The Pragmatics Study Of The Verbal Humor In American Talk Show

Humor has been defined in various dictionaries as follows:Humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughterand provide amusement.Humor is explained as “The ability or tendency to think that things are funny, orfunny things you say that show you have this ability.” What’ more,“the quality insomething that makes it funny and makes people laugh.” in Longman Dictionary ofContemporary English on line.It is defined as “quality of being amusing or comic” in Oxford AdvancedLearner’s English-Chinese Dictionary.Humor is annotated as “The quality of being laughable as well as comical andthe ability to understand or express what is comical, witty, etc.” in the AmericanHeritage Dictionary of the English Language.It is considered as “a comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement”,“the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical”,“an instance of being orattempting to be comical or amusing” from Dictionary. Com.Humor is“the sound of silence”,“something funny, laugh with lots of humor,funny makes people laugh, otherwise humor makes people think more. In theWebopedia baike.baidu.comHumor means “anything (usually talking and behavior) interesting as well ashaving deep meanings.” according to Chinese dictionary Xian Dai Han Yu Ci Dian.Humor is the art of communication which can resolve the embarrassmentbetween speakers, lessen burden and pressure of daily life. Humor is a way to build arelaxing atmosphere among speakers. Humorous language involves profound thinkingof one person that can even have a role of sarcasm.Humor can help people out of embarrassment from the situation. Those guyswith sense of humor are more accepted in social communication, and what’s morehumor can help communicate with strangers, and resolve embarrassing situation. Humor is a long history research issue, the premier theory of humor can berelated back to era of Plato and Aristotle in Ancient Greece, and is revised anddeveloped continuously in the following era. The topic of humor appeals many ofscholars from different disciplines. That presents multi-angle research of humor.Scholars such as philosophy, literature, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, andaesthetics and so on make great efforts on research of humor including defininghumor from diverse angles.Through the centuries, the term had changed which comes to refer to one’s moodor state of mind in a very general sense. However, there is not final conclusion for thedefinition of humor. As Congreve (1984) says:”To define humor is difficult for it is ofinfinite variety”.Scholars also categorize humor into different classifications. Some are based onthe structure of humor, whereas others are based on the semantic content. There aresatire, anecdote, irony, farce, parody, joke, comedy, cartoon, pun and political humor,sexual humor, religious humor.Lots of scholars work on humor from psychology and form three importantconventional theories of humor which are called superiority theory, incongruity theoryand relief theory. Study on humor has made a lot of progress and from differentaspects over the centuries. Linguistically, studies such as semantics, syntax, stylisticsand pragmatics promoted widely and newly angle for humor study. Semantic scripttheory of humor (SSTH) and the general theory of verbal humor (GTVH) are twomain theories from semantic angle. Interaction between language and cognition isstudied. Research on humor from the aspect of pragmatics such as presupposition,cooperative principle, speech act theory and relating theory are also studied bylinguists in different countries.As the main form of humor, verbal humor is most frequently seen in daily life. Itis the very essence of human language. Using verbal humor can make people in theconversation laugh during the talking process; inspire people’s thinking ability andexchange of their feelings. Furthermore, it helps people get much closer to oneother. Grice’s cooperative principle (cp) makes it quite clear that how it is realized for the speakers to suggest more than what is literally said and for the hearer tounderstand. It is an important contribution to study of the pragmatics. CP claims thatthe polite principle, relevance theory and cooperative principle are most effective interms of analyzing the verbal humor. According to the linguist Grice, there are fourmaxims in terms of cooperative principle: Quantity Maxim, Quality Maxim, RelationMaxim and Manner Maxim. It explains how it is feasible to mean more than what isreally expressed, and also plays an important role in the production of conversationalimplication. Definition of the four maxims is given in this thesis. Detailed and clearanalysis of the violation of each maxim is showed. However, speakers often violatesome of the maxims to achieve the effect of exaggerated, ironic, and funny role inhumorous conversation.After the collection of American talk show of Joe Huang and statisticanalysis, the author concludes that: Firstly, there are close relationshipbetween verbal humor and CP, relevance theory and politeness principle. Throughthe analysis of the verbal humor, the author talks about how to make verbal humor inthe conversation. Most of the verbal humor in the American talk showachieved the humorous effect by violating the different maxims of thecooperative principle. Sometimes, the joke in the American talk shows violatesthe maxims and utilizing relevance theory purposely in order to make funof some guys or even the speaker himself in the program.A foreign language teacher can introduce knowledge of pragmatics in Englishclass, such as talk show jokes to explain some language obstacles, guide the student tounderstand the deep meaning of the language material by means of pragmatics. It canpromote interest of students and their background knowledge. During the process ofEnglish learning, the sense of English humor can be cultivated gradually...