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Transitivity Analysis of Verbal Humors in the Modern American Sitcom Friends

Author: WangShengWei
Tutor: ZhangDeLu
School: Ocean University of China
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: humor incongruity theory foregrounding incongruity situational comedy
CLC: H313
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 205
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Abstract

This thesis is a tentative endeavor to study the stylistic features of verbal humors in the famous American sitcom Friends from the perspective of ideational function of language, namely, transitivity. Based on the cognitive incongruity theory' dissertation">incongruity theory of humor, the author draws samples out of Friends and makes a quite comprehensive investigation of the features of transitivity when humorous language is generated by applying functional stylistic analysis.The author makes a general review of cognitive-pragmatic study of humor and identifies the traditional cognitive idea of humor, incongruity theory as the basis for any of further theories on humor. Upon the retrospect of current cognitive-pragmatic study of humor, the author notes that there is vacancy in the humor research from the functional perspective and attempts to make it up by probing into the linguistic features of humor from the aspects of language’s ideational function realized by transitivity.Transitivity is a grammatical system aiming at categorizing people’s experience through grammar which is represented in six processes, namely, material process, mental process, behavioral process, verbal process, existential process, and relational process. In each kind of process, there are participants and circumstantial elements structured logically and semantically with the verb as the center of the process. According to Halliday, style is not only“prominence”but“motivated prominence”(foregrounding) (Zhang, 2005). That is to say, prominent features such as parallelism, antithesis, and metaphor, to name a few, can be stylistic features only when they are closely connected to the situation. Abiding by“incongruity theory”, Halliday’s functional approach of transitivity and theories of functional stylistic analysis, the author summarizes a series of stylistic features in transitivity when humor occurs through quantitative and qualitative analysis.The whole thesis includes seven chapters. Chapter One is introduction. It gives a brief account of the famous American sitcom Friends, the objective of the present study, the significance of the present study and the design of the thesis. Chapter Two is a review of currently prevalent cognitive-pragmatic study of humor and proposes“incongruity theory”as the basis of cognition of humor. Chapter Three presents the theoretical framework, including Halliday’s transitivity theory and theories of functional stylistic analysis, namely, foregrounding, incongruity and deflection. Chapter Four is concerned with the methodology of the research. Chapter Five makes a detailed analysis of the sample both qualitatively and quantitatively. Chapter Six gives the interpretation of the findings. Chapter Seven is the conclusion. It shows the limitations of the research and gives suggestions for further study.There are 150 samples extracted from Friends for the research by the standard of cognitive incongruity theory of humor. In this study, a quantitative analysis and a qualitative analysis are employed. The author firstly makes a quantitative analysis to present the findings and then supports the findings by analyzing the samples qualitatively. According to Halliday’s functional stylistic analysis approach, the following findings are summarized: (1) In the transitivity structure of the funny clauses, humor can be realized by the incongruity between different elements of each process; (2) In the six process types, material process, mental process and relational process are more productive of humor than the other three processes; (3) In the six processes, there are more than one kinds of incongruity to generate humor in material process, mental process, behavioral process and verbal process while in the rest two processes, there is just one kind; (4) of the thirteen features summarized, the incongruity within relational process ranks first in terms of the amount of humor produced. These findings can be used in the construction of humor in people’s daily interaction or some amusing programs such as cross-talk, sketch, situational comedy, etc.

Transitivity Analysis of Verbal Humors in the Modern American Sitcom Friends

Abstract

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