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
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
This thesis discusses some humorous conversations in the American TV show Friends based on the philosopher Henry Paul Grice's Cooperative Principle (abbreviated as CP) and his conversational implicature theory, and finds out the relationship between humor and the CP. In detail, when the participants make a humorous conversation, they may flout the maxim of Quality, of Quantity, of Relevance or of Manner. Humorous conversation is sometimes in this case delivering a conversational implicature. Thus, this paper, furthermore, is likely to explore the implied or deeper meaning hiding in humor. To some extents. This paper assists English learners to better understand the ways in which humor occurs and the meaning conveyed by humor, in particular, to improve their ability of understanding and using American verbal humor because the humor in Friends is humor of unique American style.
However, the studies in this field have not reached the stage of maturity , which are rather insufficient or lack of authority both in China and abroad. People in non-English speaking countries can not completely understand humor in English sometimes due to the differences between different cultures. However, this paper has not mentioned the cultural differences when analyzing humorous dialogues.Friends is a classical and typical American TV show with strong element of American culture. Studying and discussing American culture is of great help for English learners to understand American humor. Therefore, a further research on humor in Friends can be possibly developed from the aspect of cross-cultural communication.
Besides, while explaining the humorous dialogues, this paper has not referred to figures's characters and traits, which may also have much effect on the style of humor. In Friends, six protagonists have respective personality and life experience, so the style of humor uttered by each of them is to a certain degree different. Understanding of the six figures' personality contributes to a further study on the humor in Friends.
