Study On The Rhetoric Behind Colloquial Humor Based On The Corpus Of The Mass Media Of Communication

Numerous historical documents show that China has a long tradition of linguistic humor,which has been carried forward into the 21 st century.Since the reform and opening-up,middle-aged and aged Chinese people have liberated their natural instinct to pursue entertainment,as material needs are constantly being met and there are more and more leisure time.Meanwhile,the fierce competition,which currently pervades the whole China,has put many young people under great pressure.Such people want to relieve the pressure through entertainment.In this case,various mass media are seizing the opportunity to respond to this demand with a lot of entertaining works in a humorous style.This paper aims to study the colloquial humor style,especially the colloquial humor style shown in corpus of mass media such as TV and Internet,from the perspective of rhetoric.The author uses the rhetoric as the theoretical basis of this paper and will closely connect it with the discussion of colloquial humor,especially with existing colloquial humor styles in mass media programs:reviewing and explaining colloquial humor style by rhetorical factors,observing and exploring rhetorical factors in oral humor styles.The rhetorical theories used by the author are mainly principles of rhetoric especially positive rhetoric therein proposed by Chen Wangdao who is the founder of modern Chinese rhetoric.Except the introduction and conclusion,this paper includes ten chapters.Chapter I describes Chen Wangdao’s rhetorical theories,especially his positive rhetoric.Chapter II discusses the relationship between colloquial humor and figures of speech like metaphor from the perspective of materials.Chapter III gives a discussion about the relationship of colloquial humor with figures of speech like exaggeration in term of artistic conception.Chapter IV discusses the relationship between colloquial humor and word rhetoric,which uses wrongly written or mispronounced characters.Chapter V relates to the relationship between colloquial humor and figures of speech like parallelism in terms of sentences and articles.Chapter VI is devoted to the relationship between colloquial humor and simple or complicated combination of figures of speech.Chapter VII expounds the reason that the positive rhetoric leads to colloquial humor.Chapter VIII argues the relationship between passive rhetoric and colloquial humor.Chapter IX states the voice features of colloquial humor and other relevant issues.Chapter X shows Chinese tradition of linguistic humor and the relationship between linguistic humor and rhetoric.The organic combination of the said chapters make up a complete study on the theme of this paper.The author believes that the study on colloquial humor in the mass media from the perspective of rhetoric will bring inspiration to the understanding of cause and essence of colloquial humor,training in self-awareness of media professionals（such as hosts）to develop their colloquial humor based on rhetorical principles,education on broadcasting and hosting,and the building of rhetoric nowadays when spoken and the written languages have equal share in the mass media.