A Structuralist Analysis of Humor in Friends
Abstract: This thesis focuses on the structural analysis of humors, aiming to apply Roman Jakobson’s theory about speech events to the humorous in Friends to acknowledge the essence of humors from a constituent perspective. Besides, this is only a tentative research paper and another aim is to incur more insight and consciousness when the student faces the challenges of study of English alone after graduation. The author finds it incomplete to explain the original theory in humor in previous researches. The author finds that the structures of humors in the previous researches are not fully elaborated. Therefore, she further analyzes and explores the reasons why the humorous speech events make people laugh in Friends from structure perspective.
Key words: Roman Jakobson, Structuralism linguistics, Humor
朋友中幽默结构主义分析
摘 要 本论文旨在从结构主义大师Roman Jakobson理论的角度，分析研究英语幽默的产生根源。作者尝试性地运用这一理论着重分析美国情景喜剧《六人行》中英语幽默，并藉此帮助英语学习者提高英语幽默的理解力和鉴赏力。在探究当代对幽默的语言研究中，作者发现大多数的研究成果似乎都未能完整解释幽默的语言原理。作者从全新的角度研究语言幽默的实现过程，并表示本文是以方法为导向而非结果为导向的研究，最大贡献在于突破性地和创新性地从语言交际功能构成与幽默相联系。
关 键 词 雅各布森；结构主义；幽默；情景喜剧
Contents
Chapter1 Introduction 2
1.1 Background 2
1.2 Previous studies and approach of the present thesis 2
1.3 Organization of the thesis 3
Chapter2 Literature Review 3
2.1 A Brief Literature Review of Studies on Humor 3
2.2 Methodology 5
2.2.1 Structuralism Linguistics 5
2.2.2 The descriptions of theory of the structuralists, Roman Jakobson 5
Chapter3 Situation Comedy and Humor 7
3.1 The definition of humor 7
3.2 The social functions of humor 8
3.3 The definition of situation comedy 9
3.4 A brief overview of “Friends” 10
Chapter 4 Approaches to Humor in Friends 11
4.1 Jakobson’ Theory applies on humor in Friends 11
Chapter 5 Conclusion 21
References 22
Acknowledgements 23
