A Study On Verbal Humor In Zhao Benshan's Comedy Skits From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

The present thesis mainly goes to analyze the audience's comprehension process of verbal humor in comedy skits and the pragmatic strategies used by skit writers to produce verbal humor in the framework of Relevance Theory (RT, Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995). The thesis takes verbal humor as the research object and tends to interpret it with RT from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics. The author selects Zhao Benshan's comedy skits as the data of research and uses a qualitative analysis method.The thesis attempts to answer two questions:What is the audience's comprehension process of verbal humor in comedy skits from the perspective of RT? What are the pragmatic strategies used by skit writers to create humorous effect from the perspective of RT. The purpose of the current study is, first of all, to reveal the cognitive process of verbal humor in comedy skits and the pragmatic strategies usually used by skit writers to create humorous effect based on RT, then to validate the interpretive force and adaptability of RT on verbal humor in Chinese comedy skits, and finally to expand the scope of application of RT.In this thesis,13 comedy skits performed by Zhao Benshan on CCTV Spring Festival Gala from 1999 to 2011 are selected as the scope of linguistic material for study. The 24 classically amusing fragments of lines in 9 comedy skits which are selected from the 13 comedy skits with a simple random sampling method are used as the data of research. Through the study of RT, this thesis establishes an analysis mode of RT about the cognitive process of verbal humor: Maximal relevance (assumed optimal relevance)â†'Irrelevanceâ†'Optimal relevance. The thesis interprets the 24 humorous fragments of lines one by one with this analysis mode, analyzes and concludes the comprehension process and pragmatic strategies of verbal humor in Zhao Benshan's comedy skits from the perspective of RT.As can be concluded from analysis of the text samples, the comprehension process of verbal humor in comedy skits is mainly reflected in four aspects based on RT: ostensive and inferential process of humor, gap between maximal relevance and optimal relevance, activation of cognitive context and additional cognitive efforts. According to RT, the author considers that the audience's comprehension of verbal humor approximately goes through three phases. In the first phase, cognitive context is established to comprehend verbal humor. In the second phase, incongruity is detected. In the third phase, optimal relevance is sought to obtain the contextual effect of humor. It is using the comprehension process of verbal humor in comedy skits that skit writers convert the theory of Yus (2003) on interpretative steps of humor to pragmatic strategies of producing verbal humor in comedy skits, which can be approximately divided into four aspects:misguidance by logical form, production of ambiguity, use of semantic vacancy and use of cognitive context. The thesis also validates the strong interpretive force and adaptability of RT on verbal humor in Chinese comedy skits.The thesis is of certain significance for the exploration of verbal humor and research of RT. At the same time, due to the limitations of theoretical foundation and knowledge structure of the author, this thesis also has some limitations.