摘 要

合作原则是语言哲学家格赖斯提出的对话时人们应该遵守的四项准则,为了实现成功的交际，人人往往会遵循这些准则。然而，在实际交际过程中，人们有时会故意违反合作原则来产生幽默效果。本文结合美国情景喜剧《生活大爆炸》中的经典幽默对白，分析该剧中人物如何故意违反合作原则中的质的准则、量的准则、方式准则及关系准则来产生幽默效果，探讨其幽默效果的产生机制。

关键词: 合作原则，违反，美式幽默，生活大爆炸

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. Demonstration 2
   1. A brief introduction to cooperative principle 2
   2. Generation of humor based on the violation of maxim of quantity 3
      1. Providing less information than is required 4
      2. Providing more information than is required 5
   3. Generation of humor based on the violation of maxim of quality 5
      1. Saying what one believes not true 6
      2. Saying what one lacks adequate evidence 6
   4. Generation of humor based on the violation of maxim of relevance 7
      1. Providing irrelevant information 7
   5. Generation of humor based on the violation of maxim of manner 8
      1. Using expressions of obscurity 8
      2. Using expressions of obscurity of ambiguity 9
      3. Using expressions lacking brevity 10
      4. Using expressions lacking order 10
3. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

Bibliography 13

The Generative Mechanism of American Humor from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle

1. Introduction

It’s world-widely acknowledged that humor, which gives people great happiness during daily life, is a universal phenomenon of culture. It is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. Humor, as a form of cultural manifestation, can be seen in many aspects of life, such as literature, video, daily conversation and so on. Humor is a must in our life because it can offer us great pleasure, enrich our life and make the relationship among human become much easier. A group of scholars study on humor due to its universality and fundamentality.

For example, Cui Yahui, one famous scholar, analyzes humor from the mechanism of language by dissecting humor from logic, grammar, pragmatics, semantics and figures, while Wang Yong, another scholar, tries to tie humor together with relevance theory and points out that humor only exists in utterance meaning.

As for American humor, the first thing that appears in most people’s mind is sitcom and one of the most famous sitcom in recent years is The Big Bang Theory, which first premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007 and tells the story of four scientists who are endowed with high IQ and low EQ. It has become one of the world’s most popular sitcoms after broadcast. There have been seven seasons all together by now and each season has got both high ratings and online click rate. It also gains enormous nomination and awards. One of the most important factors that contribute to its humor is the violation of cooperative principle among dialogues.

Cooperative principle, CP for short, is a principle concerning dialogue proposed by Paul Grice. He put forward an opinion that both of conversation participates should follow certain potential and necessary principles to ensure that the conversation can move on successfully. However, sometimes, humor can be generated from the deliberate violation of CP.

This paper begins with a brief introduction to cooperative principle and then uses specific examples of dialogues from The Big Bang Theory to analyze the