Interpretation Of English Verbal Humor:A Perspective Of Relevance-Blending Model

Humor can almost be said to be everywhere in life, which can bring people immense joyfulness all the times and influence people’s life potentially. Most humor is presented by the way of language, thus verbal humor gradually becomes the most widespread and primary presented way. The object of this study is English verbal humor, and it is believed that the integration of the two theories is necessary after evaluating the shortcomings of Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory in interpreting verbal humor. Therefore, a revised model, Relevance-Blending model is to be proposed based on the former research in order to give a more reasonable explanation for English verbal humor. This thesis aims to explore how English verbal humor is interpreted by hearers, so that humorous effects can be realized. Besides, it also attempts to conclude the characteristics of verbal humor in Conan after analyzing humorous fragments.This thesis takes a famous America late-night talk show-Conan as the data source, through analyzing the collected 82 pieces of humorous fragments, and dividing them into three categories, that is, universal, political and cultural verbal humor. Then, universal verbal humor is further divided into verbal humor for fun and satire in accordance with the pragmatic functions. This study describes the collected data, and interpret three categories of English verbal humor in detail by using Relevance-Blending Model.The results of this study are mainly as follows. Firstly, it is believed that it is necessary to integrate Relevance Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory in interpreting verbal humor, and there is a great complementarity between both the theories. It proves that Relevance-Blending Model can be able to present the detailed procedure of how English verbal humor is interpreted, and finally the humorous effects occur. The research finds that universal verbal humor plays a prominent role among three categories, which accounts for 69.5% of the total. The largest number of this kind verbal humor is English verbal humor for fun, which accounts for 41.5%. It mainly realizes humorous effects by incongruity between hearers’ assumption and speakers’ final words. Meanwhile, there is 28% English verbal humor has the pragmatic function for satire, and this kind of verbal humor is regarded as a characteristic of Conan. Then, political verbal humor accounts for 22% of the total, which mainly presents that speakers express their own political views and dissatisfaction through humorous expressions. It not only wins the support from audiences, but achieves the effect of humor. Although there are a small number of cultural verbal humor, which only accounts for 8.5%. It is also believed that this kind of verbal humor is indispensable because it reflects the cultural differences have an effect on interpreting verbal humor. Secondly, the characteristics of verbal humor in Conan are gained after analyzing data in detail. Namely, in Conan the utterances have a strong satire, the facticity and timeliness as well. Rather than deliberately distorted facts to achieve humorous effects, and keep the contents of communication with freshness.In sum, this thesis theoretically enriched the study on verbal humor. It would offer people some helps when they interpret verbal humor.