摘 要：近年来，情景喜剧凭其独特的艺术魅力在人们的娱乐生活中占有举足轻重的地位，其中《摩登家庭》自其开播以来，因其主题新颖,而受到越来越多观众的热捧。本文采用定性的研究方法,对情景喜剧《摩登家庭》违反合作原则产生的幽默进行分析。首先分析了幽默与合作原则的理论内容，在此基础上，本文结合《摩登家庭》中的语料分析了其语言幽默产生的机制，研究表明，幽默是由说话人对合作原则的违反产生的。本研究旨在进一步加深对幽默产生机制的理解，扩展幽默研究的理论范围。

关键词：摩登家庭；幽默；合作原则

Abstract：With the special artistic charm, various sitcoms occupy an important position in people’s entertainment life in recent years. Because of the novelty of its subject, Modern Family is becoming more and more popular. Qualitative analysis is used as the major research method in this paper. First of all, the paper will analyze the theoretical contents of humor and cooperative principle. Then combining with the corpus in Modern Family, this paper will analyze the mechanism of humor through the violation of the cooperative principles. This study aims to further deepen the understanding on the system of humor generating, and it also expands the theoretical scope of the study on humor.

Keywords: Modern Family; humor; cooperative principle

Contents

摘 要 i

Abstract ii

I. Introduction 1

II. Theoretical Framework 2

2.1 The Definition of Humor 2

2.2 Cooperative Principle 3

III. The Analysis of Verbal Humor from the Perspective of CP 4

3.1 Violation of Quantity Maxim 4

 3.1.1 Less Information 4

 3.1.2 More information 5

3.2 The Violation of Quality Maxim 6

 3.2.1 Intentional Deception 7

 3.2.2 Rootless Information 7

3.3 The Violation of Relation Maxim 8

 3.3.1 Irrelevant Information 8

 3.3.2 Topic Change 9

3.4 The Violation of Manner Maxim 9

 3.4.1 Obscurity 9

 3.4.2 Ambiguity 10

 3.4.3 Redundancy 11

 3.4.4 Disorder 12

IV. Conclusion 13

Bibliography 15

Acknowledgements 16

Analysis of Verbal Humor in Modern Family from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle

I. Introduction

As an essential part of life, humor exists in everywhere. It is a common communicative method among people. Humor is embodied in some fields, for example, newspaper, dramas and literature. Nowadays, many people live under great pressures, thus humor is significant to eliminate the effects of pressures, and finally remove it from themselves. Humor helps people shorten the distance and increase the intimacy between human beings. Therefore it is an appropriate way to strengthen and smooth relationship among people.

The study has been conducted by many scholars in many disciplines including sociology, culture, anthropology and so on. The early research of humor derived from the aspect of philosophy and literary critics, according to Attardo(1994), linguist acquired a significant role among the researchers of humor, which was played traditionally by psychologists and philosophers until the late 1970s.

The American situation comedy has been becoming increasingly popular in China since it was imported. As we all know, American sitcom is a good audio-visual material for English learning. Modern Family is worth to be studied. Its novelty and popularization included the affirmation of the audience all over the world. The previous study of the American sitcom Modern Family was confined from the perspective of irony or other analysis. Research on verbal humor could help people know about the situation comedy in depth. Analysis of language let audience know that how the humor is understand through the conversation, which has a further understanding to the usage of language.

What’s more, situation comedy is common and popular which can have effect on exotic culture and daily life. The author mainly pays attention to the American situation comedy in the paper. Studying on the verbal humor promotes people to understand better from the other culture and their life. That is a simple channel to amplify the horizon of the cultural knowledge of foreign countries.