Abstract: Humor is an amazing phenomenon which helps to promote the communication between speakers and create a harmonious relationship in social networking. The study of humor has a long history and many researchers come to analyze the emergence and effects of humor from different perspectives. Since the last century many linguistics have been conducted to study and analyze verbal humor from a pragmatic point of view and focus their study on the linguistic features of the humorous language. This thesis adopts Cooperative Principle approach to analyze English humor in great depth and illustrate how to obtain humorous effects by the violation of the four maxims. It further summarizes the English pragmatic functions of humor. The understanding and appreciation of humor in English will do contribution to the better mastering of English of language learners.

Keywords： English humor； pragmatics； the Cooperative Principle； pragmatic functions  

摘要：幽默是一种有助于促进谈话者之间交流和在社交中创造和谐关系的神奇现象。幽默的研究有着很长的历史，许多研究者从不同的角度来分析幽默的产生和影响。从上世纪开始，许多语言学已经被研究，从语用学角度分析言语幽默，集中研究于幽默语言的特征。本论文采用合作原则，最大深度的分析英语幽默和说明通过违反四条准则，如何获得幽默的影响。进一步总结了英语幽默的语用功能。对英语幽默的理解和欣赏将会为英语学习者更好的掌握英语语言作出贡献。

关键词：英语幽默；语用学；合作原则；语用功能