摘要

20年前，一部名为《老友记》的美国情景喜剧以其独特的幽默风格风靡于全球各地，然而，由于中美的文化差异，使得大部分中国观众对其情节与语言的理解存在误区，从而无法真正地了解到该剧的英语幽默所在。因此，该剧也为国内的英语学习者们开启了一扇新的大门。本文主要以语用学的合作原则为切入点，通过分析《老友记》中的经典幽默台词，来帮助读者更好的理解和学习英语语言幽默以及西方文化。

关键词：幽默，合作原则，《老友记》

Abstract

In the past twenty years, Friends, an American sitcom, filled with unique humor, sweeps around the world. However, owing to cultural differences, most Chinese audiences have misunderstandings in the plots and languages. Therefore, they can’t truly understand its humor. However, this sitcom opens a new door for our English learners. This paper will focus on cooperative principle of conversation to analyze the classic humorous dialogues in Friends, so that it may help readers better understand English humor as well as western cultures.

Key words: humor, cooperative principle, Friends

1. Introduction
    Nash (1985:9) once stated: “Humor is a specifying characteristic of humanity.” It is a special language phenomenon that plays an essential role in people’s life, which is also necessary to our daily communication. Because of cultural differences, a large amount of English learners in China can’t understand or use verbal humor well. Therefore, breaking through this barrier will help us studying English better.
Humor was seldom investigated from the pragmatic point of view previously until Grice (1975) put forward cooperative principle (CP), an important part of pragmatics, in his book Logic and Conversation. Grice's CP and its four maxims can be applied to explain verbal humor. Analysis of humor examples in Friends using CP shows that humorous effect is achieved when speakers violate CP and its maxims intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore, this paper mainly aims to explain the causes of humor in Friends on the basis of CP. Specific samples are given to illustrate each cause, helping readers find a good way to better understand English humor connotations.