浅析美国情景喜剧的对话幽默——以《生活大爆炸》的对话为例

A Study of Humorous Dialogues in American Sitcoms—— A Case Study of 2 Broke Girls浅析美国情景喜剧的对话幽默——以《破产姐妹》的对话为例AbstractThe cooperative principle is first proposed by Grice and it is an important principle for the analysis of discourse in linguistics which includes four criteria - the maxim of Quality, the maxim of Quantity, the maxim of Relevance and the maxim of Manner. At present, many scholars have turned to study the humor effect in violation of the cooperation principle in the actual dialogues. 2 Broke Girls is a famous American sitcom and a wealth of humorous dialogues in the play are deeply loved by the audiences. The paper takes the classic dialogues in American sitcom 2 Broke Girls for example and the cooperation principle as the theoretical basis to explore the discourse humor of the play. Through this study, it is hoped that people could have a better appreciation and understanding of this melodrama.Keywords: humor; sitcom; conversation; Cooperative Principle摘要合作原则由Grice首次提出，它是语言学中用于分析话语的一项重要原则。

其中包括四大准则—数量准则，质量准则，关联准则，方式准则。

目前有许多学者转向研究实际对话中违反合作原则产生的幽默效果。

《破产姐妹》是美国著名情景喜剧，剧中丰富的幽默对白深受观众喜爱。

本文以美国情景喜剧《破产姐妹》中的经典对白为例，以合作原则为理论基础，探索剧中的话语幽默。

希望通过本文的研究，能使人们对这部情景剧有更好的欣赏和理解。

关键词：幽默；情景剧；对话；合作原则Contents1. Introduction2. An Overview of Verbal Humor and American Sitcom2.1 A Brief Introduction of Verbal Humor2.1.1 Definitions of Humor2.1.2 Classifications of Humor2.2 A Brief Introduction of American Sitcom3. Pragmatic Principles3.1 Cooperative Principle3.1.1 Cooperative Principle and Its Four Maxims3.1.2 Nonobservance of the Conversational Maxims3.2 Interpretation of Humor under the Cooperative Principle4. An Interpretation of the Humorous Dialogues in 2 Broke Girls from the Cooperative Principle4.1 Non-observation of the Maxim of Quantity4.1.1 Insufficient Information4.1.2 Excessive Information4.2 Non-observation of the Maxim of Quality4.2.1 Incorrect Information4.2.2 Proofless Information4.3 Non-observation of the Maxim of Relation4.4 Non-observation of the Maxim of Manner4.4.1 Vague Expression4.4.2 Lengthy Discourse5. ConclusionReferencesAcknowledgments1. IntroductionThe universality of humor allows human beings of any nation, any race, and any culture to share something common. But what’s noticeable is that at the same times, the same elements in the different cultural background, different living conditions, and different language systems could be the possibility of invisible barriers for the transmission of humor.(Hu, 1987: 21) All those factors mentioned and even more are inevitably involved into the production and inference of humor. So, humor could be a preferential subject for cross-cultural studies. It’s complicated but full of exciting challenges. It is commonly accepted that humor plays an important role in people’s daily communication. It helps to produce the harmonious atmosphere to reduce psychological tightness and release their negative emotions. In social intercourse, it is usually handled as a beneficial strategy to build a favorable figure, gaining the necessary support from others with the evidence that there is study showing that, in all of human qualities, the sense of humor takes a crucial proportion in getting a good impression. Moreover, humor makes its contribution to arousing confidence, courage and a healthy status. Therefore a study on humor gets its significance here.In recent years, the Cooperative Principle (short for CP) enjoys a more extensive, thorough and systematic development in Western countries. It has been applied to many areas in the studies abroad since the proposal of the CP by Grice in 1967, including the linguistic perspective. American jokes are humorous and open. They can set people laughing, and at the same time they can also set people thinking. However, people in non-English speaking countries sometimes cannot completely understand English humor because of the differences between different cultures. So some scholars start to interpret the humor from the view of CP.Sitcoms like Friends,the typical sources of corpus, are repeatedly used in similar studies; however, 2 Broke Girls is quite a brand new one. 2 Broke Girls is an American comedy TV series which is of familiarity and popularity among people for its combination of visual, verbal, physical and situational humor.2 Broke Girls is a sitcom that firstly premiered on CBS in the United States in September 19, 2011. The sitcom was set in a small low-end restaurant in Brooklyn, New York City, which told the story about two complete different girls of different identities and backgrounds. Max was born in a poor family, while Caroline was born in a rich family. The Caroline’s family fortunes declined, she had to go to work to earn money in the same restaurant that Max worked. Although two girls came from different background, they eventually became good friends because of common dreams, and they discussed to raise 250,000 dollars to explore a new career jointly. This play returned to the traditional comedy route and concerned the small potatoes’ ridiculous daily life. The reason of this play’s quick popularity was characters’witty and humorous dialogue. A lot of dialogues in this play conveyed vivid and rich implication through the violation of cooperative principle, which had produced humorous effect. In order to better understand and feel its comedic function, this article would make a corresponding analysis from the angle of cooperative principle in this sitcom.However, the analyses of this sitcom from the view of pragmatics are absent. On this basis, this thesis attempts to research on the verbal humor in this movie with the view of violation of the cooperative principle. On the basis of their researching outcomes, this paperattempts to decode the mechanisms of the generation and perception of humor by applying the famous theory of pragmatics, the CP. The corpus comes from one of the recently popular American situation comedies (sitcoms) 2 Broke Girls.2. An Overview of Verbal Humor and American SitcomThe humor was not attached enough important in the past. Most people think that humorous utterance is just common. Language is a game and in order to play it well, language users have to comply with the unified rule.2.1 A Brief Introduction of Verbal HumorThe study of the humorous phenomenon is involved with plenty of disciplines, such as psychology, sociology and linguistics. It is conceivable that humor is an entity concerning such a complicated and comprehensive relationship with human communication.2.1.1 Definitions of HumorHumor prevails in everyday life. It may turn up in every occasion with sweeping subjects. Usually, people assume humor as a witty quality in personality and a light-hearted attitude towards life. Thus defining its nature and locating its features require lots of efforts.According to McGhee Paul(2005: 32), the humor does not exist in the real world, but something emerging from our mind. He also pointed out that humor is not the feature of certain events, by which we may think of jokes, comedies and funny behaviors, nor the human mood, or behavior, like laughing and smiling. Therefore, the discourse of “humor” first referred to a quality that only belongs to human beings, and that is what we call a sense of humor.Another renowned definition has it that humor as the fundamental nature of an occurrence generates laughter. Just like Berger argues that humor is everything that is actually or potentially funny and humor is also the process by which this “funniness”occurs (Palmer, 2009: 3). This understanding refers humor to “funniness”, and considers humor as a tangible event.Likewise, the Booth-Butterfields (1991: 205) holds that the act of humor is “a ‘genus’ or derivation in culture, institutions, attitudes, beliefs, typical practices, characteristic artifacts, etc..” Thus humor in this case is regarded as an entity rather than a human quality.Humor has been defined as a quality in human personality, a characteristic of an event or occasion, a rhetoric device of expression and so on. Thus it is hardly possible to translate verbal humor under a translation consensus and there is no completed existing guideline for verbal humor translating practice.2.1.2 Classifications of HumorHumor is classified into two categories according to Koestler: verbal and situational humor (Koestler, 1993: 684). The situational humor occurs with other mediums except language, which is therefore untranslatable. While the verbal humor, enjoying its various vehicles whether rhetorically or by certain anecdotes. The humor that the author mainly concentrates on in this paper is the verbal humor, which includes both written and spokenverbal humor.As Attardo(1994: 56) concluded in his study,an analysis of the vast bibliography on humorology has led to the organization of verbal humor into three groups: universal or reality-based humor, culture-based humor, and linguistic or word-based humor. This grouping serves as a pedagogical framework for teaching humor in both language and translation classrooms. Therefore, it is more practical for humor translation and could offer the principal foundation when analyzing the humor cases. The analysis of the later chapters will apply this series of humor classification in the specific cases.As a summary, people from different nations, races and classes have different understandings towards humor. Humor is very common in life, but possesses deep cultural meaning. As an art, though humor is difficult to understand by people from another country, it should be enjoyed by all the people in world.2.2 A Brief Introduction of American SitcomSituation comedy (abbreviated as sitcom hereafter), especially American sitcom, is a successfully popular form of modern TV programs during these years and has spread all over the world. In the last two decades, people have witnessed that American sitcoms become quite popular among the world and amuse a lot of people from different cultural backgrounds. They play a significant role in transnationally cultural communication after movies and TV programs become a carrier of cultural factors and stir people’s desire to learn English.American sitcom especially attaches importance to the contents of a play and is famous for its originality, oddity and boldness of conception. American sitcom, with its dynamic American oral English, authentic American accent, vivid description of American common people’s customs and lifestyle, has not only aroused people’s viewing interests but also caught the attention of many language researchers to devote their time and energy into studying the unique charm of American sitcom from different perspectives. The present study aims to find out why American sitcoms have so much charm in the conversation between characters.In a word, the main purpose of situation comedy is to create happiness for audiences. It aims to pursue humor and entertain them, the most meaningful and valuable thing is to make audiences concerned about some problems existing in the society.(He, 2009: 17) In order to find the mechanism of the production of humor in modern American sitcoms, a currently favorable and successful sitcom 2 Broke Girls is selected to be the material to be analyzed.3. Pragmatic PrinciplesThe study of English humor should not be entirely empirical, but should be theoretically based. Cooperative principle and its maxims, proposed by Grice, can be used to analyze the formation of humor.3.1 Cooperative PrincipleThe Cooperative principle, which was first brought up by Grice in 1967, is widely appreciated for its significance in linguistic studies. The current research aims to study hownon-observation of Cooperative principle operates in dialogues and produces humorous effects.3.1.1 Cooperative Principle and Its Four MaximsThere is no any other famous philosopher can take place of H. P. Grice-- the American linguist, who puts forward the cooperative principle in the lecture named “Logic and Conversation” in Harvard University in 1967: “Make your contribution such as is 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: 12). Along with Speech Act Theory, Grice’s work on the CP initiate the current interest in pragmatics, and lead to its development as a separate discipline within linguistics, and as such it is discussed by most textbooks in the area, and often cited in academic papers within pragmatics and associated disciplines. In the view of Grice, usually, people abide by this principle, that’s to say, they will make the communication meet the needs based on the actual goals. Supporting the cooperative principle are the four maxims:To be more specific, this general principle consists of four maxims, they are as follows:The Maxim of QualityTry to make your contribution one that is true, i.e.(i) Do not say what you believe to be false;(ii) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.The Maxim of Quantity(i) Make your contribution as informative as is required. (for the current purpose of the exchange);(ii) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.The Maxim of RelationBe relevant.The Maxim of MannerBe perspicuous, i.e.(i) Avoid obscurity of expression;(ii) Avoid ambiguity;(iii) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity);(iv) Be orderly (Grice, 1975: 62-67)Actually, the Cooperative Principle has been widely used. The Cooperative Principle provides a foundation of pragmatic interpretation of humor, of which the flouting of Maxims plays a very important role. People should learn to appreciate humor from the view of the CP on the ground that people often violate the maxim of CP to achieve their purpose in conversation.3.1.2 Nonobservance of the Conversational MaximsAs it should be, if the cooperative principle is strictly used, it will be more convenient and efficient for communicators to obtain the speakers’intended meaning. In fact, while Grice offered CP as an approach to help analyze the conversational implicature, he didn’t mean to establish a standard for obeying, and that is, when people try to complete a smoothinformation exchange through a conversation, they would follow something like the CP in their mind to guide the development of the dialogue. They would like to be honest, helpful communicational partners. However, whether they are ready or not, the reality is that the CP is frequently violated, especially in humorous communication.Grice paid much attention to the conversational implicature generated by flouting the maxims. He thought that when speakers make a quite nonobservance of the maxims, the reason might be a deliberately misleading, a gentle refuse for an invitation of a public activity, or even an ill performance in linguistic knowledge. What is noticeable is the blatant flouting behavior. On this occasion, the hearer should reconsider the possibility that the speaker is using this kind of approach, seemingly failing to obey the CP to reinforce the communicative effect. Following the same pattern, humor is generated.3.2 Interpretation of Humor under the Cooperative PrincipleNon-observation of CP can lead to humorous effect, and people often employ rhetorical devices in creating humor like irony, metaphor, hyperbole, parody, punning. As part of deviation, these rhetorical devices demonstrate one important feature of humuor: being deviant.(Crawford, 2011: 74) According to this theory, the conversational participants normally communicate in a maximally efficient, rational and cooperative way. They should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, when providing sufficient information, thus creating four maxims of cooperative principles, i.e. the maxim of quality, the maxim of quantity, the maxim of relevance and the maxim of manner. But in daily communication, the participants often do not conform to cooperative principle and its maxims. They are not always observed in a talking exchange in order to achieve a cheerful atmosphere or to produce humorous effect; the actors or speakers always violate or flout the Cooperative Principle. In such cases, conversational implicature arises, making the formation of humor possible.4. An Interpretation of the Humorous Dialogues in 2 Broke Girls from the Cooperative PrincipleIn this chapter, an case analysis of the realization of humor on the sitcom 2 Broke Girls from the perspective of violat ing Grice’s Cooperative Principle will be analyzed, that is violating the maxim of quantity, violating the maxim of quality, violating the maxim of relevance, and violating the maxim of manner.4.1 Non-observation of the Maxim of QuantityWhen people communicate with others, they try their best to convey proper quantity of information to the addressee in order to express things clearly. Yet on occasion, in daily conversation or in the sitcom’s conversation, it is not very easy to do so. For some reason, the quantity of information may be given too little or too much. According to Grice’s elaboration, observing the maxim, one should ensure that “contribution should provide sufficient, but not too much information”. Both less and more information are provided,humorous effect can be generated. Thus non-observation of maxim of quantity can be divided into two categories: giving information less than required and giving more information than required.(Lin, 2004: 21) The following examples illustrate both cases.4.1.1 Insufficient InformationIn order to keep a conversation smooth, people should provide enough information that is needed. However, people often give less information. Providing insufficient information is another effective way of violating the maxim of quantity to make humorous effect, examples as follows:Caroline: Wait, why would anybody pay that woman so much? What is she saying she has on you?Martin: Well, she is claiming she was fired because she had insider information about the Ponzi scandal, and that we were sleeping together, which we weren’t.Caroline: Of course you weren’t. You would never sleep with someone who wore brown with black together.Max: Man, I haven’t seen this much hatred toward brown and black since the 50s.In this dialogue violates the maxim of quantity. According to the dialogue, the speaker offers insufficient information to express her purpose indirectly. In this case, the “brown and black” literately means “棕色和黑色”, but here, it has its historical background. Since the Bus Boycott in 1955, the black Americans have carried out a series of movements to gain their civil rights and to fight against the Racial Discrimination. So, here the “brown and black” doesn’t refer to someone who wears black and brown, it means the color of skin, so Max turns the topic from the woman who wore brown with black together to the Racial Discrimination, and gains the humorous effects. The audience can’t help laughing in this funny scene. There are too little primary information and too much secondary ones. The key is how to make your contribution appropriate. Compared with too much information, it is easier for speakers to mislead the hearers.4.1.2 Excessive Information“The second sub-maxim of Quantity is ‘not mak ing your contribution more infor mative than is required’.”(Hu, 2010: 159) It is obvious that providing excessive information than is required is unreasonable in a conversation. However, it does occur in conversations produced in reality and this excessive information tends to breed some humor. Examples below interpret this case.The protagonist Max in Broke Girls was the prominent figure to create humorous effect, because she was extremely good at breaking this principle. For example: in Valentine’s Day evening, Max went to visit 75 year-old Earl with other officers, Earl, a black cashier, who was ill in hospital. After some pleasantries between the two, Earl asked Max about her emotional state carefully.Earl: What about you Max? No sweetheart on Valentine'sDay．I worry about you．Be nice if you had someone special．Max: I already do．Earl: Ah，Max，I’m only going to be around another 30 or 40 years. You better widenthe net a bit．In this dialogue, Earl sincerely recommended Max to be tender to her Mr. Right if she met him, as for this concern, Max, whose bark was worse than her bite, and she was reluctant to admit that even if she met her object of affection she would not be brave and obedient to express her feeling, the she took Earl’s hand and said: “I have you already.”Obviously, Max intentionally violated the Quantity principle and didn’t provide Earl with sufficient information about her self emotion, while it made the thing interesting that Earl sincerely thought that she had told him sufficient information, therefore he said: “I only can live 30 or 40 years at the most, therefore you’d better get a bigger net.” Like irony rhetoric device is frequently used for humor caused by flouting the maxim, and hyperbole is a good choice to hit the goal. It is used to express the speaker’s strong feeling. It is obvious that the information is excessive. But it is the excessive information that makes people laugh happily. From this, it could be seen that even though the two sides violated cooperative principle, they both obey the interesting principle of polite principle, which made the oppressive atmosphere become easy and fun.Case 2:Max: Hi, what can I get you? He is obviously good drink-wise.Customer: I will have tea and turkey club.When this scene appeared, all the employees of this restaurant were staring at one pair of customers in the restaurant. This pair of customer was a mother and her child, and the boy was about 7 or 8 years old, but he still wormed himself in his mother’s cloth to drink breast milk. Max took a meal card to walk over and said to them: “What can I do for you? It’s obviously that your son is drinking now.” Arguably, the waiters only need to ask the customer what they wanted, but Max deliberately said another sentence that “your son was already drinking something.”This gave more information that was more than the communication needed, thus it produced a humorous effect.Case 3:Caroline: What is this, a student loan? Oh, my God, Max, you went to college? That wasn’t a judgment. It was just shocking…kind of like seeing a baby smoke on the Internet．Max: I love that kid．When Caroline helped Max arrange the bills she accidentally found Max’s bill of students’ loan, and she was surprised that Max had ever went to college, and Caroline was afraid that Max would misunderstand and she would laugh at Max was not like a scholar, she completed that “I was only shocked, just as surprised as seeing the children’s smoking picture online.” And Max did not want to talk about the bill, so she deliberately changed the topic and said: “I love that child so much.” And this answer had politely told Caroline that she was unwilling to talk anything about the bill, so the audience would laugh heartily because of Max’s unrelated lie. From the pragmatic perspective, it is clear that Caroline’s utterance violates the maxim of quality.4.2 Non-observation of the Maxim of QualityWhen communicators lie purposely or communicate while hiding their intentions, they violate the maxim of quality. This maxim requires us to follow these two rules: “Do not say what you believe to be false”and “Do not say that for which you lack adequateevidence”(Yin, 2011: 278). Examples would be helpful for perceiving how humor works this way.In terms of the maxim of quality, people often mock others by deliberately saying something that they do not believe is true, and two more specific maxims: “do not say what you believe to be false” and “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.”(Zhou, 2010: 145) In this part, we will pay attention to the humorous languages in the TV series 2 Broke Girls violating the first sub-maxim of quality and the second sub-maxim of quality.4.2.1 Incorrect InformationThis sub-maxim of the maxim of quality requires the speaker should say something honest and do not tell lies. However, in real conversation, people always violate this maxim in order to reach some purposes and convey the hidden meaning and feeling of him or her. Grice points out explicitly that employment of several rhetoric devices, including irony, metaphor, hyperbole and meiosis, typically give rise to the violating of the first sub-maxim of Quality. In the show 2 Broke Girls, there are lots of dialogues display it, to express what people do not believe that is true. Cases as follows:Through exaggeration and irony with corresponding expression, the protagonist in this play violated the authenticity of the statements, thus it produced a comedic effect. Because of the leaving of the former employee, the boss wanted to employ a new person, that was rich lady Caroline who had to work because of her family’s bankruptcy, yet Max, who had been worked here for a long time, wanted to work two jobs in this chance, therefore she was not satisfied about boss’s decision.Case 1:Caroline: Mr. Lee, not to complain, but I think someone wore this uniform before me, like right before me. Is it possible I could get another one? Maybe one that’s a little less moist... I think it is better for everyone, including my immune system, if I just keep on wearing what I’m wearing, and not the apron, cause this is Chanel, so thank you and let’s waitress.Max: Whatever that is, it does not belong in this diner. It belongs in a show on Bravo.The first day when Caroline went to work, she politely said to the boss that she did not want to wear the dirty clothes of the former waiter, in the excuse of her health and her own clothes were in brand of Chanel. Seeing this scene, Max commented: “this restaurant was not suitable for her, who was rich lady, but television was.”And the conversational meaning that was produced in this sentence was: “you should fair her and let me do all the work.”Here Max did not really thought that a so artificial person was suitable for performance, therefore she violated the authenticity principle but she obeyed polite principle at the same time, preventing that if she was too frank to consider boss’s face, thus the comedic effect was produced. The meaning of her utterance is that he cannot understand the major well. This kind of long-winded and confusing talk would drive others mad in some context.4.2.2 Proofless InformationGrice observes that examples in which the second sub-maxim of quality “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence” is not easy to find(Zhao, 2006: 60). Comparedwith the violating of the first sub-maxim, cases in the sitcom 2 Broke Girls do not occur in a large number.Case 1:Caroline: I was trying to get your T-shirt back. I wanted you to have it, because you lit up at the will when you saw it.Max: I don’t light up, okay? There’s no light inside me. What you’re seeing is probably radiation from the summer I collected uranium tubes by the train tracks. That was good money.In order to help Max re-seize the T-shirt that was robbed off in a secondhand store, she fought with others in a bar, and Max owned that T-shirt, because when Max saw it, her eyes shined. And the following all words of Max violated the Quality principle; it was the words that she even did not believe them for herself, “I will not shine in my easy, because my heart was dark and the light of hope have been put out. The light you see was maybe the left radiation when I collect uranium tube by the railway in a certain summer. And the things make me earn a lot of money.”Max was a sunny and cheerful girl but she was ashamed to show her inner heart, therefore she pretended to be dark in her heart, and also he made up the lies of collecting uranium tubes to make money. So Max’s lies was just the humorous point.Case 2:Max: What do you even have to apologize for?You must have been the easiest birth ever. She could have coughed you into a catcher’s mitt.Han, a short man who was the owner of a fast food shop, after his calling with his mother in Korean, Max and Caroline made a joke of him and said if he was flirting with his girlfriend. Han said, he was not flirting just now but making apology, and my mother was angry that I had left home and went abroad. Max said: “what are you apologizing for? When your mother is angry with you, it should be the time when you are most relaxed, when she gets a cough, she will spray you into a baseball glove”. Even if Han’s figure was so undersized, his mother was impossible to give birth by coughing. Here Max exaggerated Han’s birth and violated the Quality principle, thus the audience could feel a sense of humor from this.4.3 Non-observation of the Maxim of RelationThe relation maxim refers to both the two sides of conversation should focus on the same topic, and in the definite place, the two sides of conversation must have the common intention for realization, it should not be self-contradictory. But sometimes the speaker will follow the conversation of the opposite side and wittily uses “intention” to misunderstand, thus it violates Relation maxim and produces ambiguity, which will produce the ridiculous and humorous effect.(Tang & Zhou, 2013: 67)In a conversation, generally, speakers and listeners are supposed to speak something relevant in order to ensure the conversation could continue smoothly, that is the maxim of relevance. While conversations flout this maxim in real to contribute to the humor. In the sitcom 2 Broke Girls, some cases illustrate it:The characters in 2 Broke Girls will intentionally get ride of the current context and。