A Study Of Semantic Deviation And Its Realization In Sketches Of Spring Festival Gala

This paper takes sketches of Spring Festival Gala as research subject and then explores and analyzes the categories of semantic deviation and its realization in these sketches.As its highest attention and powerful influence, Spring Festival Gala demands the highest quality of its programs. As an important part among the language programs, the quality of sketches of Spring Festival Gala is inevitability higher than the sketches in other programs. In addition, types of sketches of Spring Festival Gala are abundant and content is rich, thus it is possible for the author to analyze the lines of different kinds of sketches of Spring Festival Gala deeply and comprehensively. Studies both at home and abroad mostly focus on Zhao Benshan’s sketches(An Fengcun and Li Hongying, 2011; Deng Menglan, 2008; Li Lili, 2005) and comedies(Zhao Siying, 2012; Zhao Yan, 2011). However, the subject of our study includes all kinds of sketches of Spring Festival Gala from the year of 2000 to the year of 2014.Semantic deviation, as an important type among language deviation, refers to unreasonable logic in meaning, especially the illogical collocations and expressions(Leech, 1969). The lines of sketches belong to communicative language and the process of performance of sketches is also the process of communication. Meaning is of great importance to the effect of communication. Therefore, lines of sketches can directly influence the effect of performance. Studies on sketches are mostly from the perspective of language deviation during the recent ten years, but less made a study specially on semantic deviation. Although there are studies on classification of semantic deviation, the results are almost the same and they all belong to the category of positive semantic deviation. In addition, the studies on ways of realizing semantic deviation are paid less attention to.Therefore, this paper mainly explores two research questions: 1. What are the categories of semantic deviation in sketches of Spring Festival Gala? 2. In what ways are these categories of semantic deviation realized in sketches of Spring Festival Gala?This paper mainly adopts the method of qualitative analysis. This paper classifies the phenomenon of semantic deviation into two categories: creative semantic deviation and negative semantic deviation based on Leech’s definitions of semantic deviation and creative deviation and Wang Xijie’s classification: positive deviation and negative deviation.This paper also adopts the methods of observation and description to explore the ways of realizing the two categories of semantic deviation. In terms of creative semantic deviation, there are 8 ways. They are creative use of different senses of a morpheme; creative use of homophony; creative switching between conceptual meaning and affective meaning; creative use of parody; creative use of abnormal collocation; creative deviation from logic; creative switch of thematic meaning and creative use of metonymy. In terms of negative semantic deviation, there are 3 ways. They are misuse of social meaning; misuse of sense of category and misinterpretation of words.Finally, the conclusion is that creative semantic deviation helps to enhance the performance effect of sketches, but negative semantic deviation impedes communication, for it exploits the weakness of ill-educated people to make fun. Therefore, this kind of semantic deviation should be reduced. The limitation of this paper is that quantitative study should be used to analyze the percentage of categories and of ways of realizing these categories, which helps to grasp the rules of the utilization of semantic deviation.