英语幽默语特点及功能

摘要

幽默，作为一种语言现象在英语文化中有着举足轻重的作用。幽默话语不仅在人们的日常生活中起着改善人际关系，调节谈话气氛的作用，更多的被赋予个人智慧、魅力和教育的意义。幽默研究的历史源远流长，甚至可追溯到现代文明的萌芽时期。作为一种可资研究的学科题材，幽默现象受到了来自于文学、社会学、心理学、语言学和文化研究等领域的广泛关注。作为幽默的主要表现形式，幽默话语在我们的生活中很常见。它源于生活又高于生活，因此常会以生活中的会话形式出现。这就使它带有鲜明的语言特征。

本文旨在从语言学角度出发，以会话形式的英语幽默为例，对英语幽默话语的功能及特点进行分析研究。文章从英语幽默话语研究的意义、现状谈起，接着讨论了幽默话语的定义、分类，及其相关的理论综述。在文章的主体部分，作者对幽默话语的语言特征进行比较全面的分析。在语音、词汇、语义、句法等层面，作者主要突出了幽默话语的一词多义，同形异义的特征。在修辞方面，作者用各种例子说明了幽默话语里各种修辞手法的广泛应用。在语用方面，作者结合了语用学中的语境理论、合作原则、言语行为理论、关联理论等进行分析。主要探讨了语境对幽默话语的影响，幽默话语对合作原则、言语原则、关联原则的违反所产生的幽默效果。通过例证分析研究，作者发现幽默话语具有很鲜明的语言特征，在各个语言层面都有其独特的表现形式，与很多语言学理论是相当契合的。基于其鲜明的语言特点，作者结合了韩礼德的功能语法以及Brown和Levinson的面子理论讨论了幽默话语的交际功能、护面子功能和批判功能。

总之，运用语言学理论特别是语用学理论来研究幽默，不失为一种有效的、快捷的研究方法和手段。这种方法的采用，在促进人们探索幽默规律的过程中起着不可忽视的作用。

关键词: 英语幽默话语，特征，功能

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

Abstract

As a language phenomenon, humor plays an important role in English culture. In daily communication, humor not only ameliorates human relations, improves the communicative atmosphere, but also symbolizes personal wit, glamour and education. The research of humor has a long-dated history, which has attracted much academic interest in the field of philology, literature, sociology, psychology, linguistics, and culture studies. As the main form to express humor, humorous remarks are popular in our daily life. It comes from our daily life while to some degree it exceeds life. So humorous remarks are often in the form of conversations in life and thus it has distinctive linguistic characteristics.

This thesis attempts to make an analysis on linguistic features and functions of English humorous remarks through lots of examples. It begins with the significance, current research of studying this topic, and then gives a brief introduction to humor, including the definition and classification of humor, as well as the related theories. In the main part of the thesis, the author tries to make a relatively systematic research of the main features of humorous remarks. On the phonological, lexical, semantic, syntactic levels, the features of homonymy and polesemy of humorous remarks are reflected. On the level of figures of speech, the author shows various kinds of rhetorical devices are usually employed in English humor. For the pragmatic aspect, which is the key point, the author employs many pragmatic theories like Context, Cooperative Principle, Speech Act Theory and Relevance Theory to analyze the realization of English humor by giving many specific examples. The thesis discusses the influence of Context on the appreciation of humor, phenomena of violating Cooperative Principle, Speech Act Theory and Relevance Theory leading to humorous effect. According to the analysis, the author found that humorous remarks have obvious linguistic features, reflected in various aspects, those are matches pretty well with some important linguistic theories. Based on these features, the article further discusses the communicative function, face-saving function and criticizing function of humorous remarks, applying Halliday’s Systematic-Function Grammar and Face Theory of Brown & Levinson.

In brief, using linguistic theories，especially the pragmatic theories, to study humorous remarks is a quick and effective research technique and method. It plays the noticeable role in helping people to explore the humorous rules and to do research on communicative rules over culture gaps.

Key words: English humorous remarks，features，functions

Acknowledgements

This thesis could not have been written without the support of a number of people.

I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness and gratitude to them all.

My sincere gratitude first goes to my supervisor Professor Huang Chongzhen, for her continuing support and encouragement through the entire period in which this thesis is written. She spared a lot of her precious time, giving me extraordinary scholarly suggestions, encouraging advice, and invaluable corrections towards this thesis. Words are not enough to express my sincere thanks for her assistance in guiding the research.

I am also grateful to all the other professors in Foreign Language School in South-Central University for Nationalities. Their earnest and enlightening teaching is of great help for my understanding of linguistics and for the accomplishment of this thesis.

Last, I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to my family members for their invaluable help in the course of thesis writing.

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

1 Introduction

Humor pervades our lives. It exists in almost every part of the world. We can find humor almost ubiquitously in our daily conversations. When we are with family members, we tell jokes; when we are with friends, we tell jokes; even when we are with strangers, we tell jokes. People tend to be humorous, and humorous persons are always very popular with the others. There exists no subject that has not been joked about in one way or another. Morreall (1983) summarizes the importance of studying humor in the prediction that to understand our laughter is to go a long way toward understanding our humanity. A sense of humor is a unique feature, or to be more exact, a gift shared by all normal human beings. Explanations and studies of this intriguing human behavior have been recorded as far back as the early Greeks, from Plato and Aristotle, through Kant, to the more recent Bergerson and Freud, a history probably as long as that of culture.

Overall, the study of humor is a fascinating area: not only because its role is so crucial to our social communication in the society, but also because any achievement made by our research will provide us with some glimpse of the interactive powers that we routinely employ in order to communicate either humorously or non-humorously.

1.1 An Introduction of Humor

Humor, as a subject, has been studied for thousands of years. The ability to appreciate and enjoy humor is universal and shared by all people. Yet, there is still quite a lot of controversy about what is humor. There exists no single definition of humor that can satisfy all researchers. Just as the three blind men who touched the various parts of the elephant’s body offered varying descriptions of it, different scholars provide different definitions that account for certain aspects of humor. Goldstein and McGhee do not even attempt to define humor for the simple reason that there is no single definition of humor acceptable to all investigators in the area. Though it is a formidable task, we cannot avoid the important issue of specifying what is meant by the key term “humor” and how this category is determined since humor is the subject

in this paper.

The word “humor” originates from Latin. According to t he New Oxford Dictionary of English, the very original meaning of “humor” is “one of the four liquids (of blood, phlegm, choler, melancholy) in our body, said to determine a person’s mental

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

and physical qualities.” Through centuries of changes, the meaning of the term gradually narrows down to a specific “temperament or disposition”, characterized by a sensitivity to, or appreciation of ludicrous, absurd, or comical events. (The New Collins Concise English Dictionary). When the word was introduced into art, it was something negative that referred to odd, funny and affected temperament. Finally, in the late 17th century, a new definition of humor appeared in the New Oxford Dictionary of English and it is the basis of the modern meaning of humor: “humor” is the “quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech”, “something that arouses amusement, laughter” or “the capacity for recognizing, reac ting to, or expressing something which is amusing, funny etc.”

From the above definition, we see that the focal point of the modern definition lays emphasis on two sides: one is humor as a phenomenon, which consists of linguistic and non-linguistic human behavior; the other is the capability to understand, to appreciate and to create humor. Similarly, different scholars, in their attempt at defining the term, tend to emphasize different aspects of humor depending on their varying purposes and orientations in research.

In this paper, the writer shall follow the suit of two famous humor scholars by defining humor in a very general sense. One scholar is Attardo (1997), who defines humor as a technical term covering anything that is (or may be) perceived as funny, amusing, or laughable. The other is Raskin (1985), he proposes to consider “humor” in the least restricted sense, which is interchangeable with “the funny”. We also draw the conclusion that “humor” is a very general word, covering the types of stimu lation that are perceived as funny and can elicit laughter, or that at least intends to do so. All those that are laughable, amusing, funny can be called humor.

There also has been a widespread disagreement about how many different kinds of humor exist. Ju st as different people define the term “humor” from different perspectives, they tend to categorize humor based on different criteria. If we take a stylistic or rhetorical approach, we will face a family of related terms like satire, anecdote, irony, farce, parody, joke, comedy, cartoon, pun, etc.; if we select the semantic content approach, we will have categories like political humor, sexual humor, religious humor, Jewish humor, Cliton’s humor, Bush’s humor, etc. In some cases, we can divide humor into two types: one type can be termed as nonverbal humor, which refers to a humorous situation that is not created or expressed by language, such as humorous music, humorous pictures, humorous actions; The other is called verbal humor, which refers to humor “conveyed or expressed by means of a linguistic system”

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

(Ritchie, 2004) Nonverbal humor is not the focus of this paper; instead, verbal humor will be our primary concern.

1.2 The Aim of This Paper

All the studies reviewed above have enlightened our understanding of humor. It is concluded that due to certain limitations and inadequacies of those studies, they fail to give an overall account of the production and interpretation of humor. Most of the previous research has focused only on humorous utterances in isolation. This paper ventures on the development of linguistic humor theory. On the basis of the former studies, the thesis will give a comprehensive analysis of humorous remarks from various perspectives and discuss its functions. Through the analysis, we will understand better how those humorous effects are achieved and how a short conversation brings us so much enjoyment. Consequently, we will know more about how to create humor and how to appreciate.

1.3 Thesis Organization

The whole thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter one is the Introduction, which offers a general introduction of humor, states the purpose and goal of this thesis and stretches out the overall arrangement of the thesis. Chapter two is the literature review, introducing the important approaches in this field. Chapter three and chapter four are the main parts of the thesis. With plenty examples, a detailed analysis of English humor from many levels is given. The core of this part is how the theory of PP, CP, Relevance Theory and Speech Act are reflected in English humors. Chapter five focuses on the functions of English humorous remarks. The important function of humorous remarks is saving face of both sides in communication. Chapter six is the conclusion of the whole thesis. It sums up the findings of the study and analysis.

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

2 Literature Review

Interests in humor date back to longtime ago. On the list of famous theories, we could find great names like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. In the more recent literature are Beattie and Kant. The turn of the 20th century witness a burgeoning literature on humor in the psychoanalytical discipline, marked by the famous book written by Freud in 1905. From 1970s to 1980s, humor research reached its heyday, particularly in the field of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and also linguistics. Since ancient times, the heterogeneous nature of humor research has complicated the matter of classifying these theories. Traditionally, theories concerning the nature of humor are often clustered into a tripartite division of incongruity, superiority, and release theories. (Raskin, 1985). Attardo (1994) generalizes these labels to cognitive, social, and psychoanalytical. There, of course, exist approaches to humor, which cannot be easily subsumed under any one of these labels.

In accordance with these different research perspectives, major works on humor fall into the fields of the philosophical, psychological, sociological, anthropological, linguistic and educational. In this section, some will be reviewed so that the major and recent developments in the fields can be cited and the current research may be viewed objectively.

2.1 Philosophical Approaches

A great many theories of humor, laughter, and comedy have been advanced by philosophers and theorists over the centuries, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant, and more recently, Bergson. They attempted to explain why we laughed in certain situations but not in others, and what kinds of mental,

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emotional, and motivational processes were involved in the perception and experiencing of humor.

Philosophers such as Kant, Schopenhaur, and Bergson argued that incongruity was at the core of all humor experiences. That is, something unexpected, or out of context, inappropriate, unreasonable, illogical, exaggerated, and so forth, served as the basic vehicle for humor. It should be made clear, though, that incongruity might also produce reactions incompatible with humor (such as puzzlement or confusion, interest and curiosity, and anxiety or fear).

Dziemidok (1993) discusses and classifies theories of the comical: theories of a single major motif together with theories of crossed motifs. These theories can be further classified as objectivist, subjectivist or relational depending on whether a given theory attempts to locate the essence of the comical within the object order. (Xu, 2003:58)

Kant was the first to analyze the humorous object in terms of incongruity arising from the disappointment of a strained expectation.

2.2 Psychological Approaches

Psychologists such as Freud, Spence, Minaky claim that humor is a result of the release of excess energy. The basic principle of all such theories is that, laughter provides relief for mental, nervous and psychic energy, and thus ensures homeostasis after a struggle, tension, strain, etc. (Raskin, 1985) Psychological analyses of linguistic humor have been based on the notion of incongruity (Pepicello, 1983); indeed, psycholinguistic research on humor has almost exclusively involved assessment of people’s sensitivity to various sorts of linguistic ambiguity, tog ether with the measurement of people’s appreciation of verbal humor that allegedly hinges on the detection and resolution of incongruities based on various sorts of ambiguities.

Pepicello’s field theory of humor depicts laughter and smiling as “embodies so cial events” thus stressing the importance of the feelings of a laughing or smiling person.

Oring (1984) conducts a unique psychological investigation of humor as a form and style of individual expression by examining naturally humorous repertoires and performance, thus providing a crucial source of hypothesis for laboratory verification.

McGhee (1983) focuses on studies of humor development from early to later phases of life, summarizing all aspects of recent studies of children’s humor. He concludes that incongruity is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite, that there are important emotional influences upon humor, and that social context too has an

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

important bearing upo n the “funniness” of an event, the core of humor consisting of an incongruous of nonsensical relationship of which one has to make sense.

2.3 Linguistic Approaches

Amongst linguistic studies in this field, it seems that semantic approaches prevail, which concentrate on the linguistic form of the humorous line. Many recent studies have given due attention to the social factors, especially in pragmatic-oriented studies of humor, yet these fail to bring the social dimension to actual linguistic analysis of humor.

Freud (1960) initiated the linguistic analysis of the humorous text in identifying joke techniques in terms of sound, syllables, repetition, and variation. The exact description of language structures offered by Freud was of great interest to linguists. Linguistic analysis was directed to the ambiguity in structure of language occurring at various levels such as phonology, graphology, morphology, lexis and syntax. Those levels served as mere linguistic techniques underlying the incongruities of humorous language.

In the field of syntax, D. D. Oaks offered a catalogue of syntactic and lexical devices for the creation of ambiguity within jokes.

Robert Hetzron gave an extended account of the structure of jokes and punchline. Neal Norrick looked at the intertextuality of jokes. It was worthy of note that likewise, certain rhetorical techniques such as hyperbole, metaphor, irony, and pun were just responsible for the semantic ambiguity or incongruity of humor.

Pepicello (1983) summarizes the linguistic analyses of genres of linguistic humor and riddles in particular. It gives considerable attention to developmental changes in children’s linguistic humor, proposing that linguistic studies of humor and psychological studies of humor should be complementary.

Pepicello (1983) cites a classification scheme by listing the linguistic strategies in verbal humor, with the linguistic genres exhibiting the strategies as being either riddles or non-riddle humorous sequences, namely jokes.

Raskin (1985) first proposed the semantic script theory of jokes which provided an explicit description of joke texts as simultaneously compatible with opposed “semantic scripts (frames, schemas)”

Nash (1985) mainly sets out to link the content of humor to the perception of its linguistic or stylistic structure, particularly in locative or formulaic jokes. The act of humor has three principal references: a genus or derivation, in culture, institutions,

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

beliefs, typical practices and characteristic artifacts; a characteristic design, or verbal packaging; and a locus in language, which is the point at which humor is both held and discharged.

Chiaro (1992) explores the pragmatics of work play and examines the narrative structures of various joke forms. She focuses particularly on the socio-cultural contexts for the production and reception of jokes by examining the extent to which jokes are both universal in their appeal, and yet specific to a particular culture. However, she stresses that the linguistic options available to the joker are no different from those available to the poet, though confusing the joke with the poem.

To Norrick (1993), conversation is the natural home of punning, allusion, and joking; the various forms of humor in their natural conversational contexts require an investigation. He views joke-telling, punning, and teasing in relation to power, solidarity, and social distance, in the light of the principle of politeness and cooperation, with the aim of explaining how joking can express aggression and yet still build a rapport.

Perhaps the most extensive and comprehensive review of linguistic literature on humor is that of Attardo (1994), who studies:

1) The surface phenomena --- organization of phonemes and morphemes (such as the position of the punch line and processing of the ambiguity);

2) The semantics of the joke --- script theory, text theories;

3) The pragmatics of texts --- registers, broader texts, pragmatic mechanisms and their use in interaction with other speakers.

Attardo argues that linguistic theories of humor are either essentialist, providing the necessary and sufficient conditions to define the “essence” of the phenomenon, or teleological, concerned with the psychological and sociological “contents” of t he phenomena, although incongruity theories in psychology are the exception (essentialist). He contends that a linguistic approach will tend to favor essentialist theories and necessarily foreground essentialist problems. Since the phenomenon of humor is not purely linguistic, a comprehensive research into humor should not be confined to language alone, which agrees with the overall design of this research.

2.4 Other Approaches

Apte (1985) discusses methods used by anthropologists in the study of humor and also reviews selected areas of anthropological theories and research related to humor. Specific attention is given to joking relationships, humor in religion and trickster

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

studies.

Chapman discusses the many functions served by laughter and humor in the context of social interaction.

Fine reviews sociological approaches to the study of humor, where attention is focused on the fool, the clown, the wit, the joker and the comedian.

Paton (1996) concentrates on humor in British, American and Australian societies, with such studies being intellectually diverse, and reflecting the different analytical approaches adopted in the broad field of humor and society.

Chen& Zhou (1992) provides a typical cross-cultural study of humor, with humor in eight nations outlined and investigated. Clearly, their universal functions of humor, known as self-defense, as well as Freudian aggressive and sexual impulses, together with Bergsonian corrective role of humor, dominate in the diverse studies of the national characteristics of humor.

Hill (1988) examines humor and its application in the teaching profession, demonstrating the possibilities which humor offers in the classroom.

Palmer (1994) makes a comprehensive or interdisciplinary study of humor, involving anthropology, psychology, literaray criticism, biology and aesthetics.

Humor is a multi-disciplinary field of research. A comprehensive study would involve scholars from various fields like philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, literature and so on and so forth. However, in this paper, the writer would like to make an exploration of humor from the linguistic perspective.

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

3 The Features of English Humorous Remarks

H. Widdowson assumes that “the study of how meaning is encoded in a language is the central business of semantics” (Widdowson, 2000: 53). It is generally assumed that the main concern of semantics is with the meaning of words as lexical item. But we should note that it is not only restricted to words. As we all know, meaning also figures at levels of language below the word and above it. In this chapter, we will firstly give humor an analysis from a semantic angle. It will include the studies of humor from different aspects, for instance, the lexical meaning and the syntactic meaning. Pragmatic study will be followed.

3.1 Phonological Features

In English, it is quite easy to make humor because there are a lot of words of homonymy. Homonymy can be divided into three kinds: complete homonymy, partial homonymy and false homonymy.

3.1.1 Complete Homonyms

Complete homonyms are the words which are written in the same way and sound alike but which have different meanings. For example, the word “bear”, when used as a noun, it refers to a kind of animal; when used as a verb, it means give birth to (sb). This kind of phenomenon is extremely easy to create ambiguity, produces humor.

[1] The judge noticed a disturbance in the back of the courtroom.

“What’s going on there?”

“I’ve lost my jacket and I’m trying to find it.” replied a young teenager.

“Son,” smiled the judge, “people often lose whole suits here without all the fuss.”

In the [1], the word “suit” has two meanings: one refers to the set of outer garments of the same material; the other refers to the case in a law court or the legal proceedings. In this conversation, this judge skillfully uses the two meanings of “suit”to tell the young man that it is no need to making much ado about nothing.

3.1.2 Homophones

Homophones are the words, which sound alike but are written differently and often have different meanings. For example, the English word “no” and “know”,“flower” and “flour”, “ear” and “year” are pronounced same, but they have totally different meanings.

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

[2]“What you need is exercise. You should have a little sun and air.”

“Why, I am not even married.”

“Sun” and “Son”, “air” and “heir” have the same pronunciations. So here “sun and air” is mistakenly understood as “son and heir”.

[3] We have courses to make grown man young and young men groan.

This is a funny advertisement for male gym. “Grown” and “groan” are used in the same sentence. The sentence means that doing the fitness is effective, but suffering hardship is unavoidable.

3.1.3 Homographs

Homographs are the words which are written in the same way but which are pronounced differently and have different meanings. Here are the examples:

[4] Six-year-old Linda returned unimpressed from her school first day at school.

Asked how she got on, she replied, “Every morning, we all have to sit at our desks and when the teacher calls our names, we have to answer ‘prisoner!’”

When teacher calls students names, students should answer “present”, but Linda answered “prisoner” instead. She intentionally used the similar pronunciation of these two words to express her complaint and discontent of school life.

[5]Sign in New England travel agency promoting a Colorano vocation: “You’ve

worked too hard, you deserve a little west.”

This is an advertisement of travel agency. “You deserve a little west” means that you deserve a little rest, so please go to the west for your Colorano vocation. “Rest”and “west” are pronounced similarly, but have different forms and meanings.

3.2 Lexical Features

The humorous effects are not only caused at the phonological level, but also at lexical level — polysemy. Along with the language development, the meanings of English words are changing. The old meanings vanish gradually, and the new ones appear unceasingly, forming polysemy. While one word in different collocations and contexts will hold different meaning, so we have to distinguish the literal meaning to the figurative meaning.

3.2.1 Lexical Polysemy

[6]Professor: “You missed my class yesterday, didn’t you?”

Unsubdued students: “Not in the least, sir, not in the least.”

“Miss the class” in professor’s sentence means “fail to attend the class”, but

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students understood it mistakenly as “feel regret for it”. So student answered unrelated:“Not in the least, sir, not in the least.” The humors in this conversation caused by the polysemy of the word “miss”.

[7] What do lawyers do after their death?

They lie still.

“Lie” here has two meanings: 1.have or put one’s body in a flat or resting position on a horizontal surface; 2.make a statement one knows to be untrue. Here humorously use “lie” to expose the nature of lawyer — cheating and lying cannot be changed. [8] Policeman: Why did you park your car on the yellow lines?

Driver: Because the sign says, “Fine for Parking”.

Whether the driver really does not understand the sign or not, whether he explains the sign intentionally for the advantage of himself or not, “fine” can be comprehended as “very well” or “punish somebody for breaking a law or a rule”. Facing the quibbling of the driver, policeman really will not know whether to laugh or cry.

3.2.2 Phrasal Polysemy

In English, many idioms and phrases cannot be understood according to the literal meaning of words, they usually have certain connotations. So in many contexts, the understandings of phrases can be cause humors.

[9]Dentist talks to talkative patient: “Open your mouth and shut up.”

From the literal meaning of the sentence, “open your mouth” and “shut up” are contradict with each other. But “shut up” has another meaning: talk no more. Here the dentist used the antonymy and polysemy of the phrases to express his criticism to the wordy customer.

[10]“Fourth floor.” Shouted the passenger to the elevator impolitely.

“Here you are, son.”

“Why did you call me son?”

“I brought you up, didn’t I?”

“Bring up” have two meanings:“raise, rear or educate somebody” or “bring sb to the upper place”. Because of the impoliteness of the passenger, the elevator used the two meanings of a same phrase to give a lesson to him.

3.3 Semantic Features

Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and sentences in particular. G. Leech, the famous expert in semantics, recognizes seven types of

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

meaning in his Semantics (1974), conceptual meaning, thematic meaning, and associative meaning; the associative meaning can be divided into five ones: connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, and collocative meaning. Semantic analysis is a branch of language analysis. In order to understand certain kind of language phenomenon, we have to carry on semantic analysis; the same as the understanding of humors, in order to make clear the deep structures of humorous remarks, we must analyze the different meanings of humor language.

Humorous language focuses on the methods of displaying language expressive force and producing the unique effects, so it has the specific language culture color. Humorous remarks stress in the use of semantic cultural connotation through the semantic expanding and full play of one point in semantic association meaning; The expression, which seems to be contradictory or ridiculous in the literal level, but composures exactly what lie between lines, is humor. That is to say, humorous language has great relation to semantic expansion—mainly relates to the conceptual meaning, especially connotative meaning, reflected meaning and collocative meaning.

The rational meaning of words, which refers to conceptual meaning, thematic meaning and associative meaning, is a relatively stable and objective logical concept system, holding together the basic functions of human language communication. Thematic meaning is a kind of meaning expressed from grammatical point of view: the speaker or writer uses the change of word order and arrangement of information focus to give out different thematic meanings. As we discussed above, we know that humorous language relates to the expansion of word meaning. Obviously, conceptual and thematic meaning don not support the flexibility and uncertainty of humor language, so semantic foundation of humor language is associative meaning, to be exactly, connotative meaning, reflected meaning, and collocative meaning.

Connotative meaning and reflected meaning are caused by certain kind of a common consensus on the language culture background between two sides of communication. They are having nothing to do with the literal meaning of the words, with great openness and capriciousness. Collocation of words cannot go against the conventions, but in the humorous language, it violates these rules on purpose to get humorous effect. So in humor language, the function of collocative meaning is contradictory and interesting.

[11]An elderly woman entered a chemist shop and asked, “What do you have for grey

hair?”

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

“Great respect, madam,” replied the salesman.

In the elderly woman’s question, “grey hair” expressed in its literal meaning, refers to the white hair. She may want to buy something to do with her white hair. But the salesman replied “Great respect, madam.” Obviously, he understood it as its connotative meaning, refers to the old person. As the use of connotative meaning of the word, special semantic results were produced in the process of information transmission, making people laugh a lot.

[12] The newlyweds had just sneaked off to a honeymoon resort. After dinner the

groom wanted to go to bed, but the bride pulled up a chair and set gazing out of the window at the stars.

“Aren’t you coming to bed?” her husband asked.

“No” she replied. “Mother told me this would be the most beautiful night of my life, and I’m not going to miss a minute of it.”

After reading this short funny story, everybody cannot help laughing. The bride misunderstood the connotative meaning and collocative meaning of “beautiful night”. Everybody knows what the words refer to. In the special situation—their honeymoon, it has its collocative and connotative meaning. The bride figured out the meaning in conventional way without noticing the semantic environment.

3.4 Syntactic Features

The meaning of syntactic structure is complex. Different interpretations arise from the grammatical relationship among components of sentence, or between deep structure and surface structure. The sentence thus causes different meaning. Many humorous remarks are based on these kinds of phenomena:

[13] Freddy: I can lift an elephant with one hand

Teddy: I bet you can’t!

Freddy: Find me an elephant with one hand, and I will show you.

Different interpretations arise from different components of a sentence. In this example of “lift an elephant with one hand”, when the prepositional phrase “with one hand” is used to modify the verb “lift”, which is Teddy’s intention, it seems to us as unreasonable and impossible. Whereas when “with one hand” is used as a post modifier to modify “an elephant”, it is also ridiculous, for as far as we know, there is little chance for Teddy to find an elephant that is with one hand.

[14] I was putting moisturizer on my face when my little girl asked what I was doing.

I explained that the cream was good for winkles. “It’s sure doing a great job,

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

Mummy.” She replied, “you’ve getting a lot of them.”

The example caused humor because the different explanation of the phrase “be good for”. “Be good for winkles” means that it’s good for eliminating winkles, but the little girl misunderstood that the moisturizer is good for making winkles, totally opposite to t he mum’s meaning. That cute understanding of the little girl is quite laughable. Meantime the joke criticizes the bad quality of some product from the little girl’s mouth.

[15] Two men are talking.

“But you said she sang beautifully.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“What did you say?”

“I said she was a beautiful singer”

The word “singer” is a noun form of “sing”. The sentence that causes ambiguity is “she is a beautiful singer”. This surface structure has two deep structures at least.

a) She sings beautifully.

b) She is a beautiful looking singer.

The inconformity of two deep structures causes the humor in this joke. Ambiguity arises when the formal meaning and the phrasal function of certain components in a sentence have two or more possible explanations, or when the deep structures of the same surface structure are in opposition or in apparent contrast, humor can be generated.

3.5 Features in Figures of Speech

As mentioned before, many rhetorical devices are employed in English humor

like metaphor, hyperbole, anti-clim ax and pun, etc. Let’s analyze them one by one.

3.5.1 Pun

Pun is a word play, a figure of speech of repetition. It is, in nature, a play on word through the coupling of words that sound similar but which are very different semantically and etymologically. (Bussmann, 2000:391) It is “a figure of speech depending upon a similarity of sound and disparity of meaning”. (Wang, 1996:83) In English language, there are many words that are pronounced alike or spelt alike, or both. As one of the most effective rhetorical devices, pun is very beneficial to the realization of the funny effects in English humor. Pun can be classified into four categories: homophonic pun, paronomasia, antalaclasis, and sylleptic pun. (Wang, 1996: 84)

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Homophonic pun: It is the use of words with same pronunciation but with different spelling and meaning.

[16]Q: What’s difference between a farmer and a dressmaker?

A: One gathers what he sows and the other sews what she gathers.

“Sow” and “sew” have the same pronunciation, but different meanings. When we hear the sentence, we may feel confused. But when we read the answer, we find it is very witty, full of wisdom and humor.

Paronomasia pun: It is the use of two words that are similar in pronunciation but different in meaning. It is quite similar to homophonic pun. The only difference is the two words used are similar in pronunciation but not exactly the same. It also creates humor when the hearer just hears it.

[17]“Give me a sentence about a public servant,” says the teacher.

The small boy writes: “the fireman comes down the ladder pregnant.”

The teacher takes the lad aside to correct him, “Don’t you know what pregnant

means?”

“Sure,” answered the young student confidently.”

“Men’s carrying a child.”

Here, the cute point is the close pronunciation of “means” and “men’s”. The boy wanted to explain that he knew the meaning of “pregnant”, which is quite confused his teacher according to his sentence. But we can imagine after his explanation, his teacher will not know what to say.

Anatalaclasis pun: It refers to a word used twice or more, but each time with a different meaning.

[18] Q: What is the difference between a kangaroo and an Egyptian mummy?

A: One bounds around; the other is bound around.

These two “bound” have different meanings. The first, related to kangaroo, means “jump”, the second, refers to mummy, is the past participle of the word “bind”and it means “tied”. These kinds of plays of words can become the fun of our life.

Sylleptic pun: It is similar to antalaclasisi, but the word used as a pun occurs only once. This is the sort of pun employed most frequently. Quite a large amount of English humor makes good use of it.

[19] You earn your living and urn your dead.

Here “earn” and “urn” have the same pronunciations, but the meaning of each word is quite different. “Earn” means get money by working, “urn” means a kind of

tall vase, especially used for holding the ashes of a cremated person. The process of

The Features and Functions of English Humorous Remarks

making money is killing yourself is what the writer wants to tell the readers, so enjoy your life. This is a dark humor.

[20] An ambassador is an honest person who lies abroad for the good of country.

The humor sense is created by the word “lie” in this sentence. It is understood as “telling lies” or “live in” is quite different. The honest ambassador is telling lies for the adv antages of his country or something else, it’s all depends on the readers’understanding of the word.

3.5.2 Metaphor

The word “metaphor” derives from the Greek word “metaphora”, which means “transference, carrying over”. Metaphors are linguistic images that are based on a relationship of similarity between two objects or concepts; that is based on the same or similar semantic features, a denotational transfer occurs. (Bussmann, 2000:304) Here metaphor not only refers to metaphor in common sense, but also includes simile from the angle of cognitive linguistics. It is perhaps the most important and most frequently used figures of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claim in Metaphor We Live by,“…metaph or is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action.” They point out, “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” (Zhang, 2005:161-162) That is to say, metaphor in some degree reflects the human beings’ mode of thinking. To be more concrete, it can show the inner world, the inner needs of people.

For the wide use of metaphor, it is quite necessary for us to give an analysis of it in humorous remarks.

[21] Wh en a few young students asked the famous scientist Einstein: “what is theory of

relativity?”

Einstein answered wittily: “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it is only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it is two hours. That is relativity.”

Einstein gave a quite humorous answer and explained the difficult theory quite easy. The whole answer is a metaphor. After listening the reply, the listeners cannot help laughing, and got a good understanding of the theory of relativity.

[22] Women: Could you introduce me to the gentleman over there?

Man: I think he was married and had a lioness at home.

The man described the wife of the other man as a lioness, telling the woman that his wife is fierce and malicious just like an animal. It is wise not to be close to his

中南民族大学硕士学位论文

husband or there would be some troubles.

3.5.3 Hyperbole

Hyperbole comes from the Greek word “hyperbole”, which means “a throwing beyond, or excess”. It is a common figure of speech popularly known as exaggeration or over-statement. As Geoffrey N. Leech defines in his Principles of Pragmatics, (1983) “Hyperbole refers to a case where the speaker’s description is stronger than is warranted by the state of affaires desc ribed.” But hyperbole, there is no intent to deceive the audience. In fact, in the speaker’s mind he is truly describing his intense feeling at the time. (Zhang, 2005:210) An exaggerated description intended to elicit alienation, revaluation, or any kind of emotional reaction. Hyperbole is the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphases or heightening effect. It is often used to express one’s strong feelings or violent emotions by remarkable imagination and literary extravagance for the effect of strong impression, humor, sarcasm, irony etc. rather than to state a fact in its right perspective. (Wang, 1996:101)

[23]Son: Mum, my stomach is making noise. I’ve got fed up and can’t wait.

Mother: No hurry, dear. They’re planting the vegetables.

The son is starving in the restaurant, and can’t wait any more. But the mother said the cook is “planting the vegetables”. Here using exaggeration to express the eagerness of customers properly, having ridiculous and humorous effects.

[24] After a two weeks vocation, a man returned to his office and one of his fellow

workers asked him what kind of time he had had.

“I spent the whole two weeks helping my wife painting the rooms in our house.”

he groaned.

“Does she do that very often?”

“Well”, came the reply, “when we moved in a few days ago the guest room was nine by twelve. Now it is eight eleven.”

The wife kept his husband painting the guest room that their room became much smaller than ever before. Of course, the husband is exaggerating, but he expressed his complaints for the two weeks hard work.

3.5.4 Anti-climax

Anticlimax, or bathos, is the opposite of climax. It is defined as a sudden drop from the dignified or important in thought or expression to the commonplace or trivial, sometimes for humorous effect (Webster’s New World Dictionary); a sudden often funny change from something noble, serious, exciting, etc. to something foolish,