A Pragmatic And Cognitive Analysis Of Banter

Banter is teasing in a playful way, aiming at rapport versus aggression. It is different from joke or humor, which is either to provoke laughter or amusement. As an important means in human communication, banter is often used to facilitate human relationships, relieve tense atmosphere, reinforce in-group solidarity, bring us pleasure and happiness, and make our life colorful. The current thesis attempts to explore banter from pragmatic and cognitive aspects. The emphasis is put on the banter production and interpretation within the framework of Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory.There are three chapters, including the introduction and conclusion.The introduction helps the reader of this thesis to gain a general impression of it. It introduces the object of this research and explains why such a study is conducted and what the purposes of the study are.Chapter One first serves to introduce present studies on banter and their limitations. Then, giving the definitions of banter, it explores the pragmatic features and main devices of banter from a pragmatic view. Banter possesses such features as unseriousness, incongruity and so on. The main devices of banter are composed of literal devices which may include impolite address forms, swearing and cursing words, and linguistic taboos, and figurative devices which may include metaphor, pun, hyperbole, understatement and so on. After that, it discusses the politeness perspective of banter through exploring the relation between politeness, impoliteness and banter, and the comparison between banter and irony, real politeness and real impoliteness, as well as virtual impoliteness and virtual politeness. Banter is offensive on the surface, but at a deeper level intends to maintain comity, that is to say, banter refers to employing a literally impolite utterance to convey a truly polite goal, and thus banter conveys real politeness and virtual impoliteness. On the contrary, irony maintains politeness in the surface, but at a deeper level intends to offend, that is to say, irony is employing a literal polite utterance to convey a truly impolite goal, and thus irony conveys real impoliteness and virtual politeness. Finally, it also explores the banter effect which may include positive effect and negative effect and the response to banter which may include showing an amused expression, responding with another banter utterance and so on.Chapter Two and Chapter Three are the core parts of this thesis. Chapter Two attempts to study banter within the framework of Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. On one hand, Relevance Theory is both communication-oriented and cognition-oriented. According to it, banter communication is also an ostensive-inferential process, during which the speaker conveys his/her meaning ostensively. The hearer, by inference, seeks relevance and makes a context selection and then arrives at the correct interpretation of the banter utterance. In banter communication, because of such reasons as the speaker's interest or preference and so on, he/she may always produce the utterance which is not maximally relevant to the hearer. Therefore, in processing banter utterance, the hearer needs to spend extra effort which can be offset by additional effects. In verbal banter communication, such extra effect is the banter effect such as reinforcing comity or friendliness, exerting laughter or humorous effect and so on. On the other hand, Conceptual Blending Theory has complete networks, which functions independently according to a set of uniform structural and dynamic principles. The operation is based on four spaces: two input spaces, a generic space, and a blended space. In the process of banter blending the projection is selective. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure which is not provided by the inputs, that is, successfully understanding the banterer's communicative intention.Chapter Three first discusses the production of banter through exploring the role of the banterer in banter communication and the contextual restrictions on banter production. Then based on the notions and arguments as well as the complementarities between Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory, two models are proposed to explain successful banter understanding and unsuccessful banter interpretation respectively. According to the first model, the bantered's successful understanding of the banter utterance is a dynamic integration of the new information and the cognitive context, especially the cognitive context in prominence. The new information activates the hearer to search the relevant information in the cognitive context and find out the prominent one, which is very critical to successfully understand the speaker's communicative intention. The interaction between the new information and the prominent information changes the cognitive context in three ways: a) strengthening existing assumptions; b) contradicting existing assumptions; c) combining with existing assumptions to yield contextual implications----conclusions derivable from input and context together, but from neither input nor context alone. Then, with the guidance of the optimal relevance, the hearer choose the most appropriate one, and integrate the change in the cognitive context with the input space to achieve a successful understanding of the speaker's communicative intention, that is, the banter meaning.The second model is solidary to the first model. According to the second model, the bantered attempts to search the maximally relevant information in his/her cognitive context with the activation of the banter utterance. However, the bantered stops when he/she finds the most maximally relevant information, so he/she fails to find out the prominent information. There exists missing link between the cognitive context and the prominence in cognitive context. Then through integration between the banter utterance and the maximally relevant information, the bantered only obtains a superficial understanding of the banterer's informative intention instead of a full understanding of his/her communicative intention, that is to say, the bantered fails to understand the banter utterance. Some explanation and examples are given to illustrate the two models in details.The conclusion part first summarizes the major findings in this thesis. Then, it also gives suggestions for the future research.