| Considering whatever are either the skills of linguistic expression or the specific effects of linguistic interaction, humor is one linguistic interaction in our daily communication. As one important language phenomenon and form, humor can bring the audiences great pleasure, release their pressure and maintain their relationships in verbal interaction. Therefore, how do the audiences succeed in interpreting verbal humor? It is of great importance for them to find out the trigger mechanism of verbal humor.Clash is the trigger mechanism of producing the humor in verbal interaction. That is to say, the generating mechanism of verbal humor is the clash between the default (also the information the audiences get through conventional inference in the anterior utterance) and the reality (also the information the audiences get factually in the later utterance).According to the adaptation theory, language use is a process of choice and adaptation of four aspects, namely, contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of adaptation processes.Firstly, the thesis is based on the analysis of the previous researches on verbal humor study made at home and abroad, and attempts to discuss the relief of clash in verbal humor from the adaptation theory. Secondly, in the process of the adaptation analysis of verbal humor, we furthermore come up with a new working model of verbal humor---the adaptation working model of verbal humor interpretation, which is based on the structure of a pragmatic theory in adaptation theory and cognitive process of verbal humor interpretation. Then, we attempt to apply the adaptation working model of verbal humor interpretation to making case studies of interpreting verbal humor. As a result, its application to the interpretation of verbal humor is tested to be as workable as well. So it is not hard to see that it is also feasible to apply this new model to the analysis of verbal humors.
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