A Cognitive-pragmatic Analysis Of Humorous Traffic Warnings

As a special type of speech act, traffic warnings are no longer as straight-forwardand rigid as they were in the past; instead, they have become increasingly diversifiedand human-oriented. A considerable number of humorous traffic warnings havesprung up on the roadsides, above the motorways and even on the tails of the privatecars. However, so far there were very few studies done on this new pragmaticphenomenon, and most of the previous relevant researches have just focused theirattention to the example listings and classifications as well as their rhetoric orsemantic features. Taking realistic humorous traffic warnings from road signs,newspapers, magazines and the internet as the data, this research makes a qualitativeanalysis and case study of the production and interpretation of humorous trafficwarnings, aiming at exploring the cognitive-pragmatic mechanisms of such kind ofspeech acts.The research takes an integrated cognitive-pragmatic approach to the analysis ofthe humorous traffic warnings. Conceptual Blending Theory is a newly emergedcognitive theory popular in recent years, which has developed from Mental SpaceTheory. It has been frequently applied to the construction of complicated cognitivemodels. The conceptual blending process can conceptualize the things in reality,fiction and imagination. Mental spaces from different domains are projected into theblended space selectively. In the blended space, after the process of composition,completion and elaboration, an emergent structure occurs. The present research isattempted to apply the Conceptual Blending Theory to the explanation of theproduction of humorous traffic warnings. Relevance Theory, as another theoreticalbasis of the present research, takes verbal communication as an ostensive-inferentialcommunication. The inference of communicator’s intentions is a process of seekingfor the optimal relevance between the utterance and the contextual assumptions. Anutterance is optimally relevant if its interpreter could achieve sufficient contextualeffects while paying only the necessary processing effort. Relevance is a matter of degree which depends on the contextual effect and the processing effort. Other thingsbeing equal, the greater is the contextual effect, the greater is the relevance; otherthings being equal, the greater is the processing effort, the smaller is the relevance.Relevance Theory contributes to the adequate interpretation of humorous trafficwarnings and the achievement of their humorous and warning effects.Some major findings have been drawn from the present research:First, as a special kind of communication, owing to its location, function orcommunicative purposes, traffic warnings have some unique features: concise,diversified, eye-catching, thought-provoking and humorous. Their linguistic featuresinclude the use of nominalization, imperatives, passive voice and non-agentive subjectsentences.Second, the cognitive operation of conceptual blending networks can give asufficient explanation of the production of humorous traffic warnings. In Chapter Four,based on the Conceptual Blending Theory, the production process of humorous trafficwarnings is analyzed from three perspectives: mental space, cross-space mapping andconceptual blending networks. There are four mental spaces in their conceptualblending networks: Input Space I, Input Space II, Genetic Space and the BlendedSpace. Each mental space is a frame including related elements and their relations.Mental spaces are interlinked by cross-space mappings. Three types of cross-spacemappings play an important part in the production of humorous traffic warnings:projection mapping, pragmatic function mapping and schematic mapping. Theelements and their relations from input spaces are blended by the interaction amongthe three related mental cognitive activities: composition, completion and elaborationin the blended space. An emergent structure occurs in this blending process and theproduction of humorous traffic warning is completed in the emergent structure.According to the complexity and features of the humorous traffic warnings, theproduction processes are operated in four kinds of conceptual blending networks:simplex network, mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network.Third, according to RT, humorous traffic warnings belong to a type ofostensive-inferential communication, whose interpretation depends on the pursuit of the optimal relevance between the warning and its communicative context. Theproducer of humorous traffic warnings often makes ostensive stimulus throughimpressive images, striking colors of the signs, capital letters, humorous words orsentences to draw the viewers’ attention. Relevance depends on contextual effects andprocessing effort. Compared with the ordinary types of speech, humorous trafficwarnings could yield more contextual effects such as warning, amusing, relaxing,humorous effects and so on. Therefore, interpretation of humorous traffic warningsdemands more processing effort.Fourth, successful interpretation of humorous traffic warnings lies in the pursuitof the optimal relevance between the warning and its contexts, which can besubdivided into three categories: situational context, psychological context andsocial-cultural context.To conclude, Conceptual Blending Theory and Relevance Theory arecomplementary to each other. Their integrated cognitive-pragmatic model constitutesa stronger explanatory power for the analysis of the verbal communication, includinghumorous traffic warnings...