An Analysis Of Humor In Chinese Comic Monologue From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Hum or is an indispensable seasoning in people’ s life and an important way for people to relieve pressure and make happiness. The research on it is prolonged and covers alm ost all subj ects such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and so on. As a social behavior, the carrier of humor can be language and other things. That is humor can be divided into verbal humor and non-verbal hum or. Verbal humor is more popular com pared with non-verbal humor, thus has been the cen ter of attention, wh ich can be seen from the popularity of com ic sketches and com ic cross-talks in China w hich have been part of Chinese people’s life.Fauconnier & Turner(2002) points out that language is the outcome of conceptual blending w hich is of creat ive significance in the explanation of language and puts forward a theory- con ceptual blending theory. As the most influential cognitive approach in linguistic field, conceptual integration theory has gained extensive attention from researchers both at hom e and overseas owing to its great pow er in analyz ing language phenom ena. However, no single theory is capable of interpreting all linguistic phenom ena. Can conceptual blending th eory be ap plied to th e interpretation of Chinese traditional humors? If the answer is yes, how does it do that? As a d eeply loved humor form by Chinese people, What’s its humor making mechanism? In order to find the answers, som e pieces of monologue are studied,which are played by famous comedians in China such as Zhang Shouchen, Liu Baorui and Ma Sanli.The study indicates that by e mploying a witty language, th e talker will create a “bao fu”, also an incompatibility which will stimulate the listeners to search for reasonable explanations through their long term m emories or encyclopedic knowledge com bined with th e context. At the tim e when the listeners are finding the resolu tion, the talker will shake out of the “bao fu”, revealing the answer. With the listeners laugh at it, hum or is thus produced. The process is a com plex and dynamic one. The model networks put forward by Fauconnier & T urner dynamically illustrate the process of how humor in Chinese monologue is produced online. It is also a dy namic process of meaning construction of natural langua ge. The part of “huo” provides the listeners with a space fram e, input one a nd the part of “di” provides an other space frame, input two, an incom patibility is em bodied. Two cross-space relations will be established by the listener automatically. In the process of blending, all the cross-space relations undergo “compression”. In order to find the resolution to the incompatibility, three steps will be a ctivated by listeners, which are composition, completion and elaboration. The result is a creative “emergent structure” is found.The analysis of different scripts shows in crystal detail the whole process of humor making in Chinese m onologue. At the sam e time the strong explanatory power of conceptual bl ending theory on Chinese m onologue can be found.