摘　要

《老友记》是美国最有名的情景喜剧之一，共10季，播放于1994年至2004年。这是一个六个年轻人的故事，期间夹杂他们的生活，纠纷，友情，爱情（李清清，2008）。《老友记》反映了美国人关于爱情，友情和婚姻等的价值观。在先前的研究中有许多人研究了《老友记》里的价值观，只有一些与婚姻观有关。通过《老友记》里婚姻观的学习读者可以更多了解他们婚姻观的起因和文化是如何影响婚姻观的。要研究婚姻观，最主要的方法就是例证法，内容为举《老友记》的例子来证明论据。通过学习读者知道美国人的确有其独特婚姻观。本篇会从爱，相互认同，离婚三方面来研究。并且知道他们的婚姻观主要是受个人主义和清教的影响。在此读者知道了美国人婚姻观及其成因。希望这篇文章对读者理解美国文化有帮助。

关键词：《老友记》；婚姻观；美国文化

Abstract

Friends is one of the most famous American sitcoms, which contains ten seasons and played from 1994 to 2004. It was a story that six people met in an apartment and they became friends and a great number of things happened among them, including their lives，confrontations, problems, happiness, friendship and love (Li, 2008). Friends reflects a lot of American’s values about love, friendship and marriage. So far there are a lot of scholars studying the cultural values in Friends, and some are about American’s views of marriage. The study of views of marriage in Friends can also help us know more about the causes of views of marriage and also how culture affects people’s views of marriage. To study the American’s views of marriage, the main method which should be used is exemplification. That is to say, to illustrate some examples about the protagonist in Friends to prove the theories. In this paper the readers can know that Americans really think of their marriage in their special ways, this paper will talk about their views of marriage through the aspects of love, mutual agreement and divorce. And their views of marriage are mainly influenced by their culture of individualism and the puritanism. So from the study above the readers know how Americans think of marriage and the causes of their views of marriage. And I hope it can help the readers understand how American think of marriage and also how culture affects people’s views of marriage thus helping the readers know American culture better. 

Key words: Friends; Views of Marriage; American Culture

1 Introduction
This paper will be divided into four parts, the first is the introduction of the sitcom Friends and marriage and marital views, the second will be the American’s views of marriage, the third will be the causes of American’s views of marriage; the last will be the conclusion.