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The Verbal Humor in Friends Based on the Violation of Cooperative Principle
- 1 Southwest University
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Abstract
Humor is thought to be an important cultural phenomenon and catches people’s increasing attention in recent years. Sitcoms are particularly popular for its verbal humor and the violation of Cooperative Principle is especially common and crucial to create humor for sitcoms. Thus, this article chooses the American sitcom Friends as the research object to analyze its verbal humor of the script based on the violation of Cooperative Principle. Through the violation of the Maxim of Quantity, the Maxim of Quality, the Maxim of Relation and the Maxim of Manner, humorous effects are created, and the audience are amused. Many characters in Friends intentionally break the Maxim of Quantity by providing more or less information in order to create hilarious effects. Additionally, speakers frequently violate the Maxim of Quality by telling a lie in order to make jokes, as seen in Chandler’s embarrassed reaction. As for the violation of the Maxim of Relation, people in Friends purposefully say something unrelated to the subject, and laughter bursts out when the audience realizes the real implications behind the words. Finally, there are numerous unclear and verbose sentences with amusing consequences regarding the breach of the Maxim of Manner, which the audience might appreciate and chuckle after hearing.
Keywords
verbal humor, Cooperative Principle, sitcoms
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Cite this article
Li,L. (2023). The Verbal Humor in Friends Based on the Violation of Cooperative Principle. Communications in Humanities Research,14,258-263.
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