Analysis Of Humor In Zhao Benshan's Sketches From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Humor is laughable and amusing. It reflects the wisdom and attitudes towards life. It has been studied by many scholars for a long time and many different subjects have made their contributions from different aspects. Yet, most of the studies have focused on "what is the essence of humor". In recent years, with the emergence, development and prosperity of linguistic theories, especially pragmatics, we have a wider horizon and a newer perspective in humor studies. Zhao Benshan's sketches are filled with strong local flavor and carry humorous linguistic styles and distinct linguistic features. However, present studies have not arrived at a certain theoretical height except some comments on their linguistic features. This thesis attempts to analyze the humorous language from Zhao Benshan's sketches in the framework of relevance theory developed by Sperber and Wilson (1986/1995).According to relevance theory, a mental search for an optimally relevant interpretation covers the processing of verbal humor and the derivation of humorous effects. When the hearer's expectation of maximal relevance is extremely different from, or incongruous with the speaker's actual utterance of optimal relevance, humorous effects occur. In humorous communication, in order to achieve special humorous effects, humorists tend to employ certain humor strategies and then enable the hearers to obtain global cognitive effects by means of corresponding linguistic realization of such strategies.By applying the basic concept in the framework of relevance theory, the thesis firstexplains the development of the meaning of the word "humor"from the aspect of etymology then introduces the achievements in humor research from linguistics and pragmatic aspects. Next, the thesis introduces some key notions of relevance theory and analyses the general interpretation of verbal humor from the perspective of relevance theory. Finally, the thesis, based on the analysis of the humorous languages in Zhao Benshan's sketches, analyzes the humor strategies that Zhao Benshan uses in his sketches in the framework of relevance theory from the following aspects:first, changing the hearer's cognitive context is one strategy to bring about humor effects. Second, transforming the covert interpretation into optimal relevant interpretation is another strategy to interpret the realization of humor effects. Furthermore, the author summaries the linguistic realization of such strategies respectively.Through the analysis of the classic humorous language in Zhao Benshan's sketches, the author comes to the conclusion that relevance theory is well suited to interpreting the humorous language in Zhao Benshan's sketches.