A pragmatic analysis of humour strategies and functions in 'Jenifa's Diary' and 'Professor JohnBull'

Studies on humour in Nigeria have been extensively carried out from the perspectives of stand-up comedy and computer-mediated communication. There is a dearth of scholarly enquiries on humour in situation comedies (sitcoms). This paper investigates humour in the interactions of characters in Jenifa’s Diary and Professor JohnBull, with a view to accounting for the manifestations of humour, the humour strategies deployed and the functions that the humorous utterances serve in the sitcoms. The work is situated in Culpeper’s Impoliteness Theory. Eight excerpts from the sitcoms were subjected to pragmatic analysis. Two discourse functions of amusing and castigating are discovered in the data. The former serves the function of facilitating discourse and changing presumed power and status, while the latter serves the function of maintaining one’s own space and autonomy, and demanding respect. Allusion, parody, retort, tease, banter and putdown are the humour techniques employed in the sitcoms. The study corroborates the claim of earlier studies that humour in every sphere of language use serves certain functions beyond the interactional need to create amusement.

On Translation of Puns in Sitcoms Based on Functional Equivalence Theory—Taking Yes, Minister as an Example

In situation comedies, pun is one of the most effective means of creating comic effect and takes up a considerable part. However, if incorrectly or improperly translated, it can be almost impossible for puns to get across its audience, even when the audience is somewhat capable of English. The reason is that pun, in essence, is a figure of speech, which requires certain knowledge of English literature and culture. The translation of English movies and TV series has become fairly sophisticated, but studies on the translation of pun are relatively rare. This article will introduce and study pun both in Chinese and English literature by the approach of contrast, and discuss the translation methods of puns from the perspective of functional equivalence theory; and then it will take the Chinese subtitle of the famous situation comedy series Yes, Minister as examples to analyze and study the translation methods and strategies of puns used in situation comedies.

Pragmatic and Discourse Functions in Jenifa’s Diary

Existing studies on comedies in Nigeria have focused mainly on stand-up comedy, with little attention devoted to situation comedies. This study, therefore, investigates the pragmatic acts that are used to reflect inherent societal issues revealed under the guise of humour in a Nigerian sitcom, Jenifa’s Diary. Drawing excerpts purposively sampled from the first three seasons of the sitcom and subjecting them to the analytical tools of Jacob Mey’s pragmatic acts and Meyer’s functions of humour, the study shows the discourse functions of social and moral consciousness which address issues of incivility, domestic violence, poor etiquette, lying and indecent dressing. These discourse functions are achieved through the practs of warning, informing, enculturating and advising, and the communication functions named enforcement and differentiation. The study concludes that sitcoms are not just scripted to amuse viewers but also to address the state of the nations where they are set.

The Main Humorous Characteristics of the Anti-Value Concept of Gluttony (Based on English-Language Stand-Up and Situation Comedies)

The article describes the anti-value concept of gluttony in the humorous discourse of English-language stand-up and situation comedies. The main humorous characteristics of this concept are identified and analyzed. An axiological approach is used for constructing a humorous conceptual framework, because humor is one of the most important tools for forming values and anti-values of a certain culture. The ridiculed characteristics of gluttony are divided into the following two groups: those of process and result. The main characteristics of the process include improper eating of edible items and eating of inedible items. Improper eating of edible items is usually ridiculed through eating excessive amounts of food, eating food under inappropriate conditions, eating incompatible items. Eating of inedible items is mostly ridiculed through eating life-threatening objects, eating something unfit to eat, and eating excrements or other human waste products. The main ridiculed characteristics of the result include gaining excess weight, addiction to a certain food, illness/death of a person. This work also performs a detailed analysis of the anti-value concept of gluttony for the first time. The main linguistic means of representing the anti-value concept of gluttony in stand-up comedies and sitcoms are revealed. This article makes a significant contribution to constructing an axiological humorous framework of the concept, because gluttony is one of the basic anti-values in humorous discourse.

Similar Yet Different: the Structure of Social Networks of Characters in Seinfeld, Friends, How I met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory

Networktheoryhasbeenusedtoanalyzestructuresofnarrativesinworksoffiction.Indeed,previous works have shed light on issues related to role detection, for instance. However, few comparative works exist that deal with TV shows. Since these shows are very popular, there are several Internet forums that suggest how similar some of them are, mostly by comparing roles or importance of core characters. Is this popular intuition backed by an objective, numerical analysis using tools from network theory? The goal of this paper is to compare four situation comedies (Seinfeld, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory) that share a lot in common since their characters are friends living in similar, urban, environments, struggling with their daily lives, careers, and so on. Using tools for analyzing social networks, these shows were compared, showing that their structures and the roles of the core characters are fundamentally different. The only measure that proved to be similar among the four shows is entropy of their graphs, especially when computed over the degree distribution.

We were queer first: Male homophobic anxieties in three American sitcoms of the 1990s

This article investigates how three of the most popular and influential mainstream American situation comedies of the 1990s (Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends) explored and developed societal attitudes to sexual identities. None of these sitcoms feature gay male characters in leading roles, yet (the odd camp restaurant critic aside) they may be seen as pioneering popular televisual representations of attitudes towards male homosexuality. This article argues that these sitcoms (which are today considered homophobic by some) may, in their exploration of problematic responses to differences in sexual identities, be (in effect) more progressive than those series of that period (such as Ellen [1994‐98] and Will & Grace [1998‐2006, 2017‐20]) whose representations of central gay characters in positive but often stereotypical ways tended to avoid (or posited that they had no need to engage in) discussions of the prejudices of wider society (of homophobic ridicule, discrimination and violence).

Friends Forever: Sitcom Celebrity and Its Afterlives

Following work by John Ellis and John Langer, scholars often define television stardom against film stardom, a dichotomy that depends on a view of television as lesser than film, and which impedes our understanding of television stardom. Taking Friends as a case study, this article argues that situation comedies freeze stars in time, limiting their abilities to work both outside their character type and as they age, while offering limitless possibilities for the circulation of the star in a media culture characterized by self-referentiality and intertextuality. While previous scholarship on stardom might suggest that this failure to transcend character makes television stardom less valuable, in the television economy, the character is more valuable than the actor who plays her. Following Derek Kompare’s argument that the rerun is the quintessential television form, stardom gained from a Nielsen-dominating sitcom with an ever-present afterlife may be the most valuable form of television stardom.

“I want a real apology”

Research on the apology spans over half a century and has been quite prolific. Yet, a major issue with numerous studies on apologies is a lack of findings from naturally occurring interaction. Instead many studies examine written elicitations. As a result they research how respondents think they apologize, not how they do apologize. This project, in contrast, stresses the importance of studying the apology as a dynamically constructed politeness strategy in situated interaction. Apologies are part of the ever-present relational work, i.e., co-constructed and co-negotiated, emergent relationships in a situated social context. Hence, the focus is not on the illocutionary force indicating device (IFID) alone, nor on the turn in which the IFID is produced, but on the interactional exchange in situ. Naturally, data eliciting produces a larger sample size of apologies than the taping and transcribing of naturally occurring interaction does. To remedy the issue, this study uses interactions from situation comedies, which provide a large sample of apologies in their interactional context. Sitcom interactions constitute a valid focus of pragmatic research as they share fundamental elements of natural interactions (B. Mills 2009; Quaglio 2009). The validity of this approach is tested using findings from published conversation analytic studies on apologies. The analysis is set within the framework of discursive pragmatics and leads to new insights on apologies and responses to apologies.