The Dependence Of Verbal Humor On Context

Humor plays an indispensable role in people’s daily communication,not only does the humor improve people’s interpersonal relationship,adjust the atmosphere of conversation but also reflect the wisdom and charm of personality.As a method of verbal humor,partial tone often appears in all aspects of life for the Han nationality.For the Han nationality,homophonic humor has been rooted in the soil of Chinese culture and has its own unique feature,which is also a habitual way to enhance their level of communication and make the expression more appropriate.Therefore,as for the generation and comprehension of verbal humor,it is very necessary to understand the specific context that is related to the verbal humor.As a figure of speech,partial tone widely exist in both writing and speaking,it also attracted scholars’ research interest.While the traditional research about partial tone mostly stay in the definition,classifications,characteristics and rhetorical effects of partial tone,etc.,very few people research the manners and principles of homophonic humor,which is broadly used in Chinese homophonic culture.The paper has five parts in total,specific contents as follows:Introduction part,the author mainly analyzed the topic,the source of corpus and the current situation in domestic and abroad.The first chapter is on the basis of Malinowski’s theory of "context" and according to the other scholars,classification methods separately expounded the context that includes verbal context,situational context and cultural context.The second chapter discussed the definition,characters and foundation of homophonic humor.Its foundation is discussed from two angles,which are language and psychology.Meanwhile,the relation between partial tone and homophone is also analyzed in this chapter.The third part is the main part of the paper,verbal humor and homophonic humor,the classifications and ways of homophonic humor,the functions of homophonic humor and the reasons why it could be humorous.This chapter discussed the relation between homophonic humor and context,the elements of homophonic humor are related by analyzing and demonstrating.After that,it turns out to be this result,that the speaker and listener must share common contexts which is depended in the process of producing and understanding the homophonic humor.Then taking the pronunciation of homophone as a trigger to choose the contexts for reaching the humor.Conclusion,the views and content are stated briefly.