The Cooperative Principle of Pragmatics:
An Analysis of the Verbal Humour in the Sitcom Home with Kids
Since the language was born, the research of it has never interrupted. Humor is the spice of our lives, leave it the life will be boring. Pragmatics is a main branch of Linguistics, with the development of pragmatic theory, linguists and hobbyists from many angles analysis on verbal humor and achieved fruitful results.While cooperative principle, as one of the most important pragmatic principle, makes a systemic study about language use and lays a solid foundation for later development of pragmatics. The violation of cooperative principle can often generate conversational implicature or achieve certain communicative effects. On the basis of previous humour and pragmatic theory research, I will analysis from the point of the cooperative principle of those verbal humour dialogue in the sitcom "Home with Kids", which reflects the daily life of a rebuilt family and attracts many Chinese audiences by its creating writing, good acting as well as its wonderful transcripts.
1. Four Maxims of the Cooperative Principle
In 1975, the language philosopher H. P. Grice published a seminal article entitled “The Cooperative Principle” which created quite a stir in the linguis tic world and generated a large number of linguistic publications that are built on Grice's postulates.
According to Grice, in conversational exchange, people usually try to reach a common goal by mutual efforts or at least make the conversation develop in the direction of their expectation. To achieve this, people need to cooperate with each other. Grice' theory of the cooperative principle explains how it is possible for the speaker to convey more than what is literally said and foe the hearer to understand.
The four maxims of CP are Quantity Maxim, Quality Maxim, Manner Maxim and Relation Maxim. The maxim of quantity has two sub-maxims that require the cooperative
speaker to say as much as but no more than is required for his particular purposes in the talk exchange. The maxim of quality also has two sub-maxims, which demands that the speaker say only what he believes to be true and for which he has sufficient evidence. The maxim of relation urges the speaker to make his contribution relevant to the communication context. The maxim of manner requires the speaker to be methodical and to avoid ambiguity, prolixity, and obscurity. In short, as Grice put it for the cooperative principle, "make your
conversational contribution such as is required,at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged". The cooperative principle is the foundation of pragmatic interpretation of humor, of which the flouting of maxims plays a very important role.
2. Floutings of CP Maxims and Humor Production
In actual conversation, a participant may deliberately flout CP maxims for some reason or special need. As an important category of non-observance of the conversational maxims, a flout is distinguished by deliberately triggering the hearer's search for an implicature. The speaker employs this way seemingly against the cooperative principle to reinforce the communicative effect. In this way the speaker can make his conversation humorous and thus produce the effect of humor. In fact, flouting of the CP is often seen in Chinese sitcoms. Of course, sitcom writers also deliberately flout the principle in order to achieve humorous effects.
2.1 Flouting the Quantity Maxim
When a speaker offers more or less information than is required by the situation with the intention of generating an implicature, he flouts the maxim of quantity. Look at the following example:
