A Pragmatic Study Of Features Of Humorous Conversations In Reader's Digest

Based on Grice's theory of the Cooperative Principle, this paper hasconducted a linguistic-pragmatic study of the humorous conversations inReader's Digest. While trying to summarize the pragmatic features ofhumorous conversations in this journal, it revisits Grice's taxonomy ofmaxim nonfulfillments.With reference to the five types of nonfulfillment (i.e. flouting, opting out, clash,suspension & infringement, and violation), this paper has studied two representativehumor columns in twelve monthly issues of Reader's Digest (January throughDecember, 2003). Through discussions of possible semantic interpretations of keywords and/or whole propositions, and the conflicts between the speaker'spresupposition and the hearer's assumption, the paper summarizes the cases ofmaxim nonfulfillments and confirms the omnipresence of the supreme generalprinciple of cooperation in human communication, and proves, against existingliterature on the study of humor, that humorous effects result from maximnonfulfillments rather than violating the Cooperative Principle.