An Analysis Of Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of C-R-A Model

Verbal humor, a unique communicative method of human beings, is oftenregarded as the “lubricant” in our daily life, making the complicated socialcommunication easy and interesting. Scholars have studied and analyzed it fromdifferent perspectives, philosophically, psychologically, sociologically, rhetoricallyand so on. With the development of linguistics, many linguists have analyzed verbalhumor from the aspect of linguistics. They combine verbal humor with linguistictheories from semantics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, etc. As onebranch of linguistics, pragmatics is especially powerful in analyzing verbal humor.Previous researchers have analyzed the production mechanism of verbal humor andthe interpretation of verbal humor from the perspective of Cooperative Principle,Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory.Based on the previous researches and with the method of descriptive andqualitative research, the author applies the C-R-A Model (based on the framework ofCP, RT and AT) to analyze verbal humor. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate thefeasibility of C-R-A Model in the interpretation of verbal humor. C-R-A Model is putforward by Liao Qiaoyun in2005. The C-R-A Model is a theory which combinesthree theories (CP, RT and AT) into one theory. It adopts the strong points and avoidsthe weak points of each theory, and makes the perspectives of philosophy, cognitivityand sociology complementary, to achieve a level which is more powerful andcomprehensive than any single theory (He Zhaoxiong,2005). In C-R-A Model,cooperation is the prerequisite condition; relevance serves as the necessary conditionand adaptation functions as regulatory mechanism. The C-R-A Model includes twoversions: the primary version and the extended version. The primary version is used toanalyze the verbal humor of a single communication act and the extended version isapplied to explain the verbal humor in multi-exchange communication act. In theextended version of C-R-A Model, the cooperation is classified into cooperative, lesscooperative, and non-cooperative; the relevance is divided into optimally relevant, less relevant and non-relevant; and the adaptation is put into explicitly adaptative,implicitly adaptative and non-adaptative. Verbal humor can be divided into successfulverbal humor, less successful verbal humor and non-successful verbal humor. Thisthesis focuses on three types of successful verbal humor: the successful verbal humorwhich is on the basis of cooperative, optimally relevant and explicitly or implicitlyadaptative; the successful verbal humor which is on the basis of less cooperative, lessrelevant and explicitly or implicitly adaptative; and the successful verbal humor whichis on the basis of non-cooperative, non-relevant and explicitly or implicitly adaptative.The CP, RT and AT are three important theories of pragmatics. They areseparately applied to analyze various linguistic phenomena. However, there is noresearch which has been done with a theory combined by the three theories. Thisthesis applies the C-R-A Model to analyze the selected samples from different genres,discussing the verbal humor in them with the primary version and the extendedversion. Since humor is “lubricant” in our life, it is worth understanding andappreciating from different angles. It is hoped that this thesis can enrich the studies inthe field of verbal humor, providing references for the understanding of humor, andbroadening the scope of pragmatics.