A Study On The Verbal Humor In Sitcoms From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Verbal humor is a common but special language phenomenon. With its profound pragmatic functions, it plays a vital part in people’s daily communication. As early as fourth century BC, plenty of scholars and specialists from various fields like psychology, physiology, anthropology, sociology, etc. spared no efforts to probe into verbal humor. However, in the field of linguistics, the study of verbal humor failed to catch the linguists’ close attention until the late 1980 s. The research in linguistic field started from semantics, rhetoric and syntax, and later extended to the field of pragmatics and cognitive pragmatics. Some of the typical research has been conducted to interpret verbal humor by Wang Yong(2006), Jiang Bingqing(2007), Li Jie(2007), Gao Jie(2013), Fang Xiaofang(2013). They make the detailed and comprehensive pragmatic research on verbal humor from the perspectives of the Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT), Memetics, Cooperative Principle(CP), Turn Silence(TS). Although the corresponding achievements are obtained, they all, too certain degree, have their own limitations. Therefore, it is extremely essential and far-reaching to carry out the research on digging out the nature of verbal humor.As a special and unique language art,situation comedy firstly started in America.By virtue of its humorous lines,witty language style,distinctive characters,as well as the nonsensical comedy,the sitcom appeared on television and successfully won the attention of the mass.In linguistics,the research on verbal humor in sitcoms tends to be rare in recent year.The related study in the past is rather macroscopic by adopting some representative pragmatic attempts like Cooperative Principle(CP),Politeness Principle(PP),and Speech Act Theory(SAT).However,taking Relevance Theory as the theoretical framework to interpret the verbal humor in sitcoms is far from satisfactory both in quantity as well as quality.Meanwhile,among other sitcoms,the Ipartment directed by Yu Zeng(于正)in recent years,once broadcast,has won the popularity of people from all ages.Since it is alived with numerous special andhumorous lines,in many well-known scriptwriters’eyes,are known as the revolution of the new comedy test.As a successful example of the new generation of sitcoms,the verbal humor in Ipartment not only keeps the pace with the age,greatly highlights the current characteristics of contemporary era but also successfully reflects the orientation of sitcoms in future.Therefore,in light of Relevance Theory,the study on verbal humor in sitcoms is rather a meritorious topic which is worthy of closer attention and more efforts to dig out its nature.Based on the excellent achievements of previous study, the present thesis takes data study, descriptive qualitative study and exemplification as the main study methods to probe into the inner mechanism of verbal humor in sitcoms. The research corpora are the classical and humorous conversations, which are completely selected from the first three seasons of the famous Chinese sitcom Ipartment. Under the guidance of Relevance Theory, the present thesis is intended to conduct a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the thirty-three samples in Ipartment, aiming to explore and summarize the inner mechanism of the generation and interpretation of verbal humor in sitcoms. To be specific, two important research questions will be answered in the current study. Firstly, how does the humorous effect emerge in essence? Namely, under the guidance of Relevance Theory, in what way can the humor effect be produced? Secondly, in accordance with Relevance Theory, how can we smoothly interpret the verbal humor in sitcom?Through the deliberate and comprehensive analysis, it is not difficult to find that degrees of relevance, dynamic cognitive context and the cognitive ability of the communicators all play a crucial role in verbal humor generation and interpretation.Generally speaking, the present thesis has got two major findings: 1.Three main ways contributes to the generation of verbal humor in sitcoms. First of all, the contrast between informative intention and communicative intention accounts for the humorous effect in sitcoms. In the second place, the separation between maximal relevance and optimal relevance gives rise to verbal humor in sitcoms. In the end, the non-mutual cognitive environment plays a great part in verbal humor generation as well. 2. There are three points on the interpretation of verbal humor in sitcoms. Tostart with, the speaker’s informative intention always separate with his communicative one, which requires the listener to try his best to infer the concealing communicative attention of relevance. Thus the verbal humor can be interpreted smoothly. Secondly,the verbal humor can be interpreted successfully when the listener spends some extra cognitive effort to win the most optimal relevance. At last, cognitive context, as a key factor in verbal humor comprehension, is not static but dynamic. Once activated, the new cognitive context tends to interact with the old one. Under such a circumstance,the verbal humor interpretation can be realized stably. According to these finding, the present thesis proves that Relevance Theory provides a rather new and convincing research angle for verbal humor studies in sitcoms. The strong explanatory power in elaborating the inner mechanism of verbal humor generation and interpretation greatly contributes to the further development as well as the better appreciation of sitcoms.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is Introduction which makes a detailed introduction about the research rational, questions, significance,methodology and the outline of the research. The second chapter is the literature review, in which a review of the previous study on humor is given. Namely, the definition, classification of humor, and the humor study home and abroad are reviewed. Chapter three presents the basic theoretical framework of the thesis, which plays a solid theoretical foundation for the present thesis.Chapter four serves as major part and creative point of the present thesis. Under the guidance of Relevance Theory, The author, based on the main concepts including ostensive-inferiental model, dynamic context, relevance and principles of relevance,makes an attempt to explore in great depth the generation and interpretation of verbal humor in sitcoms. In the final chapter, the conclusion of the current thesis is mainly comprised by the major findings, limitations, and the suggestions for future research.