Comparative Study Between English And Chinese Humor Under Autonomy-dependency Analysis Framework: A Cases Study Of Pun

With the development of linguistics, the study of humor now attracts the attention of more and more linguists. The theory of cognitive linguistics provides a new perspective to the study of humor, which could give a better explanation to the study of humor and is helpful for a comparative study between English and Chinese humor.From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, by applying the mental model based on research paradigm—Autonomy-Dependency Analysis Framework put forward by Professor Xu Shenghuan, the purpose of this thesis is to make a comparative study between English and Chinese humor (esp. pun) so as to find the similarities and differences between them and try to apply this conclusion to the translation between English pun and Chinese pun by putting forward some workable advices for the practical translation in this field.After reviewing the previous studies on English pun and Chinese pun, the author finds that there are few experts engaging in the comparative study of pun between English language and Chinese language from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, scarce books or papers concerning the cognitive aspects of pun or taking pun as the data or the research target to find out the underlying mechanism. With the method of abductive and text analysis, by absorbing the previous achievements and applying the mental model based on research paradigm—Autonomy-Dependency Analysis Framework and other relevant principles of cognitive science, this thesis puts forward its own classification of pun. Based on the classification, this thesis also probes into the difference of the inner production mechanism of English pun and Chinese pun and the cause of the differences from the perspective of culture. Finally, the author also presents some preliminary advices on the translation of puns. To better achieve the goal, the following questions will be analyzed:(1)What are the similarities and differences between Chinese and English in the process of the production of pun?(2)What cultural factors should be considered when analyzing certain language phenomenon?(3)Could the results be applied to translation?Through the analysis of some examples of pun, the following conclusions have been reached:(1) By applying the theories of cognitive linguistics, especially the mental model based on research paradigm—Autonomy-Dependency Analysis Framework put forward by Professor Xu, it can be found that the inner production mechanism of English pun and Chinese pun shares the identical process. In other words, people speaking Chinese and English respectively have the similar way of thinking, which can be applied to other fields of study, such as translation. The different characteristics of the two languages, for example, the twoness of Chinese, could exert some influences on the production mechanism, and lead to different features of English pun and Chinese pun.(2) In the analysis of any language phenomenon, the cultural factors can not be ignored, including the historical background, natural environment, customs, economic and political affairs and literary works.(3) During the cognitive analysis of English pun and Chinese pun, it can be found that pun translation is rather difficult because of the different cultural factors and different features in both English language and Chinese language. Therefore, the good acquaintance of two languages and their cultures is an important precondition of mutual translation between English pun and Chinese pun. As for those puns with no equivalent transflation, the translator should take effort to find some expressions in target language which could render the similar semantic and stylistic meanings of the original pun.In general, this thesis tries to explain the production mechanism of English pun and Chinese pun by applying the cognitive theories, which can be called an innovation of the present thesis. Meanwhile, the limitations still exist:data used for research are limited; this thesis mainly focuses on the puns with humorous meanings, and they cannot represent all forms of humor in the two languages; the conclusion got by the abductive reasoning method needs further testing.