A Study Of Humor In Friends From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Once after the publication of Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1986) bySperber and Wilson, great attentions and interests have been aroused in linguistic field. Moreand more linguists start to focus their attentions on relevance theory. Relevance theory hasput forward a reasonable cognitive explanation to human communication, thus it isconsidered as―the foundation of cognitive pragmatics‖(He Ziran,1998). Relevance theoryhas been widely adopted to explain various language phenomena.The situation comedy―Friends‖is a humorous drama which has been broadcasted forten years in US. Since its broadcast in1994, it has received a great welcome from lots oftelevision viewers, which is also regarded as―one of the most successful and influential TVseries in the American history or even around the world‖(Liu Xuelian,2012). Its uniqueAmerican-style humor has received a fantastic affection by the English language learners.However, the forms and understanding process of humor are very complicated and it’s quitedifficult for the language learners to understand. Many scholars believe humor can not onlyeffectively promote the acquisition of vocabulary, syntax, semantics and the habits in thetarget language, but also is a shortcut to understand and insight into target language culture(Sun Xianhong,2011). Hence, it is very significant to study English humor.According to relevance theory, human communication, without exception, follows therelevance principle (Liu Naishi,2005). Relevance theory has a powerful explanation overhumor. According to relevance theory, fundamentally speaking, the reason for humorgeneration comes from the different understandings of the mutual cognitive environments bythe speaker and the hearer (Tu Jing,2003). Cognitive hypothesis and ostensive-inferentialcommunication provide a reasonable explanation for the mechanism of humor generation; inthe mean time, the intensity of humorous effect comes from the contrast between maximalrelevance and optimal relevance, as well as the degree of processing effort and cognitiveeffect. First of all, this thesis provides a reasonable explanation of the reason for selectingrelevance theory, through the comparative study between the traditional humor theories,pragmatic humor studies (including presupposition, speech act theory, face theory, politeness principle and cooperative principle) and relevance theoretic humor study, pointing out thelimitations of those theories and figuring out relevance theory’s powerful explanation overhumor and relevance theoretic significance in compensating for these limitations; secondly,the mechanism of humor generation and the main influencing factors of the intensity ofhumorous effect have been interpreted respectively from the perspective of cognitiveprinciple and communicative principle, pointing out the contrast between the maximalrelevance and optimal relevance and the extra processing effort have a great impact on theintensity of humorous effect endeavoring to provide a theoretical basis for it; thirdly, combingwith the classic humorous case in Friends, this thesis try to make a detailed analysis, hopingto provide a methodological reference for humor study.Considering the situation that only a few researchers studied the relationship betweenhumor and RT, this thesis attempts to make an analysis of English humor in Friends from theperspective of RT, mainly focusing on the mechanism of humor generation and theinfluencing factors of the intensity of humorous effect, trying to arouse language learners’attention to humor, hoping to inspire language learners to have a better appreciation onEnglish humor.