| As a unique art of performance on the stage, the comedic skits has been topics of tremendous interest in a wide variety of disciplines. Whereas great importance has been attached to the issues in the production and performance of the comedic skits from the viewpoint of drama, little attention has been paid to the witty language itself, which essentially ensures the humorous effect of the comedic skits. It is in fact a display of the current research trend—caring more about the production(phenomenon)than the process. As for the connections between language and humor, they are closely associated with each other. Language constitutes an integral part of humor, while humor is generated through the deviation of the linguistic elements. The comedic skits of China originates from 1980s,when the play Eating Noodles performed by Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao has been presented to the screen. Since then, the comedic skits has become an indispensable programme of the Spring Festival Gala Evening. It also gives rises to a group of excellent performing artists, among who, Zhao Benshan is assumed to be the most typical and accessible representative. He has awarded"the most popular comedic skits"for over ten successive years and is entitled as"The king of the comedic skits". As far as I am concerned, apart from his profound performing ability, the special style of the humorous utterance with his own characteristic is supposed be an even more important aspect which contributes a lot to the success of his comedic skits.In recent years, the research of comedic skits from linguistic angle has aroused wide concern of the scholars gradually, more and more people come to realize that the relationship between language and humor is mutually dependent and inseparable. Some have made an attempt to analyze the humorous utterance from pragmatics with the theory of RT (Relevance Theory) and CP (Cooperative Principle); some have probed into the conversational implicature of humor from semantics; among which, the interpretation made from cognitive linguistics perspective is rare. According to Palmer, nothing is born to be humorous, it depends on the cognitive process of the recipients.Besides,Xu Lixin had once remarked in his work The research of the humorous discourse:"As for the research of operational process of humor, it is far from completed and remains to be studied further". The theory of the idealized cognitive model proposed by Lakoff in his classical work Women,Fire and Dangerous Things, is one of the most important terms in cognitive linguistics, which is considered to be an effective approach to semantic interpretation, as well as a key concept in cognitive semantic analysis. Humor is a distinctive language phenomenon, for which a multi-dimensional study is extremely needed.Most of the current researches on comedic skits are of cognitive pragmatics nature, it maintains that humor is a cognitive process which deals with the laugh-producing mechanism, as well as verbal communication mechanism. As for the humorous utterance phenomenon in comedic skits, more and more experts have paid attention to and made explorations for the subject by using Relevance Theory and Blending Theory. This paper aims to apply the Idealized Cognitive Model into the exploration of the humorous mechanisms in Zhao Benshan's comedic skits so as to demonstrate the rationality and feasibility of the new model, and inspires a new thinking for the study of humorous utterance. The traditional semantic theory may appear restrictive when facing with some daily-concept category, compared with the idealized cognitive model, which supposed to be an open and dynamic system of semantic interpretation and of great explanatory power for humorous utterance. |
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