1、 （ 20_ _届） 本科毕业 设计 英语 从会话含义看英语幽默的产生 Analyzing English Humors from the Perspective of Conversational Implicature Theory I 内容摘要 作为英语中一种特殊的语言现象，幽默在英语文化中起着十分重要的作用。它不仅担任着人际关系润滑剂的角色，而且是个人魅力的表现。对于我国的英语学习者来说，对英语幽默的理解和运用始终是英语学习中的一个瓶颈，如果打破这一瓶颈，将极大地提高英语学习者学习英语的兴趣 ，促进他们的英语学习。 本文将运用会话含义理论对英语幽默进行分析。由于合作原则是会话含义理论中
2、最重要的原则，所以本文将着重运用合作原则及其四个准则对英语幽默进行研究。本文主要研究方法为描述法和案例分析法。描述法主要用在理论方面，案例分析主要出现在运用会话含义理论对英语幽默的分析上。 关键字 ： 幽默；会话含义；合作原则；违反 II Abstract As a special language phenomenon in English, humor plays a very important role in English culture. It not only acts as the lubricant in peoples relationship, but also show
3、s ones personal attractiveness. English humor is a bottleneck for Chinese English learners to understand and use during English learning. Chinese English learners interests will be stimulated if this barrier is broken. This paper will use Conversational Implicature theory to analyze English humor. C
4、ooperative principle is the most important principle in Conversational Implicature theory. The author will focus on using cooperative principle and its four maxims to do a research on English Humor. The main methods of this paper are Descriptive method and Case analysis. Descriptive method will be i
5、nvolved in this thesis mainly when describing Cooperative Principle (CP) as the theoretical basis. Case analysis will be used in the analyzing humor through conversational Implicature theory. Key words: Humorous Utterance; Conversational Implicature; Cooperative Principle; Violation III Content Abst
6、ract . . II 1 Introduction . .1 2 Grices Conversational Implicature Theory . . .2 2.1 Definition of Conversational Implicature . . . .2 2.2 The Cooperative Principle and Its Four Maxims . .2 2.3 The Violation of CP . .3 3 Analyzing English Humor through CP and its Four Maxims . 3 3.1 Brief Review of
7、 English Humor . .4 3.1.1 Affiliative Humor . . . .4 3.1.2 Self-enhancing Humor.5 3.1.3 Aggressive Humor.5 3.1.4 Self-defeating Humor.5 3.2 Analyzing English Humor through CP . .6 3.2.1 Violating the maxim of quality . . .6 3.2.2 Violating the maxim of quantity . . . .7 3.2.3 Violating the maxim of
8、relevance . . . .9 3.2.4 Violating the maxim of manner . . 10 4 Implications of the Studies . . . . .11 5 Conclusion . . .12 Bibliography . 13 Acknowledgements . . .14 1 1 Introduction Humor is the discourse, action, or facial-expression which can amuse people in the process of their communication.
9、Since peoples communication is realized in the discourse, humor is often appeared in everydays discourse. Its generation must draw support from the language and depends heavily on the context in which it is used. Generally speaking, pragmatics, as a new field in linguistics, studies how people inter
10、pret language and use it through contexts in communication. In resent years, there have been a large number of pragmatic studies of humor. Raskin put forward “Cooperative Principle in humor”; Attardo criticized that humor violates the cooperative Principle and said that humor violates at least one m
11、axim in Cooperative Principle. (qtd. in He Ziran, Ran Yongping, 2009, 60) Humor research in China started in the 1980s. The research has been dealing with the cooperative principle, ambiguity and figures of speech respectively, the results of which are distributed in the academic magazines. This pap
12、er, therefore, tries to analyze English humorous utterance from pragmatic perspective in which found its insufficient study at present. An abundance of examples has been gathered by the author. The author intends to study the language of humor by view of Cooperative Principle, which is the core of t
13、he conversational implicature. “Although many linguists have doubted the Cooperative Principle, as it provides detailed maxims and sub-maxims, it makes the analysis of conversations rather persuasive and justifiable. So comparatively speaking, it is the most effective pragmatic theory for analyzing
14、how the humorous effects are achieved in conversational humor.” (He Ziran, Ran Yongping, 2009, 62) The purpose of this paper is to reexamine the relationship between Cooperative Principle and humor through analyzing the humorous examples, in the hope that it will be of some help in the learning of E
15、nglish humor. Descriptive method will be involved in this thesis mainly when describing Cooperative Principle (CP) as the theoretical basis. Case analysis will be also used. With some of the humorous examples as the basis and the CP as the guideline, this thesis aims to analyze how conversational im
16、plicature of humor is generated, in an attempt to help Chinese English learners better enjoy and understand the English humor and harmonious interaction in real life. 2 Grices Conversational Implicature Theory As mentioned before, this paper aims to interpret the humorous utterance in English with t
17、he help of the following theory： the Conversational Implicature and its four maxims, which forms the basic theoretical framework for the conversational analysis in this paper This part will present a general description of this theory. 2 2.1 Definition of Conversational Implicature The conception of
18、 conversational implicature is one of the most important ideas in pragmatics. The term conversational implicature was put forward by the English language philosopher H.P. Grice in a series of lectures at Harvard University in 1967, referring to an indirect or implicit meaning of an utterance derived
19、 from the context that is not presented from its conversational use. According to Grice, “conversational implicature plays an important role in our personal interactions.” (Grice, 2002, 269) In conversation, people usually understand what others are saying even when they do not express their intensi
20、ons directly. But to work out the complete message when speakers mean more than say, hearers have to calculate or interpret their utterance. How can people correctly understand others? The Cooperative Principle needs to be referred here. 2.2 The Cooperative Principle and Its Four Maxims Pragmatician
21、s are also keen on exploring why interlocutors can successfully communicate with one another in a conversation. A basic idea is that interlocutors obey certain principles in their participation in order to sustain the conversation. Grice provides a theory that explains how people correctly interpret
22、 what others are implying by universal conversations in human interaction, which are called Cooperative Principles. These principles explain how hearers are able to interpret speakers intentions. Grice calls such principles conversational maxims. They are the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance a
23、nd manner (Grice, 2002, 269) (i) The Maxim of Quality Speakers should be truthful. They should not say what they think is false, or make statements for which they lack adequate evidence. (ii) The Maxim of Quantity A contribution should be as informative as is required for the conversation to proceed
24、. It should be neither too little, nor too much. (iii) The Maxim of Manner Speakers contributions should be orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity. (iv)The Maxim of Relevance Speakers contributions should relate clearly to the purpose of the exchange. Of course Grice dose not prescribe
25、the use of such maxims. 2.3 The Violating of CP However, in the real world, people do not always obey the Cooperative Principle. “No one speaks by always faithfully observing these maxims.” (Yule, 1996, 147) Participants may 3 choose to follow these maxims, but they also violate one of them, opt out
26、 one of them, or sacrifice one to the other if they clash. Lying, for example, violates the maxim of quality. “Facing the fact, Grice explains, in many situations, under the general assumption of adhering to the Cooperative Principle, the speaker intentionally violates some maxim to imply un-stated
27、information and manages to be understood by the interlocutor” (Levinson, 2001, 98). To the hearer, in understanding the meaning beyond the utterance, he should realize that certain cooperative maxim is not followed at once and will think why the speaker violates them. This is a very fast calculating
28、 process. Because the speaker wants the implied information to be successfully conveyed, so normally the hearer can easily get it. “That is to say both the speaker and the hearer are clear about that they actually cooperate with each other even certain maxim is violated.” (He Wenzhong, 2003, 11) Thi
29、s exploitation of the maxims is the basic mechanism by which utterances are used to convey more than they literally denote, which is called as Implicature. By intentionally hiding the real meaning and trying to imply it can very often create humorous effects. In the following part, there is a detail
30、ed analysis of different techniques and devices that create by violating the cooperative principle with examples. 3 Analyzing English Humor through CP and its Four Maxims There are too many humorous conversations in English, to really appreciate these humorous conversations one has to delve into the
31、 implicit meaning behind the explicit utterance. The following discussions explore the conversational implicature of humorous utterance from the approach of the cooperative principle and its four maxims. These well-chosen humorous conversations are grouped into different categories and carefully exa
32、mined. 3.1 Brief review of English Humor There are many researches on humor, but no precise definition of humor is generally recognized in the academic field so far. Here a review of some frequently used existing definitions is given below. In Oxford English-Chinese Dictionary, “humor” is the “quali
33、ty of being amusing or comic”, or the “ability to appreciate things, situations or people that are comic; ability to be amused”. (qtd. in Tian Jianming, Tian Xiaojun, 2000, 16) And in Websters New World Dictionary of American English, it is “a) that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous
34、or absurdly incongruous; b) the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous; c) something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing.” (qtd. in Tian Jianming, Tian Xiaojun, 2000, 4 16) All in all, both the two sources lay stress on two sides:
35、 one is humor as linguistic or non-linguistic behavior or as other forms that induce amusement or laughter. The other is the ability to recognize, appreciate and create humor. Our general idea is that humor simply makes people laugh, and it should be positive rather than negative. However, normal hu
36、mors are usually funny and hurt nobody, many of them indeed have an aggressive nature. We live in a society with a lot of people. Either consciously or unconsciously, we always try to coordinate with other people, and to adjust our society status according to our purposes. Humor often acts as an int
37、ellectual weapon in the fight for increasing ones social status, or as the presentation for intellectual combats; or as a way to attain ones own benefits in order to enhance the personal relationships. On the basis of this view, one of the popular opinions in academic field at present classifies hum
38、or as four types. 3.1.1. Affiliative Humor “Affiliative humor is used to amuse others and enhance ones relationships with people in a way that is relatively accommodating and self-accepting.” (qtd. in Tian Jianming, Tian Xiaojun, 2000, 16).One who uses affiliative humor may joke around with others a
39、nd has the ability to make other people laugh. Plenty of light humorous conversations that take place in our daily life fall into this kind. For example: “Hey, why do you take bread and a knife whenever you do downtown?” “Well, its because of the report of a traffic jam.” (Zhang Yanlun, Lianghui, 20
40、00, 28) “Jam” here has double meanings. Of course we know “the traffic jam” is very different from the literal meaning of “jam”, which is used for eating bread. But the comic reply deliberately takes the literal meaning. Humorous conversations like this do no harm to anyone yet make everyone amused.
41、 3.1.2. Self-enhancing Humor “Sometimes humor may be used in a way that is tolerant and non-detrimental to others to enhance the self. Self-enhancing humor is aimed to reduce an individuals stress through changing ones perception of a situation.” (qtd. in Tian Jianming, Tian Xiaojun, 2000, 17).Peopl
42、e require a sense of superiority over something or someone in this kind of humor and they are easily amused. Behavior associated with self-enhancing humor includes being able to cheer oneself up with humor, and being amused by the absurdities of life. For example: Waiter: tea or coffee, gentleman? 1
43、st customer: Ill have tea. 2nd customer: Me, too. And be sure the glass is clean! 5 (Waiter exits, returns) Waiter: Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass? (Zhang Yanlun, Lianghui, 2000, 69) This is a typical example of a humor on absurdity. We are amused because the waiter doesnt realize wha
44、t can be implied in his reply. Therefore, the unconscious satisfaction or superiority over the waiter rises. This kind of humor also commonly appears in jokes that mock a third person or people of certain nation, and some clumsy behavior existing in real life or movies, etc. 3.1.3. Aggressive Humor
45、“Aggressive Humor is of sarcastic, manipulative, or disparaging, which may be done at the expense and detriment of ones relationships with other people.” (qtd. in Tian Jianming, Tian Xiaojun, 2000, 17).In reality, aggressive humor would include ironic jokes or teasing others about their mistakes and
46、 lack of concern about how other people might react to the joke. For example: Hotel Clerk: I hope you enjoyed your stay with us, sir. Departing Guest: Well, the bed was too hard, the price was too high, the food was lousy, the service was slow, theres too much noise, but anyway, I certainly enjoyed
47、your ice water. (Xiaolin, 2001, 41) The last sentence of this reply makes the whole utterance humorous; this is obviously an aggressive humor to the hotel clerk. 3.1.4. Self-defeating Humor “Self-defeating humor is used for excessive ingratiation or self-disparagement. Different from aggressive humor, it may be used at the expense and detriment of the self in order to amuse others and enhance ones relationships with others.” (qtd. in Tian Jianming, Tian Xiao
