会话幽默的语言学分析——以美国情景喜剧《摩登家庭》为例

Contents

Acknowledgements (i)

Abstract (Chinese) ............................................................................................... i i Abstract (English) . (iii)

Chapter 1 Introduction (1)

1.1 Research Background (1)

1.2 Objective and Significance (1)

1.3 Layout of the Thesis (2)

Chapter 2 Literature Review (4)

2.1 Origin and Definition of Humor (4)

2.2 Theories and Mechanisms of Humor (6)

2.2.1 Superiority Theories (7)

2.2.2 Relief Theories (8)

2.2.3 Incongruity Theories (10)

2.2.4 Summary (12)

2.3 Linguistic Scholarship on Humor (13)

2.4 Classifications of Humor (16)

Chapter 3 Scope, Methodology and Data Collection (19)

3.1 Scope of the Study (19)

3.2 Methodology of the Study (21)

3.3 Source of Data (23)

3.3.1 Modern Family (23)

3.3.2 Data Collection (25)

Chapter 4 Analyzing Conversational Humor (27)

4.1 Phonological Level (27)

4.1.1 Alliteration and Rhyming (27)

4.1.2 Phonetic Resemblance (29)

4.1.3 Homonymy and Homophony (31)

4.2 Lexical Level (35)

4.2.1 Polysemy (35)

4.2.2 Decomposition of Idiomatic Phrases (37)

4.2.3 Nonce Formation (39)

4.2.4 Pseudo Morphology (41)

4.3 Syntactic Level (42)

4.4 Pragmatic Level (45)

4.4.1 Flouts of Grice’s Maxims (45)

4.4.2 Register Clash (52)

Chapter 5 Conclusion (55)

5.1 Major Findings (55)

5.2 Limitations and Implications (56)

References (58)

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Humor prevails in people’s daily life. It plays an important role in everyday communication. As a subject of study, humor has been a greatly diversified and complicated field of research, involving a wide spectrum of disciplines. Scholars have discussed and examined humor from various vantage points, including the philosophical significance of its prevalence, its physiological association with the behavior of laughing, the psychological account of its causes and effects in relation with emotional states, the cognitive process of its perception, its social functions in interpersonal relationships, the ethnographic comparisons of its patterns, etc. This wide diversity of opinions have indeed contributed to a potentially comprehensive understanding of humor, yet its very nature and essence remains open-ended and elusive to a final say as ever.

Intrigued by the phenomenon of humor in daily communication, the writer of this paper makes an endeavor to investigate into conversational humor. While some aspects of humor remains instinctive and intangible in nature, the focus of the present paper is going to be directed towards the tangible forms of its stimulus, i.e. the language of humor. Observations are made on a plurality of humor instances and we hold that instead of employing those conventional yet confusing terms, humor instances can be captured in the light of linguistic devices engaged in the stimulus. Therefore, a linguistic approach is adopted in this paper to present an analytical framework of conversational humor.

1.2 Objective and Significance

With the purpose of exploring the way in which linguistic resources are exploited in conversational humor, the present paper sets out to analyze from a linguistic perspective the manipulation of various aspects of language in creating certain

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