A Study Of The Temporal Compression In The Humor Of Chinese Crosstalks

Since Fauconnier & Turner have shown us the powerful explanation of Conceptual Blending Theory in different phenomena, many researchers at home and abroad have become quite interested in this theory. Study of humor from this perspective has also attracted many researchers'attention. However, most studies of this kind are too broad and commonplace. Therefore, this paper will study the humor of Chinese crosstalks from another point of the theory, that is the vital relations and their compressions. This paper will choose one of the vital relations and their compressions, temporal compression to show how it works in Chinese crosstalks to achieve the humorous effect.This paper consists of five chapters. First chapter offers a brief introduction about the research background and the main structure of the paper. Chapter two gives a glimpse of the definition of humor and the previous studies towards humor generation. Chapter three makes a general introduction about conceptual blending theory and a detailed description of vital relations and their compressions, and the governing principles. Chapter four is the core part of this paper: five pieces of Chinese crosstalks are selected to analyze how temporal compression works in Chinese crosstalks to achieve the humorous effect. Last chapter is the summary of the paper, and the contributions, limitations and further work of the study.