Linguistic peculiarities of Sex and the City

Not only does the sitcom differ greatly from its predecessors thanks to its humorous approach to a wide range of issues and self-reflectiveness, but it stands out by its language.
This apparently frivolous and trite sitcom can boast an incredibly witty and peculiar language which consists of a great deal of rhetorical devices and figures of speech.
These devices have contributed to the creation of the unique narration style that has already become a hallmark feature of the sitcom.
I’m going to analyze some of these comic devices citing different examples in order to illustrate them better. But before I start, I would like to introduce term «humor» and its meaning. Humour is known to be something that makes a person laugh or smile. Alison Ross, analyzing this kind of social phenomenon in her book entitled «The language of humor», states that the context for humour is crucial for determining whether an individual finds something amusing or not.
We can also examine the features of language that have the potential to make people laugh. The so-called incongruity theory, for example, focuses on the element of surprise. It states that humour is created out of a conflict between what is expected and what actually occurs in the joke. This accounts for the most obvious feature of humorous devices of Sex and the City: an ambiguity, or double meaning, which deliberately confuses the audience, followed by a punch line. The examples of humour use the possibilities for ambiguity in the words or structure of language. The term incongruity refers to the possibility for two meanings being understood from the utterance. This is often called a pun, which is the key element of humour in the sitcom. The humour of Sex and the City is mainly based on the conflict, which is caused by an ambiguity at some level of language. For example, structural ambiguity occurs in the sitcom at various levels:
• phonology—the sounds that make up the language
• graphology—the way the language is represented in written form
• morphology—the way words themselves are structured
• lexis—the individual words of the language
• syntax—the way the words are structured into phrases, clauses and sentences.