| Acknowledgements | 第1-5页 |
| Abstract in Chinese | 第5-7页 |
| Abstract in English | 第7-11页 |
| 1. Introduction | 第11-13页 |
| 2. Theoretical Background | 第13-34页 |
| ·A Brief Literature Review of Studies on Humor | 第13-22页 |
| ·Psychological Approaches | 第17-19页 |
| ·Sociological Approaches | 第19-20页 |
| ·Linguistic Approaches | 第20-22页 |
| ·A Discourse Approach | 第22-34页 |
| ·Discourse Cohesion | 第22-25页 |
| ·Speech Acts | 第25-27页 |
| ·Conversational Principles | 第27-30页 |
| ·The Context of Discourse | 第30-34页 |
| 3. Situation Comedy and Humor | 第34-40页 |
| ·The Concept of Humor | 第34-36页 |
| ·The Definition of Situation Comedy | 第36-38页 |
| ·A Brief Overview of Friends | 第38-40页 |
| 4. A Discourse Approach to Humor in Friends | 第40-70页 |
| ·Discourse Cohesion and Humor | 第40-47页 |
| ·Humor Created by Reference | 第40-42页 |
| ·Humor Created by Ellipsis and Substitution | 第42-43页 |
| ·Humor Created by Lexical Repetition | 第43-44页 |
| ·Humor Created by Parallelism | 第44-45页 |
| ·Humor Created by "Running Gags" | 第45-47页 |
| ·Speech Acts and Humor | 第47-50页 |
| ·Conversational Principles and Humor | 第50-55页 |
| ·Cooperative Principle and Humor | 第50-53页 |
| ·Politeness Principle and Humor | 第53-55页 |
| ·The Contextual Dimension and Humor | 第55-70页 |
| ·Situational Context | 第56-63页 |
| ·Cultural Context | 第63-70页 |
| 5. Conclusion | 第70-72页 |
| Bibliography | 第72-75页 |
| Appendix: Script of Friends (extract) | 第75-82页 |
