《艾伦秀》中言语幽默的动态语用分析

Chapter one Introduction

1.1 Research Background
Verbal  humor  is  the  most  important  form  of  humor.  Many  scholars  do  various researches  in  different  fields  on  verbal  humor,for  example,from  the  perspective  of semantics,pragmatic and rhetoric. The study of humor is a kind of useful tool for the development  of  communication  among  people,  especially  from  the  perspective  of pragmatic. Verbal humor is a form of language, which has its unique relationship with the  pragmatic.  Humor  study  can  date  from  more  than  2000  years  ago.  Lord Shaftesbburry firstly discuss the word “humor”, which means the focus of decreasing the pressure of society. Attrado holds that many linguists does not play an important role  until  1960s.  Apt  holds  that  humor  and  language  rely  on  each  other.  Although pragmatic has been a promising field of linguistics, linguists carry out the researches from the perspective of the pragmatic.According  to  Leech,  the  Politeness  Principle  can  be  viewed  in  two  forms:the negative form and the positive form. The politeness principle might be formulated in a general  way:  minimize  (  other  things  being  equal)  the  expression  of  the  impolite beliefs; there is a corresponding positive version : maximize ( other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs which is somewhat less important.（Leech，，1983：81) In fact , except for the proposal of two forms to view the politeness principle and the six maxims under the principle, as we are going to discuss in the following sections , it  seems  that  Leech  has  never  offered  an  exact  definition  as  to  what  the  politeness principle  is.  The  politeness  principle  is  one  of  the  pragmatic  principles  that  socially constrain  communicative  behavior  of  the  speaker  to  ensure  the  effective  use  of language  in  communication,  for  which  the  speaker  is  expected  to  employ  various polite strategies. 
.........

1.2 the Significance of the Research
The  globalization  of  the  world  makes  the  communication  between  different countries more frequent. Therefore humor is much too important for our research into the culture. Firstly Ellen show is a talk show, in our daily life, we often watch the talk show  on  TV,  sometimes  we  will  bear  into  laughter  because  of  the  conversation between the host and the guest. However, we do not know the reasons of laughing. In this  thesis,  dynamic  pragmatic  will  be  applied  into  the  talk  show  to  analyze  the reasons  of  coming  into  being  laughter.  Politeness  Principle  was  introduced  to  the linguistics and played more and more important role in this subject. In the talk show, the host have to create and maintain a harmonious relationship with the guest. Thus, it is  necessary  for  the  host  to  make  good  use  of  the  politeness  principle  and  to  do  his best to make the guest relax. What’s more, identifying pragmatic strategies in the talk show  can  help  people  to  understand  the  deep  meaning.  As  we  all  acknowledge  that humor  is  of  significance  to  us,  it  can  help  improve  the  quality  of  the  conversation, humor  can  be  understood  in  context.  Context  is  a  dynamic  course.  This  study  is intended to throw some light on both theory and practice in the research. In the theory, it endeavors to broaden the study of dynamic pragmatic. This paper aims to analyze the appearance of humor from the perspective of the dynamic context,the politeness principle. In practice,the research can help more Chinese audience to understand the reasons of laughter and master language in a appropriate way. 
........

Chapter two Literature Review

2.1 A Brief Introduction to Humor 
Humor  has  been  studied  in  many  fields  as  a  hot  topic,such  as  philosophy, psychology, sociology. Many linguists show interests in humor in the 1970s. However, linguists  mainly  learn  more  about  humor  from  the  perspective  of  philosophy psychology,sociology.  From  then  on,  linguistics  gradually  play  a  significant  part  in humor  study  in  the  late  1970s.  Charles  Morris(1938)  make  a  concept  of  pragmatic, but linguists did not begin to study verbal humor until 20th century. Later pragmatic scholars were based on pragmatic to analyze humor from the perspective of Adaption theory, Relevance theory, Cooperative principle and Speech Act theory.  Humor  plays  an  important  role  in  the  daily  life  which  can  help  people communicate better. However,different scholars have different opinions about humor, so  humor  has  various  meanings  in  academic  fields.  William  Congreve(1964:7) presents  “  in  my  opinions,there  are  opinions  as  many  as  people”,  which  actually shows the definition of humor.Lin Yutang pointed that humor could be understood by the  people  who  understand  the  real  humor”.  What’s  more.  Humor  also  has  other meanings, for example, the comic, the ludicrous, the funny, wit, joke. Minsky (1974) held that the reason why humor does not has the definition is that humor has direct relationship  with  many  phenomenons.  Palmer(1994)  defines  humor  like  this  :  “by humor  mean  everything  that  is  actually  or  potentially  funny  and  the  processes  by which  this  ‘funniness’  occurs  in  Taking  Humor  Seriously”.  Etymologically,the  word "humor"  comes  from  the  Latin  word  "fluid"  or  "moisture".  
.........

2.2 Studies on Humor
Traditional  theories  about  humor  have  been  put  forward.  Superiority  Theory; Incongruity  Theory;  and  Relief  Theory  is  the  classic  theory.  Attardo(1994)  named three  theories  as  “social”,  “psychoanalytical”  and  “cognitive”  respectively.  Modern researchers on humor has been carried out from various fields, especially in 1950s and 1960s,  there  are  more  and  more  scholars  showing  their  interests  in  humor  from  the perspective of semantics,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. International inferences about  humor  are  continuous  holding  in  different  countries.  Humor:  International Journal  of  Humor  Research  is  a  sort  of  academic  journal  which  was  set  up  in 1988(Bright,1992:181)      Attrado(1990)  explained  the  reason  of  humor  flouting  Grice’s  conversational rules. Hancher(1980) expressed his ideas about humor from the perspective of Speech Act. Raskin(1985) proposed the Semantic Script Theory of Humor, which also named the Script-based Semantic Theory of Humor. This theory was based on two semantic scripts  and  formulated  necessary  conditions  for  the  text  to  be  funny,in  addition,  the two  scripts  are  compatible  and  opposite.  Attardo  and  Raskin(1991)  put  forward  the General Theory of Verbal Humor, where they proposed five other parameters: Logical mechanism,situation,  target,  narrative  strategy  and  language.  Compared  with SSTH,the  General  Theory  of  Verbal  Humor  refers  to  a  theory  which  can  consist  of many sides,for example,textual linguistic and pragmatics. Raskin(1985) also explored humor  into  Cooperative  Principle.  Humor-CP  is  a  new  mode  of  communication. Giora(1997)proposed  marked  information  requirement  and  optimal  innovation hypothesis to make an explanation of humor from the understanding of humor. Geet Brone  uses  cognitive  linguistics  to  analyze  construal  operation.  Francis(1994) regarded  humor  as  a  way  of  emotion  management.  Holmes(2006)  connected  humor with  the  gender  in  the  workplace,  who  paid  attention  to  the  content  of  humor  in gender. Nesi(2012) involved different practices of humor in lecture, who argued that the use of humor in lectures is culture-specific. 
.......

Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation ........12 
3.1 Dynamic Pragmatic.........12 
3.2 Politeness Principle .........13 
3.3 Conversational Analysis........17 
3.4 Conversational Implicature........18 
Chapter Four Research Methodology .....20 
4.1 Research Questions .........20 
4.2 Research Method.......20 
4.3 Data Collection ....21 
4.4 Research Procedure ........21 
Chapter Five Dynamic Pragmatic Analysis of....24 Verbal Humor in Ellen Show........24 
5.1 The Changes of Context Leading to Verbal Humor in Ellen Show.....24 
5.2  Analysis  of  Verbal  Humor  in  Ellen  Show  from  the  Perspective.........29 
5.3  Analysis  of  Humor  in  Ellen  Show  from  the  Perspective....49 
5.4 Analysis of Humor in Ellen Show from the Perspective of Topic Changes....53 

Chapter Five Dynamic Pragmatic Analysis of Verbal Humor in Ellen Show 

5.1 The Changes of Context Leading to Verbal Humor in Ellen Show
In the eyes of almost all the pragmatists, “context” is a vitally important concept. In fact, it is so important that a good many of the scholars have made great efforts to study  the  context.  It  has  been  widely  discussed  since  the  emergence  of  modern linguistics in different fields. To understand the context and understand the exchanges, we  should  rely  on  the  context  for  a  great  number  of  detailed  inferences.  Both  the participants should have common knowledge about the language in use. What’s more, we  should  also  be  equipped  with  some  relevant  extra-linguistic  knowledge,  i.e., background  knowledge,  situational  knowledge  and  mutual  knowledge.  Background knowledge  is  composed  of  three  parts:  encyclopedia  knowledge,  social  norms  and conversational  rules  of  a  specific  culture,  which  the  author  understand  as  optional. Extra-linguistic knowledge also includes situational knowledge, i.e., the time and the place and the topic of the communication, degree of formlessness of the exchange and the relationship of the conversational participants. The mutual knowledge, in the eyes of the pragmatists, is often regarded to be an essential concept for pragmatic inference. Now we have a deeper understanding of the fact that the concept of the “context” in pragmatics is different from that referred to in traditional linguistics. One of the most important differences between the two is that it is viewed by pragmatists as dynamic, like the concept of “meaning”. 
........

Conclusion

The  thesis  focuses  on  the  analysis  of  verbal  humor  from  the  perspective  of pragmatic,  which  mainly  selected  the  talk  show  Ellen  Show  as  the  data.  The  verbal humor  is  connected  with  the  following  theories:  Politeness  Principle,  Dynamic context,  topic  changes.  Through  the  course  of  analysis,  some  major  findings  are summarized as followings:     Firstly,  verbal  humor  can  be  produced  by  the  changes  of  context,  flouting  the Politeness Principle and topic changes. For one thing, the dynamic context results in the  humor  because  the  host  hopes  that  the  changes  of  the  context  would  make  the atmosphere  of  scene  become  funny  and  humorous.  For  another  thing,  Politeness Principle  is  of  great  significance  to  the  guest  because  the  host  Ellen  must  respect every  guest  and  make  use  of  different  ways  to  make  the  audience  laugh.  Therefore, adhering  to  the  Politeness  Principle  or  flouting  the  Politeness  Principle  leads  to  the verbal humor. Politeness Principle has six maxims , which also has close relationship with  the  verbal  humor.Tact  Maxim,Generosity  Maxim,Approbation  Maxim,Modesty Maxim,  Agreement  Maxim  and  Sympathy  Maxim  are  included  in  the  Politeness Principle.  The  host  communicates  with  the  guest  more  humorously  and  she  usually adheres  to  six  maxims.  Due  to  her  politeness,  the  verbal  humor  appears  in  this  talk show. What’s more, for interviewing the guest, the host has difference topics to turn to make the audience know more about the guest. When the topic changes, Ellen always asks some interesting questions whose answer the audience are interested in, and then that makes the audience laugh. 
.........
The reference (omitted)