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1、论文编码： H030首都师范大学本科毕业论文基于美国情景喜剧老友记中幽默语言的会话含义分析AN ANALYSIS OF THE THEORY OF CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE REFLECTED IN ENGLISH HUMOROUS UTTERANCE BASED ON AMERICAN SITCOM FRIENDSA thesissubmitted in partial fulfillmentof the requirements for the degree ofBachelor of Arts in the English Education Departme
2、nt ofCollege of Foreign LanguagesCapital Normal University April 2010摘要本文重点分析了英语幽默语言的会话含义。鉴于我国语言学界对英语幽默研究尚处于初级阶段，缺乏对幽默产生中的语用因素研究，本文在总结已有的幽默学理论基础上，以老友记中部分语境对话为例，从语用学视角来分析英语幽默产生的原因。重点分析了通过违反合作原则和礼貌原则而产生的幽默效果。其实用价值可指导人们认识产生幽默的语用因素，从而恰当地发挥语用能力，提高英语学习者热情并有助于教师改善教学方法及学习策略,提高跨文化交际的效率。关键词: 幽默语言；会话含义；语用学；合作原
3、则；礼貌原则；老友记AbstractThis paper discusses the theory of Conversational Implicature reflected in English humorous utterance. Due to the facts that humor researches in China conducted from the perspective of pragmatics remain scant and superficial, the research, which is based on examples from Friends, v
4、entures on an attempt to analyze English humorous utterance from pragmatic perspective. There are three parts in this thesis. In the first part, a general literature review will be presented. Then the current methodology will be introduced briefly in the second part. In the last part, the cases coll
5、ected from Friends will be analyzed and discussed to reach a conclusion. The main part of the paper is the detailed analyses on how humorous effects are achieved by the violation of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, in the hope that it will be applied to help people realize the pragmat
6、ic aspect in humor production and improve the efficiency in EFL learning and cross-cultural communication.Key words: humorous utterance, Conversational Implicature, pragmatics, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, FriendsContents摘要-Abstract-List of Abbreviations-1. Introduction-1 1.1 Backgro
7、und of the Research-1 1.2 Significance of the Study-12. Literature Review-3 2.1 Definitions of Humor-3 2.2 Three Basic Conventional Humor Theories-3 2.3 General Theory of Verbal Humor-6 2.4 Grices Conversational Implicature-6Summary-93. Methodology-10 3.1 Materials-10 3.2 Method-103.3 Data Collectio
8、n-114. Results and Discussions-12 4.1 Humor and Cooperative Principle-12 4.2 Humor and Politeness Principle-20 Summary-225. Conclusion-23 5.1 Major Findings-23 5.2 Implications-23 5.3 Limitations-24 5.4 Recommends for further research-25References-26Appendix-28List of AbbreviationsCP Cooperative Pri
9、ncipleHU Humorous UtterancePP Politeness PrincipleGTVH General Theory of Verbal Humor1. Introduction1.1 Background of the researchThe use of humor is a complex and intriguing aspect of human behavior, which can help people to conduct all kinds of speech acts, influence communication as well as impro
10、ve intimacy. With the development of social civilization, people have gradually realized that humor is indispensable for our monotonous and regular life. The study of humor can be traced back to the time of Aristotle (384-322B.C.) and Freud (1856-1939). Apte (1985:175) concluded that “humor and lang
11、uage are interdependent”. Raskin (1985) put forward “cooperative principle in humor”; Grices Cooperative Principles are also used to give explanation to humorous effects. Attardo (1994) criticized some attacks on humor as violation of Cooperative Principle and reiterated that humor violates at least
12、 one maxim in Cooperative Principle. Humor research in China began in 1980s, but the researches especially from pragmatic perspective remain superficial and scant. This paper ventures on the theory of Conversational Implicature reflected in English humorous utterance, which explores how the verbal h
13、umor can be achieved in terms of the rules and theories of pragmatics, in hopes that it will help further the study on language humor and provide some insights into cross-cultural communication.1.2 Significance of the studyThe research provides an adequate basis for the study of how people use verba
14、l humor to perform communicative tasks, as it analyzes daily conversations taken from the popular American sitcom Friends and lays emphasis on the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. Moreover, it proves the validity of the application of pragmatics in studying the sitcoms. Hence, by prov
15、iding the strategies of creating verbal humor, it could shed lights upon playwrights with the help of some basic theories of pragmatics. Last but not least, it may help improve language learning and teaching because it could give insights into the mechanism of humor production, which contributes to
16、successful intercultural communication.2. Literature review2.1 Definitions of humorThroughout the centuries, humor has aroused enormous curiosity of sociologists, anthropologists, linguists and philosophers. The word humor seems too common in our daily life to be defined as a theoretical concept. It
17、 is difficult to pin down exactly what humor is. As Goldstein and McGhee (1972:37) wrote, “There is still no agreement on how humor should be defined. Nor is there an agreement on how appreciation or comprehension should be defined.”The definitions from different dictionaries are not completely the
18、same either.Humor is: “the ability to be amused by something seen, heard, or thought about, sometimes causing you to smile or laugh, or the quality in something that causes such amusement.”(Cambridge Dictionary of American English, 2000:426)Humor is: “the quality in something that makes it funny amu
19、sement” or “the ability to understand and enjoy funny situations to laugh at things.”(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2003:698) Humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.(Wikipedia, 2009)Both dictionaries mentioned above define hu
20、mor as “the ability and the quality to amuse people or to enjoy the amusement” while the definition from wikipedia put emphasis upon “the tendency of particular cognitive experiences”. 2.2 Three basic conventional humor theoriesAccording to the standard analysis, humor theories can be classified int
21、o three neatly identifiable groups: incongruity, superiority, and relief theories.2.2.1 The Incongruity TheoryThe Incongruity Theory focuses on the cognitive elements of humor. According to Mulder (2002), the incongruity theory states that humor is perceived at the moment of realization of incongrui
22、ty between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the concept. In the Rhetoric (III, 2), Aristotle presents the earliest glimmer of an incongruity theory of humor, finding that the best way to get an audience to laugh is to setup an expectati
23、on and deliver something “that gives a twist.” Schopenhauer (1818) offers a more specific version of the incongruity theory, arguing that humor arises from a failure of a concept to account for an object of thought. When the particular outstrips the general, we are faced with an incongruity. Schopen
24、hauer also emphasizes the element of surprise, saying that “the greater and more unexpectedthis incongruity is, the more violent will be his laughter” 2.2.2 The Superiority TheoryThe superiority theory of humor traces back to Plato and Aristotle, and Thomas Hobbes. The theory explains that a person
25、laughs about misfortunes of others, because these misfortunes assert the persons superiority on the background of shortcomings of others. For Aristotle, we laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at being superior to them. Socrates was reported by Plato as saying that the ridicu
26、lous was characterized by a display of self-ignorance.Thomas Hobbes (1634) developed the most well known version of the Superiority theory. He elaborated upon the relationship between humor and power as that “The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception o
27、f some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others or with our own formerly.” (Quoted from Berger, 1992)2.2.3 The Relief TheoryRelief theories attempt to describe humor along the lines of a tension-release model. Rather than defining humor, they discuss the essential structures
28、and psychological processes that produce laughter. It has been given considerable impetus by the rise of psychoanalysis. The two most prominent relief theorists are Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud. Spencer (1860) develops a theory of laughter “The Physiology of Laughter” as intimately related to h
29、is “hydraulic” theory of nervous energy, whereby excitement and mental agitation produces energy that “must expend itself in some way or another.” He argues that “nervous excitation always tends to beget muscular motion.” As a form of physical movement, laughter can serve as the expressive route of
30、various forms of nervous energy. Spencer did not see his theory as a competitor to the incongruity theory of humor; rather, he tried to explain why it is that a certain mental agitation arising from a “descending incongruity” results in this characteristically purposeless physical movement. Spencer
31、never satisfactorily answers this specific question, but he presents the basic idea that laughter serves to release pent up energy.In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud (1905) develops a finer grained version of the relief theory of laughter, which amounts to a restatement of Spencer
32、s theory with the addition of a new process. He describes three different sources of laughterjoking, the comic, and humorwhich all involve the saving of some psychic energy that is then discharged through laughter. In joking, the energy that would have been used to repress sexual and hostile feeling
33、s are saved and can be released in laughter. In the comic, cognitive energy to be used to solve an intellectual challenge is left over and can be released. The humorous involves a saving of emotional energy, since what might have been an emotion provoking situation turns out to be something we shoul
34、d treat non-seriously. The energy building up for the serious emotional reaction can then be released.2.3 General Theory of Verbal HumorThe General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) proposed by Victor Raskin (1985) (and known for some time under the name of semantic script theory of humor, SSTH) identif
35、ies a semantic model capable of expressing incongruities between semantic scripts in verbal humor; this has been seen as an important recent development in the theory of laughter. The GTVH has become widely accepted across the various disciplines involved in humor studies as a theoretical basis for
36、research. It has gained, despite its faults and lacks, a canonical status such that it is nearly impossible to find published humor research that does not make reference to it in some way (Rutter, 1997).2.4 Grices Conversational ImplicatureGrices Theory of Conversational Implicature (1975) is basica
37、lly a theory about how we use the language.Paul Grice identified three types of general conversational implicature:1. The speaker deliberately flouts a conversational maxim to convey an additional meaning not expressed literally.2. The speakers desire to fulfill two conflicting maxims results in his
38、 or her flouting one maxim to invoke the other. 3. The speaker invokes a maxim as a basis for interpreting the utterance. 2.4.1 Cooperative Principle and its four maximsA basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to cooperate with one another to construct
39、 meaningful conversation. This assumption is known as the Cooperative Principle. As stated in H. P. Grices “Logic and Conversation” (1975): Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which y
40、ou are engaged.Grice came up with the following maxims of conversation: Quantity Make your contribution as informative as required. (Dont say too much or too little.) Make the strongest statement you can.Quality Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evi
41、dence.Relation Be relevant. (Stay on topic.)Manner Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly. (Grice, 1975)The maxims above can be violated for various reasons. The significance lies in that they provide explanations or references when analyzing Conversational Implicature.2.4.2 Politeness Principle According to Geoffrey Leech (Leech, 1983:80), there is a politeness principle with conversational maxims similar to those formulated by Paul Grice. Leech assumes that “the PP can be seen not another principle
