A Study On Ambiguity In Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Ambiguity means that one expression has two or more explanations. As a commonlanguage phenomenon, ambiguity is pervasive in all kinds of languages in the world; Englishis certainly not an exception. Generally speaking, discussions on ambiguity can be dividedinto two levels: the linguistic level and the pragmatic level. Recently, with the consistentexploration of ambiguity, studies of ambiguity are transferring from the static analysis ofphonetic, lexical and syntactic levels to an analysis of the speaker and addressee’s intention,which is at the level of pragmatics. This thesis attempts to make an analysis of ambiguityfrom the perspective of relevance theory. Being a new division of western linguistics,relevance theory has been accepted by linguists all around the word. Relevance theory isgrounded in the concept of relevance and two principles—the cognitive principle and thecommunicative principle. Taking both communication and cognition into account, verbalcommunication is defined from the view of cognitive linguistics: in a dynamic context, verbalcommunication is a cognitive activity which is carried out in accordance with the inferringand thinking process in mind. Therefore, relevance theory makes the emphasis of pragmaticstransfer to the cognitive theories, which becomes a hot topic in recent pragmatic study.Relevance theory characterizes verbal communication as an ostensive-inferential process.The speaker’s ostensive process is a coding process in a manifest way, in other words, thespeaker expresses his communicative intentions with clear and imprecise utterances. On theother hand, inferring is a process in which the addressee, conforming to his own cognitivecontext, decodes the speaker’s utterance on the basis of the manifest ways, and then obtainsthe correct interpretation. This thesis makes a qualitative analysis of typical ambiguousutterances selected from the American sitcom “The Bigbang Theory” and attempts to illustratethe cognitive mechanism of ambiguity in verbal humor in theoretical framework of relevancetheory and then discusses its important role in the production of humorous effects. The studyshows that ambiguity lies in the contrast between the maximal and the optimal relevance.Under the ostensive and inferential mode, the speaker provides utterances of maximalrelevance, addressee firstly makes the assumption of the maximal relevance accordingly, andthen by expanding cognitive context, the addressee obtains the interpretation of optimalrelevance, and finally recognizes the speaker’s communicative intention correspondingly. Inthis process, ambiguity lies in the contrast between the assumption of maximal relevance andthe effective of optimal relevance and it is the contrast that finally evokes humor effects. Meanwhile, this thesis aims to make some explorations of the dynamic study of ambiguity;the detailed discussions on ambiguity will be beneficial to the interpretation of humor, theeffective proceeding of a communication, and finally to achieve a successful communication.