Relation: Be relevant. Manner: Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). 4. Be orderly (Grice 45-46).
People observe the Cooperative Principle consciously or even unconsciously when communicating with others. Hu Zhuanglin has pointed that the CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation instead of telling the speakers how they ought to behave, though it is described in the imperative (Hu, 2006:192). That is to say, people usually disobey these maxims here and there due to various purposes and such condition is called violation. Through violation, some unexpected and intentional purposes will appear. Such deeper meaning in the conversation is the implication that the hearer has to think about, “Grice coined the term implicature” (Hu, 2006:191).
According to Grice’s theory, if the speaker violates the CP, it doesn’t mean that he/she doesn’t want to cooperate with his/her partner; instead, it indicates that he/she wants to have a better communication with the hearer. Through implicature, the speaker may express his/her deep meaning better. That is to say, implicature is very important in our communication since it can help us understand each other better.
1.2 Humor Introduction
People of all ages and cultures respond to humor. The majority of people are able to experience humor, i.e., to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are considered to have a sense of humor. Humor is everywhere in our daily life. As a language phenomenon, humor plays an important role in our society since it can not only improve our personal relationship, but also display our wit and glamour.
1.2.1 Definition of Humor
Although humor has been studied by different scholars from different angles for thousands of years, there are still quite a lot of controversies about what humor is. Goldstein and McGhee
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do not even attempt to define humor “for the simple reason that there is no single definition task it appears, a feasible definition of the humor acceptable to all investigation in the area” (Apte, 1985:13). Though a tough task it appears, a feasible definition of the key term” humor ’has to be presented since it is the very subject matter in this thesis.
The term ”humor “originates from the Latin word” liquid ”,”fluid”, or “ moisture”. Ancient physiologists tend to consider man’s temperature as the balance of four kinds of humor, namely choler, melancholy, blood and phlegm. In Plato and Aristotle’s views, laughter was regarded as the proper correction of the excessive, the ridiculous and the ludicrous. Those who possess the excess of any humor are called “humorists”, i.e. objects of laughter. Gradually, the four kinds of humors are respectively related to personality of four kinds. And therefore, humor comes to mean character or style, specifically, a fanciful state of mind. In modern usage, humor means the comic, the laughable, or that which is funny, witty, or in any way makes people laugh. In this period, the title of “humorist” comes to signify those who are amusing and skilled in the literary or artistic expression of humor.
According to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition), part of the definition of humor is as follows:
(a) That quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous. (b) The mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous.
(c) Something that is or is designed to be comical amusing.
Taking a closer look at the above three definitions, it can be obviously found that they emphasize something different: (a) defines humor as something that is someone’s attribute; (b) equates humor as a human cognitive faculty which functions in the perception of humor; (c) refers to the thing, idea or event that is of humor.
Similarly, many other scholars tend to emphasize different aspects of humor depending on their different research purposes and orientations. Among the many definitions, the very two ones in a general sense by two famous humor scholars are worth to be quoted here.
One scholar is Attardo(1994), who defines humor as a technical term, covering anything that is ( or maybe) perceived as funny ,amusing, or laughable. Another one is Raskin(1985), who, in the least restricted sense, proposes to consider” humor “as an interchangeable word
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with “funny”. As far as this thesis is concerned, it suffices to adopt a general definition of humor, taking it as all-inclusive term. Or put it in another way, humor in this thesis covers the types of stimulation which are perceived as funny and which can elicit laughter, or which at least intends to do so.
1.2.2 Classifications of Humors
Involving classification of humor, scholars have tried to find a uniform method of classification; the criteria for the classification are varied in accordance with different criteria. For example, humor can be divided into verbal humor and non-verbal humor according to the relationship to language; humor can be grouped into intentional humor and unintentional humor according to speaker’s intention; humor falls into active humor and passive humor according to the receiver’s expected mental state. On the basis of semantic content, humor can be categorized into political joke, sex, religious joke, Jewish joke, etc. American scholars who join rhetoric and functions of humor together divide the humor into joke, satire, wit, irony, comedy, wise-crack, farce, pun, etc.
Situation comedy is famous for its humors which exist in diversified forms, and the two main types of humor are verbal humor and non-verbal humor. This paper only focuses on the verbal humor in that most or the humors in situation comedy exist in the form of verbal humor. Verbal humor is also known as language humor, which the humor effect is produced through the medium of human language, including humor expressed in language and humor created by using human language, that is to say the humorous effect comes into being with the help of word play making hearers laugh. From the name of non-verbal humor, it can be easily seen that such humorous effect is not generated through human language, so non-verbal humor is also named situational humor. The amusement of non-verbal humor depends on a certain situation or context and the understanding of the humorous meaning must depend on the context to a certain degree.
1.3 Significance of Present Research
This study is of particular significance from both theoretical and practical angles.
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Theoretically, this study of humor functions as a specific application of pragmatics. Pragmatics, a rather new field in linguistics, studies how human interpret language and use it in real communication. It is mainly concerned with such topics as deixis, conversational implicature, presupposition, speech acts and relevance theory, etc. Through analysis, a better understanding of how the humorous effects are realized will be attained. As such, a comprehensive knowledge as to how to create humor and how to appreciate humor is crated.
Practically, the exploration of English humor and its implication can help Chinese viewers better understand foreign situational comedies. Nowadays in china, a lot of college students begin to get interested in hot foreign TV programs. Knowing the techniques of making humorous effect will help to grasp the essence of dialogues in the situational comedy.
In a word, no matter whether it is seen from the theoretical angel or the practical one, it can be seen that the study on humor from the pragmatic perspective is quite important and necessary.
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Chapter2 Literature Review
2.1 Linguistic Approaches on Verbal Humor Study Abroad
Humor research has a long and glorious history. However, linguistics held an assured position in the late 1970s among the central player of humor research, which was traditionally psychology, sociology, and philosophy (Attardo, 1997: 395). Linguistic study on humor is concerning with linguistic devices such as exaggeration, ambiguity, pun etc is very common. Pepicello in his work The Language of Riddles (1984) pointed out that humor had a close relationship with ambiguity, and humor depended on the indecipherable ambiguity until the punch line resolved it in an unexpected way.
Raskin’s the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH for short) (1985) is the semantic theory on verbal humor from the point of cognitive linguistics. The aim of the SSHT is, “ideally, a linguistic theory of humor should determine and formulate the necessary and sufficient linguistic conditions for the text to be funny” (Raskin, 1985:47). A text can be characterized as a single-joke-carrying text if both of the condition are satisfied:”the text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts and, the two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite”(Raskin, 1985:81) . Here the script refers to a large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word or evoked by it. Therefore the “script” here contains more meanings than the lexical meanings offered by the dictionary. The opposition of the script is the most important element to influence a joke. Attardo and Raskin cooperate with each other and set up a new theory named the “General Theory of Verbal Humor” (GTVH for short), which is a revision of Raskin’s SSHT. As Attardo puts forward:” whereas the SSHT was a semantic theory of humor, the GTVH is a linguistic theory for it includes other areas of linguistics as well, including , most notably, textual linguistics, the theory of narrativity, and pragmatics”(Attardo, 1994:222). Comparatively speaking, the GTVH contains more linguistics knowledge than the SSHT. Raskin’s Semantic Script Theory of Humor and its further developed version General Theory of Verbal humor are the two most influential theories on humor study from the perspective of linguistics.
Coulson is the initiator who employs conceptual blending theory to study humor. In his paper” what’s so funny? Conceptual integration in humorous examples” (2002), he paid much
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从合作原则角度分析《生活大爆炸》中的对话幽默英语论文
