Interpreting Verbal Humor-from The Perspectives Of Semantic Script Theory Of Humor, Relevance Theory And Conceptual Blending Theory

Humor is pervasive as a way of verbal communication. Research on humor has a long history, even traced back to Plato's period of early ancient Greece. Humor research has received extensive attention from the fields of philosophy, literature, sociology, psychology and linguistics and so on. In the traditional humor research, the representative theories mainly have Incongruity theory, Superiority theory and Relief theory.From three perspectives of Raskin's Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH), Sperber and Wilson'Relevance Theory (RT), and Fauconnier's Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), this thesis gives an explanation of verbal humor interpretative mechanism. In this thesis, chapter 2, 3 and 4 respectively elucidates the basic principles of Semantic Script Theory of Humor, Relevance Theory, and Conceptual Blending Theory, and subsequently applies the basic principles of every theory to interpret verbal humor. But it is found that no theory can fully interpret verbal humor.Semantic Script Theory of Humor illustrates the necessary and sufficient conditions of humor production: script overlapping and script opposition, but Semantic Script Theory of Humor can not formulate why readers first activate a default script, however, it is not until the next part of speech contradicts the first script that readers construe the second script to interpret verbal humor, which can not clearly express the reasons why scripts shift. Relevance Theory is a guiding principle of human verbal communication, of course, which is suitable to the interpretation of verbal humor. This thesis applies the ostensive-inferential communication, contextual effects and processing efforts, and the gap between the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance in Relevance Theory to interpret verbal humor, which supplements the shortcomings of Semantic Script Theory of Humor and can give a good explanation of reasons why scripts shift. But Relevance Theory is too general and vague to reflect the dynamic construction of verbal humor. Conceptual Blending Theory can adequately supplement Relevance Theory, which involves conceptual blending networks and blending process, which can deduce the on-line dynamic construction of verbal humor; but Conceptual Blending Theory lacks a guiding principle like Relevance Theory.In this thesis, chapter 5 comes to a conclusion that there exist necessities for combining three theories to explain verbal humor, and formulates a frame of the combining three theories to give an interpretation of verbal humor. The interpretative frame of verbal humor consists of five parts:(1) Readers first activate the default script (Script 1) in the former part (Input Space 1) of verbal humor according to the principle of maximal relevance;(2) Elements in Script 1 are projected into selectively and interact with elements in the latter part (Input Space 2, i.e. Punch line), but which are not very relevant;(3) Readers activate the other script (Script 2) of the former part (Input Space 1) to correspond with the latter part (Input Space 2) according to the optimal relevance;(4) Elements in Script 2 are projected into selectively and interact with elements in Input Space 2 (Punch line),which coincide with each other just right;(5) Readers compare and blend two projections, and recognize the emergent content. Humorous effects are achieved.