Stereotypes in British Comedy : An Analysis of Open All Hours and The Good Life

Sammanfattning: The aim of this work is to analyse how the comic effect is constructed from a series ofstereotypes that characterize the British sitcoms of the 1970s and 1980s. It is based on thewriter´s hypothesis that British television situation comedy in the second half of the twentiethcentury depended heavily on depicting mythical stereotypical characters in British society andconfronting these with aspects of modernity, especially in relation to the relaxation of sexualmores and the erosion of class distinction. The identification of stereotypes is essential inorder to explain “representation” (Hall, 1997). The attempt is made to investigate the humourthough the General Theory of Verbal Humour (Raskin and Attardo, 1991). Next, an analysishas been conducted into how humorous utterances are produced by Relevance Theory(Sperber and Wilson, 1986). Lastly, sexual innuendoes and double entendres are analysed.The analysis shows that humour based on stereotypes including features related to class, raceand gender were crucial in sitcoms from the studied decade, and the humour was frequentlymade obliquely, and yet deniably, sexual using such innuendo. Unexpected transgressions ofstrict boundaries created a comic effect. In the 1970s the class structure was still clearlymanifest in the society and was available to be caricatured; similarly, while there had beensome challenge to gender roles from the Women´s Liberation movement of the time, theseroles were still largely discernible. It is found that sitcoms were, to a large extent, reflectionsof societal trends and millions of people spent much of their spare time consuming them onthe limited number of television channels then available.