A Study Of Humorous Utterances In The Academy Awards Ceremony From The Perspective Of Cooperative Principle

The research on humor can be dated back to Plato and Aristotle of the fourth century B.C.During the two thousand years after that,scholars explore humor from different perspectives and in various ways,such as linguistics,rhetoric,aesthetics,philosophy and sociology,and they conclude many theories of humor.A great number of western scholars probe humor based on psychology and they put forward three theories of humor,namely,Superiority Theory,Relief Theory and Incongruity Theory.These theories provide a solid theoretical foundation for analyzing the production mechanism of humorous utterances.With the development of applied linguistics,scholars tend to study humorous utterances from the perspective of pragmatics.Grice's Cooperative Principle plays an important role in the progress of pragmatics.Relatively speaking,it's one of the most effective theories to analyze the production mechanism of humorous utterances.The thesis studies humorous utterances in the Academy Awards ceremony on the basis of pragmatic theory of Cooperative Principle.Cooperative Principle is proposed by the famous American linguistic philosopher H.P.Grice in his speech at Harvard University in 1967.This theory suggests that a successful communication depends on whether interlocutors obey some basic rules during the process of interaction.Specifically,Cooperative Principle consists of four maxims:quantity maxim,quality maxim,relation maxim and manner maxim.And each maxim includes some sub-maxims.However,in practical communication,people often violate the maxims of Cooperative Principle out of certain purposes and generate conversational implicatures,thus some humorous effects such as exaggeration,sarcasm,self-mockery are produced.The Academy Awards ceremony is the annual event of the global film industry.It is also regarded as one of the traditional symbols of America.The language used in the Academy Awards ceremony is typical because it reflects not only the continuation and development of the English humorous utterances,but also the cultural diversity of America.Grice's Cooperative Principle can be adopted to analyze any texts including written texts and oral texts.So far,researches on English texts from the perspective of Cooperative Principle have mainly focused on the dialogues in English novels,films or TV dramas.While the pragmatic analyses of formal occasions like the Academy Awards ceremony are few.However,the humorous utterances in the Academy Awards ceremony have not been given priority.Therefore,the thesis makes an analysis of the speeches of hosts and guests in this program from 2000 to 2017 to figure out the humorous utterances from the perspective of Cooperative Principle.The thesis is composed of five chapters as follows.Chapter one is the introduction to the thesis.It mainly comprises four parts-the background of the study,aims and significance of the study,research methodology and structure of the thesis.Chapter two gives a detailed literature review on the humorous utterances.And the research achievements of humorous utterances both at home and abroad are respectively demonstrated.Chapter three is the theoretical framework.It first looks at Grice's Cooperative Principle.Then it elaborates the violation of quantity maxim,quality maxim,relation maxim and manner maxim.Finally,it explains the significance of Cooperative Principle.Chapter four is the main body of the thesis.It analyzes how the hosts and guests in the Academy Awards ceremony violate four maxims of Cooperative Principle to produce humorous utterances concretely.Chapter five draws a conclusion of the whole study.It presents the major findings of the study,gives both theoretical and practical implications,points out the limitations and puts forward the suggestions for further advancement.The practical significance of the thesis is discussed in the following:Firstly,the mastery of the English humorous utterances is difficult for English lovers and English learners in China,while learning the humorous utterances in English TV programs is conductive to using English skillfully in daily life.Secondly,the studying object of the thesis is the Academy Awards ceremony.The language used in the Academy Awards ceremony is more representative and typical.Through exploring the language features of this program from the pragmatic perspective,the audience can better comprehend and appreciate English TV programs.Thirdly,a sense of humor is crucial in western values.Westerners are good at using humor,but they frequently violate the maxims of Cooperative Principle to foil atmosphere on some formal occasion like the awards ceremony.Humorous utterances,as the main form of humor,play a decisive role in human interaction.Thus,analyzing the humorous utterances from the perspective of Cooperative Principle helps people deeply realize the importance of humor and maintain the harmonious interpersonal relationship.