从合作原则角度分析《生活大爆炸》中的对话幽默英语论文
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论文（设计）题目： 从合作原则角度分析《生活大爆炸》中的对话幽默
学院： XXX学院 专业： 笔译 班级： 2XXXX级笔译X班
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1、论文（设计）研究目标及主要任务
本论文的研究目标是探讨合作原则在情景喜
剧《生活大爆炸》中的应用及产生的
幽默效果。其主要任务是通过分析合作原则的应用提高我们沟通、交
流能力 。
2、论文（设计）的主要内容
本论文分为四章，第一
章介绍合作原则、幽默的定义及其分类，第二章介绍中外
语言学家关于言语幽默的语言学研究成果，第三
章分析《生活大爆炸》中由于违背合
作原则而产生的众多幽默效果，第四章探讨研究合作原则的重要意义
。
3、论文（设计）的基础条件及研究路线
本论文的基础条件是不同的语言学家关于言语幽默的研究结果。
研究路线是对《生活大爆炸》中的幽默对话进行整理归类，并运用合作原则进
行分析阐述。
4、主要参考文献
Attardo, S. 1994. Linguistic
Theories of Humor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Grice, H.P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation”.
Syntax and Semantics: Speech Acts No. 3,
41-58.
Hu, Zhuanglin. 2006. Linguistics:
A Course Book. Beijing: Beijing UP.
Zhang,
Yan. 2002. “The Violation of the Cooperative
Principles in Catch-22.” Diss. Hebei
Normal
University.
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从合作原则角度分析《生活大爆炸》中的对话幽默
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课题论证：从违背格莱斯合作原则角度论证情景喜剧《生活大爆炸》中的幽默对话效果。
方案设计：第一章介绍合作原则、幽默的定义及其分类，
第二章介绍中外语言学家关于言语幽默的语言学研究成果，
第三章分析《生活大爆炸》中由于违背合作原则而产生的众多幽默效果，
第四章研究合作原则的重要意义。
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从合作原则角度分析《生活大爆炸》中的对话幽默
论
文
内
容
摘
要
本论文主要以情景喜剧《生活大爆炸》中的对话为例，分析由于违
背格赖斯的
合作原则而产生的众多幽默效果。第一章主要对合作原则及其会话含义，幽默的定
义
及其分类作简要概述。第二章主要讨论中外语言学家关于言语幽默的语言学研究
成果。 第三章从四个角
度分析在《生活大爆炸》中通过违反合作原则所产生的幽默
效果。第四章讲述研究合作原则的重要意义。
因为它不仅可以帮助我们更好的欣赏
电视节目，还可以提高我们理解他人，与他人交流的能力，从而使我
们更好的享受
生活。
指
导
教
师
评
语
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职称
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XXXX大学本科生毕业论文（设计）文献综述
Literature Review
stic Approaches on
Verbal Humor Study Abroad
Humor research has a
long and glorious history. However, linguistics
held an
assured position in the late 1970s
among the central player of humor research, which
was traditionally psychology, sociology, and
philosophy (Attardo, 1997: 395).
Linguistic
study on humor is concerning with linguistic
devices such as exaggeration,
ambiguity, pun
etc is very common. Pepicello in his work The
Language of Riddles
(1984) pointed out that
humor had a close relationship with ambiguity ,
and humor
depended on the indecipherable
ambiguity until the punch line resolved it in an
unexpected way.
Raskin’s the Semantic
Script Theory of Humor (SSTH for short) (1985) is
the
semantic theory on verbal humor from the
point of cognitive linguistics. The aim of
the
SSHT is, “ideally, a linguistic theory of humor
should determine and formulate the
necessary
and sufficient linguistic conditions for the text
to be funny”( Raskin,
1985:47). A text can be
characterized as a single-joke-carrying text if
both of the
conditions are satisfied:”the text
is compatible, fully or in part, with two
different
scripts and, the two scripts with
which the text is compatible are opposite”
(Raskin,
1985:81). Here the script refers to a
large chunk of semantic information surrounding
the word or evoked by it. Therefore the
“script” here contains more meanings than the
lexical meanings offered by the dictionary.
The opposition of the script is the most
important element to influence a joke. Attardo
and Raskin cooperate with each other
and set
up a new theory named the “General Theory of
Verbal Humor” (GTVH for
short), which is a
revision of Raskin’s SSHT. As Attardo puts
forward:” whereas the
SSHT was a semantic
theory of humor, the GTVH is a linguistic theory
for it includes
other areas of linguistics as
well, including , most notably, textual
linguistics, the
theory of narrativity, and
pragmatics”(Attardo, 1994:222). Comparatively
speaking,
the GTVH contains more linguistics
knowledge than the SSHT. Raskin’s Semantic
Script Theory of Humor and its further
developed version General Theory of Verbal
humor are the two most influential
theories on humor study from the perspective of
linguistics.
Coulson is the initiator who
employs conceptual blending theory to study humor.
In his paper” what’s so funny? Conceptual
integration in humorous examples” (2002),
he
paid much attention to the humorous examples from
political cartoons, and aimed
to explore the
role of Conceptual integration in these examples.
He focused on the
cultural concepts involved
in these examples, and examined how conceptual
blending
works. There is a special topic on
humor study from the cognitive linguistic way on
the eighth International Cognitive Linguistics
Association conference in 2003. G.
Rithchie’s
the Linguistic Analysis of Joke (2004) and Alan
Partington’s the Linguistic
of Laughter (2006)
are the masterpieces of humor study in this field.
G. Rithchie takes
one subclass of joke-pun- as
example, aims to discover the inner generation
mechanism of jokes. Partington’s work examines
the phenomenon of “laughter-talk”
with the
assistance of language corpora. The author tries
to investigate “what speakers
try to achieve
by engaging in laughter-talk and what both
speakers and hearers mat be
signaling when
then produce laughter” ( Partington, 2006:1)
stic Approaches on Verbal Humor Study at Home
It was Lin Yutang, a great writer, who
introduced the word “humor” for its
current
meaning in 1923. So humor study at home is
relatively new, and scholars
began to study
language humor from linguistic aspects in 1980s.
From that time on,
theories on humor take on a
new look, and the studies on humors go further.
Around the 1990s, humor studies
concentrated on rhetoric. Hu’s Linguistics
of
Humor (1987) and Tan’s Humor and Language Humor
(1997) are the
representatives; both of the
works are analyzing humor from the viewpoint of
rhetoric. They take humor as a kind of
rhetoric, and pay a lot attention to the
rhetorical structures and techniques of humor;
however, they overlook the internal
mechanism,
causation and process of humor.
Many
scholars pay attention to how the humor comes into
being. Yuan (2002)
studies how the humor
efforts are produced from the perspective of
language
deviation. Her paper, the
humorous effect of language deviation, shows the
efforts are
produced from the perspective of
language deviation. Her paper, the Humorous Effect
of Language Deviation, shows the formation of
language deviation and its humorous
effect by
taking different deviations and the humorous
effect as examples, such
vocabulary deviation
and humorous effect, grammar deviation and
humorous effect,
semantic deviation and
humorous effect, etc. Zhang (1993) and Cai (2001)
do that
research on humor from the ambiguity
and misunderstanding respectively.
Study on
humor from pragmatics is popular recently. Duan
(2002) applies
conversational maxims,
Politeness principle, Deixis, and Pragmatic
Vagueness to
study the humor in Chinese. Wu
(2005) wrote a paper named The Cooperative
Principle and Humor in Sit-coms. She used
Cooperative Principle to show that how
the
humorous effect was achieved due to the violation
of a certain maxim of the
Cooperative
Principle.
Compared with humor study
abroad, the humor study at home is not
sufficient enough whether in scope or in
depth. Not so much interest is invested in this
field; articles on humor published on the
journals and works on humor study are rare,
so
more emphasis should be put on humor research.
题目：
本科生毕业论文设计
从合作原则角度分析《生活大爆炸》中的对话幽默
作者姓名：
XXX
指导教师： XXXX
所在学院： XXX学院
专业（系）： XX系XX专业
班级（届）： XXX届
完成日期 XXX
年 5 月 4 日
On Verbal Humor in
the Big Bang Theory
From the Perspective of
Cooperative Principle
BY
XXX
Fu XXX, Tutor
A
Thesis Submitted to Department of English
Language and Literature in Partial
Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the
Degree of B.A. in English
At XXXXUniversity
May 4
th
,XXXX
Abstract
This thesis mainly
aims to explore the numerous humorous effects
brought about by
violating Grice’s Cooperative
Principle (CP) with examples from the dialogues of
the sitcom the
Big Bang Theory. The first
chapter gives a brief introduction about the CP,
its implicatures, and
humor. The second
chapter presents the previous researches on humor,
done from foreign
theories to domestic
theories. The third chapter investigates the humor
brought about by
violating the CP from four
aspects. The last chapter summarizes the
significance of conducting
research about CP
since it could not only help us appreciate some TV
programs better, but also
improve our ability
to understand and communicate with others, and
make us enjoy the life
better.
Key words: cooperative principle
implicature humor
xi
摘要
本论文主要以情景喜剧《生活大爆炸》中的对话为
例，分析由于违背格赖斯的合作
原则而产生的众多幽默效果。第一章主要对合作原则及其会话含义，幽默
的定义及其分类
作简要概述。第二章主要讨论中外语言学家关于言语幽默的语言学研究成果。 第三章从
四个角度分析在《生活大爆炸》中通过违反合作原则所产生的幽默效果。第四章讲述研究
合作原
则的重要意义。因为它不仅可以帮助我们更好的欣赏电视节目，还可以提高我们理
解他人，与他人交流的
能力，从而使我们更好的享受生活。
。
关键词
：
合作原则 会话含义 幽默
xii
Table of Contents
Chapter1 Introduction…........................
..................................................
...............................1
1.1Cooperative
principle…………………………………………………………..1
1.2 Humor
Introduction………………………………………………………….2
1.2.1
Definition of
Humor…………………………………….....................2
1.2.2 Classifications of
Humors…………………………………………….4
1.3 Significance
of Present Research………………………………………………4
Chapter2 Literature Review………………………………………………….
.........................6
2.1
Linguistic Approaches on Verbal Humor Study
Abroad………………………6
2.2 Linguistic
Approaches on Verbal Humor Study at
Home……………………...7
Chapter3 Violation of CP on
Humor in the Big Bang Theory......................
.............................9
3.1
Humor created by violating the maxim of
Quantity…….……………………..9
3.1.1 Use of
repetition…………………………………………........................
.9
3.1.2 Use of
ellipsis…………………………………………………………….10
3.1.3 Use of roundabout
sentences…………………………….........................11
3.2 Humor created by violating the
maxim of Quality……………........................12
3.2.1 Use of irony………………………........
..................................................
13
3.2.2 Use of
metaphor…….…….……………………………………………..14
3.2.3 Use of rhetorical question….................
..................................................
..15
3.3 Humor crated by violating the
maxim of Relation……………........................15
3.3.1 Partial irrelevance….........
..................................................
.......................15
3.3.2
Complete irrelevance …………………………………………………...17
3.4 Humor created by violating the maxim of Manner
…..........................................18
3.4.1 Use of prolix
sentences………………………………………………….18
xiii
3.4.2 Use of hyperbole………………
………………......................................19
Chapter4.
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….21
Bibli
ography…………………………………………………………….…..................
........22
xiv
Chapter1.
Introduction
1.1 Cooperative Principle
Cooperative Principle (CP) was proposed by an
Oxford philosopher Herbert Paul Grice. It
first became known to the public in 1967
through the William James lectures Grice delivered
at
Harvard. Part of the theory was published
in his Logic and Conversation in 1975. “In a
conversation, a speaker and a hearer are
supposed to respond to each other in their turn
and
exchange with needed information that
benefits both of them” (Crowley and Mitchell,
1994:
140). Only through this can the
participants create a successful and smooth
conversation.
According to Grice (Grice,
1975), to achieve such effect, people are supposed
to follow a
certain set of principles, that
is, the Cooperative Principle.
These
principles are what participants should follow in
order to achieve a satisfactory and
efficient
conversation. However, Grice found that in many
cases, people fail to fulfill them in
various
ways though they still want to create a successful
communication. By violating them,
people can
express their deep meanings or use it as a
strategy to communicate. Grice used a
term
“implicature” to refer to such kind of deep
meaning. Generally speaking, if we study it
further, we can find out that a lot of
laughter and humor can be created and understood
through
understanding the implicature. The CP
is stated as follows:
“Make you conversational
contribution such as required at the stage at
which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged” (Grice,
1975:45).
To specify the
CP further, Grice introduced four categories of
maxims as follows:
Quality: Try to make your
contribution one that is true.
1. Do not say
what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say
what for which you lack adequate evidence.
Quantity:
1. Make your contribution as
informative as is required (for the current
purpose of
exchange).
2. Do not make your
contribution more informative than is required.
1
Relation: Be relevant.
Manner: Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity
of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be
brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4. Be
orderly (Grice 45-46).
People observe the
Cooperative Principle consciously or even
unconsciously when
communicating with others.
Hu Zhuanglin has pointed that the CP is meant to
describe what
actually happens in conversation
instead of telling the speakers how they ought to
behave,
though it is described in the
imperative (Hu, 2006:192). That is to say, people
usually disobey
these maxims here and there
due to various purposes and such condition is
called violation.
Through violation, some
unexpected and intentional purposes will appear.
Such deeper meaning
in the conversation is the
implication that the hearer has to think about,
“Grice coined the term
implicature” (Hu,
2006:191).
According to Grice’s theory, if
the speaker violates the CP, it doesn’t mean that
heshe
doesn’t want to cooperate with hisher
partner; instead, it indicates that heshe wants to
have a
better communication with the hearer.
Through implicature, the speaker may express
hisher
deep meaning better. That is to say,
implicature is very important in our communication
since it
can help us understand each other
better.
1.2 Humor Introduction
People
of all ages and cultures respond to humor. The
majority of people are able to
experience
humor, i.e., to be amused, to laugh or smile at
something funny, and thus they are
considered
to have a sense of humor. Humor is everywhere in
our daily life. As a language
phenomenon,
humor plays an important role in our society since
it can not only improve our
personal
relationship, but also display our wit and
glamour.
1.2.1 Definition of Humor
Although humor has been studied by different
scholars from different angles for thousands
of years, there are still quite a lot of
controversies about what humor is. Goldstein and
McGhee
2
do not even attempt
to define humor “for the simple reason that there
is no single definition task
it appears, a
feasible definition of the humor acceptable to all
investigation in the area” (Apte,
1985:13).
Though a tough task it appears, a feasible
definition of the key term” humor ’has to
be
presented since it is the very subject matter in
this thesis.
The term ”humor “originates from
the Latin word” liquid ”,”fluid”, or “ moisture”.
Ancient
physiologists tend to consider man’s
temperature as the balance of four kinds of humor,
namely
choler, melancholy, blood and phlegm.
In Plato and Aristotle’s views, laughter was
regarded as
the proper correction of the
excessive, the ridiculous and the ludicrous. Those
who possess the
excess of any humor are called
“humorists”, i.e. objects of laughter. Gradually,
the four kinds of
humors are respectively
related to personality of four kinds. And
therefore, humor comes to
mean character or
style, specifically, a fanciful state of mind. In
modern usage, humor means
the comic, the
laughable, or that which is funny, witty, or in
any way makes people laugh. In
this period,
the title of “humorist” comes to signify those who
are amusing and skilled in the
literary or
artistic expression of humor.
According to
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11
th
Edition), part of the definition of
humor is
as follows:
(a) That quality which appeals to
a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous.
(b) The mental faculty of discovering,
expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or
absurdly incongruous.
(c) Something that
is or is designed to be comical amusing.
Taking a closer look at the above three
definitions, it can be obviously found that they
emphasize something different: (a) defines
humor as something that is someone’s attribute;
(b)
equates humor as a human cognitive faculty
which functions in the perception of humor; (c)
refers to the thing, idea or event that is of
humor.
Similarly, many other scholars tend to
emphasize different aspects of humor depending
on their different research purposes and
orientations. Among the many definitions, the very
two
ones in a general sense by two famous
humor scholars are worth to be quoted here.
One scholar is Attardo(1994), who defines
humor as a technical term, covering anything
that is ( or maybe) perceived as funny
,amusing, or laughable. Another one is
Raskin(1985),
who, in the least restricted
sense, proposes to consider” humor “as an
interchangeable word
3
with
“funny”. As far as this thesis is concerned, it
suffices to adopt a general definition of humor,
taking it as all-inclusive term. Or put it in
another way, humor in this thesis covers the types
of
stimulation which are perceived as funny
and which can elicit laughter, or which at least
intends
to do so.
1.2.2
Classifications of Humors
Involving
classification of humor, scholars have tried to
find a uniform method of
classification; the
criteria for the classification are varied in
accordance with different criteria.
For
example, humor can be divided into verbal humor
and non-verbal humor according to the
relationship to language; humor can be grouped
into intentional humor and unintentional humor
according to speaker’s intention; humor falls
into active humor and passive humor according to
the receiver’s expected mental state. On the
basis of semantic content, humor can be
categorized into political joke, sex,
religious joke, Jewish joke, etc. American
scholars who join
rhetoric and functions of
humor together divide the humor into joke, satire,
wit, irony, comedy,
wise-crack, farce, pun,
etc.
Situation comedy is famous for its
humors which exist in diversified forms, and the
two
main types of humor are verbal humor and
non-verbal humor. This paper only focuses on the
verbal humor in that most or the humors in
situation comedy exist in the form of verbal
humor.
Verbal humor is also known as language
humor, which the humor effect is produced through
the
medium of human language, including humor
expressed in language and humor created by
using human language, that is to say the
humorous effect comes into being with the help of
word play making hearers laugh. From the name
of non-verbal humor, it can be easily seen that
such humorous effect is not generated through
human language, so non-verbal humor is also
named situational humor. The amusement of non-
verbal humor depends on a certain situation or
context and the understanding of the humorous
meaning must depend on the context to a certain
degree.
1.3 Significance of Present
Research
This study is of particular
significance from both theoretical and practical
angles.
4
Theoretically, this
study of humor functions as a specific application
of pragmatics. Pragmatics,
a rather new field
in linguistics, studies how human interpret
language and use it in real
communication. It
is mainly concerned with such topics as deixis,
conversational implicature,
presupposition,
speech acts and relevance theory, etc. Through
analysis, a better understanding
of how the
humorous effects are realized will be attained. As
such, a comprehensive knowledge
as to how to
create humor and how to appreciate humor is
crated.
Practically, the exploration of
English humor and its implication can help Chinese
viewers
better understand foreign situational
comedies. Nowadays in china, a lot of college
students
begin to get interested in hot
foreign TV programs. Knowing the techniques of
making
humorous effect will help to grasp the
essence of dialogues in the situational comedy.
In a word, no matter whether it is seen from
the theoretical angel or the practical one, it can
be seen that the study on humor from the
pragmatic perspective is quite important and
necessary.
5
Chapter2 Literature
Review
2.1 Linguistic Approaches on
Verbal Humor Study Abroad
Humor research has a
long and glorious history. However, linguistics
held an assured
position in the late 1970s
among the central player of humor research, which
was traditionally
psychology, sociology, and
philosophy (Attardo, 1997: 395). Linguistic study
on humor is
concerning with linguistic devices
such as exaggeration, ambiguity, pun etc is very
common.
Pepicello in his work The Language of
Riddles (1984) pointed out that humor had a close
relationship with ambiguity, and humor
depended on the indecipherable ambiguity until the
punch line resolved it in an unexpected way.
Raskin’s the Semantic Script Theory of Humor
(SSTH for short) (1985) is the semantic
theory
on verbal humor from the point of cognitive
linguistics. The aim of the SSHT is, “ideally,
a linguistic theory of humor should determine
and formulate the necessary and sufficient
linguistic conditions for the text to be
funny” (Raskin, 1985:47). A text can be
characterized as a
single-joke-carrying text
if both of the condition are satisfied:”the text
is compatible, fully or in
part, with two
different scripts and, the two scripts with which
the text is compatible are
opposite”(Raskin,
1985:81) . Here the script refers to a large chunk
of semantic information
surrounding the word
or evoked by it. Therefore the “script” here
contains more meanings than
the lexical
meanings offered by the dictionary. The opposition
of the script is the most important
element to
influence a joke. Attardo and Raskin cooperate
with each other and set up a new
theory named
the “General Theory of Verbal Humor” (GTVH for
short), which is a revision of
Raskin’s SSHT.
As Attardo puts forward:” whereas the SSHT was a
semantic theory of humor,
the GTVH is a
linguistic theory for it includes other areas of
linguistics as well, including , most
notably,
textual linguistics, the theory of narrativity,
and pragmatics”(Attardo, 1994:222).
Comparatively speaking, the GTVH contains more
linguistics knowledge than the SSHT.
Raskin’s
Semantic Script Theory of Humor and its further
developed version General Theory of
Verbal
humor are the two most influential theories on
humor study from the perspective of
linguistics.
Coulson is the initiator who
employs conceptual blending theory to study humor.
In his
paper” what’s so funny? Conceptual
integration in humorous examples” (2002), he paid
much
6
attention to the
humorous examples from political cartoons, and
aimed to explore the role of
Conceptual
integration in these examples. He focused on the
cultural concepts involved in these
examples,
and examined how conceptual blending works. There
is a special topic on humor
study from the
cognitive linguistic way on the eighth
International Cognitive Linguistics
Association conference in 2003. G. Rithchie’s
the Linguistic Analysis of Joke(2004) and Alan
Partington’s the Linguistic of Laughter(2006)
are the masterpieces of humor study in this field.
G. Rithchie takes one subclass of joke-pun- as
example, aims to discover the inner generation
mechanism of jokes. Partington’s work examines
the phenomenon of “ laughter-talk” with the
assistance of language corpora. The author
tries to investigate “what speakers try to achieve
by
engaging in laughter-talk and what both
speakers and hearers mat be signaling when then
produce laughter” (Partington, 2006:1)
2.2 Linguistic Approaches on Verbal Humor
Study at Home
It was Lin Yutang, a great
writer, who introduced the word “humor” for its
current meaning
in 1923. So humor study at
home is relatively new, and scholars began to
study language humor
from linguistic aspects
in 1980s. From that time on, theories on humor
take on a new look, and
the studies on humors
go further.
Around the 1990s, humor studies
concentrated on rhetoric. Hu’s Linguistics of
Humor(1987)
and Tan’s Humor and Language
Humor(1997) are the representatives; both of the
works are
analyzing humor from the viewpoint
of rhetoric. They take humor as a kind of
rhetoric, and pay
a lot attention to the
rhetorical structures and techniques of humor;
however, they overlook the
internal mechanism,
causation and process of humor.
Many
scholars pay attention to how the humor comes into
being. Yuan(2002) studies how the
humor
efforts are produced from the perspective of
language deviation. Her paper, the
humorous
effect of language deviation, shows the efforts
are produced from the perspective of
language
deviation. Her paper, the Humorous Effect of
Language Deviation, shows the
formation of
language deviation and its humorous effect by
taking different deviations and the
humorous
effect as examples, such vocabulary deviation and
humorous effect, grammar
deviation and
humorous effect, semantic deviation and humorous
effect, etc. Zhang(1993) and
7
Cai(2001) do that research on humor
from the ambiguity and misunderstanding
respectively.
Study on humor from pragmatics
is popular recently. Duan (2002) applies
conversational
maxims, Politeness principle,
Deixis, and Pragmatic Vagueness to study the humor
in Chinese.
Wu(2005) wrote a paper named The
Cooperative Principle and Humor in Sit-coms. She
used
Cooperative Principle to show that how
the humorous effect was achieved due to the
violation
of a certain maxim of the
Cooperative Principle.
Compared with
humor study abroad, the humor study at home is not
sufficient enough
whether in scope or in
depth. Not so much interest is invested in this
field; articles on humor
published on the
journals and works on humor study are rare, so
more emphasis should be put
on humor research.
8
chapter3. Violation of CP on
Humor in the Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang
Theory is very popular in the USA. It tells about
eight young people, with
different
backgrounds, living together and creating many
humorous stories in their daily life.
This
paper will focus on its dialogues as material to
analyze the humor that is created by
violating
the CP.
Grice further distinguished literal
meaning from speaker’s intention. Hearing the
utterance,
the hearer first works out its
literal meaning and then assumes that the speaker
is observing the
CP. But sometimes, the
utterance doesn’t fit the context. That is to say,
the hearer must try to
work out the possible
implicatures corresponding to the speaker’s
intention. “The clash between
the initial
literary interpretation and the implicature serves
to generate humor. Therefore, the
humor
production is characterized as an intentional and
regular violation of Grice’s maxims,
especially the maxim of quality and
relevance”. (Attardo, 1985: 541).
Next, we
will use the dialogues in the Big Bang Theory as
examples to illustrate the
humorous effect
created by violating the CP.
3.1 Humor
created by violating the maxim of Quantity
An
efficient speaker should know when and where to
stop talking and not to overdo it.
More
information will enhance comprehension, but too
much will lead to just the opposite. The
result will be also unacceptable if people do
not give enough information. The guidelines to
distinguish whether this maxim is violated
include:“if the speaker does circumlocution or not
to
the point; if the speaker is uninformative;
if the speaker talks too short; if the speaker
talks too
much; if the speaker repeats certain
words” (Grice, 1975:47). However, if the speaker
violates
this maxim deliberately, heshe
generates some humorous effect. Then we will
analyze it mainly
by means of some rhetorical
devices such as repetition and ellipsis.
3.1.1 Use of repetition
“Repetition is a
powerful rhetorical device which creates good
rhythm and parallelism to
make the language
musical, emphatic, attractive and memorable”
(Zhang, 2005:116). As to the
sitcom, the
characters usually repeat some words or sentences
apparently many times. Heshe
9
violates the maxim of Quantity for
heshe gives more information than what is needed.
However, by doing so, it can create humorous
effect. The following are some examples:
1.
SHELDON: New neighbor?
LEONARD: Evidently
SHELDON: Significant improvement over the old
neighbor.
LEONARD: 200-pound transvestite with
a skin condition? Yes, she is.
PENNY: Oh, hi!
LEONARD: hi!
SHELDON: hi!
LEONARD:
hi!
SHELDON: hi!
Here, this is the first
time Sheldon and Leonard meet Penny. As we all
know, Penny is a
very nice girl who is always
on sexy dress. However, Sheldon and Leonard are
young scientists
whose topics are always
concentrated on scientific studies and appear to
be a little dumb. When
they meet this
attractive girl and know she is going to be their
neighbor, they become nervous,
embarrassed and
excited. So they repeat the word “hi” many times
just to delay the time and try
to figure out
what to say. Anyway, as in normal conversation, we
don’t need others to say the
same thing more
than one time. Apparently, here Sheldon and
Leonard violate the maxim of
Quantity. But
such sentences make the two guys lovelier and such
stammer makes the audiences
burst into
laughing.
2. SHELDON: There is something I
need to tell you.
LEONARD: OK
SHELDON: I
can’t tell you.
LEONARD: Why
SHELDON: I
can’t tell you why I can’t tell you. So I guess
there are two things I can’t
tell you.
Here Sheldon wants to tell Leonard the secret
that Leonard’s girlfriend wants to break up
with him but Sheldon has promised to his own
girlfriend to keep the secret. One side is his
girlfriend, the other side is his best friend,
so he repeats the sentence” I can’t tell you” to
think
whether he should tell Sheldon the
truth. If the audiences realize that Leonard’s
girlfriend don’t
10
want to
break up with him and Sheldon makes too much fuss,
heshe will understand the
emotion in the
utterance and smile for the poor guy’s behavior.
As a result, a kind of humor
arises here.
3.1.2 Use of ellipsis
Ellipsis means the
act of “leaving out a word or words from a
sentence deliberately, when
the meaning can be
understood without them” (“Ellipsis”). Through
this, people can realize the
implied meaning
and can get more information though it
deliberately violates the maxim of
Quantity
for it lacks the needed information. The following
are some examples:
1. SHELDON: You, really?
You can assess the quality of my work? OK, um,
here.
PENNY: “A proof that algebraic topology
can never have a non-self contradictory set of
aphelion groups “. I am just a blonde monkey
to you, aren’t I?
Here, apparently, Sheldon
wants someone with a rudimentary understanding of
science to
help him comb through his notes.
Penny is interested in these notes and volunteers
to help
Sheldon. However, Penny is just a
waitress and Sheldon don’t believe she has got the
ability to
sort out these notes. He rejects
Penny indirectly by make her read an article.
After reading some
lines, Penny finds that she
cannot understand these terms. Sheldon is staring
at her with a
strange expression and omitting
the information like” look, you are not
competent”. She stops
utterance and knows how
they look at her. So the humorous effect is
generated by violating the
maxim of Quantity.
What’s more, after laughing, we may realize that
there will appear a new
role in the sitcom to
be Sheldon’s assistant, which arises our
curiosity.
2. LEONARD: She seems nice.
RAJ: Hey, you’ve already got a girlfriend. I
call dibs.
LEONARD: All I said was” She seems
nice.”
RAJ: Yeah, well. I love her.
In
this scene, Leonard and Raj meet Sheldon’s new
assistant Alex. They are shocked by the
beauty
of Alex. When Alex leaves, Leonard says to Sheldon
that his new assistant is a nice girl.
Raj,
originally from New Delhi, India, is very shy
around women and is physically unable to
talk
to them. Hearing Leonard’s words, Raj thinks
Leonard will pursue Alex by interpretating
his
utterance as” she is nice, and I want her to be my
girlfriend”. So he warns Sheldon that do
11
not try to chase Alex and pretends
to be more interested in this girl than Leonard.
Actually,
Leonard feels good about Alex
although he explains to Raj. The later story
proves that there is a
vague relationship
between Leonard and Alex. After drawing the
inference, the humorous effect
is generated by
violating ellipsis.
3.1.3 Use of
roundabout sentences
Roundabout sentences
refer to the utterances that are not done or said
using the shortest,
simplest, or most direct
way possible. Zhang Yan has pointed that in such
cases, speakers
deliberately avoid the theme
of the topic and choose to say something in a
roundabout way so as
to convey something
implied or to express something indirectly, which
can create a ridiculous
and humorous effect
(Zhang, 2002:18). In such kind of conversation,
the speaker tends to
supply inadequate
information at the very beginning, so it is a
violation of the maxim of
Quantity. Consider
the following dialogue:
Bernadette: What about
you, Penny?
Penny: what about me what?
Bernadette: Do you think you and Leonard might
ever get married？
Penny: oh, well, he is
sweetie.
Amy: You are not answering the
question. Do you love him?
Penny: Yeah, sure,
of course, I love him.
Bernadette: It doesn’t
sound like that.
Penny: well, I do.
Bernadette: Do you tell him that?
Penny:
He’d just take it the wrong way.
Bernadette:
What does that mean?
Penny: I mean he is
special and smart and nice.
The background is
the three girls are talking about their boyfriends
and their future
marriage. Although Penny
loves his boyfriend Leonard, but she never think
to marry him. The
other two girls feel
unbelievable of Penny’s reflection and keep asking
her true feeling. Penny
avoids answering it
directly but chooses her own topic and delays to
give the required
information. So she risks
violating the maxim of Quantity just to bury her
real thinking.
12
Definitely,
her tactful and innocent roundabout way makes the
audience laugh immediately.
3.2 Humor
created by violating the maxim of Quality
In
our daily conversation, speakers observe this
maxim for a successful communication.
“In the
formal circumstances, if we violate this maxim, we
will lose some credibility. However,
under
some less serious circumstances, violating such
maxim may lead to amusement and
humor. The
criteria of such violation are: “if the speaker
lies or says something that is believed
to be
false; if the speaker does irony or makes ironic
and sarcastic statement; if the speaker
denies
something; if the speaker distorts information”
(Grice, 1975: 47). Such violation makes
the
audience laugh and leads them to infer the
conversational implicature in the deep level.
3.2.1 Use of irony
This rhetorical
device is the uppermost figure of speech applied
in the Big Bang Theory.
Irony is “a figure of
speech in which the intended meaning of the words
used is directly
opposite to their usual
sense” (Zhang, 2005:216). So in an irony, the
relationship between the
explicit utterances
and the intentional meanings is opposite. Thus,
the speaker violates the
maxim of Quality—Do
not say what you believe to be false. In the
following, we will discuss
some interesting
examples.
1. PENNY: Oh, guys. So how was
paintball? Did you have fun?
SHELDON: Sure,
if you consider being fragged by your own troops
fun.
In this scene, the four guys lose a
paintball game. They feel depressed and shameful.
Sheldon said the main reason why they fail the
game is that some people in their group do not
follow the chain of command and Wolowits shoot
him in the back during the game. When they
meet Penny, Sheldon expresses a kind of
sadness with the opposite words. Apparently,
Sheldon’s utterance is an irony and is
absolutely opposite to the reality which is a
violation of
the maxim of Quality. From this,
the audience can really feel the four guys’
sadness and will
burst into laugh for his
humorous utterance which is really beyond
expectation.
2. PENNY: hi, guys. I need some
guinea pigs.
SHELDON: Ok, there is a lab
animal supply company in Reseda you could try. But
if
your research is going to have human
applications, may I just suggest white mice
instead? Their
13
brain
chemistry is far closer to ours.
PENNY: I
swear to god, Sheldon, one day, I’m going to get
the hang of talking to you.
Actually, Sheldon
uses too much technical terms while talking that
others can not follow
his speed and understand
him. Penny do not really means that she will try
her best to understand
Sheldon, but to say
that Sheldon speaks too fast and he must correct
his utterance style in order
to let people
easily get his meaning. In fact, Penny swears to
god that one day she will make
Sheldon adapt
to her, not let herself get used to Sheldon. So
apparently, this is an irony. Penny
sacrifices
the maxim of Quality to convey his criticism and
complaint. As audience, we will
definitely
laugh for the black humor created by the lovely
girl.
3. PENNY: So, you and Leonard?
SHELDON: Oh, dear, god!
PENYY: A little
misunderstanding? Huh?
SHELDON: a little
misunderstanding? Galileo and the pope had a
little misunderstand-
ing.
Sheldon and
Leonard received a letter from the institute for
experimental physics who
wants them to deliver
a speech about their research fruits. Sheldon
refuses this invitation
because he has no
interest in standing in the rose room in front of
a group of judgmental
strangers who he thinks
would not recognize true genius. While Leonard
values this honor and
strongly wish to attend
it and has a quarrel with Sheldon. Penny wants to
persuade the two guys
to compromise, while
Sheldon raises the example of Galileo and the pope
to prove that they
have totally different
values and they have not just a little
misunderstanding. Here in this scene,
by means
of irony, on the surface, Sheldon seems to agree
that there is a little misunderstanding
between he and Leonard, but on the deep level,
he expresses his dissatisfaction and anger. By
violating the maxim of Quality, Sheldon makes
the audience laugh and feel special black
humor.
3.2.2 Use of metaphor
“A
metaphor uses words to introduce something
different from their literal meaning—one
thing
is described in terms of another so as to suggest
a likeness or analogy between them”
(Zhang,
2002:161). Like irony, it also violates the maxim
of Quality and causes conversational
14
implicature. The use of metaphor is
likely to produce humor and delight atmosphere.
Now, let
us take a look at the example below:
WOLOWITZ: See a penny, pick her up, and all
day you’ll have good luck!
PENNY: No, you
won’t.
Here in this dialogue, Wolowitz sing a
song about penny. As we all know, Wolowitz
wants Penny to be his girlfriend at the
beginning, and he tries to make Penny happy. In
his song
the word” penny”refers to a coin as
well as the girl Penny, and the real meaning of
the sentence
is that if you see Penny, you
will have a good luck all day.. However, penny’s
answer is a direct
rejection to Wolowitz’s
love expression. Certainly, Wolowitz’s sentence is
a metaphor and is
definitely not true because
having good luck has no relation with meeting
Penny. Wolowitz says
something false and thus
violates the maxim of Quality. If the audience can
sense his meaning
and the background, they
will definitely be amused by Wolowitz’s style of
humor.
3.2.3 Use of rhetorical questions
“A rhetorical question is one that does not
need an answer, for the answer is suggested by
the speaker, or presumed by the speaker to be
fairly obvious or probably known to the
audience” (Zhang, 2002:152-153). By asking
rhetorical questions, the speaker doesn’t need any
answer in fact and usually invites
implicatures to express hisher anger, criticism,
surprise, and
irony, etc. and thus violates
the maxim of Quality. Here is one example to
illustrate this strategy.
1. PENNY: Good
afternoon, gentlemen. And welcome to today’s
physics bowl practice
round. I’m Penny and
I’ll be your host. Because apparently I do not
have anything else to do in
the Saturday
afternoon. And isn’t that a just little sad? Ok,
gentlemen, are you ready?
The four guys will
attend a physics contest and they want Penny to
help them practice,
Penny is a girl who knows
little about scientific studies and has no
interest in this contest.
Therefore, being
host for the four guy’s practice is a boring job
for her. She uses a rhetorical
question “And
isn’t that a just little sad?” to express her
frustration. Certainly she knows the
answer
clearly but she still uses a question. However,
after violating the maxim of Quality,
Penny’s
rhetorical question leads the audience to burst
into laugh immediately.
3.3 Humor
created by violating the maxim of Relation
15
The maxim of Relation requires
that one’s contribution must be relevant. That is
to say,
relevance refers to an utterance that
is relevant to the topic of the conversation or
communication. However, it is this maxim that
is violated most frequently in order to generate
conversational implicature. As to this thesis,
the violation of this maxim in the big bang theory
falls into two kinds: partial irrelevance and
complete irrelevance.
3.3.1 Partial
irrelevance
Sometimes the information in the
big bang theory is not completely related to the
contemporary character or episode. Part of the
utterance relates well with the dialogue or
situation, while the rest is irrelevant to
that. Such kind of switch is usually opposite to
the
audience’s consciousness. Therefore, such
way of violation of the maxim of Relation can
achieve various kinds of unexpected effects,
including humor. This will be further illustrated
by
the following examples.
1. SHELDON:
Penny, Penny, Penny! Good morning！
PENNY: Do
you have any idea what time it is?
SHELDON:
Of course I do. My watch is linked to the atomic
clock in boulder,
Colorado. It is accurate to
one-tenth of a second. But as I am saying this, it
occurs to me that,
once again, your question
have been rhetorical.
The dialogue happens
when Sheldon knocks the door of Penny’s room in
the very early
morning while Penny is still
sleeping. As in normal situation, when Penny asks
Sheldon
question like do you have any idea
what time it is, the usual response of the
listener is to realize
that heshe has annoyed
others and immediately make apologize for
disturbing others at
inappropriate time.
However, out of our expectation, Sheldon directly
answer the question of
Penny, explain how
accurate his watch is and do not feel sorry for
disturbing her. With little
doubt, Sheldon
violates the maxim of Relation for his utterance
is partially irrelevant to the
current
situation. What’s more, in this sitcom, we may
realize that Sheldon usually fails to grasp
the important point of the current topic and
pays attention to something else because of his
over
complicated-mindedness. However, it is
his special response and performance that amuses
the
audience a lot and increases the humorous
effect of the sitcom.
2. LEONARD: what are
you talking about?
16
SHELDON:
Einstein.
LEONARD: yeah, I’m going to need a
little more.
SHELDON: Albert Einstein.
Here, the background is Sheldon is trying to
solve a very difficult scientific problem which
all other scientists have thought impossible
to deal with. Every small step forward Sheldon
makes, he would tell his best friend Leonard
while Leonard feels so boring to hear it because
Sheldon talks about his study without choosing
appropriate time and place. This scene is
Leonard is sleeping with his girlfriend.
Sheldon suddenly breaks in and says his new
findings,
which makes Leonard angry. However,
Leonard tries to listen to his new findings and
hope to
end this as soon as possible.
Actually, Leonard says”I’ m going to need a little
more” means that
please be quick and I’m
sleepy. Out of our expectation, Sheldon says
something that has
nothing to do with his new
findings but to waste time by add the last name of
Einstein. Till now,
the two characters’
utterances are not related to each other. What
Sheldon says actually has
nothing to do with
their current topic and is an obvious violation of
the maxim of Relation.
Hearing his words, the
audience would definitely burst into laugh for the
lovely guy. Therefore,
the humorous effect is
created here by such violation.
3.3.2
Complete irrelevance
Sometimes, the speaker
violates the maxim of Relation so greatly that
hisher utterance is
completely irrelevant with
the hearer or the topic. By such kind of behavior,
the speaker may try
to convey some deep
meanings and create various conversational
implicatures instead of
showing that heshe
doesn’t care of the current topic. The humor
created by complete
irrelevance is shown
everywhere in the big bang theory and here are
some examples.
1. RAJ: You won’t believe it.
Somebody got the whole thing on a cell phone. And
put it on
the YouTube.
LEONARD: What?
Now who would do that?
RAJ: Hey, check it out.
It’s a featured video.
LEONARD: Oh, geez, does
this suit look that bad?
SHELDON: Forget your
suit. Look at my arms waving; I’m like a flamingo
on Ritalin.
In this scene, Sheldon and
Leonard fight each other in front of a lot of
scientists at a very
17
important conference because Sheldon
challenges Leonard’s speech at the end of the
meeting,
which makes their relationship get
worse and worse. Their friend Wolowitz gets the
whole
fighting process on a cell phone and put
it on the YouTube. While they are watching this
video,
we may think another fighting will
break out. But then, out of everyone’s
expectation, they do
not blame Wolowitz for
putting their fighting scene onto the website or
quarrel with each other
again. Instead,
Leonard pretends to forger the unhappiness between
he and Sheldon and talk
about his suits. And
Sheldon plays a joke on his fighting style without
mention their
misunderstandings. Therefore, it
is a completely violation of the maxim of
Relation. But if we
think about it twice, we
can figure out that Leonard and Sheldon are true
friends. Both of them
want to make up their
relationship but they do not know where to start.
Therefore, they change
another topic to play
joke on themselves as a kind of apologize. If we
think about this, we may
admire the art of
speech and laugh at the two guy’s humor.
2.
LEONARD: Do we really have to wear this camouflage
crap to play paintball?
SHELDON: Who said
that? Leonard, I can hear your voice. But I can’t
see you.
The background is Leonard decides
to break up with his girlfriend and he is in bad
mood.
His best friend Sheldon wants to comfort
him by making him laugh with strange utterance.
Therefore, when Leonard asks a question,
Sheldon pretends not seeing him but actually
Leonard
is standing right in front of him.
Here, Sheldon’s sentence has no relation with
Leonard’s
question, which means he violates
the maxim of relation. On the other hand, it also
reflects
Sheldon’s character: valuing
friendship. So, by the violation of the maxim of
Relation, Sheldon
creates her particular kind
of humor for the audience.
3.4
Humor created by violating the maxim of Manner
Zhang Yan says that if we say that the maxims
of Quality, Quantity and Relation are about
“what to say”, then the maxim of Manner is
about “how to say” (Zhang, 2002:36). The standard
of the violation of this maxim include: “if
the speaker uses ambiguous language; if the
speaker
exaggerates something; if the speaker
uses slang in front of people who do not
understand it; if
the speaker’s voice is not
loud enough” (Grice, 1975:47). However, it is a
very interesting
phenomenon that the speaker
sometimes goes out of the way to flout this maxim
to avoid
embarrassment, unpleasantness,
offence, taboo and so on. Such violation may lead
to
18
misunderstanding or
humorous conversational implicature. When it comes
to this violation, the
following devices are
usually be used.
3.4.1 Use of prolix
sentences
Prolix sentences refer to the
utterances that “so long as to be boring; verbose”
(“prolix”).
The prolix utterance is more
difficult to understand than the directly made
utterance, so the
speaker has to take more
effort to infer the implied meanings. But it can
cause humorous
conversational implicature. The
following examples belong to this type.
1. SHELDON: no, the word is “Polish”. See,
look, Polish sausage. And the-the model of
the
solar system developed by Nicolaus Copernicus, a
Polish astronomer. And then, finally, if
that
wasn’t enough-which it should‘ve been-that is
Madame Curie killing herself by discovering
Radium, who, although she was a naturalized
French citizen, was Polish by birth.
PENNY:
Excuse me, the word is” polish”, see? Small “p”.
Here, the background is four guys are playing
Pictionary. In this round, the word is
“polish”. Sheldon draws many things that
related to the word “Polish” on the board, but
Leonard still cannot guess out what the word
is. Therefore, Sheldon explains to Leonard but
actually the word is the verb “polish” not the
adjective “Polish” .So we understand the humor in
Sheldon’s utterance if we realize that he
violates the maxim of Manner deliberately in order
to
show how smart he is.
2. SHELDON: Don’t
you need money? This is money I’m not using.
PENNY: But what if you need it?
SHELDON:
My expense account for 16.9% of my after-tax
income. The rest is divided
up between a small
savings account, this deceptive container of
peanut brittle and the
hollowed-out buttocks
of a superhero action figure who shall remain
nameless for his own
protection. Or her own
protection. Take some.
In this scene, Penny
hasn’t paid the rent and runs to Sheldon’s room to
escape the house
manager. After Sheldon hears
it, he wants to lend some money to Penny. However,
penny do not
want Sheldon‘s money because she
can imagine how boring Sheldon would be if she
borrows
money from him. Sheldon explains his
daily expense in such a detailed way that Penny
knows
she would begin to listen to his chatter
without stop. So Sheldon here expresses his idea
in a
19
prolix way which
violates the maxim of Manner. Thinking about this,
we cannot help but
laughing for the emotional
and lovely boy.
3.4.2 Use of hyperbole
“This is a popular figure of speech known as
exaggeration or over-statement. It refers to a
case where the speaker’s description is
stronger than is warranted by the state of affairs
described” (Zhang, 2002:210). However, in the
speaker’s mind, he is truly describing hisher
intense feeling at the time. By using such
device, the speaker can create some special kind
of
humorous effect. Now let’s look at some
examples below.
1. SHELDON: I’m sorry; I
don’t understand which social situation this is.
Could you
give me some guidance as to how to
proceed?
PENNY: The building manager is
showing on apartment downstairs, and I haven’t
paid my rent.
SHELDON: Oh, I see. Penny.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable harboring a fugitive
from
the 2311 North Los Robles Corporation.
In this scene, Penny does not pay rent and
hide in Sheldon’s apartment. Sheldon does not
know what happens. After he realizes the
truth, he says he is harboring a fugitive, which
means
Penny commits crime and escapes.
Apparently, it’s hyperbole because owing the rent
is such a
small affair. So Sheldon violates
the maxim of Manner by exaggerating that Penny is
a fugitive.
However, through her utterance, we
may feel the humor created by the interesting guy.
After knowing the background, the humorous
effect is generated simultaneously.
2. PENNY:
Things are looking good.
LRONARD: So, are we
still taking things slow? Because a gunshot wound
today and
last week I slammed my thumb in the
kitchen drawer. We don’t know how much time I
have.
Here, Penny and Leonard are dating.
Leonard hopes to develop fast with Penny but Penny
want to take things slowly in order to make
sure they have a solid foundation of love. Penny
thinks that everything is going smooth but
Leonard says if they do not move forward he would
die because he has got hurt twice. Obviously
he is exaggerating. The exaggeration by Leonard
to the Penny expresses the boy’s great
aspiration for improving their relationship. And
therefore,
it is a violation of the maxim of
Manner. And thus the humorous effect is generated.
20
chapter4. Conclusion
The paper conducts the study on verbal
humor created by violating the Cooperative
Principle, an important theory of Pragmatics.
All the examples used in this paper entirely stem
from the popular American sitcom the big bang
theory. As we all know, humor can create
light-hearted and happy time for us in this
busy world, make us feel easy about our life, and
help us to concentrate on our work with a
better mood and higher efficiency. That is to say,
if
we can learn to appreciate the humor
created in the world better, we can enjoy our life
better. By
doing so, we can also improve our
ability to communicate with others, because
through this, we
know how to say appropriate
words to make the atmosphere easy. To achieve this
goal, it is
necessary for everyone to learn
something about CP.
However, this theory has
its own limitations. There is some inconsistency
and redundancy
among the CP and its maxims
that need to be boiled down to a set of principles
that are truly
indispensable and do not
overlap at the same time. Despite such shortages,
the CP and its
implicatures have supplied a
new way of understanding the verbal humor.
All in all, learning CP and its relevant
knowledge can not only help us find more laughter
in our life, but also help us enjoy a better
personal relationship and adopt to the society
better.
21
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