Even though self-praise poses a socially problematic speech act, it appears that self-praise is used in sitcoms quite often for comic effects. This term paper deals with the question which strategies the fictional character Sheldon Cooper in the US American sitcom The Big Bang Theory applies when performing self-praise. On that account, the paper will follow the lead of Daria Dayter in her article “Self-Praise in microblogging”. The strategies for self-praise found by Dayter will present the framework for this specific study. Therefore, this paper will not deal with structural characteristics of those utterance but only with the strategies applied. As self-praise seems to be used for comic effects in the sitcom, I assume that the results conducted in this paper will not contain many mitigation devices when self-praise is being performed. Furthermore, it seems that the article by Dayter is the only specific study on self-praise so far. Hence, the study of self-praise poses a quite unsought area and thus provides the possibility for an individual study that will not have to rely on previous studies with a similar content. As this paper deals with self-praise in the US American sitcom, it poses an interesting crossover between the fields of film language and self-praise studies. As the study of self-praise increasingly gained attention among researchers since self-portrayal via social media websites like Twitter became possible and almost socially acceptable, spreading the issue to a scripted context constitutes a completely unexplored area of research. In this paper, I will first give a brief overview of Dayter's study on the topic in my literature review section. I will also take into account some important studies on compliment responses, as Dayter extracted her strategies for self-praise from those. Then there will be an elaboration on the methodology applied to this paper, followed by a more detailed outline of the strategies and the data that will be investigated in this work. Afterwards the results will be presented and ultimately a critical discussion of the findings. In the end a conclusion will be provided to give an overview for further possible fields of research and to offer a precise summary of the results.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography
Appendix 1: Data and References
Research Objectives and Topics
This paper investigates the self-praise strategies employed by the fictional character Sheldon Cooper in the US American sitcom The Big Bang Theory. By applying the theoretical framework established by Daria Dayter, the study aims to determine how a scripted character performs self-praise for comic effect and whether these strategies align with or deviate from naturally occurring speech patterns.
- Analysis of self-praise strategies in scripted television dialogue.
- Application of the Dayter framework (explicit vs. modified self-praise).
- Examination of the character Sheldon Cooper as a unique, ironized case study.
- Comparison of scripted self-praise with real-life discourse markers.
- Exploration of the relationship between self-praise and comic effect.
Excerpt from the Book
3. Methodology
This is a descriptive study focusing on a particular case, namely Sheldon Cooper and the self-praise strategies applied by him. For this study a corpus of 40 self-praise acts by Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory was compiled. These samples were taken from season one and two of the sitcom. Season one was broadcasted on the US channel CBS from 2007 to 2008 and season two was broadcasted on the same channel from 2008 to 2009. The series features a group of four physicists and their neighbour Penny. This study concentrates on the fictional character Sheldon Cooper, who is a theoretical physicist in his mid-twenties. He is portrayed as a typical geek who has an unusually high IQ and is extremely socially inept. His mother tongue is English and he grew up in Texas, United States. As this study centres on a fictional character, one should take notice that the speech acts in focus are part of a scripted dialogue. Also, as Sheldon Cooper is quite a unique type of character and highly ironised for comical effects, I suggest that the strategies deployed by him will not completely match the ones found by Dayter. To gather the data, season one and two of The Big Bang Theory were viewed with focus on speech acts by the character Sheldon Cooper. Afterwards these were reviewed to select the utterances with a self-praising character as it is defined by Dayter: “Self-praise involves uttering a positive statement about oneself” (Dayter 2014: 92). These samples were then listed in the order as they occurred and congregated in a chart. By employing Dayter's strategies these were characterised and interpreted to draw a general conclusion in the end with the method of induction.
Chapter Summaries
1. Introduction: This chapter introduces the research topic, presenting the motivation for studying self-praise in a scripted sitcom context while establishing the primary research focus on Sheldon Cooper.
2. Literature Review: This section provides an overview of existing pragmatics studies, specifically detailing Daria Dayter's classification of self-praise strategies and the Modesty Maxim by Leech.
3. Methodology: This chapter outlines the descriptive, corpus-based approach used to analyze 40 self-praise acts from the first two seasons of the series.
4. Results: This chapter presents the statistical findings of the corpus analysis, categorized by the specific strategies identified in the literature review.
5. Discussion: This section interprets the results, analyzing why Sheldon Cooper’s frequent use of unmodified self-praise might deviate from conventional social norms regarding positive face.
6. Conclusion: This final chapter synthesizes the study's findings and suggests avenues for future research comparing sitcom representations to real-life discourse.
7. Bibliography: This section lists all academic sources and media references utilized throughout the paper.
Appendix 1: Data and References: This section contains the raw corpus of 40 self-praise utterances by Sheldon Cooper used for the analysis.
Keywords
Self-praise, The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper, Pragmatics, Speech acts, Scripted dialogue, Comical effect, Modesty Maxim, Positive face, Discourse analysis, Microblogging, Explicit self-praise, Linguistic strategy, Social norms, Sitcom.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research paper?
The paper examines the speech act of self-praise as performed by the fictional character Sheldon Cooper in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
What are the primary themes analyzed in this work?
The themes include the linguistic classification of self-praise, the contrast between scripted and natural language, and the comic function of breaking social maxims.
What is the central research question?
The research asks which specific self-praise strategies Sheldon Cooper applies and how these strategies function within a scripted comedic environment.
Which scientific methodology is utilized?
The author uses a descriptive, corpus-based empirical study, compiling 40 instances of self-praise and categorizing them based on Daria Dayter’s established strategy framework.
What is covered in the main body of the paper?
The main body covers the literature on pragmatics, the methodology of data collection, a detailed breakdown of the results per strategy, and a discussion on the social implications of the findings.
Which keywords characterize this work?
Key terms include self-praise, sitcom, Sheldon Cooper, pragmatics, scripted dialogue, and speech act theory.
How does Sheldon Cooper’s self-praise differ from typical social norms?
The findings suggest that Sheldon frequently utilizes "unmodified self-praise," which is typically viewed as a violation of the Modesty Maxim, implying he either disregards social status or lacks awareness of social norms.
Does this study claim that sitcom dialogue is representative of real-life conversation?
No, the author concludes that due to the stylistic requirements of comedy, sitcom data should not be considered a direct reflection of natural, face-to-face interaction.
What role does the "Appendix" play in this paper?
The appendix provides the full transcript of the 40 specific speech acts identified as self-praise, allowing for transparency in the data collection process.
Why is this study considered an "empirical study"?
It is classified as empirical because the author systematically compiled, classified, and analyzed a specific corpus of 40 real-world examples from the television show.
- Quote paper
- Katharina Lurz (Author), 2014, Self-praise in the US American sitcom The Big Bang Theory, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/432060
