A Research On Verbal Humor In English Jokes From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Verbal humor is a kind of common linguistic phenomenon. It is ubiquitous and playsa quite significant role in daily life. As a special form of entertainment, it can help peoplereduce pressure, release tension and remove tiredness, which does much good to theirhealth. Besides, as a particular sort of communicative tactic, it enables people to ease theembarrassing situation, which contributes to the harmonious interpersonal relationship.As a result, there are many scholars dedicating themselves to the study of verbal humor.Especially in recent years, with the rapid development of semantics, pragmatics, etc.within the field of linguistics, more and more scholars have begun to concern with theresearch on verbal humor. They have carried out the studies from a newer and widerperspective, but all of them have some limitations. Therefore, it is necessary to do somefurther research on verbal humor and dig out its essence. Based on the previous researchachievements, this thesis attempts to make a thorough study on verbal humor generationand comprehension in English jokes under the guidance of Relevance Theory putforward by Sperber and Wilson from the pragmatic perspective.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion, whosemajor contents are as follows:Introduction first summarizes the research findings of verbal humor at home andabroad, and points out the shortcomings, and then explains the theoretical significanceand the practical value of the verbal humor study in English jokes from the perspective ofRelevance Theory.The main body is composed of three chapters:Chapter One is literature review. It first looks back the definition of humor and itsthree traditional theories: Superiority Theory from the angel of social behavior, ReliefTheory from the psychological perspective and Incongruity Theory from the viewpoint ofcognition, and then gives a brief introduction to Relevance Theory, like the definition ofrelevance, the relevance principles, the degree of relevance, the cognitive environment,and so on. All of these lay the essential theoretical foundation for the research.Chapter Two and Chapter Three form the main body of the thesis. Chapter Twomakes a comprehensive analysis of the verbal humor generation mechanism in Englishjokes, which is carried out from three relevant perspectives. To begin with, the humorous effect comes into being by the disparity of the speaker’s informative intention and hiscommunicative one. In the process of the verbal humor communication, the semanticmeaning of the speaker’s utterance conveys the informative intention, and the implicaturetransmits the communicative intention. It is just the separation of the two sorts ofintention that gives rise to the humorous effect. Secondly, according to the principles ofrelevance, the hearer expects the speaker to provide the utterance of the most relevance.However, in fact, the speaker only supplies the utterance of the optimal relevance. It issuch incongruity that leads to the humorous effect. Finally, in verbal humorcommunication, the speaker envisages that the hearer could interpret his utterance in anappropriate context. Nevertheless, the proper context expected by the speaker is,sometimes, not mutual manifest to the hearer. On such occasion, the hearer wouldmisunderstand the utterance, which accordingly brings about the humorous effect.Chapter Three illustrates the verbal humor comprehension in English jokes underthe guidance of Relevance Theory. At first, in the ostensive-inferential process of verbalhumor communication, the hearer interprets the humorous utterance through theinference of the speaker’s communicative intention by the speaker’s ostension. Secondly,in the course of verbal humor interpretation, the hearer’s expectation of the speaker’smost relevant utterance contrasts with the speaker’s actual offer of the optimal relevantutterance. Thus, the hearer has to spend extra processing effort to fill the gap and get thehumorous effect. Finally, from the angle of context, the hearer chooses certain context toprocess the speaker’s utterance. Nevertheless, with the appearance of the incongruitycaused by the distinction between the hearer’s expectation of the most relevant utteranceand the speaker’s actual supply of the optimal relevant utterance, the hearer has to changethe context, in which he will reinterpret the utterance, and thus enjoy the pleasurebrought by the humorous utterance. Besides, the author analyzes two main barriers to thesmooth verbal humor comprehension: one is caused by the non-mutual manifestlinguistic information; the other by the non-mutual manifest context.Conclusion summarizes what have been discussed above. This research employs themethod of exemplification to analyze a large amount of English jokes under the guidanceof Relevance Theory. It illustrates the verbal humor generation and comprehension withdetail from three aspects respectively, which makes up the weaknesses of the previous verbal humor studies mainly carried out on the superficial layer of language itself, andthus deepens people’s understanding of the verbal humor in English jokes. Accordingly,it can help them get the humorous effect smoothly and enjoy the pleasure. In addition,through the analysis of the obstacles to verbal humor interpretation, the research draws apedagogical implication, i.e. to better interpret the humorous utterances, teachers andstudents should lay much emphasis on the enrichment of mutual manifest cognitiveenvironment in the process of language teaching and learning.