An Analysis Of Humor Embodied In American Situation Comedy Friends:Relevance Theory Perspective

As humor is a long-standing topic,many theories have made an investigation into humor such as the Superiority Theory,the Relief Theory and the Incongruity Theory(Attardo,1994,pp.47).Although they have,to a degree,given an explanation to how humor has been produced,most of them are related to psychology with few focusing on the language in use.This thesis makes an attempt to figure out the generation mechanism of humor based on the random samples of scripts(downloaded from http://www.docin.com)picked out from the 10-season sitcom Friends,the popular American situation comedy,and makes a qualitative analysis of the verbal utterances in Friends with the application of key concepts in the Relevance Theory(abbreviated as RT)such as dynamic context and ostensive-inferential communication model,etc.The findings boil down to the fact that humorous effects stem from the contrast between the Maximal Relevance and the Optimal Relevance.According to the cognitive principle “Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance.”(Sperber & Wilson,2001,pp.260)and the communicative principle “Every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance”(Sperber & Wilson,1986,pp.158),the generation mechanism of verbal humor will go through the following phases: firstly,since the human cognition strives to achieve the maximization of relevance,the audience will attempts to pay the least processing efforts to get the most contextual effects,which is the Maximal Relevance;then,when some new information presents itself,the audience realizes that the previous verbal interpretation is in conflict with the new information and will pay extra processing efforts to get enough contextual effects,which is the Optimal Relevance.It is the contrast between the interpretations of utterances,or rather,the contrast between the Maximal Relevance and the Optimal Relevance,that results in verbal humor.