Study on language of humor traditionally examines the pragmatic mechanism of
humor: violation of linguistic norms is one of the major sources of humor. However,
sociolinguistic factor can be added into consideration in the construction of humor
texts and scripts. In the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory, the audience sees a
specific social group, nerd, is brought to the center stage and is represented in
performance. The main source of a particular social group comes from stereotypes,
and in the case of nerds, they are characterized as people who are socially
underachieved and intellectually overachieved. They are also people who are
specifically fascinated about the segment of sci-fi genre of the popular culture. When
shaping nerds as social underachievers, we mode them as lacking abilities of having
adequate conversation with people who are not the member of their group. They are
represented as people who have trouble adhere to social rituals, such as greeting, and
this inability makes them difficult to make friends and socialize with people outside
of their group. The function of the character of Penny is to reflect how socially inane
nerds can be. Nerds are also represented as people who only process literal meaning
in conversations, thus they are not good at following politeness principle, and humor
ensues from their mishaps. They are also unable to process irony, implicature, and are
insensitive to contextual cues. To sum up, they are people with a high degree of social
anxiety. In addition, they have no knowledge in mainstream popular culture, except
for the sci-fi genre, they show their enthusiasm in sci-fi related films, games, comic
books, etc., but remain quite ignorant to popular culture beyond this genre.
When shaping them as intellectual overachievers, we mode them as possessing
professional knowledge and applying them in every aspect of their life. They are
characterized as people who speak superstandard language, namely written register
across contexts. They tend to demonstrate much anecdotal knowledge, even when it is
unnecessary to do so. They are also represented as multilingual, a significant sign of
intellectual superiority in American society where most people are monolingual. They
excel at computer and engineering, and spend much of their spare time with
computers. These sociolinguistic factors contribute to the construction of nerds, and
simultaneously provide sources of humor in The Big Bang Theory.
However, The Big Bang Theory also adheres to the pragmatic principles of humor in sitcom. Violations of linguistic norms are the methods of creating humor in
Friends, and this principle is also applicable in The Big Bang Theory. Violations of
linguistic norms take place at different levels, and they are done not only for the sake
of humor, but also for indexing nerdiness of the characters. For the non-nerd
characters in The Big Bang Theory, they also violate linguistic norms, but they lack
the quality of being socially underachieved and intellectually overachieved. Nerds
tend to have a different pattern of violating linguistic norms compared to non-nerds.
Non-nerds do not feel anxious in engaging social interactions. They adhere to social
rituals, and they have the flexibility to respond to the change of context. Non-nerds
violate politeness principles as well, but they do so for a purpose, be it insulting,
threatening, condescending, begging, flattering, etc. However, nerds lack this
flexibility, as they are represented as people who only put emphasis on literal meaning,
regardless of the illocutionary act of an utterance. Similarly, emphasizing only on
literal meaning makes nerds unable to process implicature and irony, nor are they
aware that non-nerd people may take their words as irony when nerds do not have the
intention to do so.
Lacking flexibility also makes nerds difficult to pay attention to the setting and
the scene during interaction. Telling the same words to different people will lead to
different interpretations, but in this sitcom, nerds often lack this kind of awareness,
and when the undesirable results happen, the humor ensues as well.
Nerds are seen as people who lack knowledge on common popular culture. For
non-nerds, information and knowledge of popular culture are considered to be a kind
of basic knowledge, and possessing and sharing this knowledge engages an individual
to the mainstream society. Nerds are represented in this sitcom as people who have
none, or insufficient knowledge of popular culture. Once one lacks the knowledge of
the “mainstream,” one will be considered as a misfit and an outsider of the society,
thus renders him/her a social underachiever. Another basic knowledge of the society
is the taboo topics. What constitutes a taboo is specific to each society, and it requires
enough degree of socialization to learn a taboo of a given society. In many cultures,
sex, disease and death are considered as taboos. If one wants to talk about a taboo
topic with someone else, one must consider the social relationship between him/her
and his/her addressee, and pay attention to the setting and the scene so that the
conversation would be appropriate and acceptable. Talking about taboo topics to the
wrong people at the wrong time and place is inappropriate, and in a sitcom, it causes
incongruity, and eventually the audience laughs. Nerds are represented as people who
never learn how to appropriately talk about taboo topics, which makes them social
underachievers because they do not share the common basic knowledge of the
society.
Nevertheless, nerds have their strengths. They possess and demonstrate the
knowledge of science. The methods to demonstrate their knowledge is through
superstandard language, anecdotal knowledge, multilinguistic ability, and technology
mastery. Under such social structures in which computer and technology are
dominating our daily lives, possession of such knowledge is not only useful, but is
also admirable and potentially profitable. These are the symbolic capitals of nerds.
Since they are always in want of common, shared knowledge of the society, which put
them in an inferior position, it is necessary for them to demonstrate such intellectual
to not be completely rejected by the society. Almost none of the non-nerd characters
in this sitcom demonstrate such superior knowledge, but all the four nerds do so.
A significant trait of nerds is that they are fanatic about sci-fi genres of movies,
television series, comic books, video games, etc. This can be seen as simultaneously
being a social underachiever and an intellectual overachiever. The genre of sci-fi is
approximate to their symbolic capital: the knowledge of science. One must have some
level of knowledge and interest to science in order to appreciate sci-fi genre works.
Since nerds possess an extreme amount of knowledge on science, sci-fi is easily
accessible to them. Also, many sci-fi works have nothing to do with the society we
live in, but usually features a fictitious time and place, with characters that possess
superpowers that only exist in human imagination. Sci-fi is a tool of escapism for
nerds. They are not popular in the society we live in, but for them, sci-fi is easily
accessible and unreal, which is a perfect hobby to fulfill the characteristics of nerds.
Other advantages of enjoying sci-fi genre works include that they do not require
physical labor, in which nerds do not excel, and that these works demands
engagement and attention, which is a forte of the nerds. All these reasons contribute to
the construction of the stereotype that nerds are sci-fi, comic book, and video games
fans. By contrast, non-nerd characters in this sitcom show detachment and ignorance
about sci-fi works.
Another issue is ethnicity. Nerd is a racialized and gendered stereotype in
American society, according to Bucholtz (1998, 1999, 2001) and Eglash (2002).
Caucasian males are thought to be quintessential nerds, but in this sitcom, Raj is a
non-Caucasian foreigner who shares the property of a stereotypical nerd. To some
extent, one can see that the script writers have broken a firm stereotype. One of the
minor characters, Leslie Winkle, is a female scientist who shares some of the
properties of nerd. However, she does not appear very often, thus the comparison
between male and female nerds are not significant. In the last episode of season three,
a new female nerd, Amy, joins the cast, but she also does not have enough screen time.
From the last episode of season three, one can only say that the character of Amy
bears strong resemblance to Sheldon in terms of behavioral patterns.
This study is only a starting point in the research of the sociolinguistic dimension
of humor and the specific social group of nerd. One crucial thing is that The Big Bang
Theory is not over yet, as more episodes are being produced. More examples will
appear when future seasons of The Big Bang Theory are aired. As of February 2011,
the production of this sitcom is guaranteed to the show’s seventh season, and future
researchers can attain a complete data when the sitcom has run its course. Perhaps this
can further proves the claim in this study, or it might overthrow it. Nevertheless, this
sitcom is still worthwhile studying in many aspects. Comparison of humor strategy
among sitcoms can also be studied as well. Since The Big Bang Theory is an
American sitcom, it can be compared to sitcom, or similar genres of comedy shows,
produced in other countries. The humor styles of different cultures can be a future
research topic as well. To conclude, this thesis is only a starting point in the research
of humorous language and the language and society.
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