On Verbal Humor Of Short Sketch From The Perspectives Of Cooperative Principle And Relevance Theory

As a kind of language phenomenon, verbal humor has a special pragmatic effect. Many scholars tend to do research on verbal humor of Chinese and foreign jokes and Chinese cross talk from the perspectives of sociology, psychology or the theory of conversational implicature. However, the research on Chinese short sketch is far from enough. By means of the Spring Festival Gala Evening, short sketch has become a kind of social culture. Therefore, the perception and interpretation of the verbal humor of short sketch in the Spring Festival Gala Evening is a very meaningful research topic.Based on Cooperative Principle and Relevance Theory, the present thesis attempts to reveal the cognitive process of understanding verbal humor, making a comparison of the impact on verbal humor between the two pragmatic theories. And the analyzing cases of humor are from short sketch in the Spring Festival Gala Evening over the past ten years. Cooperative Principle and Relevance Theory are two important theories in pragmatics, which has powerful explanatory to verbal understanding. The thesis is comprised of six chapters.Chapter one is introduction. It includes data sources, significance, research methods and organization of the thesis.Chapter two is the literature review. It introduces the previous theories of humor, including superiority theory, the incongruity theory and the release theory. It also provides some information and investigation about short sketch. Then an overview of previous studies of general theories of humor, Cooperative Principles and Relevance Theory will be provided.Chapter three is theoretical framework. It first discusses the violation of four maxims of Cooperative Principles, including violation of maxim of quantity, violation of maxim of quality, violation of maxim of relevance and violation of maxim of manner. And then it talks about Relevance Theory and several important definitions, including ostensive-inferential mode, contextual effects and processing effort and principles of relevance.Chapter four is mainly concerned with humor interpretation of short sketch from the perspective of the Cooperative Principle and Relevance Theory. According to Grice, language humor arises from the violations of Cooperative Principle, while Sperber and Wilson consider that the source of production of humor is the gap between maximal and optimal relevance.Chapter five first makes a comparison between Cooperative Principle and Relevance Theory. And then it makes an interpretation of verbal humor by explaining the differences of the two perspectives in terms of the generating mechanism, figures of speech. Grice holds the view that the violation of maxims of Cooperative Principle is the root of the birth of humor. However, Sperber and Wilson believe that the production of humor lies in the gap between maximal relevance and optimal relevance. Grice thinks that metaphor as well as pun, irony and hyperbole results from the deliberate violation of the maxim of Cooperative Principle. However, according to Relevance Theory, metaphor belongs to a universal discourse and is just a kind of loose talk while irony is an echoic use of one's experience.Chapter six summarizes the major findings of the study, the limitations of the study and some suggestions for further research.