A Cognitive Study Of Humor Interpreting Within The Framework Of The Conceptual Blending Theory

In this more globalized world, interpreting activities become more and more frequent. In these activities, humorous utterances are usually employed by speakers to achieve a certain effect. In order to convey meaning and achieve similar communicative goals, it is necessary for interpreters to fully understand humor in source language and reproduce in target language. This has made interpreting even more difficult. This thesis studies Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) and explores the cognitive process of humor interpreting from the perspective of CBT. The process is divided into two stages:comprehension and production.This thesis applies the Incongruity Theory and CBT into analysis of real interpreting cases to better illustrate the two stages of humor interpreting. At the first stage, interpreters have to comprehend humor utterances by conceptual blending. Their expectation and experience constitute the two input spaces. According to the Incongruity Theory, the mismatch of the two inputs creates "surprise" and makes audience laugh. The generic space includes elements shared by the inputs and provides guidance for projection. As the result of projection, emergent structure is created in the blending. This newly created structure could be summarized as one question:why is the utterance humorous? This very structure then comes into the second blending stage and together with the source language and source culture serves as the conceptual structure of one input space. The other input space is interpreter’s space which includes interpreter’s knowledge of the target language, target culture and his or her relevant capacities. Under the guidance of the generic space, elements are selectively projected into the blending in order to create emergent structure, which is the humor utterance in the target language.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter one introduces research background, objectives and significance. Chapter two conducts a literature review of humor studies, interpreting studies and studies of the conceptual blending. Chapter three is the theoretical framework of the whole paper which introduces CBT in detail and proposes the cognitive process of interpreting from the perspective of CBT. Chapter four borrows the Incongruity Theory to classify humorous utterances and to apply CBT in comprehending each type. Chapter five analyzes the production stage of humor interpreting and discusses the application of the four blending networks. Chapter six summarizes the whole thesis. Conclusions are made and limitations of this study are discussed. It also offers suggestions for future research.