A Research On English Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of Memetics

The previous linguistics researches on verbal humor show that incongruity of verbal humor is generated by the unconventional usage of rhetorical devices, discourse cohesion means, cooperation principles, politeness principles, speech acts and logic, etc. The previous researches still suggest that verbal humor is much related to four key factors: language, context, cognition and hearer. But any linguistic perspective mentioned above only involves one or two of the four key factors in the analysis of verbal humor. While the present research finds that memetics possibly interprets the four key factors at one time.As to the factors of language itself, verbal humor can be generated from disharmony between content and form of memetic genotype or memetic phenotype. With regard to the factor of context, no default context knowledge of language meme usually makes comprehension of verbal humor failed. As far as the factor of hearer is concerned, the scope of language meme transmission determines that not everyone does know some language meme; therefore, verbal humor based on the language meme is not funny at all for some hearers. Concerning the factor of cognition, meme variation in content or form can cause cognitive transformation of expectation into nothing, generating humorous effects. In this sense, verbal humor is a cognitive process. Therefore, verbal humor can be interpreted from the perspective of memetics. Memetically, we are meme machine, countless memes have already resided in our brains, so the violation of normality in verbal humor may also be said to be violation of memes stored in brain.The present research finds that characteristics of meme replication and meme variation have effect on generation of verbal humor; moreover, verbal humor based on language meme will promote replication and transmission of language meme contained in verbal humor. The present research also finds: firstly, congruity of verbal humor may be interpreted from disharmony between default context and new context of language meme, besides, default context of language meme plays a key role in the interpretation of language meme; secondly, verbal humor may be formed in four stages of meme replication–assimilation and retention stage of language meme are preparation stage of verbal humor, expression and transmission stage of language meme are generation and appreciation stage of verbal humor; thirdly, verbal humor may be generated from ways of language meme replication and transmission, which can be specifically divided into five ways, in other words, verbal humor is generated from disharmony between content and form of memetic genotype or memetic phenotype.The present research is a tentative research, which makes a qualitative analysis based on the data collected from Friends. Moreover, it is hoped that the present research will be beneficial to research of verbal humor.