A Study On The Effects Of The Verbal Humor In Two Broke Girls From The Perspective Of The Appraisal Theory

The study of humor can be traced back to the age of Plato.With the rise of linguistics,many linguists have studied verbal humor from the aspects of pragmatics,semantics,syntax,intercultural communication and cognitive linguistics.All aspects of research have achieved remarkable results.This thesis will take the Appraisal Theory which belongs to Systemic Functional Linguistics as the theoretical framework and the author selected the American sitcom Two Broke Girls as the basic data aiming at exploring:(1)What frequencies are used in subsystems of the Appraisal Theory to produce the verbal humor?(2)What the verbal humor effects can be achieved from the perspective of the Appraisal Theory in the data Two Broke Girls?The Appraisal Theory is the new development of the Systematic Functional Linguistics and it is also a supplement to the interpersonal meaning of the Systemic Functional Linguistics.It is a textual analytic system based on lexical analysis.The Appraisal Theory mainly discusses all kinds of attitudes that the text and the speaker want to express,intensity of emotion that they expect to achieve,ways of expressions that adopted to indicate value.The aim is to show people how to evaluate,build textual character and adjust the interpersonal relationship by using language.The Appraisal Theory divides the evaluative resources into three modules according to semantic meaning: attitude,engagement and graduation.Verbal humor is the common linguistic phenomenon in verbal communication.It is also a kind of method and effective pragmatic strategy in interpersonal communication.By applying the linguistic knowledge to study the verbal humor can help people communicate smoothly in a relaxing atmosphere.Meanwhile,studying verbal humor by applying the linguistic knowledge can not only make the readers have a better understanding of the knowledge of linguistics,but also let the readers have a deeper comprehension to the verbal humor.Sitcom is a kind of comedy performance forms which appeared earliest in the golden age of American Broadcasting Company and now it is taken to the video screen.Sitcom is very short and each episode is 30 minutes long in general.It is very popular among the young and the old due to its humorous utterances and it is one of the most popular television programs.Studying sitcom can help people know the American culture and American people's thinking patterns,meanwhile,it is also a good corpus material for the second language learners.The data are excerpted from the famous American sitcom Two Broke Girls and this sitcom also won the “American People's Choice Award” and the highest award “Emmy Award” in the United States television.Therefore,it is valuable and representative to choose this sitcom as the data.This thesis mainly adopts the quantitative and the qualitative research method to study verbal humor effects with the sitcom Two Broke Girls as the basic data.On the basis of deep understanding of the subsystems of Appraisal Theory and analysis of the basic data,the author uses the quantitative research method to calculated the quantity and the percentage of each system of the three subsystems in Appraisal Theory from the selected data.The author mainly collects the most representative data according to the contents of the subsystem of Appraisal Theory and uses qualitative research method to explain how the verbal humor effects are achieved by all subsystems of the Appraisal Theory.This thesis aims at letting readers have a clear understanding of the production of verbal humor and Appraisal Theory through this way.After a large number of data collection and analysis,this thesis gives the following summaries: the Appraisal Theory includes three subsystems: attitude,engagement and graduation.According to the selected data,the thesis found that the Attitude System accounted for 234 times of the total ratio of 48.55% of the overall appraisal system,which occupies the highest percent,followed by the Engagement System that accounted for 150 times of the total ratio of 31.12% and the Graduation System in the overall appraisal system accounted for the least proportion,98 times of the total ratio of 20.33%.In the Attitude System,implicit attitude is the common way to express verbal humor.In the course of interpersonal communication,people tend to use this kind of indirect and implicit expressions to save face and make the topic in a relaxing way.The Engagement System consists of dialogic contraction and dialogic expansion.Dialogic contraction limits the existence of other voices and ideas to lower the dialogicality of conversation.It has certain subjectivity.Dialogic expansion expands the space of conversation and takes in many different voices and ideas,which reflects the dialogicality and objectivity of conversation.Dialogic expansion is more often used to produce the verbal humor because it provides more space for the listener to imagine and choose.People can analyze more conversational meanings through this kind of way.The Graduation System includes force and focus.Force system can strengthen or weaken intensity of meaning.In force system,repetition is often used to express verbal humor,thus it can reinforce the mood and the intensity of the contents that the speaker wants to express.Focus tells the difference of the prototype that describes the phenomenon by sharpening or softening attitude resources.In the focus system,people tend to use the softening focus to produce verbal humor because this kind of way is easier to accept by the people who are evaluated and saves the face of them.After analyzing,the thesis draws the conclusion that the sentence patterns which occur frequently,such as adverbial clause of condition,rhetorical question and polysemy play a crucial role in verbal humor.In addition,polysemy will give the hearer more space for imagination in specific context and background.