Cognitive Analysis Of Cold Jokes:a Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

Recently, cold jokes are popular on the Internet, in the programs on TV, in the books and the magazines as a special kind of humorous expressions. The name comes from the fact that when one hears a cold joke, he shivers in terror instead of laughing because the joke is so bad. By using different syntactic devices, like omission, shifts in languages, rhetorical devices and debating skills, people can make various cold jokes to make the utterances more impressive. The research into cold jokes is still in its infancy, but they have already attracted many scholars from rhetoric and linguistics. They have contributed a lot to the interpretation and application of cold jokes, while the studies have some limitations and weakness, either. This thesis, initially having a brief review of the previous study towards cold jokes and the basic concepts of Conceptual Blending Theory proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (1998,2002), mainly attempts to analyze the online meaning construction of cold jokes in conceptual blending networks.According to the author, in the conceptual integration network of cold jokes, input spaces are connected to a generic space which reflects some common abstract structures or frames shared by the inputs. The frames and elements from the inputs are selectively projected to the blend. The emergent structure in the blend is composed by these structures from the inputs and completed by the relevant background knowledge. Then it is elaborated by mental and physical simulation of the events, by which novel structure not existing in the real world or seeming illogical, irrational and strange can be generated, most of which is in conflict with the structures in the linguistic context or the cultural backgrounds and conventional views in extralinguistic context. It is such contradiction that evokes the humorous, ironic or other meaning of cold jokes.Because of the complexity and diversity of cold jokes, the author adopts five different blending networks to study them, that is, single framing networks, frame networks, one-sided networks, two-sided networks, and multiple integration networks. Based on the present study, it is concluded that there are three general ways to cause conflicts. First, the blend unconsciously formed by the addressee based on the elements of inputs is contradicted with the end or the punch line of cold jokes. Second, the structures projected to the blend are in conflict with each other. Third, the emergent structures seem logic and right but conflict with the relevant background knowledge. In a word, there are some clashes in the blend, and the clashes attracted human’s attention which make humorous or ironic meanings of cold jokes, that is, humor effects can be deduced in solving the contradiction.The thesis consists of five parts. The first chapter introduces the significance, research questions, objectives and organization of the thesis. The second chapter is the literature review, including definitions, classification, relation with relevant terms, previous studies on cold jokes. The third chapter introduces the theoretical frame: Conceptual Blending Theory, where the four-space model, selective mappings, emergent structures, optimality principles, types of networks as well as the application of the theory are listed. The fourth chapter is the key part, analyzing the meaning construction of cold jokes from the five types of integration networks as single framing networks, frame networks, one-sided networks, two-sided networks and multiple integration networks. The fifth part is the conclusion of the entire thesis, points out research limitations and gives the advice and enlightenment for future study.