2. Literature Review

A portmanteau sitcom, often shortened to the situation comedy, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, with often humorous dialogue. Such programs originated in radio, but today, sitcoms are found mostly on television as one of its dominant narrative forms.

This part aims to make a theoretical and systematic study on American situation comedies—— a TV genre originated in America. During the process of its localization, the research is carried out from a comedy – feature perspective, as well as the specific artistic strategies used to build up comedic effects.(Lv Xiaozhi, 2010:25）