An Analysis Of Humor Via Dialogic Resonance In Sitcoms Based On CBT-IR Model

As an eternal topic in human history,humor study has a long history.This thesis aims at analyzing humor via dialogic resonance from the integrated perspective of Conceptual Blending Theory and Incongruity-Resolution Theory.The thesis mainly focuses on two questions.One is what is the mechanism of humor produced via dialogic resonance under the integrated CBT-IR Model.The other one is what is the difference of humor at different levels of dialogic resonance.Dialogic Syntax maintains that dialogic resonance can occur at every level of language resources.The data of this thesis are extracted from the tenth season of the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory.There are altogether 40 pieces of data.The data distribute at three different levels.They are word level,syntactic structure level and utterance repetition level.The theoretical basis of this thesis is an integrated model of Conceptual Blending Theory and Incongruity-Resolution Theory.By data analysis,it is found that the mechanism of humor via dialogic resonance goes as follows.In conversation people tend to reuse the language resources of the previous speakers.Their utterances activate two input spaces of CBT.The elements and relations of the two inputs are projected into the blend space where emergent structure occurs.The meaning of the emergent structure differs from the audience's predictions,and then they use the Two-Stage Model of Incongruity-Resolution Theory to resolve the incongruity.When a reasonable explanation is found,the audience get the humor and laugh.This thesis finds that humor via dialogic resonance at syntactic structure has the largest proportion,which is followed by the word level.Humor at the level of utterance repetition has the least frequency.Humor via dialogic resonance at the word level usually results from different meanings of a word or different intensities of emotion which generates sarcasm.The contrast of different elements under the same frame is the cause of humor via dialogic resonance at the syntactic structure level.At the level of utterance repetition,humor is produced by different references of the same language resource.On the one hand,analyzing humor via dialogic resonance under the CBT-IR Model provides a new way for humor study.On the other hand,it enriches Conceptual Blending Theory and Incongruity-Resolution Theory.