A Study Of The Mechanism Of English Humors In Verbal Expressions From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The current thesis, within the framework of relevance theory, attempts to explorethe success and the failure of English humors in verbal expressions from the cognitiveaspect. The emphasis is put on the cognitive processes leading to the success and thefailure of English verbal humor and also on the underlying causes involved in verbalhumor failure.There are four chapters together with introduction and conclusion included inthis thesis.First it is a general introduction to the current research, presenting the researchbackground, the theoretical foundation and the central idea of the thesis.Chapter One is literature review, including the development of the concept ofhumor, the major humor theories and humor researches from the perspectives ofsociology and linguistics. Since early times, humor researches have been focused onthe exploration of why we laugh. And the major theories include the superiority theory,the relief theory, the incongruity theory and the incongruity-resolution theory. Thesuperiority theory views laughter as a form of aggression;the relief theory seeslaughter as a release of pressure. Obviously, both of these theories cannot be taken asthe real illustrations of the laughter-eliciting mechanism of humor. Generally speaking,the incongruity theory is regarded as an authorized one to illustrate thelaughter-eliciting mechanism of humor. However, it has been found that theincongruity theory is not a perfect one because incongruity alone cannot create humor.Therefore, the incongruity-resolution theory, which is a further development of theincongruity theory, has been proposed. Like the incongruity theory, theincongruity-resolution theory is also a cognition-based theory. But different from theincongruity theory, the incongruity-resolution theory stresses mental operationinvolved in humor appreciation. This theory exerts a great influence on linguisticresearches on verbal humor. It is based on these points that the incongruity-resolutiontheory can be combined with relevance theory in verbal humor analysis in this thesis.Chapter Two offers the theoretical framework of this thesis. In this chapter, thebasic assumptions of relevance theory have been discussed. Relevance theory is bothcommunication-oriented and cognition-oriented. According to it, humancommunication is an "ostensive-inferential" process, during which the speakerconveys his/her meaning ostensively. The hearer, by inference, seeks relevance andmakes a context selection and then arrives at the correct interpretation of the utterance.Because of the speaker's interest or preference, he/she always produces the utterancewhich is not maximally relevant to the hearer. Therefore, in processing such kind ofutterance, the hearer needs to spend extra effort which can be offset by additionaleffects. In verbal humor communication, such extra effect is the humorous effect. Thisprocess is involved in the resolution of incongruity. Based on this, relevance theorycan integrate with the incongruity-resolution theory in the current research on verbalhumor.Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main body of the thesis, focusing on theapplication of relevance theory to the analysis of English verbal humor.In Chapter Three, the success of verbal humor is discussed within the frameworkof relevance theory. It is held that the success of verbal humor depends on thesuccessful interaction between the humorist, the humorous utterance (the punch line)and the hearer. That is to say, to make verbal humor successful, the humorist musthave a humorous attitude towards someone or something or some event and a desireto convey it to others. At the same time, the humorist must make a correct estimationof the hearer's contextual information and processing abilities and be able to design asmart and reasonable humorous utterance. "A smart and reasonable humorousutterance" here refers to such kind of utterance that once it is uttered, it will producean incongruity at a moderate level on the hearer's psychological level which can beresolved at last. In other words, the humorous utterance is inconsistent with what thehearer expects initially, but after having been processed carefully, it will guide thehearer to arrive at the correct interpretation and amuse him/her at last. Moreimportantly, the hearer must pay attention to the humorous utterance and believe thatit is worth the processing effort and be willing to spend mental effort to process it.Only when the hearer spends the processing effort in the utterance interpretation canthe incongruity be resolved, and then the humorous effect can be achieved. So the keyto the success of verbal humor is the hearer's correct comprehension. That is to say,the hearer can resolve the incongruity created by the humorous utterance throughrelevance seeking and context selection, and so he/she can achieve the correctinterpretation of the humorous utterance at last. The extra effort he/she has spent inhumorous utterance processing will be offset by the additional effects which will takethe form of the humorous effect.Chapter Four mainly explores the failure of verbal humor within the frameworkof relevance theory. It has been acknowledged that incongruity is a necessary but nota sufficient prerequisite for humor production. According to my survey, if verbalhumor is very easy to understand, the incongruity produced by the punch line will betoo small. Thus the hearer does not need to spend extra mental effort in its resolution.As a result, no additional effects will offset the extra effort and then the humorouseffect is hard to achieve. If verbal humor is hard to understand, the incongruityproduced by the punch line will be too big, so it is difficult for the hearer to resolve it.In other words, great extra effort spent in humorous utterance processing cannot beoffset by any additional effect, so it is impossible to produce the humorous effect. Andwhat prevents the hearer from resolving the incongruity is lack of the contextualinformation. That is to say, the hearer will have difficulty in resolving the incongruityif he/she does not have enough logical, encyclopedic or lexical knowledge. In thesecases, the failure of verbal humor cannot be avoided. Besides, incorrect choices ofcontext can also lead to humor failure. Therefore, the same humor is funny for one butunfunny for another since contextual resources and cognitive abilities vary from oneperson to another.At last, the thesis draws the conclusion: the success or the failure of verbalhumor mainly depends on whether the hearer has enough contextual resources andhigher cognitive abilities. Only having enough contextual resources and improvingcognitive abilities can we comprehend and appreciate English verbal humor well andmake it serve our English study better.In addition, the shortcomings in the current research have been pointed out andsome suggestions for the future study have been made, too.