A Study Of English Verbal Humor From Perspectives Of Semantics And Pragmatics

Humor is everywhere in our daily life . As a language phenomenon, humor plays an important role in English culture. In daily communication, humor ameliorates personal relations, improves communicative atmosphere, but also is endowed with the symbol of personal wit, glamour and education. Humor is a meaningful concept. The definitions of humor are somewhat controversial. Some people think it is a temperament, a spirit and an attitude to life; some think it is a personality, an artistic style and an aesthetic form; others think it is a tone, a mind style, etc. .Though there is no exact definition of humor , for the purposes of this study, I have chosen to use"humor"as a generic term to cover any phenomena with humor-inducing potential.Humor can be classified into two categories: situational humor and verbal humor. In this thesis, our efforts are chiefly made to deal with verbal humor.Throughout the centuries , humor has been studied by psychologists , physiologists and philosophers . Nowadays the study of humor has already become a special and independent discipline . With the rapid development of natural and social sciences , scholars have extended the humor studies from those above--mentioned traditional fields to such broader ones as anthropology ,pedagogy , aesthetic , sociology ,and many others .Since the 1950s , the world has witnessed great changes in the field of linguistics . The study of linguistics no longer stays on the stage of grammatical studies , but turns to the meaning aspect of languages . In recent years , semantics , cultural linguistics , pragmatics have arisen and developed into important branches of linguistics . The theories of semantics and pragmatics now sharpen our eye and widen our horizon in humor studies.Humor , as a kind of speech communication , can be explained with the help of semantics and pragmatics for the reason that the realization of humor especially depends on the context and the implied meaning of the language . Here appears an intersection between the humor studies and the semantic and pragmatic theories . This thesis intends to apply the basic linguistics theories to humor , especially verbal humor . With the help of sample analysis illustrating how the respective semantic...