Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1Research Background and Research Significance
Laughing is human being’s instinct and it is a good expression of people’s sentiments.Apart from expressing one’s feeling, laughter could also make others happy and relaxed.Humor, which can make people laugh, is one of the most important and valuable nature ofmankind. A person with a sense of humor is always warm welcomed and loved. As alinguistic convey of humor, joke is the sauce of our life and work. A teacher could usejokes to activate the atmosphere in the classroom and inspire students to learn initiatively.A friend may adopt a joke to say something which is embarrassing and perplex. Jokes cannot only be laughter maker but also could be a good strategy used in embarrassingsituations, so it is well worth studying on it.When people talk with others, they do not randomly say what they want or like. Theremust be some common knowledge or information shared by the speaker and hearer. Forexample, one will not talk about the current super star with his grandparents because theydo not even know who she or he is, let alone what he or she is. Perhaps, he or she wouldrather prefer to chat it with his friends as they have some common hobbies or interests. Ifthis common knowledge is destroyed or disturbed, the communication may fail. This kindof common knowledge or shared information is just the focus of the presuppositiondiscussed in this thesis.
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1.2Research Questions and Research Methodology
There are altogether 35 English jokes selected in this thesis. For the property ofpresupposition, 12 pieces of English jokes are analyzed. And the strategic uses ofpresupposition, 10 pieces of English jokes are attached. As for rhetorical presupposition,the paper chooses 13 English jokes. The number of studying material selected in each parthas not a strict criteria and it is just intended to make the main point clearer and moreprotruding.The data for the current study is mainly selected in the book 300 English Jokes, byWang Fuzhen，in which jokes are chosen from a large number of original English jokes. 35typical jokes which are closely related to presupposition theory are chosen for the currentstudy. The author analyzes how humorous effects are achieved in these English jokesunder presupposition theory.The reasons for choosing them are as follows: first, jokes are refined and excellentlinguistic materials of humor study. Second, jokes in 300 English Jokes are mostly chosenfrom the original edition of English books, whose languages are idiomatic，pure and typical.Third, the 300 English jokes are pided into 12 kinds based on its contents such as love,life, family affairs, children’s innocence, school life, going to doctor’s, animals and so on.Although these jokes belong to different types and different subjects, they are close to thecurrent times and daily life. It has a strong readability for it can make people laugh, cleanup trouble, set people thinking or inspire daily life. Fourth, the author discovered that mostof these jokes could be interpreted by using the theory of presupposition, such as itsproperties or the strategic use of it.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 A Brief Introduction to Humor
It was Lin Yutang who translated humor to China in 1924 for the first time. From thenon, humor has entered into Chinese dictionary as a foreign word. Lin Yutang once pointedout that it was so difficult to tell what humor was and we would rather not to say if wecould not tell it clearly. One who understands it can identify as soon as he reads it while ifone does not know it, whatever means is used, he can not understand either. Some scholarsalso think that humor can only be felt, not explained.Humor has been studied for more than thousands of years. It is so well enjoyed bypeople for they can get pleasure and relaxation from it. People in this world, home andabroad, old or young, men or women, have the ability to appreciate and enjoy humor.However, it is not an easy task to give an accurate definition of what humor is. Just as“One thousand Hamlets in one thousand readers’ eyes” shows, many researchers indifferent fields have tried to define it from different perspectives in various ways. There isstill not a consensus. Apte (1985) believed that it is impossible to give a globalanthropological theory of humor.
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2.2 A Brief Introduction to Jokes
Joke has the origin of Latin word “jocus”, covering thing such as a person, a thing, anevent, a funny story or an amusing trick, which is said or done in order to make peoplelaugh and get them amused. “By joke, we mean a relatively short text which, for a givencultural group, is recognizable as having, as its primary purpose, the production of anamused reaction in its reader/ hearer, and which is typically repeatable in wide range ofcontexts” (Ritchie, 2004:15). Joke refers to a way of language phenomenon using severalsentences or a short story to make the listener or the hearer to feel laughable, that is, tocreate a sense of humor.According to different criterion, jokes can also be pided into different categories.Based on the contents and structure, Sherzer (1987) pided it into: 1) riddle jokes, whichis created by riddles; 2) Narrative jokes, which is organized in a narrative structure andended with an out-surprised punch line. It always quotes people’s conversation directly; 3)Dirty or obscene jokes are connected with sex; 4) Interethnic or interracial jokes are jokesthat laugh at a certain ethnic or a certain kind of people’s obscure behavior or words.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework .... 16
3.1 A Brief Introduction to Presupposition Theory ...... 16
3.1.1 The Classification of Presupposition...... 17
3.1.2 Presupposition Triggers ........ 20
3.2 Pragmatic Presupposition ......... 23
3.2.1 The Classification of Pragmatic Presupposition....... 24
3.2.2 The Property of Pragmatic Presupposition......... 26
Chapter 4 Properties of Pragmatic Presupposition in English Jokes ......... 29
4.1 Verbal Humor Achieved by Appropriateness ......... 29
4.2 Verbal Humor Achieved by Mutual Knowledge .... 33
4.3 Verbal Humor Achieved by Defeasibility ........ 36
Chapter 5 Strategic Uses of Pragmatic Presupposition in English Jokes......... 39
5.1 Verbal Humor Reflected in Preserved Presupposition ....... 39
5.2 Verbal Humor Reflected in Added Presupposition ...... 41
5.3 Verbal Humor Reflected in False Presupposition......... 43
Chapter 6 Rhetorical Presuppositionin English Jokes
6.1 Verbal Humor Resulted from Pun
Pun presupposition is one type of presupposition generated by the use of pun in thediscourse (Wei Zaijiang, 2003). Pun is defined as “an amusing use of a word or phrase thathas two meanings, or of words with the same sound but different meaning” in LongmanDictionary of Contemporary English. A pun is also called paronomasia and it is a figure ofspeech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetoricaleffect, whether it is humorous or not.Pun is essentially ambiguous and it applies a polysemy to indicate more than onemeaning, in most cases they are literal meaning versus figurative meaning, or it may applyhomonyms, which is the case that several different words with similar spelling andpronunciation but have different meanings. The main point of a pun is that the user intendsto create a humorous effect by means of the juxtaposition of meanings. Pun can be pidedinto several kinds: homonyms, homophones and homographs.A homonym is a word that is the same as another word in pronunciation and spellingbut they are different in meaning. For example: A man sits down at a table in a restaurantand asks, “Do you serve crabs here?” The waiter says, “Sure, sit down, we serve anybody.”The customer is in fact asking if the restaurant serves the food of crabs. As the word “crab”also means “sour person”, the waiter tells him that they serve everybody even a personwho has got sour temper.
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Conclusion
Almost every one of us has told or been told jokes, and we know that the basiccharacteristic of joke is to make people laugh, that is, to create a sense of humor. Humorand joke are always going together, and sometimes they are mistaken as just one thing.Humor is embedded in jokes while jokes are language expressions of humor.In our daily life, we don’t randomly say what we want or like. We must assure thatwhat we said could be understood and accepted by the listeners, that is, there must be afelicity or shared information between the communicators. And only the inference utteredby speaker being understood by the hearer can the speech act go smoothly and successfully.This is just what pragmatic presupposition refers to.This thesis adopts pragmatic presupposition theory to analyze humor in English jokes,and the studying materials are typical jokes selected from 300 English jokes by WangFuzhen. Sufficient cases are analyzed from three aspects of the pragmatictheory-characteristics presupposition, strategic uses of it as well as rhetoricalpresupposition. Numerous of jokes can be explained by properties of presupposition suchas appropriateness, mutual knowledge and defeasibility. Strategic uses ofpresupposition-preserved presupposition, added presupposition and false presuppositionalso play an important role in humor analysis. Besides, humor can be embedded inrhetorical devices such as pun, satire, simile, metaphor, exaggeration and so on.
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