A Pragmatic Study Of Puns In Chinese

The paper attempts to explore puns in Chinese (We shall often refer to the notion"puns in Chinese"simply as"pun"as shorthand) within the theoretical framework of the Conversational Implicature theory, aiming at making a motivated explanation to pragmatic mechanism of puns in Chinese and solving the problem of how to use pun more effectively in communication. The present researches of puns in Chinese have been done from different perspectives. It is noted that these researches are mainly concerned with the classifications, properties, rhetorical functions, theoretical motivations, and expressive effects. Although some scholars have studied puns in Chinese based on the Conversational Implicature theory, they could not pay emphasis on the pragmatic mechanism of puns in Chinese and only have simply talked about the conversational implicature of advertising pun.It is commonly acknowledged that language has a function of"one can mean more than one says"and that puns in Chinese could convey more information than what is said. As to these phenomena, the author chooses a universally-known figure of speech of puns in Chinese as a studying point to discover its pragmatic mechanism. Puns in Chinese are generally classified into three kinds: the homophonic pun, the homographic pun and the mixed pun. The homophonic pun is pun in which words having the same sound but differing in form and meaning when used. The homographic pun is pun in which the same word has different meanings, and polysemies are mainly used. The mixed pun means that there is a mixing of a homophonic pun and a homographic pun in a word or a sentence.In line with Grice's"non-natural meaning theory", the meaning of puns in Chinese is included in it because pun is related to context closely. In order to uncover the pragmatic mechanism of pun, all the resource of pun in chapter four present in communicative environments. On the basis of Grice's the Conversational Implicature theory, the conversational implicature of puns in Chinese is classified into three groups: Group A: conversational implicature arises but no maxim is violated or at least it is not clear which maxim is violated. Group B: the speaker faces a clash: he observes one maxim and has to violate the other maxim. Group C: the speaker violates or exploits blatantly one of maxims and Grice called this"flouting of the maxims". According to the different contexts, the conversational implicature of puns in Chinese is worked out and upon which the pragmatic mechanism is summarized.The paper is composed of five chapters.Chapter One makes an introduction. There are five parts: Firstly, it is an overview of the present study of puns in Chinese. Secondly, it is the motives of the study. And following the main theory used in the paper. Fourthly, the author gives the purposes of the study. At last, it shows the general organization of the paper.Chapter Two is a general survey of the present researches of puns in Chinese both in the Rhetorical approach and the Linguistic approach (such as Semantic approach, Cognitive approach and Pragmatic approach) from the perspective of theories or motivations.Chapter Three is the paper's theoretical framework. It is H. P. Grice's the Conversational Implicature theory and the related Meaning theory. Chapter Four is centered on analyzing puns in Chinese. Before analyzing, the author gives a general description of the relationship between pun and context. On the basis of the Cooperative Principle and its maxims, the conversational implicature of pun is worked out from three aspects.The last Chapter is the conclusion of the paper. On the basis of the preceding study, the author summarizes the pragmatic mechanism of puns in Chinese and upon which gives the ways of using pun more effectively. At the end of this chapter, the author gives suggestion to make further study. Now, the pragmatic mechanism of puns in Chinese is summarized as follows:(i) Pun supplies two or more levels of information to the communicator, one is the surface information, and the other is the implied. The surface one is not the speaker's real intention; it is a method of expressing the implied one. From this point, pun in communication violates the Cooperative Principle. But in fact, the final purpose of the communicator is intending to convey the implied information of pun, that is to say, the communicator conveys the conversational implicature of pun and thus realizes the successful communication. Therefore, it could be said that pun is cooperative in communication to some extent.(ii) In communication, the decoding course of pun is as follows: under the assumption that the speaker is cooperative, there are two kinds of situation: one is that the speaker observes the maxim of the Cooperative Principle. The other is that the speaker deliberately violates the maxim of the Cooperative Principle. In the former situation, the double information of pun (surface and implied information) presents in the conversation. The hearer gets the surface meaning by way of the conventional thinking, then, by the hinge, the words or sentences of pun, the hearer relates the surface information to the implied information together, and according to the context of the implied information, he (or she) works out the conversational implicature of what the speaker utters. In this situation, the hearer is easy to work out the conversational implicature. In the latter situation, the speaker intentionally violates the maxim of the Cooperative Principle at the level of what is said. So what the speaker has said transcends the convention clearly and only supplies the surface information. From such surface information, the hearer gets the surface meaning which does not conform to the traditions. Then by the hinge, the hearer is induced to think about the implied context. With the help of the implied context, the hearer gets the implied information and then works out the conversational implicature of what the speaker intends to convey. So it is not easy to work out this kind of conversational implicature of pun.(iii) The reason why the speaker violates the maxim of the Cooperative Principle in communication is that it is necessary to conform to the communicative environments. The implied information is realized by the surface information in order to conform to the communicative environments, and the realization of the implied information is dependent of the social and cultural elements. With the help of the communicative environments, the implied meaning of pun could be decoded.