A Cognitive-Pragmatic Study Of Chinese Cold Jokes-Based On FIR Model

Cold jokes, a neologism which emerged in recent years, gain its wide-rangepopularity on websites, magazines, micro-blog, movies, etc. Different fromtraditional jokes, the cold joke has its unique way of laughter generating mechanismwhich can create a special atmosphere immediately. Cold jokes，have not arousegreat interests in academic, and most of the previous studies only focus on the originof the cold jokes, the types of humor used in cold jokes， its linguistic features andrhetorical devices, which are still infancy from the perspective ofcognitive-pragmatic view. Cold joke is a special humorous view, which represents anew thinking pattern, striving for bounding thinking and conversation, full of its owncharacteristics. It is a mirror of thoughts and outcome of postmodernist trends ofthought. The thesis intends to reveal the construal mechanism underlying cold jokes.This thesis proposes a new integrated framework on the basis of Frame-ShiftingTheory, Incongruity-Resolution Theory and Relevance Theory to reveal the realcognitive mechanism underlying cold jokes. Through detailed analysis, we hold thatthe construal mechanism is: default values as an indispensable role in the process ofincongruity and incongruity-resolution. The default expectation always leads toincongruity for the big gap between the hearer’s default expectation and thepunchline. The conventional logic does not work for the incongruity stimulates thehearer to find out the relationship between the punchline and default frames. Throughthe process of cognitive operations, the hearer makes extra effort to find the optimalrelevance between the default expectation and the punchline, making the defaultframe shifting and finally fulfills the purpose of the speaker.This thesis includes five parts. The first chapter provides a general introductionto the whole research. The chapter two is literature review; a summary account ofstudies on humor， jokes and cold jokes. The third chapter is the detailed analysis of the new constructed model-FIR. Chapter Four is the core of this thesis, SeveralChinese cold jokes are analyzed within the FIR framework. The last chapter is thesummary of the whole thesis.