Humour and Grice's Cooperative Principle in "The Big Bang Theory"

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2017 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Linguistik, Note: 1,3, Universität Duisburg-Essen (Anglistik), Veranstaltung: Pragmatics: Language in Use, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: This paper focuses on the pragmatic account of the American sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" with Grice and the cooperative principle as its theoretical background. It is based on the assumption that verbal humour violates Grice ¿s cooperative principle.

The aim is to explain how humour is generated and perceived in certain contexts. A data analysis is employed to provide an answer to the question if humour is created by disrespecting Grice¿s maxims of cooperation. It is investigated how humour is created by the violation of the maxims and which effect this has.