Looking At The Humor In Besieged City From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Presupposition

Humor is an indispensable part of people’s lives.Linguists have studied and analyzed humor from different angles for centuries,such as cooperation principle,relevance theory,speech act theory,memetics and other theories.However,there are few studies on humor from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition.This thesis adopts the presupposition theory to analyze humor in Fortress Besieged from the perspective of pragmatics,trying to find out the mechanism of humor,and explore how the author applied pragmatic presuppositions to produce humor and achieve humorous effect.Through the analysis,(1)humorous effects in Fortress Besieged are realized by means of diverse strategic manipulations of pragmatic presuppositions;(2)among these strategic manipulations of presuppositions,canceling presuppositions and preserving presuppositions are more widely used to create humor than others.(3)Humorous effects are elicited by various reasons such as a sudden transfer made by incongruity or an indirect satire.Therefore,the existence of pragmatic presupposition is a significant way to cause humor in Fortress Besieged.Through using pragmatic presuppositions,the novel succeeds in producing humorous and witty effects of comedy,which is full of sarcasm,banter and ridicule.