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A Study Of Verbal Humor As A Pragmatic Strategy

Posted on:2008-10-14Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:C Y FangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360242958177Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Traditionally, most of the researches into humor have been static studies of joke texts. The present study, however, takes a dynamic approach to humor and regards humor as a pragmatic strategy in communication. Based on a general analysis of humor involved in communication, humor as an overall pragmatic strategy is divided into joke teller's strategies and interlocutor's strategies, according to the way humor is involved in communication and in terms of humor producer. Both joke teller's strategies and interlocutor's strategies are analyzed at the macro-level and the micro-level respectively, by adopting the Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH, Raskin 1985) and the basic theories of pragmatics (Levinson 1983). The pragmatic strategy of humor involved in humorous communication also includes signaling strategies by the humor producer and responding strategies by the humor recipient.Joke teller's strategies are the strategies adopted by the speaker in communication so that a certain utterance of his is well-formed as an independent joke discourse. The macro-strategy, or script strategy, which is for the production of both non-linguistic jokes and linguistic jokes, involves opposition, overlap and switch between two scripts. As specific means to implement the macro-strategy, micro-strategies are the manipulation of language at linguistic levels ranging from the orthographic, phonological, lexical, syntactic to the discourse level, and therefore for the production of linguistic jokes only.Interlocutor's strategies are strategies for humor production by either the speaker or the hearer in given conversational settings. Macro-strategies are those related to general principles of communication at the macro-level, specifically the violation of the CP maxims, the fulfillment or violation of the PP maxims and the hearer's deliberate misinterpretation of the illocutionary point/force of the speaker's indirect speech act. Micro-strategies are those related to specific aspects of communication at the micro-level. The analysis of micro-strategies is made with special reference to presupposition and deixis. Presupposition-related strategies include the speaker's triggering of misleading presuppositions and the hearer's misinterpretation of the speaker's shared presupposition; deictics-related strategies are mainly the manipulation of the difference between the deictic and non-deictic use of deictics or between the metaphoric meaning of deictics and their context-dependent deictic meaning.The participants in humorous communication include both the humor producer and the recipient. The recipient's involvement is manifested in his/her use of responding strategies, which indicate his/her different degrees of appreciation of the humor. Besides the strategies for the production of humor itself, the humor producer (joke teller or interlocutor) may feel the need to use signaling strategies to indicate his/her humorous intention or entry into humorous mode of communication.Taking verbal humor as an overall pragmatic strategy with specific strategies covering the whole process of humorous communication, the present study is a new perspective of humor research. Taking verbal humor in particular as the focus of research, which makes it possible to incorporate into humor strategy various pragmatic strategies for humorous effect, the present study is meant to be a new paradigm of the study of pragmatic strategy. As a convergence of humor research and the study of pragmatic strategy, the present study is a contribution to both fields of research and, in particular, builds a new model of pragmatic analysis for verbal humor.
Keywords/Search Tags:verbal humor, pragmatic strategy, joke teller's strategies, interlocutor's strategies, signaling strategies, responding strategies
PDF Full Text Request
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