situation comedy research (dialogue)

Keywords: power distance

Verbal humour may call up different reactions in other cultures, situational

Humour however, is still harder to deal with. It might even create a kind of Culture

the following dimensions:

Power distance

Uncertainty avoidance 

Masculinity/femininity 

Individualism on the one hand versus its opposite, collectivism

Power distance is  the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally

Power distance includes high power distance and lower power distance. China is a high power distance country, American is a lower distance country.  In situation comedy, the dialogue is a good way to show the different between high power distance country and lower distance country.


Sample:  Friends（USA)  
                My Own Swordsman (China ）

Aim ：Find the characterize and difference in dialogue between China and American.

before my research, i search 'which dialogue you still remember for My Own Swordsman '
and ' which dialogue you still remember for Friends' ,because there are many lines of dialogue, so I just collect 50 lines of dialogue for friends and My Own Swordsman to Statistics to research the topic of humor.

Topic of humor
I choice three topics: sex, culture background, other

                                     sex            culture background      other

Friends                          60%                       10%                 30%

My Own Swordsman     10%                       70%                 20%

Both of them are talking about three topics, but Friends focus on sex(30), and My Swordsman focus on culture background(28).

In My Own Swordsman,  the actor always talks about famous book, if audiences don't know this masterpiece, they can't understand the meaning of dialogue.  It is the  characterize for high power distance, people need to know many culture background.

In Friends, culture background is some general advisements. Like ' Ben, Just do it'  audience sees this dialogue, they know actors is talk about Nike. It is the  characterize for high power distance. many dialogue use advisement's words , so every audience can understand it.

IMDb. (1994). Friends. Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108778/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1. Last accessed Octorber 26, 2015.

Snellinx, R. (2011) ‘HUMOUR THAT DIVIDES, HUMOUR THAT UNITES: AMERICAN SITCOMS. A CASE IN POINT’,JoLIE, 2(2).