AN INVESTIGATION INTO HUMOR IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SITCOMS FROM PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The present study is in the field of applied linguistics and pragmatics in which humorous language in sitcoms is the main focus. The study aims to explore how English and Vietnamese sitcom characters violate Grice's Cooperative Principle in their daily conversation to create humor. Then humor strategies are found in English and Vietnamese sitcoms in terms of Grice’s Conversational Maxims. In the light of Grice’s Cooperative Principle, the conversational maxims violated as humor strategies in English and Vietnamese sitcoms are figured out to help EFL learners improve their English application competence via humor strategies. Data were collected from 26 English and Vietnamese sitcoms. The descriptive method was used combined with the qualitative and quantitative approaches. The analysis was carried out to find out similarities and differences of humor strategies in English and Vietnamese sitcoms. The findings indicated that among all humor strategies resulting from the violation of Grice’s Maxims, the strategies of Irony, Exaggeation and Irrelevant statement were the top three strategies used in English sitcoms. Meanwhile, the strategies of Lexical puns, Exaggeration and Irony were the top three ones used in Vietnamese sitcoms. It was also noted that the speakers would use different kinds of strategies to achieve their intended humorous effects since every type of humor strategy had its own designated function or purpose. This study concluded that humor can be either funny or cruel, so it is important for speakers to choose appropriate humor strategies to achieve their goals in the process of communication