An Analysis Of Verbal Humor In Everyone Loves Raymond From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

As a cognitive mechanism, Conceptual Integration Theory put forward by GillesFauconnier and Mark Turner in the late1990s has aroused many scholars’ attention dueto its mighty explanatory power and has undoubtedly become one of the most influentialtheories in the fields of cognitive linguistics in the west. According to Faucounnier,Conceptual Integration Theory, due to its ability to expound the dynamic cognitiveprocess of meaning, can be employed to illustrate all human cognitive activities. Basedon this theory, many researchers both at home and abroad has tried to prove its powerfulexplanation from different angles, of which quite a few are related to humor. As we allknow, humor is pervasive in our daily life, especially in communication, which can bringus laughter and help us to release our pressure, so it is of great necessity to study it. Andananlysing humor, especially humor in American sitcom, from the perspective ofConceptual Integration Theory, widens the horizon of research and further proves themighty explationary power of Conceptual Integration Theory.As for this thesis, because the interpretion of verbal humor is basically a dynamicprocess of meaning construction, it is feasible to apply Conceptual Integration Theory toexplain the verbal humor in the American sitcom Everyone Loves Raymond from thecognitive perspective. This sitcom revolves around the family of Raymond, a sportsreporter, and its corpus is closer to our daily life. The samples of verbal humor in thisthesis are chosen from the first six seasons of this sitcom and then are classifiedaccording to the classification standards proposed by Bergson and finally the dynamiccognitive process of verbal humor generation are analyzed on the basis of ConceptualIntegration Theory.This thesis is composed of three parts, that is: an introduction, the main body and aconclusion. The folowing shows its main contents:In the first part, it mainly briefly sums up the previous research at home and abroadon humor and then lists the literature employing Conceptual Integration Theory toillustrate language phenomena studied by previous reserchers. These prove theexplanatory power of Conceptual Integration Theory for verbal humor from differentaspects. Further it points out the necessity and significance of studying verbal humorfrom the perspective of Conceptual Integration Theory. The second part is the main body, which consists of three chapters:Chapter One mainly introduces the main ideas and concepts of verbal humor andConceptual Integration Theory. First, the definitions and classifications of humor isdiscussed, further the standard that this thesis draws on are given and the previous studiesare summarized. Then great importance is attached to the core ideas of ConceptualIntegration Theory: the model of integration and integration networks, putting forwardfour-space models and four integration sub-networks, which lays solid foundations forthe next two chapters. Finally it further illustrates the feasibility of this study.Chapter Two first discusses the relationship between verbal humor at threelevels(language level, situational level and cultural level) and conceptual integration,then based on this, it analyzes the integration model of verbal humor at three levelsselected from Everyone Loves Raymond, that is, the standard model of four mental spaces,including two input spaces, a generic space and a blended space, and the counterpartsformed by cross-space mapping between input spaces and the selective projection frominput spaces into the blended space are expounded by samples selected from EveryoneLoves Raymond.Chapter Three focuses on the analysis of verbal humor at three levels from the angleof integration networks. According to Fauconnier and Turner, integration networks aredivided into four types of sub-network, namely simplex network, mirror network,single-scope network and double-scope network. This chapter analyzes the dynamiccognitive process of verbal humor at three levels respectively. And during the process ofapplying four types of sub-network to illustrate verbal humor in sitcom, three blendingprocesses (composition, completion and elaboration) are operated together to interpretthe dynamism of meaning construction. The emergent structure created by the threeprocesses of blending is crucial in meaning construction, which is not contained in eitherof the input spaces. It causes the humorous effects.The last part is conclusion, which sums up the above dicussion, and puts forward theadvantages and disadvantages of applying Conceptual Integration Theory to explainverbal humor in sitcoms, and further points out the limitations of this thesis and thesuggestions for further studies.All in all, this thesis proves that Conceptual Integration Theory is a mighty explanatory theory in interpreting the dynamic cognitive process of verbal humor inAmerican sitcom. By this theory, the underlying cognitive mechanism involved in theinterpretation of verbal humors can be revealed. In addition, applying ConceptualIntegration Theory to illustrating verbal humor in American sitcom broadens the scope ofhumor research and is useful for people to appreciate verbal humor in American sitcomsbetter on the basis of learning of the dynamic cognitive mechanism.