Relevance-Theoretic Interpretation Of Humorous Utterances

This thesis explores the issue of humorous utterances and the interpretation of humorous utterances in the light of the Relevance Theory (RT) advanced by Sperber and Wilson. Relevance Theory is a currently new theory, which is mainly concerned about cognition and communication. It proposes that communication is an ostensive-inferential process, in which both the speaker and the hearer aim at optimal relevance. RT has been widely applied to study utterance interpretation and translation. Within the framework of the Relevance Theory, humorous utterance interpretation is an ostensive-inferential communication, an interlingual interpretive use of language and a dynamic process of seeking for the optimal relevance.This thesis intends to prove that the Relevance Theory is powerful in accounting for the interpretation of humorous utterances and provides a new angle for the researches into humorous utterance interpretation. It holds that the most important thing for the interpreter is to convey the speaker-intended contextual effects to the target language (TL) audience and make the TL audience have the same response to an utterance as the source language (SL) audience. To retain the humorous effects of the original utterance is the most significant point in humorous utterance interpretation.Chapter One is the introduction of the thesis, which explains the purpose, scope and organization of the thesis.Chapter Two introduces the notion of humor and humorous utterances. The author analyzes the feature, purpose and variety of humorous utterances, which include linguistic humor and cultural humor. Linguistic humor can be further classified into phonetic humor, semantic humor and syntactic humor.Chapter Three explains the feasibility of applying the Relevance Theory in the interpretation of humorous utterances. The author fist gives an outline of the theoretical framework of the RT and then explains the process of humorous utterance interpretation from the perspective of the RT.Chapter Four, based on the relevance-theoretic account of interpretation, discusses two relationships, the relationship between fidelity and validity of the humorous utterance interpretation, and the relationship between translatability and dynamic equivalence. Some interpreting methods are also introduced.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the whole thesis, which summarizes that RT provides powerful explanation for the humorous utterance interpretation and the interpretation based on the RT has higher validity.