翻译

Humor is a common phenomenon, which plays important roles in many aspects of our daily lives. Over thousands of years, humor has been extensively studied in many fields, such as psychology, physiology and philosophy, anthropology, and sociology. Until recently, it has been studied within the scope of linguistics. However, what is humor? The English term “humour” or “humor”, which derived from the Latin word for “liquid”, “fluid” or “moisture”. As times went by, the word “humor” lost its original meaning and came to be used in its present sense. As to the definition of humor, no agreement has been reached yet. Different people have different views and thus different interpretations came into being. Aristotle once defined humor as incongruity, anything ludicrous contains some defect or ugliness, which is not painful or destructive. Sigmund Frued thought that enjoyment from humor depended on the release of suppressed tendencies in humor behavior. Even some authoritative dictionaries define humor in different ways. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, it is defined as: (1) capacity to cause or feel amusement (2) A person’s state of mind. In Longman Dictionary of English Language ＆Culture, it is defined as the ability to understand and enjoy what is funny and makes people laugh. Although the definitions are not completely the same, we still can find something in common: Firstly, there should be human participants in the act. The speaker and the hearer play an important role in the humorous utterance. Secondly, the occurrence of humor should refer to the ability of people who are capable of producing and receiving what is funny and laughable. Thirdly, in any case something must happen in a humor act, which refers to something people have seen, heard or thought. As to the classification of humor, Pocheplsov (1981) divided humor into two kinds. One is situational humor; the other is linguistic humor or verbal humor. Situational humor is situation-oriented, such as Monkeys mimic human beings’ behavior, and little babies learn to walk. Both of their awkward and vivid postures are situational humor. Verbal humor refers to text-oriented humor, both written and spoken. It is realized by languages. In this paper, the writer mainly talks about the verbal humor.

Humor and jokes are two relative and distinctive concepts. The writer got the two definitions in the Oxford Illustrated English-Chinese Dictionary. Humor means the quality of being amusing or comic; the ability to perceive or express humor or take a joke, whereas jokes refer to a thing said or done to excite laughter; a ridiculous person or thing. From the definitions we can see that humor is a kind of quality. It’s abstract and invisible. Laughable or amusing seems to be the essence of humor. On the contrary, jokes are kind of words in possession of humorous characteristic, which are concrete and visible. To distinguish these two definitions better, the writer takes the following two examples:

(1) (After dating for some months, the girl wants the boy to make a proposal for marriage. But the boy does not want to marry at present.) “Darling, I want to dance like this forever.” the girl said. “Don’t you ever want to improve?” the boy asked. (He, 2004: 166)

(2) A boy goes to a pet shop to buy a parrot. There he sees a parrot with a red string tied to its left leg and a green string tied to its right leg. He asks the owner the significance of the string. “Well, this is a lightly trained parrot. If you pull the red string he speaks French, if you pull the green string he speaks German,” replies the shopkeeper. “And what happens if I pull both the strings?” the curious shopper inquiries surprisedly. “I fall of my perch, you fool!” screeches the parrot. (College English, 2002: 27) It’s obvious that the first example is a humorous story, while the second is a joke. Jokes can be purposely written for people’s enjoyment, which may or may not happen in reality, or be aroused unconsciously by people. By contrast, humor is often created on purpose. People deliberately adopt the humorous way to reach a certain purpose. 1.3 Research Questions and the Significance of the Thesis Since humor is an important part of a language, which exists in all kinds of human communication. There are quite a few reasons for choosing verbal humor as the objective of the present study. Firstly, studying on humor from pragmatic perspective can help us better know the production of humor. In this paper, the writer tries to study the following two questions: (1) whether are there more factors related to the production of humor besides incongruity that has been proved to be a working factor to elicit laughter? (2) Can we find more evidence in pragmatics for the realization and comprehension of humor besides some major principles and theories? Through reading some papers that people wrote on humor. The writer finds that most writers analyze verbal humor from the perspective of pragmatics and semantics. From pragmatic perspective, various theories have been used to explain humor, among them, the Speech Act Theory, the Relevance Theory, the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle were mostly used. In this paper, the writer concludes more humorous examples which can be interpreted by these pragmatic theories mentioned above. One objective of the thesis will concentrate on how to understand humorous utterances with those pragmatic theories. Besides these principles, the writer wants to find whether there are other pragmatic contents that can be used to analyze the production of verbal humor. Finally, the study on the functions of humor may help us further understand the importance of humor, and how humor embodies a person’s competence of active use of language. The research method is to apply some of the major pragmatic theories, namely, Cooperative Principle, Speech Act Theory, Relevance Theory, and Politeness Principle to the analysis of what factors have an influence on the understanding of verbal humor. 1.4 The Organization of the Thesis Chapter One is an introductory chapter, which offers an overview of humor, its definition and classification. Two vague definitions will be distinguished. They are jokes and humor. Chapter Two is the literature review which reviews the three classical theories of humor including superiority, release, and incongruity and two modern linguistic studies of humor. Chapter Three illustrates the laugh-making mechanism from those aspects, including incongruity, cognitive and cultural factors, etc. Chapter Four and Five form the body of the thesis which analyze the production and comprehension of verbal humor by employing the pragmatic theories, and discuss some functions of verbal humor. The last chapter is conclusion, which summarizes the key ideas discussed in the thesis, and offers some suggestions for further study.

幽默是一钟很常见的现象，它存在于我们日常生活的各方各面。近千年以来，幽默已经广泛地被各种领域所涉猎，比如心理学，生理学，哲学，人类学和社会学等。近年来，幽默已经涉及到了语言学的领域了。但是，幽默到底是什么呢？英文单词“Humor”起源于拉丁词“Liquid”，“Fluid”，“Moisture”。随着时间的流逝，“幽默”这个词丧失了它原来的意思，开始以现在的意思为人们所用。说到幽默的定义，未能达成一致。不同的人有不同的观点,因此不同的解释都有。亚里士多德曾经幽默定义为不一致,任何可笑的包含一些缺陷或丑陋,这不是痛苦的或破坏性的。西格蒙德·操作认为享受幽默取决于释放抑制倾向的幽默行为。甚至一些权威的字典定义幽默以不同的方式。在牛津高级学习者的现代英语词典,它被定义为:(1)能力导致或感到娱乐(2)一个人的心态。朗文字典的英语语言文化,它被定义为能够理解和享受什么是有趣的,让人笑。尽管定义是不完全相同的,我们还可以找到一些共同之处:首先,应该有人类参与者的行为。说话者和听者幽默话语发挥重要作用。其次,幽默的出现应该是指人的能力能产生和接收是什么滑稽和可笑的。第三,在任何情况下一定发生在一个幽默的行为,指人们已经看到,听到或思想。幽默的分类,Pocheplsov(1981)把幽默分为两种。一个情景幽默;另一个是语言幽默或言语幽默。情景幽默是situation-oriented,如猴子模仿人类的行为,和小婴儿学走路。两人的尴尬情景幽默和生动的姿势。言语幽默是指种面向文本的幽默,书面及口语。它是通过语言实现的。在本文中,作者主要讨论了言语幽默。

幽默和笑话是两个相对的和独特的概念。作者得到了两个定义在牛津英汉词典。幽默有趣的质量或漫画,能够感知或表达幽默或笑话,而笑话说或做一件事物来指代兴奋的笑声,一个荒谬的人或事。从定义可以看出,幽默是一种品质。它是抽象的和无形的。似乎可笑的或有趣的幽默的本质。相反,笑话类词语拥有幽默的特点,混凝土和可见的。更好的区分这两个定义,作者采用以下两个例子:

(1)(交往了几个月后,女孩希望男孩要使婚姻的建议。但男孩目前不想结婚。)“亲爱的,我想永远这样的舞蹈。”女孩说。“不要你曾经想要提高吗?”男孩问。(他,2004:2004)

(2)一个男孩去宠物店买一只鹦鹉。在那里,他看到一只鹦鹉,红色字符串绑定到它的左腿和绿色字符串绑定到它的右腿。他问店主字符串的意义。“嗯,这是一个轻训练鹦鹉。如果你把红色字符串他说法语,如果你把绿色字符串他讲德语,”店主回答。“如果我把这两个字符串时,又会发生什么呢?”好奇的顾客调查诧异地。“我的树干上掉下去的,你这个笨蛋!”鹦鹉尖叫着说。(大学英语,2002:27)很明显,第一个例子是一个幽默的故事,而第二个是一个笑话。笑话可以故意写给人民享受,这可能会或可能不会发生在现实中,或被人引起无意识。相比之下,幽默往往是上创建的目的。人们故意采用幽默的方式来达到一定的目的。因为幽默是一种语言的一个重要组成部分,它存在于各种各样的人类交流。有相当多的原因选择言语幽默作为本研究的目的。首先,从务实的角度研究幽默可以帮助我们更好的了解幽默的生产。在本文中,作者试图研究以下两个问题:(1)是否有相关生产要素的幽默除了不协调,已被证明是一个工作因素引起笑声吗?(2)我们能找到更多的证据在语用幽默的实现和理解除了一些主要原则和理论?通过阅读一些报纸,人们在幽默写道。作者发现,大多数作家从语用学的角度分析言语幽默和语义。从务实的角度来看,各种理论被用来解释幽默,其中,言语行为理论、关联理论、合作原则、礼貌原则主要是使用。在本文中,作者得出结论更幽默的例子可以解释这些务实理论上面提到的。一个目标的论文将集中在如何理解幽默话语与务实的理论。除了这些原则,作者想找是否有其他务实的内容,可以用来分析言语幽默的产生。最后,研究幽默的功能可以帮助我们进一步理解幽默的重要性,以及如何幽默体现了一个人的积极使用语言的能力。研究方法是应用的一些主要语用理论,即合作原则、言语行为理论、关联理论和礼貌原则分析哪些因素会影响言语幽默的理解。1.4论文第一章的组织是一个介绍性章节,提供幽默的概述,它的定义和分类。两个模糊的定义将杰出。他们笑话和幽默。第二章是文献综述,回顾了三个经典的幽默理论包括优势,释放和不协调性和两个现代语言学对幽默的研究。第三章说明了laugh-making机制从那些方面,包括不协调、认知和文化因素等。四和五章论文的主体形式分析言语幽默的生产和理解运用语用理论,并讨论言语幽默的语用功能。最后一章是结论,总结了本文所讨论的主要观点,并为进一步的研究提供了一些建议。

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