Relevance Theory As A Different Approach To Explaining Humor

As a post-Gricean theory of pragmatics, Relevance Theory (hereinafter referred to as RT for short) can date back to the early 1980s when Sperber and Wilson suggested a revision of some of Grice's ideas ~ a reduction of Grice's conversational maxims to a single principle of relevance. These ideas were later developed into a very influential theory in contemporary pragmatic research: RT — an ambitious attempt to provide a thorough explanation to how hearers pick up one single interpretation (based on non-demonstrative inference) that is consistent with the speaker's intention. According to Sperber and Wilson, the central factor that makes communication succeed is the pursuit of optimal relevance on the part of both the speaker and the hearer. It is this claim to optimal relevance that guides the hearer in identifying the speaker-intended context for a given utterance. It makes him/her anticipate the possibility that contextual information needed for the correct interpretation is readily accessible. Hence s/he begins the interpretation process from information most readily available to him/her at that time. Furthermore, s/he will assume that, when combined with the right context, the utterance will yield an interpretation that is worth the effort invested in processing it. The search for optimal relevance guides the hearer not only to the speaker-intended context but also to the speaker-intended interpretation. The central claim of RT is that the expectations of relevance raised by an utterance are precise enough, and predictable enough, to guide the audience towards the speaker's meaning.Humor serves social functions similar to those of etiquette: to foster consensus, to control conflicts, to escape a hard situation and to help maintain and harmonize the social order. Humor, however, forms an important theoretical challenge within the discipline of linguistics because it forces us to confront the non-literal and obviously multifunctional uses of language.Sperber and Wilson's RT is a theory of human communication, which is applicableto the interpretation of all types of discourses, humorous discourses included. The principle of relevance reflects the biologically rooted human tendency to find relevant information in the utterances and non-verbal behavior that people use in order to makeit manifest that they intend to communicate some relevant information. The speaker makes an utterance whose initial part has a first accessible interpretation in terms of the balance of cognitive effects and mental efforts. Once the speaker manages to fool the hearer into selecting that accessible interpretation consistent with the principle of relevance, the speaker knows that other possible interpretations will not be taken into account. Then the speaker creates a cognitive dissonance with the assumptions arising from the processing of the subsequent part of discourse, an incongruity that has to be resolved by the surprised addressee. The resolution lies in a covert, more unlikely interpretation compatible with the whole context but not with the hearer's chosen interpretation in the initial part of the joke. Since the hearer stops his interpretative process at the first interpretation, this latent interpretation is not taken into consideration until the speaker humorously foregrounds it in the second part of the joke. In these cases, the communicator's play with the ongoing assumptions arising from already processed information is crucial. Thus the humorous intention focuses on the context built up in the processing of the eventually correct, covert interpretation against the already processed accessible interpretation of the initial part of the text. The appreciation of a humorous story can be compared to taking a walk in a beautiful garden. Most (first time) tourists take it for granted that the main scenic path leads to the exit of the garden, so they just walk leisurely along the main route and expect to walk out of the garden naturally. However, they reach the end of the route only to find that it does not lead to the exit. They have to return to the diverging point and figure out that it is the neglected back path that leads to the garden's exit. This paper aims to prove that RT shows its power in exploring the mental changes that a humor interpreter undergoes in the process of interpreting and enjoying the kind of humor (discussed in this paper).