A Study Of The Understanding Process Of Verbal Humor

Humor is a distinctive feature of human beings. The thesis takes verbal humor which conveys humor by means of humorous discourse as the object of study. Verbal humor plays an important role in the field of communication, literature creation, psychological treatment and language teaching etc. Relevance Theory is a basic theory in the field of cognitive pragmatics. It is regarded as one of the most powerful theories to analyze humor in linguistics.The author uses the method of theoretical speculation and conducts qualitative research to analyse the understanding process of verbal humor. From the perspective of Incongruity-Resolution Theory, there is more humorous discourse which contains both incongruity and the resolution of incongruity than humorous discourse which contains only incongruity. The thesis takes the understanding process of the former as the object of study because the understanding process of the latter is part of the understanding process of the former. The thesis divides human beings’understanding process of verbal humor into the following steps:audience get the first ostensive stimulus (the preamble); audience activate cognitive environment and choose proper context; audience make the first interpretation which is of maximal relevance (includes both the expectation of the following discourse and the interpretation of the preamble); audience receive new ostensive stimulus (the punchline) which is in contradiction to their first interpretation; audience automatically believe an act of ostension carries a guarantee of relevance; audience make more processing effort and reconstruct the context; audience make the second interpretation which is of optimal relevance (reinterpretation of both the preamble and the punchline); humorous contextual effect is achieved and audience get the pleasure of humor. These eight steps above can be simplified into four stages as follows. Firstly, audience get the first ostensive stimulus. Secondly, audience make interpretations of maximal relevance. Thirdly, audience encounter incongruity. Fourthly, audience resolve the incongruity. These eight steps above take place in chronological order, which constitute the understanding process of verbal humor.The third stage of encountering incongruity is crucial in the understanding process. In this thesis, incongruity refers to the disharmony that audience perceive. The thesis holds that it is the difference between optimal relevance and maximal relevance that causes incongruity. The contrast between old context and new context is the manifestation of incongruity.The study proves the strong explanatory power of Relevance Theory and can help readers appreciate and make humor more efficiently.