A Contrastive Study On Verbal Humor Generation In Chinese And American Talk Shows

Verbal humor is the essence of language.It is a tricky way to express our ideas and embody the charm of language and human wisdom as well.Since the Plato period,many scholars have studied humor.A large number of scholars maintain that verbal humor studies should not be confined to fixed lines,but should be extended to the natural triggered words.Talk shows include lots of verbal humor utterances which successfully engrossed the attention of scholars.The previous researches of verbal humor in talk shows mainly focus on the single-language case study,and few of them compare the similarities and differences between talk shows from different countries.The intention of this study is to reveal the similarities and differences in verbal humor generation between Chinese and American talk shows.The author has selected 30 episodes of Jinxing Show and Ellen Show respectively in 2015.Based on Grice?s Cooperative Principle,all the verbal humor utterances have been manually labeled and analyzed by using quantitative and qualitative approaches.The results show that there are three common points in violating Cooperative Principle to create humor in Chinese and American talk shows.Firstly,the quantity maxim is the most frequently violated maxim;next,the relation maxim is the least frequently violated;then,the violation of avoiding obscurity submaxim stays at the same level.Besides,there are differences in verbal humor generation between Chinese and American talk shows.The number and percentage of violating quality maxim and manner maxim are different.Another difference lies in the violation of submaxim in quantity maxim.Jinxing Show provides more information to create humor rather than less information.While this is different in Ellen Show,the overstatement and understatement humorous utterances almost stay at the same level.The results will not only help audiences get a better understanding of verbal humor in talk shows,but also may be helpful for second language learners and subtitle translators.