A Study Of Verbal Humor In Sitcom Two Broke Girls From The Perspective Of Memetics

As a special language phenomenon,the humorous language is widespread in our daily life.Because of the huge life pressure,the modern people use humor to relax themselves.As an important form of our daily communication,it is vivid and easy to understand.So the humorous language is very popular with people.It can activate atmosphere,improve interpersonal relationship,defend oneself and eliminate embarrassment,have a special effect in the human language communication.Therefore,more and more scholars are committed themselves to the study of humor.With the development of linguistic studies,linguists are increasingly concerned with this particular linguistic phenomenon.As a new theory,memetic theory is based on Darwin’s evolution theory,it is used to explain the rule of cultural evolution.Moreover,the theory of memetics can clarify the characteristics of language communication and explain the laws of language circulation.From the perspective of memetics theory,the language meme explained the laws of transmitting,is the unit of cultural transmission,it also reveals the rule of word spread and language communication.In fact,the spread of verbal humor is a form of memetics,so it is closely related to verbal humor.Sitcom is one of the main forms of art to transmit humor.The features of it is concise in language,humorous and rich in content,etc.So it is very popular in average people.The present thesis,studies on language verbal humor in sitcom from the perspective of memetics,gives an analysis of the language memes in the recently popular American sitcom Two Broke Girls.Through the analysis of the verbal humor in the sitcom Two Broke Girls from the perspective of memetics,this thesis intends to solve two problems.The first one: Which factors of memetics can produce verbal humor? The second one: What is the formative process of verbal humor under memetics? This allows us to understand the causes and processes of humorous producing,which will provide us with a new theoretical support to appreciate the verbal humor in sitcoms.