A Cognitive Approach To The Incongruity And Resolution Of Verbal Humor

Humor is a most important part in all cultures and languages and an all-encompassingphenomenon in human communication. Studies on humor and what makes people laugh havebeen traced from Plato, Aristotle, through Kant to the recent Freud, Raskin, Attardo andCouson, Yus.This thesis attempts a qualitative linguistic exploration---especially the cognitivetheory---Frame-shifting, Conceptual Integration, and Relevance Theory in a dynamiccommunicative process, with reference to the psychological Incongruity-Resolution Theory.Linguistics merely finds out the incongruity in humor, however, they make no explanation onthe cognitive process of creation, this is, the process of understanding. This is the focusproblem to be solved in the thesis.Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter, following a brief restriction of the definition andclassification of verbal humor, then points out the basic framework of this thesis.Chapter 2 is the literature review, which reviews the western humor theories and researches.Chapter 3 expounds the Incongruity-Resolution model of humor, and its further development.Chapter 4 is the main body of this thesis. It elucidates on incongruity and its congruousresolution in verbal humor from the angle of cognitive linguistic. First, we review the maintheoretical assumptions of frame-shifting and conceptual integration theory, and theirrelations with the incongruity and resolution of verbal humor. Then we induct the relevancetheory, and expound its relation with humor IR. Finally, we combined the three theoreticalframeworks, give full play to each of them, and try to construct an overall model of theincongruity and resolution of verbal humor.Conclusion summarizes the key ideas of the thesis.