摘要
   
    美剧老友记中的言语幽默，在某种程度上，阻碍了语言学习者有效地去欣赏这部情景喜剧。这篇论文，从合作原则还有会话理论，分析了言语幽默是怎样去轻视这些原则的。同时，本文也从细节上分析了言语幽默的效果。通过本文的学习，一定会帮助英语学习者欣赏这部情景喜剧并且替身他们理解美式幽默的能力。

关键词：老友记   语言幽默  合作原则  会话原则

Abstract

 The verbal humor in the famous American TV show Friends, to a certan degree, prevents some of the English learners from appreciating the TV show very well. This paper, based on Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature theory, explains how verbal humor flouts each of the four maxims in Cooperative Principal and how to understand the implied meaning behind the humorous conversations. Meanwhile, the effects of verbal humor are illustrated in details. This is sure to help English learners to appreciate the TV show and improve their ability in understanding the American style humor.

Keywords : verbal humor  Friends  Cooperative Principle  Conversational Implicature

1. Introduction
In Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary, the explanation of HUMOR is the quality in something that makes it funny or amusing; or the ability to laugh at things that are amusing. It is a fact that TV shows catch high attention of audience worldwide. In American, people devote amount of their free time to the TV shows mostly due to their entertainment effects. Particularly, verbal humor plays a irreplaceable and important role in entertaining people in TV shows so that it is one of the most commonly accepted language features in TV shows. The popularity of TV shows indicates that the advantages of humor include conveying additional pleasure, relieving the monotony of everyday life and easing interpersonal conflict,etc.
The American TV show Friends is one of the most famous and welcome TV shows in America and in the world for its unique conversational humor. The verbal humor in Friends is the typical humor with American characteristics, which sometimes is hard for non-native English speakers to understand. Hence, detailed pragmatic analysis of the verbal humor in Friends is helpful to improve English learners' understanding and appreciation of the nature of American humor. At the same time, it is illuminating to apply humor skills to mediate interpersonal relationships.