An Adaptation-Relevance Theoretical Approach To Verbal Humor In Hou Baolin's Cross Talk

This thesis presents a pragmatic study of verbal humor in Hou Baolin's cross talk in the light of Adaptation-Relevance theoretical model.Adaptation theory and relevance theory are two pragmatic theories which have been widely employed in analyses of linguistic phenomena. In spite of the wide application of these two theories, neither adaptation theory nor relevance theory can explain a linguistic phenomenon with both descriptive and explanatory adequacy. In order to get out of this dilemma, a couple of scholars put forward an Adaptation-Relevance model which combines the strong points of both adaptation theory and relevance theory and becomes an improved one.With the purpose of demonstrating the applicability and feasibility of Adaptation-Relevance model in elucidation of verbal humor in cross talk shows performed by the famous artist Hou Baolin, the author collects six comic dialogues which represent six different kinds of methods of constructing and uncovering the two types of packages of cross talk and provides detailed analyses of them. Besides this main purpose, the author also hopes this adaptation-relevance theoretical approach to verbal humor in Hou Baolin's cross talk can contribute to people's deep understanding of the mechanism of production and interpretation of verbal humor in Hou Baolin's cross talk.In the part of conclusion, it is concluded that Adaptation-Relevance model is applicable and feasible when employed to analyze verbal humor in Hou Baolin's cross talk. In addition, the author points out the limitations of this thesis and furthermore puts forward suggestions for improvement in the future studies of this topic.