An Analysis of the Verbal Humor in Everybody Loves Raymond from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle_英语论文

摘要

言语幽默来自于能让听者发笑的有趣谈话，我们通常能在日常交谈中找到它。言语幽默主要着重于某段对话中的会话含义，而不是其字面意思。与此同时，会话含义的产生与格赖斯的合作原则有关。根据合作原则的理论框架，我们知道故意违反（公然藐视）这条原则的某些准则或次准则会带来会话含义，这是导致言语幽默产生的关键因素。基于格赖斯的合作原则，本论文分析情景喜剧《人人都爱雷蒙德》中违反合作原则的四条准则时的言语幽默，这四条准则是：量准则，质准则，关系准则，方式准则。通过此次分析，我们希望能更好地理解言语幽默产生的机制，以及言语幽默、会话含义和合作原则三者之间的关系。

关键词：言语幽默  会话含义  合作原则 

Abstract

Verbal humor comes from the funny talking which makes the hearer laugh, and we can commonly find it in our daily communication. Verbal humor mainly pays attention to conversational implicature instead of literal meaning in a dialogue. Meanwhile, the emergence of conversational implicature is related to Grice’s Cooperative Principle. According to the theoretical framework of Cooperative Principle, we know that deliberately violating (openly flouting) the maxims or subordinate maxims of this principle can bring about conversational implicature, which is an essential factor that leads to verbal humor. Based on Cooperative Principle from Grice, this paper particularly analyzes verbal humor in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond when its dialogues openly flout the four maxims: maxim of quantity, maxim of quality, maxim of relation and maxim of manner. We hope that we can make a better understanding of the mechanism of the emergence of verbal humor and the relationship among verbal humor, conversational implicature and Cooperative Principle.

Key words: verbal humor  conversational implicature  cooperative principle

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction1

1.1  Research Background1

1.2  Purpose and Significance2

1.3  Research Objective3

1.4  Research Methodology3

1.5  Thesis Structure.4

Chapter Two  Literature Review5

2.1  The Definitions of Verbal Humor5

2.2  Studies on Verbal Humor from the Perspective of Pragmatics.6

2.3  Studies on Verbal Humor from Analysis of Films and Television Programs6

2.4  Summary.7

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework9

3.1  Emergence and Development of Cooperative Principle.9

3.2  Conversational Implicature.10

Chapter Four  Analysis of Dialogues in Everybody Loves Raymond13

4.1  Analysis of Dialogues in Everybody Loves Raymond.13

4.1.1 Openly Flouting the Maxim of Quantity.13

4.1.2 Openly Flouting the Maxim of Quality.17

4.1.3 Openly Flouting the Maxim of Relation.20

4.1.4 Openly Flouting the Maxim of Manner22

4.2  Openly Flouting More Than One of the Maxims.26

4.3  Summary.29

Chapter Five  Conclusion30

5.1  The Findings.30

5.2  Limitations31

Bibliography

Acknowledgements