英语幽默的语用研究
关键词 英语幽默 语用学 合作原则 指示语 关联理论 言语行为 前提
毕 业 论 文 外 文 摘 要
Title Pragmatic Analysis of English Humor
Abstract
English jokes are humorous and implicit. However, for people whose mother language is not English, it’s hard to completely understand English humor. This paper presents a pragmatic analysis of English humor in order to help the reader get a better understanding of English humor. Some examples of English humor are analyzed in relation to cooperative principle, deixis, relevance theory, speech act theory, and presupposition.
Keywords English humor pragmatics cooperative principle deixis relevance theory Speech act presupposition
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Pragmatic Theories 1
2.1 The Cooperative Principle 1
2.2 Deixis 3
2.3 Relevance Theory 4
2.4 Speech Act Theory 5
2.5 Presupposition 6
3 Research Design 6
4 Pragmatic Analysis of English Humor 7
4.1 Cooperative Principle and Humor 7
4.1.1 Violation of Maxim of Quantity. 7
4.1.2 Violation of Maxim of Quality. 8
4.1.3 Violation of Maxim of Relation 8
4.1.4 Violation of Maxim of Manner 9
4.2 Deixis and Humor 9
4.3 Relevance Theory and Humor 10
4.4 Speech Act Theory and Humor 11
4.5 Presupposition and humor 11
Conclusion 13
Acknowledgements 14
Bibliography 15
1 Introduction:
Humorous language is a very common linguistic phenomenon in our daily life, which usually refers to those uncoordinated, ridiculous and amusing words. It’s easy for us to understand Chinese humor stories, but when it comes to English ones, we may find it difficulty to understand some of them. Therefore, in order to enjoy English humor more, we have to learn how English humor amuses and how pragmatic knowledge is used in it. In this paper, I will analyze English humor by using five pragmatic theories: cooperative principle, deixis, relevance theory, speech act theory, and presupposition. We will take some short and easy English humor stories as examples and analyze them with the theories listed above.
2 Pragmatic Theories
English humor has been studied by many scholars from different aspects for many years, and among them the pragmatic analysis is of high popularity. Those predecessors almost use three categories of theories in their analysis overall: cooperative principle, relevance theory, and speech act theory. However, these are not all the pragmatic theories that we can use to analyze English humor. We can also study English humor from other important aspects such as deixis and presupposition.
2.1 The Cooperative Principle
A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. This assumption is known as the Cooperative Principle. As stated in H. P. Grice’s Logic and Conversation (1975). English humor is produced as a result of violation of cooperative principle (He Ziran, 1995: 23-27).
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