The Relation between Impoliteness and Humor in "The Big Bang Theory"

The Relation between Impoliteness and Humor in

Author: Timmy Paul

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2022-01-26

Total Pages: 22

ISBN-13: 3346579751

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Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: 2,0, Technical University of Braunschweig (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: This research paper focuses mainly on the relationship between impoliteness and humor in comedy series. In the following I will name the research questions I'm dealing with in this paper. What makes the character Sheldon Cooper a funny character? How is it possible for an almost misanthropic character like him to create humor and to entertain an audience? What are the reasons for his impolite nature and in what way are they presented? My hypothesis is that The Big Bang Theory uses impoliteness and power relations to create a specific type of humor, which is able to make even an antisocial character likable and congenial. In order to test my hypothesis, I reviewed the Politeness Strategies by Brown and Levinson (1978) and the Impoliteness Strategies by Culpeper (2005). Furthermore I made researches about the connection between power and impoliteness and their relation to humor. During the procedure I matched the received information with inserted data from the sitcom in order to learn about their effects on spectators. Based on the findings I received during my research, one can say that the combination of impoliteness and power leads under specific conditions to amusement and enjoyment within the audience. Taking into account different factors, can turn an offensive utterance or even a conflict between two or more people into a tool of humor and thus cause delight for observers. The main conclusions of this paper are, that Sheldon Cooper's behavior perfectly matches the Impoliteness Strategies by Culpeper (2005), that power plays a significant role in creating impoliteness and that impoliteness and conflict are strongly connected to humor.


The Language of Humour and Its Transmutation in Indian Political Cartoons

The Language of Humour and Its Transmutation in Indian Political Cartoons

Author: Vinod Balakrishnan

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-08-14

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 3031328361

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This book develops a model to examine the language of humour, which is multimodal and accounts for the possibility of transmutation of humour as it is performed through editorial cartoons. By transmutation is meant the transition in the language of humour when it crosses its own boundaries to provoke unprecedented reactions resulting in offensiveness, disappointment or hurt sentiment. The transmutability about the language of humour points to its inherently diabolical nature which manifests in the performance of controversial cartoons. The model is built by borrowing theoretical cues from Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The integrated model, then, is developed to examine the cartoons which were recommended for deletion by the Thorat Committee, following a cartoon controversy in India. Through the cartoon analysis, the model discerns the significance of context and temporality in determining the impact of humour. It also examines how the ethics of humour; the blurred lines of political correctness and incorrectness are dictated by the political atmosphere and the power dynamics.


Autism in Film and Television

Autism in Film and Television

Author: Murray Pomerance

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2022-03-29

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1477324941

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Global awareness of autism has skyrocketed since the 1980s, and popular culture has caught on, with film and television producers developing ever more material featuring autistic characters. Autism in Film and Television brings together more than a dozen essays on depictions of autism, exploring how autistic characters are signified in media and how the reception of these characters informs societal understandings of autism. Editors Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer have assembled a pioneering examination of autism’s portrayal in film and television. Contributors consider the various means by which autism has been expressed in films such as Phantom Thread, Mercury Rising, and Life Animated and in television and streaming programs including Atypical, Stranger Things, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Community. Across media, the figure of the brilliant, accomplished, and “quirky” autist has proven especially appealing. Film and television have thus staked out a progressive position on neurodiversity by insisting on screen time for autism but have done so while frequently ignoring the true diversity of autistic experience. As a result, this volume is a welcome celebration of nonjudgmental approaches to disability, albeit one that is still freighted with stereotypes and elisions.


Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness

Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness

Author: Denis Jamet

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2013-08-19

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1443852066

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Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness aims to bring together a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches exploring the notion of “impoliteness” and the usage of impoliteness phenomena in language and discourse per se, instead of simply considering impoliteness as “politeness that has gone wrong”. Impoliteness draws mainly on linguistics, but also its sub-disciplines, as well as related disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and communication. Various researchers have been selected to contribute to Aspects of Linguistic Impoliteness, and the diversity of sub-disciplinary approaches is reflected in the multi-dimensional organisation of the five sections of the book. The book is divided into five thematic parts, with 16 chapters in all, as follows. The first part aims to study the links between impoliteness and rudeness, by providing a general framework to these notions. The second part deals with occurrences of impoliteness in television series and drama, when the third part mainly focuses on the discursive creations of impoliteness found in literary works. The fourth part concentrates on impoliteness and the philosophy of language, and the fifth and final part offers some case-studies of impoliteness in modern communication.


Humor in Interaction

Humor in Interaction

Author: Neal R. Norrick

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 9027254273

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The occasioning of self-disclosure humor / Susan M. Ervin-Tripp & Martin Lampert -- Direct address as a resource for humor / Neal R. Norrick & Claudia Bubel -- An interactional approach to irony development / Helga Kotthoff -- Multimodal and intertextual humor in the media reception situation : the case of watching football on TV / Cornelia Gerhardt -- Using humor to do masculinity at work / Stephanie Schnurr & Janet Holmes -- Boundary-marking humor : institutional, gender, and ethnic demarcation in the workplace / Bernadette Vine ... [et al.] Impolite responses to failed humor / Nancy D. Bell -- Failed humor in conversation : a double voicing analysis / Béatrice Priego-Valverde


Politeness in East Asia

Politeness in East Asia

Author: Dániel Z. Kádár

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-09-08

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 113949757X

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We use politeness every day when interacting with other people. Yet politeness is an impressively complex linguistic process, and studying it can tell us a lot about the social and cultural values of social groups or even a whole society, helping us to understand how humans 'encode' states of mind in their words. The traditional, stereotypical view is that people in East Asian cultures are indirect, deferential and extremely polite - sometimes more polite than seems necessary. This revealing book takes a fresh look at the phenomenon, showing that the situation is far more complex than these stereotypes would suggest. Taking examples from Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese and Singaporean Chinese, it shows how politeness differs across countries, but also across social groups and subgroups. This book is essential reading for those interested in intercultural communication, linguistics and East Asian languages.


Creation of Humor in 'The Big Bang Theory'. An Analysis based on Grice's Maxims

Creation of Humor in 'The Big Bang Theory'. An Analysis based on Grice's Maxims

Author: Sören Klohe

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2012-06-27

Total Pages: 16

ISBN-13: 3656226377

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Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, language: English, abstract: I Introduction The study of humor dates back to the ancient times when Plato and Aristotle formulated first theories as to why people laugh (Attardo 1994:18-19). In the course of centuries humor has become a complex field of study with numerous researches that have been conducted in various disciplines (Schnurr 2010: 308-309). Hence, humor has also been given attention in the field of linguistics, especially in its branches semiotics, semantics and pragmatics. Due to the extensive research by linguists like Attardo (1994), Raskin (1985) or Norrick (1993), verbal humor has become a thoroughly investigated field these days. While Raskin ́s (1985) and Attordo ́s (1994) research focuses on humor theories as well as analyzing the nature of jokes from a linguistic point of view, Norrick investigates the function of humor in the context of familiar conversations (Attardo 136- 137 , 145). However, it was not until recently that linguists have engaged with the analysis of humor in sitcoms; therefore comparatively few studies have been published in this area yet (Kalliomäki 2005: 4). This pragmatic approach to humor aims at investigating if humorous situations in the American sitcom ‘The Big Bang Theory’ relate to the violation of the maxims of the cooperative principle. Moreover, this study analyzes which humor strategies are produced by the violation of the Gricean cooperative maxims to elicit the audience ́s laughter. The relevant research questions are: 1) Do humorous situations relate to the violation of the maxims of the Grice ́s cooperative principle? 2) If 1) is the case, what are the characteristics of the humor that is produced through the violation of a maxim? (i.e. Which maxim is violated? Which humor strategies are employed by whom and in which context?) 3) Does a character create humor by intention or unintentionally? The qualitative analysis in this paper is supposed to contribute to a better pragmatic understanding of the humor of the sitcom ‘The Big Bang Theory’. The data used in this study are obtained from the collection of scripts from season 1 and the DVD - recording. ‘The Big Bang Theory’ has become one of the most popular sitcoms in the US. It deals with four nerdy characters, the two roommates and physicists Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter as well as their friends, astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali and the Jewish aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz.


Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis

Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis

Author: Lia Litosseliti

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002-05-31

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 902729769X

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Gender and discourse interface in many more epistemological sites than can be represented in one collection. Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis therefore focuses on a principled diversity of key sites within four broad areas: the media, sexuality, education and parenthood. The different chapters together illustrate how taking a discourse perspective facilitates understanding of the complex and subtle ways in which gender is represented, constructed and contested through language. The book engages critically with long-running and on-going debates, but also reflects and develops current understandings of gender, identity and discourse, particularly the shift from 'gender differences' to the discoursal shaping of gender. Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis thus offers not only insights and methodologies of new empirical studies but also careful theorisations, in particular of discourse, text, identity and gender. The collection is a valuable resource for researchers, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates working in the area of gender and discourse.


Language and Characterisation

Language and Characterisation

Author: Jonathan Culpeper

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-23

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1317879597

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Textual Explorations General Editors- Mick Short, Lancaster University Elena Semino, Lancaster University The focus of this series is on the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts, and the theoretical issues which such work raises. Textual Explorations will include books that cover studies of literary authors, genres and other groupings, stylistic studies of non-literary texts, translation study, the teaching of language and literature, the empirical study of literature, and corpus approaches to stylistics and literature study. Books in the series will centre on texts written in English. Readership of the series is mainly undergraduate and postgraduate students, although advanced sixth formers will also find the books accessible. The series will be of particular interest to those who study English language, English literature, text linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies. Language & Characterisation- People in Plays & Other Texts explores how the words of a text create a particular impression of a character in the reader's mind. Drawing together theories from linguistics, social cognition and literary stylistics, it is the first book-length study to focus on: the role of language and characterisation characterisation in the dialogue of play texts Containing numerous examples from Shakespeare's plays, the book also considers a wide range of other genres, including, prose fiction, verse, films, advertisements, jokes and newspapers. Language and Characterisation is as practical as it is theoretical and equips readers with analytical frameworks to reveal and explain both the cognitive and the linguistic sides of characterisation. Clear and detailed introductions are given to the theories, and useful suggestions for further analysis are also made at the end of each part of the book. The book will be essential reading for students and researchers of language, literature and communication.