Understanding The Verbal Humor Mechanism Based On The Presupposition Theory

Presupposition, as an important theory of linguistics, is widely used in different kinds of verbal communication. By generalizing presence and function manner of presupposition, this paper evaluates application merits of presupposition theory in verbal humor, which is a special verbal communication manner.After detailing relevant basic knowledge of presupposition theory, this paper summarizes presence of presupposition phenomena in verbal humor from three perspectives. First, we start with its style. According to function manner of presupposition theory, we could find that in verbal humor there are existential presupposition, factual presupposition, behavioral presupposition, postural presupposition. For existential presupposition, humor is the case when presupposition information does not accord with common sense or disappointment is brought out as a result of presupposition information from mental perspective. For factual presupposition, humor is produced by result that is dissimilar with facts or common sense and caused by persisting verbal communication. Generally, the fact is confirmed and then through this kind of manner the listener is induced to follow the speaker's intent. For behavioral presupposition, it could be used to execute some kind of conduct. Via behavioral presupposition, the speaker explains his behavior or impacts on the listener's behavior attitude or changes the listener's status in order to achieve some goal. Postural presupposition is used to achieve some verbal goal through comparison.Second, from the perspective of presupposition feature, analysis on its unreversibility, consensus and adequacy is listed. On language factor and non-language factor, disharmony happens where semantic or logic expression does not accord with verbal communication situation or consensus when presupposition is reversing. It is accordant with traditional "incongruity theory" of verbal humor research area. Via presupposition's reversing, disharmony appears. Presupposition's adequacy keep the communication live, when violated, then comes the communicative barrier, disharmony and at last the humor. Presupposition's adequacy is the case when verbal communicative bilateral accidental words do not accord with the presupposition. In general, it contains misunderstanding presupposition, using uncorrected presupposition and using presupposition falsely.The presupposition using, contains using false pragmatic presupposition, pointing out presupposition and saving presupposition. When the listener uses false pragmatic presupposition as the real information to make new assertions, it turns out to be diametrically opposite to the speaker's verbal intent. Then there is information disharmony between the two sides and the humor comes. Both pointing out presupposition and saving presupposition, take advantage of making disharmony to achieve humorous effect.The last is presupposition trigger, iteratives, change of state verbs the emphasis structure all may use in the itself semantics the characteristic to cause humorous.The forth part of this paper, analyzes comprehensively the role that the presupposition plays in verbal humor. And it divides into three pieces, which are the presupposition information providing, the presupposition expression for verbal humor and the presupposition mental factor for verbal humor. The presupposition could provide verbal communication with enough known information, or help understand verbal communication via known information, or make conflicts between known information and information focus, to achieve disharmony phenomena. On expression, humor is born when misunderstanding presupposition information by speaking out known presupposition or hiding it. On mental, to understand verbal humor, the first important thing is that the listener accept presupposition information mentally, have mental expectation and finally disappointed by the speaker at the end of verbal communication.In all, presupposition application is so common in verbal humor and various kinds of humorous effect directly profit from presupposition application. As a result of data collecting, there are some shortness and loophole, which further my deeper research in future.