The Complementarities Of Relevance Theory And Conceptual Blending Theory In Comprehending Verbal Humor

Humor is ubiquitous and indispensable in our daily life. It plays a crucial role in creating joyful atmosphere, easing tension, keeping harmonious social relationships and so on. Like poetry, humor transforms the world.In the last two decades, researches on humor both at home and abroad were mainly done from the perspective of Relevance theory (RT) put forward by Sperber & Wilson. Relevance theory holds that communication is a kind of ostensive-inferential communication, and utterances of communicators are always relevant. Those who analyze humor in the light of Relevance theory may think that Relevance theory is one of the best theories.Recently, Conceptual Blending theory (CBT) brought forward by Fauconnier & Turner has attracted much more attention both at home and abroad for its forceful explanatory power. The notions of conceptual blending and emergent structure can be shown clearly in the network, which offers us a vivid view of the mental operation in the process of interpreting language phenomena. Those who have begun to analyze humor in the light of Conceptual Blending theory may think that Conceptual Blending theory is a better one or even the best one in interpreting humor so far.The author of this thesis has made a wild assumption that neither of the two theories is better than the other or can even take place of the other; they supplement each other in interpreting humor, and we have a better understanding of humor when we combine the two theories.In order to show clearly the complementarities of RT and CBT in interpreting English humors, the author tentatively proposes a cognitive pragmatic working model (based on Wang Wenbin & Linbo, 2003). In this model, the author believes that the relevance is the presupposition since humorous utterances contain a certain relevancy in most cases. However, the effect of humor cannot be reached only by the process of inference, because the inferential process is just a working process in understanding English verbal humor. The result cannot be reached merely through the inferential process. Only when the hearer sets up a conceptual blending space composed of different frames, he or she can reach the emergent structure, that is, the result of the successful interpretation.Thus, this paper, from the perspectives of Relevance theory and Conceptual Blending theory, aims to probe into the cognitive mechanisms involved in the process of English verbal humor interpretation to testify the assumption that the successful reading of a verbal humor is decided not merely by relevance and inference, but also by conceptual blending and emergent structure.