A Study On Metaphorical Humor From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Humor is an important language phenomenon which brings about laughter and pleasureto people’s life. People are interested in studying and discussing how humor makes peoplelaugh. Many scholars have studies generative mechanism of humor from philosophy,psychology, sociology, linguistics and other fields. With the development of linguistics,humor study has been brought into a brand new field. In view of explanatory power,Conceptual Blending Theory is regarded as the most significant theory to explain humor.In the field of humor study, some achievements have been made from the perspective ofConceptual Blending Theory. It is worth discussing whether this theory can be used to analyzespecific humor—metaphorical humor in sitcoms. The thesis chooses American sitcom TheBig Bang Theory as the data to analyze metaphorical humor based on Conceptual BlendingTheory, and applies conceptual blending networks to present the generative process ofmetaphorical humor.With the combination of canned laughter and concepts of metaphor, the author selects allthe metaphorical humor from previous five seasons,206in total. The metaphorical humor hasbeen discussed in three levels, namely language level, situational level and cultural level.Moreover, the generative process of metaphorical humor is analyzed with four basic types ofconceptual blending networks (simplex network, mirror network, single-scope network anddouble-scope network).Due to the characteristics of American sitcoms and metaphorical expressions, the humorselected from data has close relationship with time, place, culture, personality and otherfactors. Without knowing certain information, it is difficult for people to understandmetaphorical humor from sitcoms. Thus, background knowledge is an important factor whichis beneficial to understand metaphorical humor and appreciate humorous effects.At last, the author hopes that this study will make contributions to relevant languagestudy. Additionally, with the limitation of time and condition, the study is insufficient in someaspects which are needed to be improved in the future.