A Pragmatic Study Of The Verbal Humor In Zhou Libo Live Show A Relevance-theoretic Perspective

Humor is a phenomenon that has drawn the attention of scholars from various fields. And it can be mainly divided into two categories:verbal humor and non-verbal humor. The former has become the focus of research for many linguists over the years. Zhou Libo Live Show is a kind of Chinese talk show that has been well-received in recent years and it serves as an important source of materials for humor study. However, up to this date, research on the show has been rather limited, especially from the perspective of pragmatics. It is believed that a pragmatic analysis of humor will lead to a better understanding of its cognitive process.This study is a qualitative one based on Sperber and Wilson’s RT (RT), which is general theory for human communication and cognition. It draws materials from the verbal humor transcribed from the famous talk show Zhou Libo Live Show, employing methods of classification, deduction and induction to explore the features and working mechanism behind the humor, so as to deepen our comprehension of verbal humor from an RT perspective.The present study has shown that the verbal humor from Zhou Libo Live Show is closely related to current affairs. The criticism and satirization of unreasonable social practices plays an indispensable role in the generation and interpretation of the humor from the show. In addition, of the lexical, rhetoric and pragmatic strategies available in the show, rhetoric devices are the most frequently used and characterize Zhou’s humor.According to RT, the paper believes that verbal humor results from the filling of the gap between maximal relevance and optimal relevance by the humor recipient. This study is an attempt to improve our ability to appreciate this type of Chinese talk show and guides us to manipulate verbal humor to our advantage in our daily life.