A Study Of Humor From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Situation comedy, also known as sitcom, is naturally a lingual art and an art ofhumor. Situation comedy, originated from America, is welcomed and loved by theaudience all over the world for the special screen and technique of narrative anddialogue. American situation comedy has brought to a climax until now, which hasnot only the actor’s wisecrack and humor but also the local customs and culture inAmerica. In this process, special cultural connotations in America are learnt in themanner of American mind. In American situation comedy “The Big Bang Theory”which is one representative situation comedy in America, every character has his ownpersonality and vivid utterances. The main reasons for success in the comedy areaffluent content of humor and various patterns of language. In the thesis, relevancetheory proposed by Sperber and Wilson will be used to analyze the production andcomprehension of humorous utterances in American situation comedy “The Big BangTheory”.Relevance theory is proposed by Sperber and Wilson in the book “Relevance:Communication and Cognition” in1986, which can study humorous utterances fromthe perspective of cognitive pragmatics. In recent years, the domestic research onhumor mainly focuses on the employment of speech act theory, but is short of theoverall and systematic description of the humor production and comprehension withinrelevance theory. In the theoretical foundations of relevance theory, there are threequestions to research in the thesis as follows: How is humor effect produced inAmerican situation comedy “The Big Bang Theory”? What is the process of humorproduction within relevance theory in “The Big Bang Theory”? In what waysrelevance theory has broad and strong explanatory power on humor? Throughout ninesamples in “The Big Bang Theory” as the language material, it can be inferred thatrelevance theory has a perfect framework and strong explanatory power for understanding the phenomenon of humor. This thesis begins with the creativeutilization of language, unexpected dialogue and affluent dialogue connotations toanalyze humor effect, which can be proved that humor is a complex psychologicalprocess of cognition and exists in human being’s mind. First, the creative utilizationof language brings a feeling of novelty and happiness to the audience. Second, thedialogues which are not expected bring an unexpected effect of humor to the audience.Third, affluent dialogue connotations make the audience understand the real meaningand the implicature of humor. Then, this thesis is based on three successive steps ofthe ostensive-inferential model, contrast between maximum relevance and optimalrelevance and humor and contextual effects, aimed at analyzing how the audiencecould understand the humorous lines so as to satisfy the psychological need of humor.First, the listener searches for the relevance of language on the basis of the giveninformation of the speaker and the ostension of cognitive circumstance, infers the realcommunicative intention of the speaker and obtains the relevant effect of context.Second, the listener finds out the inconsistency between the maximum relevance andthe given information of speaker, makes effort to get the optimal relevance, and thenachieves the humorous effect. Third, context is dynamic, and the contextualconnotation that occurs by the interaction between the new contextual presumptionand the old one is right humor. Meanwhile, the author gives a brief introduction aboutthe ways that relevance theory has broad and strong explanatory power on humor.On the basis of the findings in the thesis, not only do the audience and reader havea new knowledge of humor within relevance theory, but also the findings provide afurther reference for studying the relationship between relevance theory andphenomenon of humor, and the author will also have a new improvement to thecomprehension of relevance theory.