A Study Of Verbal Humor Based On Relevance Theory

In this paper, a cognitive approach to humor is adopted within the framework of Relevance theory developed by Sperber and Wilson (1986,1995). Humor is everywhere in our daily life. Nowadays the study of humor has already become a special and independent discipline. In recent years, semantics, cultural linguistics, pragmatics have arisen and developed into important branches of linguistics. The theories of pragmatics now sharpen our eye and widen our horizon in humor studies. This paper, based on the fruitful studies of humor, attempts to investigate the English verbal humor from the perspective of relevance theory. In relevance theory, a mental search for an optimally relevant interpretation covers the processing of verbal humor and the derivation of humorous effects. "Extra effort means extra effects."(Wilson, 1999:52) When the hearer's expectation of maximal relevance is extremely different from, or incongruous with the speaker's actual utterance of optimal relevance, humorous effects accompanied by misunderstanding occur. According to Sperber and Wilson, relevance is defined in terms of cognitive effects and processing effort: (a) The greater the cognitive effects, the greater the relevance; (b) The smaller the processing effort, the greater the relevance. Verbal humor involves an element of indirectness or accidental irrelevance, which is to decrease its relevance and require extra processing effort. Nonetheless, the extra processing effort implies additional effects. In the comprehension of verbal humor, the extra processing effort invested is to be offset by additional humorous effects, by which the audience will be amused. And this also explicates why people prefer to produce and comprehend humorous utterance, which are virtually more effort-demanding.