A Linguistic Analysis Of Cold Jokes

Cold joke is a neologism that appeared in recent years, it is also a widespread new linguistic phenomenon that can not be ignored. It possesses exuberant vitality and soon gains its wide-range popularity on internet, forums, blogs, BBS, TV shows and in e-mails, comedy movies, books and magazines as well. Input and search "cold jokes" in Baidu, as much as about 13.9 million relevant web pages can be found. Cold jokes are quite different from generic jokes because of their distinct way of laughter generating mechanism which can instantly create a special atmosphere. Therefore, reactions and evaluations from different people towards cold joke are definitely not the same. Different people may take varied attitudes on it as well.Humor presents almost ubiquitously; it brings plenty of happiness and cheer into our lives. Researches on humor and jokes have long before aroused great attention among scholars. There have been a long history in the analyses of humor and jokes from the various angles such as linguistics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication, philosophy, aesthetics and literary criticism, etc., in each field above, outstanding results have been achieved. However, cold joke, a new form of verbal humor, has become popular and famous just for a few years; so far little detailed or systematic study has ever been conducted on it. Cold joke has its unique style and features; there must be some reasons for its emergence and dissemination. Cold jokes are easy to understand, thus relaxation in thinking mode and spirit can be achieved; it contains the mainstream culture which is to come into play on the next wave, so the detailed insights of the youths can be explored; it reflects the ability of recreation, understanding, disintegration, duplicating, making us feel that originality is omnipresent. Cold joke is a special humorous view, a relaxed attitude towards life and a courageous challenge against the shackle of tradition. Its prevalence is a mirror of thoughts in peculiar period and an outcome of postmodernist trends of thoughts. It represents a new thinking mode, striving for brounding thinking and conversation. For these reasons, the thesis intends to conduct a tentative and specific research on dissecting and deeply studying the linguistic phenomenon of cold jokes on the basis of previous research on humor and jokes, and then reaches some conclusions. Proceeding from the angle of linguistics, the thesis chooses cold jokes as research object. The cold jokes are systematically analyzed based on linguistic and other theories. The author adopts qualitative analysis approach to collect and sort out cold jokes which are popular on various media. The rhetorical devices of cold jokes are summed up firstly; meanwhile with the support of linguistic theories such as Grice's Co-operative Principles(CP), Sperber's and Wilson's Relevance Theory(RT) and Fauconnier's Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT), the thesis analyzes the characteristics and laughing mechanism of cold jokes. Interview and questionnaire are designed with the adoption of quantitative distributional analysis approach to look into different persons'cognitions and language attitudes on cold jokes, to find out the reasons for their wide spreading in certain groups of persons, the motivations of their usage and their effects in communication.The thesis is divided into five parts. The first chapter introduces research background, aim and significance, research methods and data collection of the thesis. The second chapter is the literature review which contains relevant definitions, introductions to previous researches on humor and cold jokes as well as knowledge which are related to cold jokes. In the third chapter, this thesis points out the characteristics of cold joke and analyzes its humor according to relevant linguistic theories. In the forth chapter, face-to-face interview and questionnaires are designed in order to explore the recognition and language attitude towards cold jokes. The fifth chapter concludes the entire thesis, points out the research limitations and finally puts forward the enlightenment and prospect for the future.