幽默的语用分析文档格式.docx

1、） Key Words: humor; cooperative principle; relevance theory; speech act theory摘 要：作为一种语言现象，幽默普遍存在于我们的日常生活中。它不仅增进了人们的关系，改善了交谈的气氛，也是个人智慧、魅力和所受教育的一种体现。因此，越来越多来自各领域的学者都给予幽默很多关注。本文试从语用学角度出发，运用语用学理论（Grice的合作原则，Sperber& Wilson的关联理论和Austin &Searle的言语行为理论）来分析幽默的特点，旨在探究幽默和一些语用规则的关系，以期对幽默有更好的理解和欣赏。本文分为三个部分：第一部

2、分简要介绍了幽默的概念，研究幽默的三大传统理论以及在心理学、语言学、社会学等方面对幽默已有的研究；第二部分是本文的主体部分，简要回顾了三个与幽默相关的语言学理论并且通过一些幽默笑话案例来分析这些理论在幽默中的应用；第三部分总结全文，重述了本文的基本思想，以助于对之前所做讨论有更好的理解。（鼎力论文网）关键词：幽默；合作原则；关联理论；言语行为理论CONTENTS1. Introduction 11.1 Definitions of Humor 11.2 Previous Researches on Humor 22. A Pragmatic Analysis of Humor 42.1 The

3、 Cooperative Principle （CP） 42.1.1 A Brief Review of CP 42.1.2 Breach of Four Maxims in Humor 62.1.2.1 Violation of Maxim of Quantity 62.1.2.2 Violation of Maxim of Quality 72.1.2.3 Violation of Maxim of Relevance 82.1.2.4 Violation of Maxim of Manner 92.2 Relevance Theory 102.2.1 A Brief Review of

4、the Relevance Theory 102.2.2 Humor and Relevance Theory 122.2.3 Sample Analysis of Humor on Relevance Theory 122.3 Speech Act Theory 142.3.1 A Brief Review of the Speech Act Theory 142.3.2 Sample Analysis of Humor on Speech Act Theory 153. Conclusion 16Bibliography 191. IntroductionHumor is almost e

5、verywhere. It is frequently found in literary works, movies, televisions, radios, photographs, advertisements and social activities, etc. There is nowhere that has not been filled with humor. Throughout the centuries, humor has been a topic that attracts the attention and interest of the researchers

6、 in various fields. Nowadays, the study of humor has already become a special and independent discipline. Many linguists, including psycholinguists, sociolinguists, have been searching for the cause of humor. 1.1 Definitions of HumorWhen we try to define exactly what humor is, we find it quite diffi

7、cult. Many linguists, rhetoricians, lexicographers, philosophers, and scholars have given various definitions of humor but no one meets with everybodys satisfaction.According to Longman Modern English Dictionary （1976）, humor is something which arises amusement, laughter, etc., or the capacity for r

8、ecognizing, reacting to or expressing something which is amusing, funny, etc. In Longman Current English Dictionary （1978）, humor is the ability to be amused or the quality of causing amusement. In Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary （1988）, humor is the capacity to cause or feel amusement. In The A

9、merican Heritage Dictionary of the English Language （1980）, humor is the quality of being laughable or comical and the ability to perceive or express what is comical, witty, etc. Whats more, in all its many-splendored varieties, humor can be simply defined as a type of stimulation that tends to elic

10、it the laughter.The above definitions have one-sided view of humor. Each definition only points out the essence of humor partly from one certain perspective. And no humor theorist can claim his explanation is exactly perfect. But it is “universally acknowledged that the nature of humor is complex an

11、d multifaceted and it is simply not possible at this time to develop a single broad theory that satisfactorily accounts for several key qualities of humor simultaneously” （McGhee 1979）.1.2 Previous Researches on Humor In the traditional view, three theories of humor have been widely accepted: superi

12、ority theory, incongruity theory and relief theory.The superiority theory is a theory with relatively long history and frequent citation among the many theories of humor. Laughers always look down upon whatever they laugh at and accordingly have a sense of superiority in their psychology by certain

13、standard. This theory focuses on emotion or superior psychology, but we feel more than superior when something is likely to elicit our laughter. Incongruity theory, also known as incongruity-resolution theory, involves some kind of difference or clash between what we expect and what we receive actua

14、lly. The usual statement of the incongruity theory （IR） model postulates that humor is created by a multistage process in which an initial incongruity is created, and then some further information causes that incongruity to be resolved （Ritchie 1999）. That is to say humor depends on the pleasure of

15、finding unexpected connections between the two mingling ideas which are felt to be utterly disparate. Relief theory has been given considerable attention by the psychoanalysts, who maintain that humor usually serves as a release of tension which results from our sexual or aggressive urges. Sometimes

16、 we will burst into laughter when we are undergoing a strain that is suddenly removed. So, the central element in humor, in the psychoanalysts view, may be neither a feeling of superiority nor the awareness of incongruity, but the feeling of relief that comes from the removal of restraint. The relie

17、f theory has been reinforced and brought into prominence by the psychologist Sigmund Freud. Freud （1976） himself regards humor as a means of outwitting the internal inhibitions which prevent us from giving rein to many of our natural impulses. The internal inhibitions are not only our sexual impulse

18、s, but also our malicious ones. The restraints may start from our childhood when we are taught that it is “impolite” either to expose our bodies or to speak insultingly or rudely to others. Thus humor, by which, insults or malicious intention may be disguised as compliments and sexual references can

19、 hide behind our innocent words, becomes a tool to release the suppressed emotion and a means of obtaining pleasure. Besides the traditional view, works on humor are mainly from the psychological, linguistic and sociological perspectives.Psychological analysis of verbal humor is based on the notion

20、of incongruity and resolution. The researches on humor from this perspective believe that incongruity is a necessary prerequisite, and that the core of humor consists of an incongruous relationship of which we have to make sense. Psycholinguistic researches on humor have paid special attention to ou

21、r sensitivity to various linguistic ambiguity and our interpretation or appreciation of humors; in other words, they try to detect whether we have the ability to find out the clash or incongruity and the resolution to make a coherence of the humor. A typical representative in this researching field

22、is Suls （1972）, who in his paper “A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons” advances a two-stage model theory on humor appreciation. In this paper, Suls puts forward “a cognitive rule” in humor appreciation. Although “a cognitive rule” is not clearly defined in that paper, it sug

23、gests that he tried to study the understanding of humor from the psychological perspective. Freud （1976） is more concerned with the construction of humor from the psychoanalytic perspective rather than the understanding of humor like Suls. In his work Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Fre

24、ud finds many similarities between the techniques used in humor and the ways in which our waking thoughts are distorted in dreams, so that he is able to link his theory of humor to his theory of dream interpretation. In addition to researches on humors interpretation and construction, the healing ef

25、fect of humor also gradually becomes hot topic in psychological field. For example, McGhee （1999）, on the one hand, focuses on childrens humor research, recognizing the relation between humor and childrens mental health; on the other hand, he concentrates on the remedy effect of humor on peoples hea

26、lth. In his work Health, Healing, and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training, he contends that humor can help people to sustain an upbeat, positive and optimistic frame of mind, and emphasizes the remedy effect of humor from the psychological point of view. Humor researches in psychological fi

27、eld are limitless and cannot be illustrated wholly, so only a few of them are chosen here to give a glimpse at this field.Linguistic studies on humor concentrate on the linguistic form of the humorous line, so that genres, like word play or riddles, and linguistic devices like pun, ambiguity, homoph

28、ony, and exaggeration, have attracted some linguists attention （Pepicello 1984; Chiaro 1992; Norrick 1993）. Pepicello （1984） in his work The Language of Riddles claims that humor is closely related to ambiguity whether it is linguistic such as phonological ambiguity in punning or contextual such as riddles, and that humor depends on the unsolvable ambiguity until the punch line resolves it in some unexpected way. As to the sociological studies of humor, Chiaro （1992） in her book The Language of Jokes: Analyzing Verbal