A Cognitive Study Of Humor In English

Humor reflects peoples'wisdom and attitudes towards life and brings us great pleasure. Based on the incongruity theory, the present thesis aims to explore the cognitive process of humor in English within the framework of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) put forward by Fauconnier.Based on the incongruity theory of humor, through the analysis of data selecting from the famous American sitcom Friends and The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, humor is classified into three kinds in the thesis: humor caused by the incongruity of lexical incongruity, humor caused by the incongruity of logical incongruity and humor caused by the incongruity of encyclopedia information. Each type, according to existing form, is subclassified into verbal humor and humorous English sayings. They are discussed with the help of CBT respectively.