This thesis aims to analyze humorous situations in American sitcoms Friends, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory in terms of their comedic effect. Prior to the analysis, a thorough theoretical background on humor consisting of several chapters is provided. The chapters describe several theories on what we find amusing and why we are sometimes predetermined to enjoy certain ideas. They also discuss the degree to which the social aspect is involved into the process of creating humorous content. Furthermore, a detailed timeframe of sitcoms from the 1950’s to the end of the 20th century with special emphasis on Friends, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory is given. Grice’s contribution to the world of pragmatics was discussed in the fifth chapter, focusing on the cooperative principle, conversational maxims and the theory of conversational implicatures. The analysis of the violation of Grice’s conversational maxims was arranged through four distinct categories: the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner. Each of the categories was explained in terms of three examples, one from each of the series. The examples were followed by a short analysis referring to the transcribed text, the characters involved, the contextual information and the overall atmosphere of the situation. Next, the discussion summarizes the key points of this work. Moreover, it adds onto the maxim violation analysis and refers to the literature discussed in the previous chapters. The last chapter provides a short conclusion.