Analysis Of Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

As a fascinating phenomenon and form of human language, verbal humor is pervasive in literature, in the movies, on televisions and so on. In our daily verbal conversation, verbal humor is also ubiquitous. Verbal humor can be used to activate atmosphere, release pressure, maintain relationship and save our face. Appropriate verbal humor can not only produce laughter, but also can help the verbal communication go smoothly. Therefore, the key of interpreting the verbal humor is to find and understand the trigger mechanism of verbal humor.Jef Verschueren put forward the idea that using language is a continuous process of making linguistic choices. Jef Verschueren also proposed four angles for describing and explaining the language use, they are the contextual correlates of adaptability, the structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of the adaptation processes. According to Jef Verschuere, the realization of the pragmatic meaning is the result of mutual adaptation between context correlates and structural objects, and the realization of verbal humor must dynamically adapt to the communication contextual, and then the humor effects can be achieved.As a result, the author based this thesis on the adaptation theory and the researches achievement of verbal humor at home and abroad. First, this thesis analyzed the three factors that influence the verbal humor:the times, the generators and appreciators, the region and culture. This thesis concludes that verbal humor is not only a kind of linguistic phenomenon but also a kind of cultural phenomenon. And then, this thesis analyzed the realization of verbal humor from the angles of contextual adaptation, structural adaptation and dynamic adaption. From the analysis it can be concluded that the generation of verbal humor is the result of language choice, and the generation mechanism of verbal humor is that it generates in the process of mutual effect between the contextual correlates and the language structural, and the mutual effect is considered as a process of continuous and dynamic adaptability. That’s to say, the generation mechanism of verbal humor exists in the dynamic inter-adaptability between language and context. This thesis sufficiently proved that adaptation theory can give a strong power for interpreting verbal humor, expand its value, at the same time, provide a new angle to studying the verbal humor.