A Research On Humor In Joe Wong's Standup Comedy From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Joe Wong,with his artistic form,is becoming more and more popular within audiences in recent years both at home and abroad.His artistic form is presented in a form which a person making his speech single on the stage while there is no complete story in his body speech but constructed by a series of jokes,among which most are generated from the conflicts of “situation”.Therefore,the audiences can come to participate and involve in the appreciation at any time.In order to distinguish it from other artistic forms,this thesis employs the term “stand-up comedy” to describe it.One task of his stand-up comedy is to output and convey values which exactly cater to the Americans.His contents are mainly based on immigrants' life which exactly touches Americans' political raw nerves.Traditional humor researches are mainly studied from aspects like psychology,rhetoric and cooperative principle.From the perspective of Relevance Theory,humorous language itself is not the source of humor but comes from the process in which the audiences choose,adjust and adapt to contextual assumptions to seek for the optimal relevance according to the contextual information stimulated by language.In short,the contrast between the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance is the source of humor,and in return,interprets the failure of verbal humor communication under the different cognitive environment and cognitive structure.This thesis starts with Joe Wong's stand-up comedy based on Relevance Theory and analyzes his humor in verbal communication from cognitive aspect,whose key points are the success and failure of verbal humor in his stand-up comedy.The whole thesis involves three parts,in which the first part is introduction;the second part is the body part and the third part conclusion.Now let's look at the contents in detail:The first part is introduction.First the Relevance Theory is introduced,from its definition to its several significant principles.Connecting humorous verbal communication to Relevance Theory,a brief literature review is made by studying on relevant books and journals.Then,it points out the importance of these theories to the whole thesis.What's more,the findings and significance of the thesis is also put forward.The second part is the main part of the thesis,which is divided into three chapters:Chapter One is the introduction to the paper,namely,literature review.First,Relevance Theory is talked about.In detail,there are two principles: the cognitive principle and communicative principle;two kinds of relevance: the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance;the activation of cognitive environment.Then three main theories of humor are introduced and then researches on humor from sociological perspective at home and abroad are also referred to.Since the most basic question in humor field is “to bring the audiences laughter and joy”,then the main theories on humor are generated: superiority theory,relief theory and incongruity theory.“Superiority theory” regarded humor as an aggressive behavior;“relief theory” is seen as a way to relief pressure;obviously,theses two theories do not really explain the producing mechanism of humor.Later,scholars and researchers further put forward “incongruity theory” which stresses human's cognitive activity when interpreting humor.This theory has caused a sensation in linguistic field.Then the thesis refers that talk show is a typical case in the present age which not only can bring the audiences laughter but also trigger people to consider social phenomenon.Then Joe Wong as a Chinese makes himself the first famous talk show host in American,which deserves more study and research on it.In the following section,all of which provide a good theoretical basis for the following chapter.Chapter Two analyzes the success of verbal humor in Joe Wong's stand-up comedy.It includes his previous expectation of his verbal expression and the audiences' psychological changes and interpreting steps.The thesis goes through that from the following perspectives: first,to classify Joe Wong's humor in his stand-up comedy to three aspects,common humor,linguistic humor and cultural humor.And then it analyzes the producing mechanism of humor under the framework of Relevance Theory and it turns out that Joe Wong's humor is generated through three stages: contrast between the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance.That is to say,the greater the contrast,the stronger the humorous effects are.But we cannot say the greatest contrast is the best,since any communication should be passed on the basis that the recipients are able to understand;change of context by expanding or converting of upgrading the context,which is an inevitable stage all the audiences have to go through who have to go to a new cognitive environment according to their own background knowledge and mutual cognition;the quest of covert information,the audiences will find many disharmony at this stage between the new context and the expected contents,thus they must obtain the covert information through constructing new assumptions.Therefore,the understanding of the audiences is so important that contents like how to finish the conversion between the maximal relevance and the optimal relevance as well as how to gain extra verbal humor through extra processing efforts are the key points in this chapter.Chapter Three analyzes the failure of humor in Joe Wong's stand-up comedy.Even though each humorous verbal behavior is designed carefully by the humorist,the audiences play a very important role in the process of interpreting it.Thus verbal humor failure is seen everywhere and unavoidable.This chapter begins with the analysis of reason to explore the barriers from the perspective of Relevance Theory.Then two reasons to cause the failure,namely,the language barrier and cultural barrier are explained,which is followed by the disharmony in the process of comprehending verbal humor in Joe Wong's stand-up comedy: Joe Wong's deliberate violation,the incorrectness of choosing the context and the audiences' deliberate misinterpretation.Seen from all the above,different people have different views to humorous expressions because of different cognitive context and other factors.The third part is conclusion,which makes a summarization to the thesis from its innovative points,finding and deficiencies.