Russian Verbal Humor Pragmatics

Humor is not only a peculiar phenomenon of the ethical culture, but a special form of verbal communication as well. The researchers have already done lots of work on the effect of humor from varous aspects, but since humor is a form of the verbal comprehension and a form of the live speech, it necessarily has close relation to pragmatics. The humor in Russian which takes the effects of human into consideration, is the most important part of the world culture, and has close relation with the culture and the general situation of the country. After summarizing the humor-related theories, this paper analyses humor from pragmatic aspect with the Russian jokes as the examples, and with the theory of presupposition, cooperative principle, situation, speech act theory and relevance theory. If the analysis of humor can be applied to the teaching of Russian, the results will be rewarding.