Cultural Presupposition In Humor Generation And Appreciation

As a linguistic phenomenon, verbal humor has its own charm, cultural value and special pragmatic functions. From the socio-cultural perspective and on the basis of the inheritance and development of Geoffrey N. Leech's (1969, 1981) stylistic outlook of deviation, this study was undertaken to investigate in what way cultural presupposition would be interrelated to humor generation and in what way cultural presupposition would govern humor appreciation.Humor theorists have been struggling for centuries to determine what makes something funny and to explain why. For this purpose, first of all, three traditional humor theories were introduced, namely, superiority theory, incongruity theory and relief theory. Based on these theories, much research on humor was done from different perspectives, such as philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology and physiology. It was not until 1970s that linguists began to study humor. They did much work from the perspectives of figures of speech, cooperative principle, relevance theory and so on. However, few theories have ever been found satisfactory in uncovering the cultural connotations of humor and explaining the underlying laughter-eliciting mechanism.The analysis of the data has yielded the following major findings:First, in the generation process of humor, the playful deviation mechanism plays a key role. Anthropologists hold that culture consists of four parts, namely, linguistic system, ideological system, social system and techno-economic system. Typical deviations that occur in each system are investigated. According to the model for humor generation (Fig. 3.1), if the playful deviation mechanism works, that is, from an expected reaction to an unexpected one, humor will be produced.Second, not all humor can be well understood by the audience in that a person's pre-stored cultural presuppositions systematically and latently govern the whole process of humor appreciation. According to the model for humor appreciation (Fig. 4.1), cultural convergences promote intercultural humor appreciation while divergences may hinder it.Third, the processes of humor generation and appreciation (Fig. 5.1) are indirectlybut inseparably related to each other in that humor is made out of people's appreciation or relaxation needs, and the audience's pleasure is admittedly achieved only when the playful cultural deviation in the generation process is identified.Fourth, humor could be recognized as a playful deviation from people's cultural presuppositions. Humor is part of and vividly mirrors a given culture. Clarifying humor from the socio-cultural perspective may help people have a deeper understanding of culture in terms of its nature and value orientations. Fifth, Leech (1969: 57) argues that deviation, as a kind of linguistic foregrounding, is not confined to poetry, but is also pervasive in joking speech. The deviation theory is used in the present study to analyze humor and is verified to beneficial.This thesis has both theoretical and practical implications. A cultural investigation into humor may deepen people's understanding of this special socio-cultural phenomenon. In pedagogy, humor could be treated not merely as a teaching style but also as an important kind of foreign language classroom input. Besides, the interpersonal functions implied in humor should be explored to promote harmonious human communication.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction. Chapter Two offers an overview of some relevant studies on humor from different perspectives, preparing the theoretical framework for the present study. Chapter Three and Chapter Four aim to describe the way in which cultural presupposition interrelates with humor generation and the way in which cultural presupposition shapes humor appreciation. Chapter Five summarizes the major findings of the present study, points out its limitations, and offers some suggestions for further research.