A Presuppositional Analysis Of Verbal Humor In Oscar Wilde's Comedies

Oscar Wilde(1854-1900)is an eminent Irish writer famous for his literary skills.For nearly a century,Wilde's four comedies have become enduring works on the stage.Wilde impresses his audience by his humorous words.At the same time,his comedies contain some thought-provoking truths which are still popular today.This thesis will analyze Wilde's four comedies from the perspective of presupposition theory and reveal mechanisms of Wilde's humorous words.This paper is divided into five parts.The first chapter briefly introduces the life of Wilde and his four comedies,the existent studies about Wilde and his comedies both at home and abroad,the theoretical concept of presupposition and the significance and layout of this thesis.The second chapter mainly analyzes the production of humor from three kinds of presupposition triggers: the lexical trigger,syntactic trigger and phonological trigger.The third chapter analyzes humorous utterances in Wilde's four comedies from humor incongruity and four manipulations of presupposition including preserved presupposition,cancelled presupposition,contradicted presupposition and false presupposition.During the reading process,incongruity will occur when the real facts of humorous utterances is different from reader's expectations.Readers can be better aware of the meaning of humorous words through incongruity resolution.Chapter four probes into the functions of humorous words.Oscar Wilde creates vivid characters,reveals themes of the Victorian era and exposes some thought-provoking social problems through humorous words.Through Wilde's comedies,it can be seen that Wilde wants to bring us his unique ideas.The fifth chapter focuses on the conclusion.Wilde's comedies revitalize British drama world and due to this reason,his comedies have an important place in the history of drama.Wilde's comedies reflect the emptiness of people's life and dilemma of people's spirit in the Victorian era.At the same time,Wilde also makes full use of his humorous words to hold his aesthetic ideas as his spiritual sustenance.At the same time,to a certain extent,Wilde's humorous words also shake morals chains in the Victorian era.