language in comedy

hi, i am doing a coursework on Language in comedy. my (self imposed) brief is "how scriptwriters use language to create comedy and develop characters" i am using The Thin Blue Line BBC comedy to do this. the thing is i have looked high and low to try and find some decent info on how language is used for comedy, searching google etc, but cannot find anything useful yet. can any of you help plz?
any useful sites/tips/books that i could go to that might tell me this?

whenever i search google it usually takes me to BBC sites or Amazon script books...

i have also posed this in General language discussion but have realised this might be a better place for it...

[Casiopea]

Welcome.

There are two things you can do.

1) Contact the Sociolinguistics Department at your local university or at universities on the Net and ask the professors there what resources they recommend you read. :D Don't be shy! They'd be more than happy to help you out. 8)

2) Go to the library and request the following dissertation:

Humour, Language and Narrative: Towards a Discourse Analysis of Literary Comedy by Isabel Ermida

Originally Posted by Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate and discuss the ways in which humour is linguistically and pragmatically rendered in English literary narratives. Being an elusive and controversial object of analysis, humour takes on further configurational complexities in the corpus under focus. Be it on the linguistic, narrative, literary or communicative levels, humorous short stories require an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological background. Although the title of this work generically reads ''discourse analysis'', insights from other disciplines - such as morpho-syntax, lexico-semantics, narratology and conversational analysis - also come into play.

The first chapter consists of a critical review of the conceptual and lexicological evolution of humour throughout history, as well as the polemics relative to its definition. Besides, it looks into the three main theories of humour - namely Disparagement, Release and Incongruity - with special emphasis being laid on their linguistic applicability. The important dimension of humour as a communicative act is also discussed.

3Read more... Click Here

All the best, :D