A Relevance-Theoretic Approach To Humor In Chinese Cross Talk

Chinese cross talk, which enjoys a long history and a national fame, is one of the greatest cultural treasures possessed by the Chinese. This form of art, reflecting the social realities of the times in a humorous way, makes people think after laughing. However, for the lack of cultural background knowledge and the knowledge of basic cross talk form and structures, non-Chinese speakers know little about cross talk.Relevance Theory has become an important focus of research in cognitive pragmatics after so many years of efforts exerted by other linguists as well as the founders. This thesis attempts to approaches humor in Chinese cross talk from the perspective of relevance and tries to discover the mechanism of constructing and understanding it.Relevance Theory provides a sound explanation for the balance of processing effort and cognitive effects, which accounts for humor in cross talk. The addressee is willing to sacrifice more cognitive effort to access the more covert interpretation in pursuit of the extra effect - amusement and satisfaction brought about by cross talk. This paper also devotes a large part to the incongruity, which is of critical importance to humor. A relevance-theoretic account of incongruity-resolution in Yus's MGI-SCI model further proves the explicability of RT for humor in this particular discourse.