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Pragmatic Analysis of Humor

Author: WangChunXia
Tutor: ZhaoYingLing
School: Northeast Normal University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: humor principle cooperative principle speech act theory relevance theory politeness principle
CLC: H05
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2006
Downloads: 1394
Quote: 2
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Abstract

In the modern society, people are on the run for their work and life. Especially with the quick tempo of life, they are under great pressure. They long for laughter to release tension in their body and mind. Humor can bring relaxation to people’s life. Taking a general view of the linguistic researches on humorous speeches, the scholars studied this language phenomenon from different perspectives, such as rhetoric, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics. As a kind of utterance art, humor is based not only on the linguistic internal rules but also on the use of speech in a special context which is the object of pragmatic study. Pragmatic analysis is one of the ways used to analyze the communicative connotations of language with the pragmatic theories. Cooperative principle, deixis, presupposition, the speech act, relevance theory and politeness principle are the main pragmatic contents which are regarded as the pragmatic cornerstone. They play important roles and can not be ignored in the comprehension of the humorous speeches. Through extensive literature review, and particularly from the perspective of pragmatics, this paper illustrates the application of various pragmatic contents to interpreting the realization of humor with examples, aiming at systematically revealing the realizations of humor and the explanations to humor’s realization by application of various pragmatic contents. Thus, humor can be better interpreted and used.Firstly, two vague definitions were specified. They are jokes and humor. Traditionally they were mixed as one. In this paper, the typical and appropriate humorous examples were prudently chosen to distinguish these two terms. Secondly, some basic pragmatic contents, such as Grice’s cooperative principle, Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory, J. Austin’s speech act, Leech and Levinson’s politeness principle, deixis, presupposition, were used to elaborate the realization of humor, Finally, the paper found that one more particular pragmatic theories can be used to explain the realization of humor thoroughly and reasonably. The realization of some humor can be explained at least by two more pragmatic contents, and some humor can only be explained by an exclusive theory.Thus, the paper suggests that humor principle should be included in pragmatics to explain the humorous style of people’s conversation. Then, humor can be regarded as a speech skill. Knowing the principles of humor’s realization, more and more people can experience its glamour.

Pragmatic Analysis of Humor

Abstract

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