| Humor plays a very important role in our daily communication, and also is an integral part of many literary works, film and television works and art works. Humor is rooted in the particular context, cultural background and language environment. Researchers mainly study the humor from perspectives of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and linguistics. Different areas have formed different theories on the reasons of producing humor, like, superiority theory, release theory and incongruity theory. In linguistics, many scholars lead humor researches from the angles of semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, cognitive linguistics, and sociolinguistics. As to the humor theories in linguistics, this thesis introduces the Semantic Script Theory of Humor and Cooperative Principles.Mark Twain is one of the representative writers in humor literature of America. Faulkner called him "the father of America literature". His writing style is known as humor and irony. Mark Twain, as a humor master, his ability to express humor in stylistic devices is well developed, which is prominent in his short stories. This thesis analyzes seven examples selected from his six representative stories. The seven examples make use of five stylistic devices; they are simile, personification, hyperbole, irony and understatement. Figures of speech, as a kind of special speech formed by creative use of the language in a specific context, are an important part of rhetoric research. The humorous language is an interesting language by stylistic adjustment. Many stylistic devices in fact have become a common effective carrier of humor. Stylistic devices can help to increase the humorous effect. What’s more, few stylistic devices serve themselves to a humorous effect, such as, a style of coloring called jokingly, and some stylistic devices are a special humorous effect achieved in the context. Different stylistic devices have different functions to humor:simile describes an event by animating it, which makes the humor more active and energetic; hyperbole or understatement is a way to reveal the nature of an event deeply and vividly, which can add appeals and expressive effects to humor; Irony can be expressed in a hot or cold tongue. Compared with a straightforward way, it is a way to express opinions by beating about the bush, which can always produce a cold humor.However, how can humor been produced by stylistic devices? That is a question to be answered. This essay analyzes the generation mechanism of humor produced by the five stylistic devices from a semantic and pragmatic perspective. From a semantic perspective, the image receptor and the image donor of a simile are two different concepts, and are not compatible according to the selection restriction; but they co-exist in simile by violating the selection restriction to produce an incongruity, which produce the humor. So does the personification. In a pragmatic aspect, the thesis analyzes the generation mechanism of humor produced by Grice’s Cooperative Principle, which includes the maxim of quantity, quality, relation and manner. As a result, simile, personification, hyperbole and understatement turn out to violate the maxim of quality; irony violates the maxim of manner.The result of this thesis can help readers make clear the generation mechanism of humor produced by stylistic devices, which is helpful for them to realize and analyze the humorous phenomenon produced by stylistic devices; and it has a guiding significance for readers to create humor in literature creation and daily communication. |
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