcription of humorous dialogue in two sitcoms,and analyzes it from three factors and corresponding sub-factors in register.Subsequently,the thesis collects humorous samples from two sitcoms,and compares differences of generation mechanism from aspects of topic and medium.Lastly,the thesis gives an explanation to the above humor differences from the perspective of cultural,historical and geographical factors.Through research analysis,we found that verbal humor in American and English sitcoms can be both achieved by three register factors and its sub-factors.Additionally,humor generation is mainly generated from field of discourse and mode and discourse,and humor examples caused by factor of mode in American sitcom are more than the British one,Englishmen seldom use mode of discourse to create humor.Furthermore,in topic aspect,American humor concerns about sex and relationship,while English humor prefers to make jokes on funeral;In the aspects of medium,American prefer to use exaggerate behaviors and expressions,they love to express directly,we can easily feel their crazy ideas and madness,while the British people are more introverted,they love to use satire and self-mockery to present humor.