Gramer Girl here, I'm Minion Fuggedy and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. Today we'll

talk about a cool thing that made the conversations in the TV show Friends Funny, and we'll talk

about how cicadas got their name and why they are not the same thing as locusts.

This first segment is by Elizabeth Stoco, and I really enjoyed her analysis of how the

script writers for the show Friends tweaked our expectations to make things funny. Just

remember that when I say I, that's her, I have not personally done research on this topic.

The Friends' reunion has undoubtedly been one of the biggest TV events of the year so

far. Over its 10-year series, The sitcom, about a group of 20 and 30 some things in New

York had a massive cultural impact. It attracted plenty of scholarly analysis, including

critiques of its gender and race politics. It scripts inspired my own research as a professor

of social interaction. Love it or loathe it, and I loved it. One of the striking things

about Friends was that much of the humor depended on clever conversational devices, not

just set piece jokes or one liners. Instead, the script writers seemed to embrace the

unexpected in conversation. First, let's think about the conversational rules for a successful

invitation. Here's an example. Pat says, what are you up to this evening? And Chris says,

nothing much? So Pat says, will you want to go to the cinema? And Chris says, okay, great.

The design of an invitation and any other action in conversation depends on who we're asking,

what kind of relationship we have, what's at stake, and how important the acceptance or

rejection is. These sorts of contingencies shape everything we say. In the example I just

gave you, Chris responds positively to Pat, doing what conversation analysts call a preferred

turn. If an invitation's preferred response is acceptance, the best way to ensure a positive

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