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.
Inhaltsverzeichnis (Table of Contents)
- Introduction
- Literature Review
- Methodology
- Results
- Discussion
Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte (Objectives and Key Themes)
This paper investigates the strategies used by the fictional character Sheldon Cooper in the US American sitcom The Big Bang Theory when performing self-praise, drawing on the framework established by Daria Dayter's study of self-praise in microblogging.
- Self-praise strategies in sitcoms
- Comparison of self-praise strategies across different contexts
- The role of humor and irony in self-praise
- The relationship between self-praise and facework
- The impact of social context on self-praise strategies
Zusammenfassung der Kapitel (Chapter Summaries)
- Introduction: This chapter introduces the research topic of self-praise in sitcoms, focusing on the character of Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. It also provides an overview of the research methodology and the key concepts that will be explored throughout the paper.
- Literature Review: This chapter examines existing research on self-praise, with a particular emphasis on Dayter's study of self-praise in microblogging. It also discusses relevant literature on compliment responses and the concept of community of practice.
- Methodology: This chapter outlines the methodology used for this study, which involves analyzing a corpus of 40 self-praise acts by Sheldon Cooper from the first two seasons of The Big Bang Theory. It explains the process of data collection and the specific strategies used to identify and interpret self-praise acts.
Schlüsselwörter (Keywords)
The main keywords and focus topics of this paper include self-praise, sitcoms, The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper, humor, irony, facework, social context, microblogging, community of practice, compliment responses, and strategies.
- 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
