Humour and (im)politeness in Chinese sitcom discourse : a case study of Ipartment

Abstract

The interaction between humour and (im)politeness in Chinese sitcom discourse is an important yet underexplored research field in current humour, (im)politeness and sitcom studies. This study draws on Brock's (2015) participation framework in sitcom theory, the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) (Attardo, 1994) and (im)politeness theories (Bousfield, 2008; Brown & Levinson, 1987; Culpeper, 2011) as a combined theoretical framework to address the major research concern. This study explores humour and (im)politeness in Chinese sitcoms by decoding the characteristics of aggressive humour and non-aggressive humour in one of the most representative of all Chinese sitcoms: Ipartment. The current study investigates four essential aspects of conversational humour. These aspects are (1) the semantic and pragmatic aspects of humour; (2) the production and reception of humour among characters; (3) the functions of humour across the two communicative levels (i.e. the communicative level between the collective sender and TV viewers, and the communicative level among characters) in sitcom discourse and (4) the social and cultural aspects of humour in Chinese. The first season (twenty episodes in total) of the Chinese sitcom, Ipartment, constitutes the main corpus of the current study. A new analytical framework of conversational humour in sitcom discourse is proposed, and this framework explicates detailed ways to identify, classify and interpret conversational humour in the Chinese sitcom, Ipartment. With the aid of the proposed framework, the study identifies a total of 2,861 lines of conversational humour in Ipartment. Based on the criteria that are adapted from Dynel (2016a), 1,526 lines of humour are classified as aggressive humour and 1,335 lines as non-aggressive humour. Lastly, humour is interpreted from the abovementioned four essential aspects. To be more specific, the current study utilises the six Knowledge Resources in GTVH (Attardo, 1994) to analyse how humour arises from characters' (im)polite remarks. Then, the communicative effects of humour among characters are examined from the perspectives of the speaker's intention and the hearers' responses. Subsequently, humour is analysed by exploring how humour serves different functions, including solidarity-based, power-based and psychological functions (Hay, 1995), at two communicative levels. Lastly, the discussion is concluded with the analysis of the social and cultural aspects of humour in contemporary Chinese discourse. The results show that characters in Ipartment show a marked propensity to aggressive humour rather than non-aggressive humour. Aggressive humour usually incurs different communicative effects and different functions across the two communicative levels. In most cases, aggressive humour in Ipartment are intentionally exploited by the collective sender to amuse TV viewers only; with no humour perceived by any characters and usually generating instances of genuine aggression between characters. These overtly aggressive remarks largely serve a power enhancement role among characters. However, no matter how aggressive the remarks are perceived by characters, the collective sender always aims to enhance affiliation with TV viewers through these impolite yet humorous remarks. Regarding non-aggressive humour, the number of failed humour largely surpasses the amount of successful humour. This is to say, although the speaking characters' humour conveys no intentional aggression, humour may still be rejected by the hearing characters for reasons such as inappropriateness and miscommunication. Non-aggressive humour usually performs a solidarity-oriented role at both communicative levels. The significance of this study is summarised as follows: (1) this study proposes working definitions of conversational humour, aggressive humour and non-aggressive humour in sitcom discourse. It provides new perspectives to the current conceptual debates of non-aggressive humour; (2) this study proposes a new analytical framework to address conversational humour in sitcom discourse. Furthermore, a set of criteria are summarised to distinguish aggressive and non-aggressive humour. It is the first study that provides a systematic approach to conversational humour and the first one to provide detailed criteria to distinguish aggressive and non-aggressive humour in sitcom discourse; (3) this study identifies some Chinese-specific characteristics of aggression and humour in contemporary Chinese conversational discourse, and it contributes to the underexplored field of humour and (im)politeness in Chinese discourse.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English