Abstract：Humor is laughable and amusing. It reflects the speaker’s wisdom and attitudes towards life and brings us great pleasure. The present thesis is a tentative exploration into the process of verbal humor understanding within the framework of Relevance Theory. It attempts to analyze  how the hearer/reader, as the recipient of humor, seeks relevance of the humorous utterance and ultimately perceives its humorous effect.

From a relevance-theoretical point of view, humor understanding is a process of searching for relevance, in which the communicative principle of relevance plays an essential guiding role. In order to fully understand humor, the hearer finds out that the utterance is incongruous and irrelevant. Driven by the expectation of relevance, he assumes that this irrelevance is apparent and further infers implicit meanings or attitudes conveyed by the utterance. At this point, a humorous interpretation of the utterance is obtained. Humor understanding is thus a process in which the hearer finds “relevance” in what seems “irrelevant”.

For humor to be fully understood, some information should be mutually manifest to both sides of communication. 

Keywords:  Relevance Theory  verbal humor interpretation   The Big Bang Theory

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 Motivation for the Study-1

1.2 Significance of the Study-1

1.3 Organization of the Study-1

Chapter Two Literature Review-3

2.1 An Introduction of Humor-3

2.1.1 Definition of Humor-3

2.1.2 Classification of Humor-4

2.2 Previous Studies on Verbal Humor Interpretation-4

2.3 An Introduction of Relevance Theory-5

2.3.1 Definition of Relevance Theory-5

2.3.2 Two Principles of Relevance-6

Chapter Three A Relevance-Theoretical Account of Verbal Humor Understanding in The Big Bang Theory-8

3.1 An Introduction of The Big Bang Theory-8

3.2The Process of Verbal Humor Understanding-9

3.2.1 Realizing Being Misled-9

3.2.2 Recognizing a Funny Misinterpretation-10

3.2.3 Coming across an Unexpected Reply-10

3.2.4 Deriving a Humorous Implication-11

3.2.5 Inferring the Speaker’s Attitude-12

Chapter Four Conclusion-13

References-14