A Contrastive Study On Humor Language In Chinese And Foreign Sitcoms From The Perspective Of Intertextuality

Humor language has been being the study focus of many fields due to its ubiquity,but it didn't become the research target of linguistics until 1980 s.Meanwhile,Sitcom,as a data reservoir of humor language,has entered into the linguists' vision.However,most of them simply fixed their view on its language features,let alone any contrastive research made upon humor language between Chinese and foreign sitcoms from the perspective of intertextuality.Therefore,this dissertation will fill the gap to contrast the humor language between The Big Bang Theory and Ipartment(Season One)from the perspective of intertextuality,so as to explore the generating mechanism of humor language from a new point of view.In this thesis,each case has been firstly chosen based on the theories of intertexuality,then analyzed and defined according to the correspondent intertextual device,which result in frequency tables.Secondly,brief contrastive analysis has been made on the different features of the scripts by means of intertextual devices between the two sitcoms.Thirdly,this thesis has also elucidated the advantages of intertextual devices in humor creation compared with other narrative techniques.Fourthly,we have also explored the forming mechanisms of humor by the contrastive study,which has been carried out according to Xin Bin's classification of intertextuality,——including specific intertextual devices like reference,cliche,allusion,quotation,proverb;and generic intertextual devices like mixture of genres,mixture of discourses as well as mixture of styles.There are some findings of the thesis.Firstly,specific intertextuality and generic intertextuality have been widely applied in both sitcoms for humor creation.Intertextuality appears more advantageous in humor creation over other common narrative techniques due to its broad knowledge connection and multimodality in content display.Secondly,the different proportions of intertextual devices applied in both sitcoms and their different humor forming mechanisms have been determined by their own themes and role settings.The intertextual cases in The Big Bang Theory contain more scientific elements which appear far from our daily life,while the onesin Ipartment contain more popular and fashion elements which go closer with daily life.This thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter one makes a brief introduction about the research background,aim,significance,methodology,data collection and structure of the thesis.Chapter two makes a literature review about the definition of intertextuality,its development,classification and the previous researches on humor from The Big Bang Theory and Ipartment.Chapter three introduces Xin Bin's classification of intertextuality and studies the feasibility of studying humor in sitcoms from the perspective of intertextuality,Chapter four conducts the contrastive study on the humor in the selected cases from the perspective of intertextuality,and the contrastive analysis has also been conducted on the humor forming mechanisms of The Big Bang Theory and Ipartment.Chapter five is the conclusion of the whole thesis,introducing the major findings,implications and limitations of this research.The significance of this research is to expand the application of intertextuality into humor language research in sitcoms,verifying the advantages of intertextuality for humor creation compared with other common narrative techniques.People and scriptwriters can use more intertextual devices in their daily life or works for better humor creation.