Relevance And Verbal Humor Understanding

This paPer is a tentative analysis of verbal humor unders1anding in the framework ofrelevance theory develoPed by SPerber & Wilson (1986/1995). SeveraI assumptions havebeen proposed for verbal humor interpreta1ion in this thesis.Firstly, verbaI humor understanding is cl1tirely a pragmatic phenomenon since it dependsmainly on an inferential process againsl a ccrtain Gontext. Pragmatics is the study of thecontext-dePendent asIsects of uttcrancc intcrprctation witl1 ils goal to show l1ow 1inguisticmeaning interacts with contextual assuInplio11s during uttcra11ce comprchension. As such,verbal humor study should no longer be approached from thc traditional lexico-semanticanalysis but within modern pragmatics. SecOI1dly. the classical Gricean apProaches to verbalhumor is not plausible. Due to the Gricean theoreticaI defects, verbal humor as a violation ofthe maxim anaiysis finalIy 1eads to nowhere except fOr more added maxims claimed to bePeculiar tO the humorous utteranccs. As a matter of fact, People usually do not go throughsuch conscious fOrms of reasoning in judging whether a certain maxim has been violaled ornot. Inferential processes in general are sPOntaneous, unconscious and automatic, assuggested by recent work in psychology. Thirdly, relevance theory is proved to be a powerfultheoretic substitutC fOr the previous vcrbal hUInor study. Rclcvance theory is notmaxim-based but an exceptionIess generalisalion aboul communication and co8inition. Therelevance-theoretic comprehension procedure app1ies to every asPect of interpretation, verbalhumor inc1uded. Relevance is assumed to be 1he cogni1ion principle of verbal humorunderstanding. It governs every stage of humor understanding f the PercePtion of incongrUity,the recognition of the implicatures, intenlions and al1ilude conveyed by verbal humorBesides, on the relevance-theoretic approach, contCxt, is no longer fixed in advance, it isdefined as a psycho1ogical construct, a subsel of lhe hearer's assumptions about the world andis constructed as Part of the comprehension process. Cof1text in the pragInatic sense canaccount fOr the failure or misunderstanding in verbal communication. Lastly, in verbal humor,in order to achieve the intended humorous effects, the slwaker always 1eads tl1e hearef, first toa perception of incongruity, then an increasing eflbrt f(1r the resolution of inconbiruity. In thisprocess the extra proGessing effort incurrcd by this kind of humorous POtential is outweighedby some increase in contextual effects. On this basis, I argue that verbal humor can becharacterized as reIevant incongruity. This is seen not only in humorous figurative utterancessuch as metaphor, irony, and pun, but also in non-figurative language too. ln metaphor, we gettwo conceptual domains which do not belong together ln lrony. we have an incongrUousconflict between the speaker's beliefs and the proposilion literally expressed. In pun, wederive two different or enven contradictary assumptions from the same uttCrance. Innon-figurative jokes or longer humorous stories, the eIements of incongruity are shown bycreating mismatching contCxtuaI assumptions on the hear's Part.In all, verbal humor interpre1ation is not a deviant process. A1I involved is that the hearertakes the linguistically encoded sentence. follows a Ixith of 1east effort, enriches it at theexplicit level and comp1ements it at the implicit leve1 until the resulting interpretation meetshis exPectation of re1evance. Only in verba1 humor, the perception of incongruity leads to attincreasing effort with more corresponding cognitive effects resulted.