Attitude Resources In English Verbal Humor

Verbal humor,a sub-genre of humor,is a pervasivc language phenomenon and widely used in human conversations.As it plays an important role in social communication,verbal humor has been attracting much attention of linguists and researchers in various fields.Verbal humor,like any other genre,inevitably shows or implies the evaluation and stance of the humorist,as Thompson maintains that evaluation is a central part of the meaning of any text and that any analysis of the interpersonal meanings of a text must take it into account(Thompson,2000:65). Unfortunately,evaluation didn't attract much attention in previous research on verbal humor.This thesis,after finding out this loophole,tries to analyze verbal humor from the perspective of Appraisal Theory,which is deemed as a most mature theory concerning evaluation and has been applied to analyze different genres of discourse. Meanwhile,emotion,which acts as a basis of humor,is also one focus of Appraisal Theory.There are researchers who see humor as an aesthetic emotion.Ruch (1998:203-228),for example,believes that humor is an emotion.Attitude,one subsystem of the Appraisal Theory,elaborates on emotion and its three sections,that is, Affect,Judgment and Appreciation,are all kinds of emotional response.Affect equals to emotion,concerned with positive and negative emotional responses and dispositions. Judgement is the emotion with respect to human behavior and Appreciation the emotion towards products and processes.Attitude,therefore,can be applied to the study of humor.The current research aims to study the Attitude resources in English verbal humor from the perspective of Appraisal,trying to find out the distribution of these resources, their functions in humor construction and their contributions to humorous effect.To fulfill the task,the current research analyzes 160 funny stories with the Systemic Coder,a linguistic soft ware.To reinforce the research findings,a survey is conducted, the data of which is analyzed by SPSS 14.0.The analysis of Attitude in English verbal humor leads to the conclusion that the Attitude resources are employed by humorists as important attitudinal presuppositions to facilitate the realization of humor and contribute to their humorous effects,which has been proved by the survey.The main findings also include the following: 1.More Appreciation(40.7%)and Judgement(35.8%)resources get involved in English verbal humor,for humor,in essence,is a specific type of comment about some aspects of the world---things and people.2.In/security(42.9%)ranks first among the Affect resources,which shows that people often experience feelings like anxiety and fear resulting from working pressure, keen competition,day-to-day affairs and social problems like drugs,crime,etc.3.Capacity(60.7%)is the highest among Judgement,which shows that in regard to Judgement of human behavior,people pay more attention to one's Capacity than any other trait.Propriety(21.4%)comes the second,which shows that ethics plays an important role in our life.Veracity(8.5%)ranks third because honesty serves as one of the social norms that people are supposed to observe.4.Reaction(45.9%)ranks top of the resources of Appreciation.Similar to the first impression we make on an object,product or process,Reaction is the most lasting and striking.5.The functions of Attitude resources in English verbal humor are listed below.The Attitude resources in English verbal humor serve as important attitudinal presuppositions which either add incongruity by foregrounding the first script or help to resolve the incongruity by foregrounding the second Script.In either case do they facilitate the realization of the great humor as well as bring about a better humorous effect.6.More implicit Attitude resources(nearly 60%)occur in English verbal humor, which shows that humor is to a large extent a matter of implicitly questioning some aspect in the human world and expressing an attitude of self-distancing to it.7.More negative Attitude resources(73%)occur in English verbal humor,which shows that verbal humor often goes with difficult or stigmatized topics and humor acts as one of the main tactics used to cope with life in harsh settings,minimizing the negativity of the events.Research also shows that in the domain of positive Attitude,more explicit values (nearly 60%)occur,while in regard to negative Attitude,implicit values(about 70%) are dominant.There are four chapters together with introduction and conclusion included in this thesis.The Introduction presents the research background,the theoretical foundation and the central idea of the thesis.Chapter One is literature review,including the definition,classification and functions of humor,the major theories of humor,humor researches from various perspectives and the rationale of the present research.Chapter Two aims to offer a general review of Appraisal Theory,including the Origin of Appraisal,the framework of The Appraisal System and previous researches on Appraisal both in China and abroad.Chapter Three is about research methodology, containing the objectives of the research,the data description,the procedure of Systemic Coder and a survey analyzed by SPSS 14.0.In Chapter Four,a detailed analysis of Attitude resources in English verbal humor is made,followed by corresponding explanations.In addition,this chapter studies Attitude according to two variables,that is,explicit/implicit and positive/negative.Functions of the Attitude resources in English verbal humor are suggested and later proved by a survey which probes into the indirectness of the punch line as well.In Conclusion the main findings of this research are listed and possible applications of the findings and limitations of the research are discussed.This thesis explores the Attitude resources in English verbal humor taking Appraisal approach,which provides a brand-new perspective for both the study of verbal humor and the research concerning Appraisal.It is also hoped that the findings in this study can be contributive to humor appreciation and humorous discourse study.