The Research On Humorous Parole Construction Under The Relevance Theory

Humor is a kind of communicative technique commonly used in communications. It can be divided into verbal humor and non-verbal humor. In this research, only verbal humor is explored. Verbal humor not only reveals the speaker’s ability in language organization but provides a joyful feeling for the hearer, even causes laughing. For this sake, research at abroad on the creating mechanism of humor has become the hot point in cognitive linguistics. However, domestic research on humor discourses of stage programs are still very few, and they mainly focus on the famous figures’ humorous speeches such as Zhao Benshan’s, instead of the host’s humor discourses in local stations, which makes it scant.This thesis aims at the humor discourses in Hunan satellite television program of "From Happy to Happier", choosing the host Wang Han’s typical speeches as a case study, to make a comprehensive research into his various provoking mechanism under the view of relevance theory. According to relevance theory, comprehension is a cognitive process through constantly seeking relevance. First, the communicative information of each other is bound to mutual ostension, otherwise obstacle will occur; second, the hearer can deduce the speaker’s intention by judging the alteration of the context, and can at last find the optimal relevance to understand the conversational implicature. Obviously, understanding of humor parole is properly in accordance with the cognitive interpretation of relevance theory. Thus, employing relevance theory to explain humorous speech becomes workable. Because of the jocosity and amusement, as well as artistic quality in this TV program, Wang Han’s discourses have aroused widely attention among the national people. In order to get a better appreciation of his discourse implication, this thesis tends to analyze the achievement of humorous effect based on relevance theory from speech sounds, words and phrases, sentence structures, figures of speech and pragmatics. On the one hand, by producing homophonic, speaking dialects, prolonging tones, etc., Wang makes the audience experience the feeling difficulty and extend the enjoying time, so that they get relaxed after a tension; On the other hand, by setting discourse context, Wang deliberately leads the audience to seeking optimal relevanceso that they can burst laughter at being suddenly enlightened. Conclusion is drawn thereby:It is the comprehensive application of language; action and setting that make Wang Han’s performing arts highlight distinguishing features and widely appreciated by the mass audience. There’s no doubt that this research has its theoretical and practical significance as well as innovation point in introducing the unique communicative form of amusing talk show with a local color in Hunan by employing a western theory, which not only confirms the widespread interpretation of relevance theory to actual communication, but also promotes people to understand the feature of culture originated in Hunan. It has a certain value in intercultural communication.The thesis contains five parts. The first part is an introduction, which introduces the research purpose, motivation, methodology and significance. The second part is literature review, which surveys the research situation and tendency at present in home and abroad. The third part is the theoretical framework, which makes a synthetic description about Sperber&Wilson’s relevance theory. The fourth part is the application of relevance theory in Wang Han’s humorous discourses, which is the core of the thesis. The fifth part is the conclusion, which presents a summary about this research and prospect to the further study in future.