A Study Of English Utterance Humor-from The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Humor is essence of human language and culture, which is pervasive in all kinds of human communication. The present thesis gives an in-depth analysis of English utterance humor from the perspective of relevance theory and a further explanation for the mental process of utterance humor understanding. Furthermore, it provides some measures to improve the sense of humor by analyzing the barriers existing in utterance humor understanding.This thesis naturally falls into six chapters according to its development. Chapter One serves as an introduction of the whole thesis, the purpose, significance and the structure of the present study are presented. Chapter Two is the literature review. The general knowledge as definition, function and elements of humor are presented, followed by a comprehensive review of the existing study of English humor from perspectives of semantics, rhetoric and pragmatics. Chapter Three reviews the theoretic framework of this thesis—Relevance Theory. Cognitive principle of Relevance theory, communicative principle of Relevance Theory and relevance are mainly expounded in this chapter. Chapter Four is the main body of the thesis, aiming to illustrate the relevance-theoretic interpretation of utterance humor in detail by employing key notions of relevance theory—cognitive environment, inference, processing effort and contextual effect. Chapter Five is the findings and implications of the thesis. Through the study, the author finds two main barriers in the humor understanding and appreciation, which are non-mutual cognitive environment and lack of inference, and puts forward some suggestions on how to improve the sense of humor. Chapter Six is the conclusion. It summarizes the present study and points out its limitations on utterance humor analyzed from the perspective of relevance theory.The study explores the relevance theoretic account of utterance humor understanding from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics. The author hopes that it can deepen our understanding of relevance theory and utterance humor as well as contribute to improving the sense of humor so as to guide smooth communication.