Humorous Effect Of Puns From The Perspective Of Conceptual Integration Theory

Punning is a significant phenomenon in language. It has been analyzed from perspectives of rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics and so on. All these researches contribute a lot to the recognition and comprehension of puns. However, the dynamic construction of puns, how their dual meanings are generated and cognized by people and how the humorous effects emerge are still of great necessity to research.This thesis adopts Conceptual Integration Theory by American linguists Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner as the theoretical basis to reveal the dynamic process of how meaning is constructed and how the humor effects are generated in people’s mind. In this thesis, puns are classified into three types-antanaclasis, paronomasia, and syllepsis. Then Conceptual Integration Network Models are used to explain the dynamic construction of puns. In addition, three major governing principles of Conceptual Integration Theory-Compression, Topology and Relevance Theory-are adopted to explore the generation of pun’s humor effects.From the analysis of the network model of puns, it can be concluded that the different types of pun are constructed with different types of network models. And the cross-space matching and selective projection appeared in the formation of blend are the major factors that dominate the form of puns. Besides, network model, bound by governing principles, and the degree of compression are the major principles which can affect the humor effects of puns, as well as topology and relevance principles.This thesis studied the internal operating mechanism of Pun and its humorous effect from the perspective of Cognitive Integration Theory. And this method may be helpful for people to comprehend the cognitive integration network model of puns and adopt them consciously to create humorous effects.