Abstract:

Humor is a pervasive language phenomenon. In social communication, the proper employment of humor can improve interpersonal relationships, adjust the mood or atmosphere, and avoid embarrassment and conflict. Humor is an essential part of situation comedy, which reflects the culture, way of thinking and customs of different countries. Friends is one of the most well-known and interesting sitcoms in America currently, especially among young people. Conversational Implicature put forward by Grice is an important theory for linguists to study humorous utterances. Through the analysis of dialogues in Friends, this paper helps people understand how the verbal humors are produced and enjoy the humorous utterances better. Therefore, people can learn more about English culture and become more interested in English learning.

Key words: humorous utterance; Conversational Implicature; Cooperative Principle; Friends

摘要：

幽默是一种普遍存在的语言现象。在社交活动中，适当的运用幽默可以促进人际关系，调节人的心情和谈话气氛，并且可以避免尴尬和矛盾。幽默是情景喜剧中最根本的一部分，它折射出文化，人们的思考方式和不同国家的不同风俗。《老友记》是美国最著名也是最有趣的的情景喜剧之一，尤其受年轻人的欢迎。Grice所提出的会话含义理论是语言学家研究言语幽默的重要依据。本文通过对美国著名情景喜剧《老友记》中的部分对话的分析，旨在使人们更好地理解言语幽默及其产生的原因，进而使人们更加了解英语文化，更加提高英语学习的兴趣。 

关键词：幽默语言；会话含义；合作原则；老友记

1.Introduction
Humor is a special art and culture phenomenon, and it has a decisive position in different cultures. Humor exists in almost every aspect of our daily life. The main form of humor in our life is humorous utterances. It can produce different meanings in different contexts through different rhetorical devices. Humorous utterances can not only be served as a tool to improve interpersonal relations on social occasions, but also be regarded as a symbol of individual wisdom and quality. Many scholars analyze it from many different aspects such as literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology and linguistics, etc. Theory of Conversational Implicature was put forward by Grice and it is a common tool for linguists to study humor.