Cultural Differences in Appreciating Humor: A Pragmatic Exploration

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MA Thesis in Linguistics Language and Society (English track)

Graduate School of Humanities University of Amsterdam

Student: Haojie Hong (Ricky) Student Number: 12236527 Main Supervisor: Anne Bannink

Second supervisor: Manon van der Laaken

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Abstract

Humor occurs frequently in daily interpersonal communication, and there is an increasing interest in analyzing humor from various aspects in academia, such as linguistics,

psychology, etc. However, most of the studies focus on the functions of humor and neglect the linguistic construction of a humorous utterance, as well as its pragmatic force. Since humor is always conveyed by the implied meaning of an utterance, this thesis analyzes the conditions and features of a humorous utterance and the reasons for failed humor in intercultural context within the framework of pragmatics. A modified taxonomy of wit is proposed after a synthesis of the relevant concepts of humor. A pragmatic model of wit emphasizing the necessary components of verbal humor is proposed on the basis of the Cooperative Principle, speech act theory, and politeness theory. Suls (1972)’s incongruity-resolution model and Raskin (1979)’ s Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humor (SSTH) are used to explain how humor is processed cognitively and understood by the hearer. Among different humor styles, Chinese people do not appreciate aggressive humor in particular, because Chinese culture embraces collectivism and cares more about others’ face. Failed humor between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers is attributed to pragmatic failure, which is often caused by insufficient English knowledge, negative L1 pragmatic transfer, and cultural differences.

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Humor is a very important component of interpersonal communication. People may use humor to foster solidarity between parties or exert power over others (Hay,1995; Dynel, 2008). In academic disciplines such as linguistics, psychology and sociology, research on humor is becoming more prolific with the emergence of some more detailed issues derived from the interests in humor, like failed humor, cultural differences in appreciating humor, etc. Even though humor has been approached from different angles in academia, most of the studies focus on the types and functions of humor with only a few studies that really discuss what constitutes a humorous utterance and why an utterance can create a humorous effect. In verbal communication, a speaker often tries to express more than the literal meaning of his1 words, whereas the hearer needs to understand the implied meaning of the utterance by linking its literal meaning with the context. Since humor is always conveyed by the implied meaning of an utterance rather than the literal meaning (Long & Graesser, 1988), and pragmatics exactly explains how people understand the meanings that are not uttered

explicitly by connecting literal utterances with contextual factors and the shared background knowledge between interlocutors, it could be argued that humor could and should be

explained in the framework of pragmatics.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze how humor is constructed and understood from the perspective of pragmatics in intercultural communication between Chinese and native

English speakers. In particular, it zooms in on the reasons why Chinese EFL2 learners sometimes fail to appreciate an intended humorous utterance by a native English speaker.

1In this thesis, the masculine embraces the feminine.

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Three research questions will be answered in this thesis: 1) What is humor? 2) How is humor constructed and why can it induce a humorous effect? 3) What are the reasons for failed humor between Chinese people and people from Western cultures? Although there are various methods to induce a humorous effect, this thesis focuses solely on verbal humor without paralinguistic elements, e.g. a wink, that can have an auxiliary effect on a successful humorous utterance.

In order to answer the research questions, this thesis consists of three parts. Part one is a synthesis of the concepts related to humor, which identifies the terminologies, types, styles, and the definitions of humor adopted in this thesis with a modified taxonomy of wit

proposed. Part two is a pragmatic model of wit explaining the linguistic construction of humorous utterance through its necessary conditions and features, as well as the reasons why people may find wit humorous. Part three explores the reasons for cultural differences in appreciating humor between Chinese and Western cultures and the causes of failed humor between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers within the pragmatic model proposed in part two. The clash between Chinese and Western cultures in the embracement of collectivism vs. individualism and different levels of attention attached on others’ face and self’s face lead to differences in appreciation of different styles of humor. Pragmatic failure is proposed to be the primary source of failed humor, which is a novel point of view in

academia.

2. Theoretical Framework

Pragmatics studies the relationship between language and contextual factors. It analyses how context contributes to the meaning of words, which includes the knowledge of physical and social world, time and space factors, and socio-psychological factors. It focuses on how interactors communicate more information than the literal meaning of the words which they use, based on an assumption that some knowledge is shared by both participants

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of a conversation: the speaker intends a meaning through composing a linguistic message; the hearer infers the meaning by interpreting the message according to the context. However, since pragmatics is a very broad and complex subfield of linguistics, only some key concepts that will be used to analyze humor are explained in this thesis.

2.1. The Cooperative Principle

The foundation of pragmatics is the assumption that interlocutors in a conversation will behave in a logical way. Philosopher Herbert Paul Grice (1975, 1978) elaborates this assumption and proposes the Cooperative Principle (CP). He suggests that in a conversation, interlocutors always make their utterances comprehensible through conforming to what is believed to be the other person’s expectations about normal conversational behavior. There are four maxims demonstrating the main expectations:

The maxim of quality. Speakers are assumed to be sincere and only say the things they believe are true, corresponding to reality. They are not expected to say anything they know is false, or something they cannot be sure of. However, sometimes speakers may use terms like “as far as I know” to state something that they believe to be true, but do not have sufficient evidence to prove to be true in order to draw hearers’ attention. The hearers under such circumstances generally would assume speakers are not lying.

The maxim of relevance. Speakers are expected to say something relevant to what has been said before or relevant to the topic under discussion.

The maxim of manner. Speakers should try to make the words in their speech clear and orderly. Obscurity and ambiguity are expected to be avoided.

The maxim of quantity. Speakers should be as informative as is needed to express their meaning. They will give neither more nor less information than necessary. People who say too little face the risk that their hearers may not be able to identify their message and

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understand their meaning, whereas people who talk too much face the risk that hearers would be confused and not be able to find the main point.

Grice argues that hearers would assume that speakers observe and understand the Cooperative Principles.

Non-observance of the maxims. The four maxims are not rules that must be followed for a successful communication, but instead, they are the expectations about the things “should” be done in a conversation. However, in daily communication in reality, people often flout or violate the maxims. The behavior of not following the maxims itself creates meaning. It is a special type of meaning known as implicature which involves implying something without directly stating it (Jones, 2012). When flouting the maxims, a speaker, on the face of it, does not follow the maxims and assume that the hearer not only could understand the literal meanings of the utterance, but is able to infer the implied implicature from his background knowledge and the context.

The maxim of quantity is flouted by seemingly giving too much or too little information. Flouting quality can be done in various ways, while the simplest method is saying something apparently not corresponding to what speakers think or believe. Figurative speech like the use of hyperbole or metaphor is also a way to flout quality. If speakers flout relation, they would normally expect hearers to imagine or supplement what is not said in the utterance and make connections between the utterance and the content of the previous

conversation. Speakers who flout the maxim of manner deliver seemingly ambiguous or obscure speech, often aiming to exclude a third party (Cutting, 2008).

Violating the maxims is different from flouting them. A speaker violates the maxims if he knows that the hearer will not get the implicature and will only understand the literal meaning of the words and the superficial intention. A misleading implicature is intentionally generated. Violating the maxim of quantity is simply done by giving insufficient information

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to prevent hearers from conceiving the full picture. Lying is a form of violating the maxim of quality by deliberately saying something insincere. The maxim of relation is violated by distracting hearers’ attention in order to change the topic. The maxim of manner is violated by giving an ambiguous answer in order to evade and end the matter of the conversation.

2.2. Speech Act Theory

Speech Act Theory focuses on the function of one’s words. At a time when academia mainly considered the “truth” of sentences, i.e. whether the facts embedded in sentences are true or not, philosopher John Austin (1975), in his lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, pointed out that when we speak, we also perform certain actions in the physical world, and he called these utterances speech acts. The key point of speech acts is their force, the capacity to perform actions, rather than the literal meanings of the words. Any speech act has three types of force: locutionary force, illocutionary force, and perlocutionary force.

Locutionary force concerns the words themselves, the literal meaning of the words. Illocutionary force means the action the speaker is intended to perform through the words, like ‘inviting’, ‘promising’, ‘apologizing’, ordering’, etc. Perlocutionary force is the actual effect of the words on the hearer, the hearer’s reactions. Moreover, Austin argues that not only those utterances containing a performative verb, like “I sentence you to ten years in jail.” have a performative function, but also the utterances without performative verbs. He called the utterances which still have a performative function but without performative verbs, implicit performatives. For instance, in the utterance, “Smoking a cigarette is harmful to your health.”, the speaker is warning someone not to smoke. Searle (1968,1969) further points out that the form and the function of an utterance are not necessary directly related. An indirect speech act is made by a speaker when his utterance fulfils a different function from the function of its form. In other words, a speaker tries to perform one speech act through another speech act. For example, “Tony wants to see you.” is a declarative form which has the

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grammatical function to make a statement. In this case, it is a direct representative describing Tony’s wishes (Cutting, 2008, p.17). However, in the context where Tony is a senior leader, and the hearer is a subordinate, the illocutionary force of the utterance will be a command or a suggestion to the hearer, which has the same function as the imperative “Go and see Tony.”, and therefore as an indirect directive speech act. Briefly, in the utterance “Tony wants to see you.”, an indirect directive speech act is performed through a direct

representative speech act. Accordingly, Sadock (2004) concludes that “every normal utterance has both a descriptive and an effective aspect: that saying something is also doing something”. (p.54)

There is a close connection between Speech Act Theory and the Cooperative Principle, for CP works as the basis of Speech Act Theory. If the locutionary force of an utterance flouts at least one of the maxims of CP, the implicature of the utterance is usually its illocutionary force. In other words, in most cases, the illocutionary force of an utterance and the implicature are identical. Flouting the maxims functions as a cue for hearers to know that the literal meaning or the locutionary force is not the real meaning intended by the

speaker, and hearers will thus try to infer the illocutionary force, the implicature, according to the context and shared background knowledge.

2.3. Politeness Theory

Politeness refers to the choices of language use and linguistic expressions that avoid intrusiveness and show friendliness to hearers. The awareness of face, a key concept in politeness, is essential for establishing social relationships. The concept of sociological face basically means the public self-image of a person linked to his dignity and prestige regarding social relationships. Scollon and Scollon (1995) define face as “the negotiable public image granted to each other by participants in a communicative event” (p.35). Brown and Levinson (1987) further argue that face is a universal concept and when people from any cultural

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background speak, they should take both their own face and hearers’ face into account and try to reduce Face Threating Acts (FTAs).

Face Threating Acts are defined as something a speaker says that “represents a threat to another individual’s expectations regarding self-image” (Yule, 1996, p.61). In many cases in real life, like requesting for others’ help, FTAs are inevitable. Negative politeness

strategies and positive politeness strategies can be used to mitigate the threat when FTAs are inevitable. Negative politeness strategies deal with one’s negative face, including the need to be independent, the right to have freedom, and not to be forced to do something. Positive politeness strategies focus on positive face, the desire to be accepted, liked, appreciated, and treated as a group member.

When a speaker asks another person for help, for instance, a choice needs to be made between doing an FTA on-record or off-record. Performing an FTA off-record means doing it indirectly. For example, if a girl wants to find a certain book from the library, and she asks herself in a voice that could be heard by someone near her, “I wish I knew where the book is.” This utterance is an indirect speech act, for the sentence is in declarative form, but it will probably be interpreted as a request to assist in finding the book by someone who hears it This off-record utterance also flouts the maxim of quantity, as it is not as informative as possible, hiding the speaker’s intention that she actually wants someone else to help find the book, so the request for others’ help to find the book is the implicature of this utterance. Indirect speech acts combined with flouting the maxims of CP constitute a sense of indirectness that allows one to make a request or suggestions without damaging others’ negative face (Cutting, 2008).

Since the girl does not explicitly express her intention in requesting for others’ help and this intention is the implicature of the utterance, so she could simply deny this implied intention by saying something like “I do not want others’ help. I was just talking to myself.”

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This possibility just confirms Grice’s (1975) argument that implicatures are cancellable. Because of this property of implicatures, speech acts can be used to perform an FTA off-record that give others negative opinions but simultaneously save others’ face. For instance, in a conversation between A and B, A: “Am I pretty today?”, B: “I like your shoes.”, B flouts the maxim of relation to create an implicature which gives A a negative comment indirectly to save A’s face. The illocutionary force might be “You are not that pretty today.”. However, B could always retreat back to the locutionary force of the utterance and cancel the

implicature by stating that he means literally and there is no illocutionary force, or other implied meanings, to save his own face.

If a speaker makes a request openly and directly, he is doing an FTA bald on-record. Such utterances tend to be direct speech acts using more imperative sentences without any mitigating devices, which leave only two choices for hearers to react; they can either accept the request or reject it.

However, most of the time, even if people do FTAs on-record, they try to take others’ face and their own face into consideration, using negative politeness strategies and positive politeness strategies to mitigate the threat. Negative politeness strategies emphasize the distance between the interlocutors, avoiding entering the space of others. Apologies, hesitation, hedges, or a question that gives hearers options including saying ‘no’ could be used to avoid imposition. “The extent of option-giving influences the degree of politeness” (Cutting, 2008, p. 45). Positive politeness strategies try to save positive face through highlighting solidarity, making statements of friendship, compliments, and claiming the common goals of the interlocutors.

It is noteworthy that politeness is a pragmatic phenomenon, which focuses on the function and the intended social meaning rather than the forms, so context, social distance, power differences and cultures are essential factors to consider when interpreting politeness.

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2.4. Intercultural Pragmatic Failure

Hymes (1972) challenged Chomsky’s (2014) concept of “competence”, as idealized pure linguistic knowledge within a monolingual community, and suggested a broader idea of “communicative competence”, which not only includes intrinsic grammatical competence but also the ability to utilize the grammatical competence in various communicative situations (Bagarić & Djigunović, 2007). In this way, Hymes added a sociolinguistic element into Chomsky’s pure linguistic point of view. Bachman & Palmer (1996) further elaborate Hymes’s concept of communicative competence and propose a model that divides language knowledge into two subcategories: organizational knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. This classification basically corresponds to Thomas’s (1983) idea of linguistic competence and pragmatic competence. Organizational knowledge refers to the knowledge involved in composing grammatically correct sentences with formal structures, including the knowledge of intonation, phonology, syntax, semantics, etc., while pragmatic competence, or pragmatic knowledge, basically refers to “the ability to use language effectively in order to achieve a specific purpose and to relate the real meaning and the intention of the speaker to the words being uttered.” (p.92)

However, pragmatic knowledge of a particular language is remarkably culture-bound. Each culture has its own code to interpret the maxims of CP, speech acts, and the politeness theory: an expression may be deemed polite in one culture, but not in another culture. In intercultural communication, interlocutors from different cultural backgrounds often have difficulties in correctly interpreting others’ implied meaning, the illocutionary force, of an utterance due to their pragmatic competence in the common language used to communicate. Such misinterpretation is called pragmatic failure.

The concept of pragmatic failure was proposed by Thomas (1983) as “any occasion on which H perceives the force of S's utterance as other than S intended s/he should perceive

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it.” (p.94) Thomas distinguishes two main types of pragmatic failure, pragmalinguistic failure and sociopragmatic failure. Pragmalinguistic failure occurs when a sentence if directly

translated from L1 to L2, the pragmatic force will be systematic different. Hong (1991) indicates that pragmalinguistic failure refers to the type of miscommunication that occurs when Chinese EFL learners subconsciously and directly translate expressions in Chinese to English but ignore their pragmatic meanings, and, as a result, use an inappropriate expression in English. Thomas considers pragmalinguistic failure as just a grammatical error which could be easily taught by telling students the pragmatic force of a certain English expression, for it is caused by the mistaken belief of the pragmatic force of an utterance. Students may mistakenly believe that the same expression, if directly translated from L1 to L2, would have the same pragmatic force. The simplest example is teaching students that “How are you.” in English does not serve as a question to ask the hearer’s condition, but as a way of greeting. However, sociopragmatic failure is more subtle, and relates to cultural norms and pragmatic principles, which “stem from …cross-culturally different perceptions of what constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior” (Thomas, 1983, p.99). It involves the lack of recognizing the conventions and the sociocultural norms of target languages, like neglecting the appropriate registers governing target language communities (Dogancay & Kamisli, 1997). For instance, the appropriate behavior in a meeting is quite different between Chinese and Western

cultures. Meetings in Chinese culture are very serious matters, where the language is highly formal, but in Western cultures, many meetings are held in an informal way, where the language is not particularly formal but rather in a manner similar to that of daily communication.

3. What is Humor?

In this part, various terminologies related to humor proposed by different researchers will be clarified to answer the first research question, what is humor.

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3.1. Definitions of humor

Humor is a broad, complex and multi-dimensional concept. Since there is no uniformly agreed definition of humor, researchers define it from various perspectives corresponding with their research directions.

For instance, Berger’s (1976) definition of humor is that “humor establishes

incongruous relationships (meaning) and presents them to us with a suddenness (timing) that leads us to laugh” (p. 113). There is a double requirement in his definition that the speakers need to have the intention to induce a humorous effect, and more importantly, the hearers should be able to comprehend the intended incongruous meaning conveyed by humor at the right time. In pragmatic terms, the illocutionary force to create humorous effects and the perlocutionary force that humor is understood by hearers are both necessary. It is worth pointing out that although Berger uses “leads us to laugh” in his definition, which seems to consider laughter as an indicator of humor, he does not elaborate this point in his paper. However, since he also puts emphasis on the hearers’ interpretations and laughter indeed indicates a success in understanding the humor, laughter therefore is a sufficient condition for a successful humor, but not a necessary one.

In contrast, Winick (1976) defines humor solely from the perspective of the speakers’ intention. His definition is that “jokes are any structured communication, with a witty or funny intent, which the speaker seemed to know in advance of telling it.” (p.124) In other words, as long as the illocutionary force, the implied meaning, of a person’s utterance is to create amusement and try to be humorous, such utterance is a “joke”. Winick does not distinguish humor with joke. These two words are interchangeable in his article.

Instead of trying to define humor, some researchers pay their attention to what humor encompasses. For example, Yue, Jiang, Lu, & Hiranandani (2016) claim that “humor

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perceptions of playful incongruity, mirthful emotions, and vocal-behavioral expressions of laughter” (p. 1). This definition focuses on the perlocutionary force of a humorous utterance, for any element of humor contained in this definition, like “comic reactions”, “mirthful emotions”, etc., is a feeling or a reaction that the hearers would gain after appreciating humor. This definition is still very abstract, but more detailed than the definitions above, for it regards more elements, like “playful incongruity”, “mirthful emotions” as necessary conditions for humor.

Long & Graesser (1988) provide a very broad definition, because in their definition, humor can be created not only verbally but also by facial or body movements. “Humor is anything done or said, purposely or inadvertently, that is found to be comical or amusing” (p. 37). The emphasis is put on the effects humor eventually made. If the effects of such events are “comical or amusing”, those events are humor. An unintentional but funny move is also humor under this definition. In terms of verbal humor, from the perspective of pragmatics, this definition exclusively highlights the perlocutionary force of an utterance, where humor is not necessarily caused by someone deliberately. Even if there is no implied meaning, no intention to be humorous, and only the locutionary force makes the hearers feel amused, as long as the perlocutionary force is that the hearers find the utterance is humorous, this utterance is also humor.

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Table 1 includes all the definitions aforementioned.

Table 1 shows that most definitions pay more attention to the perlocutionary force of a humorous utterance and neglect its illocutionary force. In other words, according to these definitions, humor can be constructed solely by the hearer’s perceptions and feelings, no matter what the intention of the speaker is. However, if only the perlocutionary force of an utterance is considered in constructing humor, subjectivity will be a problem. Different

Table 1

Definitions of Humor and their Defining Factors

Definitions of humor Defining factors

“Humor establishes incongruous

relationships (meaning) and presents them to us with a suddenness (timing) that leads us to laugh.” (Berger, 1976, p. 113)

Illocutionary force and perlocutionary force: Speakers’ intentions to induce a humorous effect and the hearers’ interpretation as humor.

“Jokes are any structured communication, with a witty or funny intent, which the speakers seemed to know in advance of telling it.” (Winick, 1976, p.124)

Illocutionary force: The speaker’s intentions to induce a humorous effect is what is all needed.

(This definition clearly covers only verbal humor.)

“Humor encompasses amusement and comic reactions, psychological cognitive appraisals comprising perceptions of playful

incongruity, mirthful emotions, and vocal-behavioral expressions of laughter” (Yue, Jiang, Lu, & Hiranandani, 2016, p. 1).

Perlocutionary force: Comic reactions, mirthful emotions, expressions of laughter, etc. are all related with the effects on hearers.

“Humor is anything done or said, purposely or inadvertently, that is found to be comical or amusing” (Long & Graesser, 1988, p. 37).

(For verbal humor) Perlocutionary force: This is the broadest definition, where humor only depends on whether the hearer feels it amusing or not, not matter it is intentional or unintentional.

(This definition covers both verbal humor and non-verbal humor, but only verbal humor is analyzed based on this definition.)

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people have different standards and criteria for the feelings like “comical or amusing”. Any utterance, whether the speaker is intended to create a humorous effect or not, that fails to produce a humorous effect on the hearer will be classified as failed humor under these definitions. As a result, it would be nearly impossible to analyze failed humor from pragmatics and cultural differences, for there is a significant individual influence on

identifying and appreciating a humorous utterance. In the same vein, if only the illocutionary force of an utterance is considered in constructing humor, there will not be any failed humor, for a speaker’s intention is sufficient enough to create humor.

In this thesis, since failed humor will be analyzed, both the intentions of a speaker and the effects on the hearer should be taken into consideration when studying how humor is constructed. Therefore, the definition of humor that is used in this thesis is similar to Berger’s (1976). Humor is made up of two necessary requirements: the illocutionary force of an

utterance made by a speaker is intended to induce an amusing effect, and the perlocutionary force is that the hearer successfully understands the illocutionary force intended by the speaker and feel amused. In contrast, failed humor means a speaker makes an utterance with the intention to induce an amusing effect on the hearer, but the hearer fails to understand or appreciate the illocutionary force of the utterance and does not feel amused. The illocutionary force and the perlocutionary force of an utterance do not coincide in failed humor, but do coincide when humor is successfully created.

3.2. Types of humor: jokes and wit

Humor is not a monolithic concept which can be easily defined, for there are various types of humor, and different researchers may use different criteria to categorize them. Moreover, since these researchers do not work together, they may use the same terminology referring to different types of humor, or use different terminologies referring to identical types of humor. For instance, Winick (1976) uses the umbrella term “joke” to include Long

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and Graesser’s (1988) ideas of “joke”, “wit”, and “humor”. (The detailed distinction between joke and wit will be introduced later.) The lack of uniformity in defining humor and in the categorization of the types of humor creates confusion and even difficulty in analyzing humor. Hay (1995) states that it is impossible to have a uniform definition of humor, for when researchers find their examples, their own subjectivity and research interests will inevitably influence their perspectives of defining humor. If a researcher wants to analyze how humor is understood and interpreted, he will be more inclined to focus on the hearers’ side, and pay less attention to speakers’ intentions. However, Hay claims that even though confusions and disagreements would be incurred upon the definition of humor, it is way more important that a researcher has consistent criteria and an appropriate definition for his own research. Although different researchers have different definitions, as long as these

definitions are reasonable and consistent throughout whole studies, then they are academically acceptable.

As the research object of this thesis is verbal humor, so two major distinct types of humor, jokes and wit, need to be clarified. This thesis will adopt Long and Graesser’s (1988) ideas of jokes and wit.

Long and Graesser differentiate jokes and wit as follows.

Context-free jokes do not need to be tied to the preceding conversational context. For the most part, a joke contains within it all of the information necessary to understand the message or point… In contrast to jokes, wit relies much more on previous conversational context, topic of conversation, shared knowledge between the speaker and listener, and aspects of the social situation. (p.37)

According to Long and Graesser, jokes are basically funny stories told to hearers for amusement, whereas wit is more impromptu and subtle: a speaker, based on the context,

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previous conversation and other conditions, makes an utterance, and the effect of this utterance is humorous.

There is a close connection between wit and jokes. Normally in a joke, all the necessary information is introduced first, which sets up a premise. A statement concluding the premise will be given at the end of a joke as a device to create humorous effects. This statement is known as punchline. The premise of a joke is solely given by the speaker,

whereas the premise of wit is shared by both the speaker and the hearer. The premise of wit is set up by retrieving information from previous conversation, shared background knowledge and the context. From this perspective, wit could be considered as the punchline of a joke in a broader sense whose premise is the context of the conversation. Since the premise of wit is not frankly given by a speaker, but is instead perceived by a hearer, a hearer may establish a different premise from the speaker’s, which leads to his lack of the necessary information to understand the wit made by the speaker. Because the speaker and the hearer may establish different premises due to their different understandings of the context, their relationship, etc., there is a higher possibility that wit would fail than joke. The different understandings of the context and relationship may stem from different background knowledge and cultures, which will be argued later in the thesis.

Moreover, according to this definition, a joke can be considered as a speech event, which is defined as “a communicative activity which has a clear beginning and a clear ending in which people’s shared understandings of the relevance of various contextual features remain fairly constant throughout the event” (Jones, 2012, p.64). For, example, a joke would start with “Once upon a time, there was a girl…”, and end with a punchline. In contrast, wit could be considered as a speech act, whose main function is to create humorous effects.

It is worth mentioning that Long and Graesser’s subcategories of jokes and wit are classified based on different criteria, where jokes are classified by topics, e.g. sexual, but wit

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is classified by intent or style, e.g. teasing. Such categorization further proves my argument that wit is a speech act, for speech acts focus on the function of an utterance, which exactly represents the intention of a speaker, and wit is primarily classified based on different intentions of the speakers by Long and Graesser.

Hymes (1972) states that speech events are made up of speech acts, and speech acts are embedded in speech events. For example, lessons are speech events which are made up of speech acts like questioning, explaining, answering, etc. Such idea is compatible with my argument that wit could be considered as the punchline of a joke in a broad sense.

Since this thesis aims to analyze how humor is understood from the perspective of pragmatics, and wit itself could be considered as the punchline of a joke whose premise is the context of the conversation, so only wit, a speech act, will be exclusively analyzed because it is exactly the device that creates humorous effects. A modified taxonomy of wit will be introduced.

4. The Taxonomy of Wit

Different taxonomies of humor have been proposed by different researchers, like Hay (1995) and Long & Graesser (1988). Since this study only focuses on wit, which is

considered as a speech act and the device that creates humorous effects, a modified taxonomy is introduced accordingly.

The taxonomy of wit in this thesis is as follows: 1. Irony

2. Teasing & insulting 3. Self-deprecation

4. Miscommunication of speech acts 5. Quote & roleplay

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6. Wordplay 7. Mo lei tau

This modified taxonomy of wit is built on the basis of Hay’s (1995) and Long & Graesser’s (1988) taxonomies of humor. Because their taxonomies include both jokes and wit, so some categories of humor, like “fantasy” proposed by Hay (1995), which basically means telling an imagined funny story, are abandoned for them belonging to the categories of jokes, not wit. Among the remaining categories of wit, the categories whose essences can be explained by the same knowledge of a certain perspective of pragmatics are merged together as one category. For instance, in the modified taxonomy of wit, the category,

“miscommunication of speech acts” is built by merging the categories of “replies to rhetorical questions” and “clever replies to serious statements” proposed by Long and Graesser.

(Detailed reasons will be explained later.) Similar categories are also merged. For example, “wordplay” is used to include Long & Graesser’s “puns”, “transformation of frozen

expressions” and Hay’s “wordplay”.

Below each category in the modified taxonomy of wit will be explained in detail. 4.1. Irony

Irony itself is a very complicated concept. Just like the definitions of humor, there is no agreed criteria in defining irony. Different definitions of irony are proposed by different researchers from different angles. This thesis adopts the traditional view of irony proposed by Grice (1975; 1978), that irony is one of the implicatures created when the maxim of quality is flouted: a speaker is saying something not true, trying to get cross a proposition while

pretending putting forwards some other prepositions to fulfill some semantic purposes. (Clark & Gerrig, 1984; Grice, 1978). In other words, the traditional definition of irony basically means that a speaker makes an utterance in which the intended meaning is opposite to the literal meaning of the utterance. Long & Graesser (1988) point out that ironic statements are

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evaluative, used to express one’s opinions, attitudes, or feelings, but they do not need to be negative, which can be used for both praise and blame.

The traditional view is challenged by other researchers. Jorgensen, Miller and Sperber (1984), e.g., propose that “the ironist mentions the literal meaning of the utterance and

expresses an attitude toward it.” (p.112) In their definition of irony, they try to attach a speaker’s attitude, a factor that Grace does not pay attention to, to the literal meaning of the utterance. Jorgensen, Miller and Sperber think that in irony, what the speaker really wants to express is an attitude. This theory is in its turn challenged by Clark and Gerrig (1984), who propose the Pretense theory of Irony. Clark and Gerrig argue that “with irony, a speaker is pretending to be an injudicious person speaking to an uninitiated audience; the speaker intends the addressees of the irony to discover the pretense and thereby see his or her attitude toward the speaker, the audience, and the utterance.” (p.121)

However, the traditional view proposed by Grice is adopted, for it is more in line with the theoretical framework used in this thesis. This view is defined on the basis of the maxims of CP, which is the foundation of pragmatics, so it will be easier and more intuitive to study the examples of wit from the perspective of pragmatics by applying this view. The best example of irony would be the one given by Grice (1975) himself: X betrayed A and leaked trade secrets to rival companies on the premise of a confidentiality treaty, but A said to B that “X is a fine friend.”. The illocutionary force of the utterance, “X is a fine friend.”, is that X is a terrible friend who betrays his dear friends. The maxim of quality is flouted. Irony is the implicature created by this flout and creates humor.

4.2. Teasing & insulting

When a person is teasing or insulting others, he is trying to embarrass or disparage others by ascribing others a negative character or emphasizing their weaknesses. The humor comes from the unexpectedness of the utterances which are normally considered

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unacceptable under corresponding circumstances (Hay, 1995). The difference between teasing and insult lies in the intention of the speaker. If a person’s intention is to seriously chastise or offend others, he is insulting others, while if one’s intention does not include malicious offense, he is teasing others (Long & Graesser, 1988).

The example of teasing comes from Jimmy Kimmel’ s Oscar monologue in 2017: “Matt Damon. I’ve known Matt for a long time now. We have problems. He is a selfish person!”. Some background knowledge is needed to understand this utterance. In real life, Jimmy and Matt are very good friends in private, but in public and on media they pretend to have serious private issues and conflicts and always disparage each other to entertain the public. Therefore, in this utterance, the maxim of quality is flouted. Matt is definitely not a very selfish person in private, for otherwise Jimmy will not be a good friend of him. On the surface, Jimmy uses this utterance to disparage Matt by ascribing Matt a negative character, selfishness. This is the locutionary force of this utterance. In contrast, the illocutionary force is probably to entertain the public and enhance the friendship with Matt.

4.3. Self-deprecation

Self-deprecation is an insult or tease targeting at oneself as the object. People may use this wit to demonstrate humility or ingratiate others, which is also recognized as a self-defense strategy (Hay, 1995; Long & Graesser, 1988). An example of self-deprecation is the utterance: “How can I face my problem if my problem is my face.” In this utterance, the speaker disparages himself on his appearance, stating that his weakness is his face. However, if the speaker actually looks fine or even gorgeous, the maxim of quality is flouted. The illocutionary force of this utterance could either be demonstrating humility or arrogance depending on what the speaker really looks like.

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4.4. Miscommunication of speech acts

I use the term “miscommunication of speech acts” to refer to the wit generated by the misunderstandings or flexible applications of speech acts. There are two major types of this kind of wit. The first type occurs when the hearer does not understand the illocutionary force, which is the real and implied meaning, of the speaker’s utterance, and replies based on the locutionary force of the utterance, for the hearer wrongly assume that the locutionary force and the illocutionary force have identical meanings. The second type happens when the hearer does understand the illocutionary force of the speaker’s utterance, but still deliberately replies according to the locutionary force. The unexpectedness of the reply is considered as the source of humor for both types. The essence of Long and Graesser’s (1988) “clever replies to serious statements” and “replies to rhetorical questions” is the second type of miscommunication of speech acts, where the hearer uses the speaker’s locutionary force to avoid answering questions directly, and creates humorous effects.

An example of miscommunication of speech acts is a conversation from the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness. The interviewer says: “What would you say if a guy walked in for an interview without the shirt on, and I hired him?” The interviewee replies: “He must have had on some really nice pants.”. The illocutionary force of the interviewer’s utterance is that “You do not respect this interview. Try to explain the reason why you come to an interview without the shirt on, or I will not hire you.”. The interviewee definitely understands the illocutionary force, which is the real question of the interviewer, but he chooses to answer the question based on its locutionary force in an ingenious way to avoid answering the real question directly and, meanwhile, tries to create a humorous effect, so the maxim of relation is also flouted by him.

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4.5. Quote & roleplay

Quote involves transforming adages, a line from television shows or movies, or some phrases from the shared knowledge between a speaker and the hearer into a speaker’s

utterance. Shared knowledge is the emphasis of this type of humor, for whether the wit works or not largely depends on whether the recipient could recognize and understand the quotes used by the speaker. Solidarity would increase between the speaker and the members who successfully understand and laugh at the quote. (Hay, 1995; Long & Graesser, 1988).

Roleplay refers to a speaker stepping in another’s shoes, adopting of another’s voice, personality or attitudes for amusement or teasing others. However, the concrete manifestation of roleplay largely depends on the performance of the speaker, ranging from just an attitude or a voice to a very meticulous mimicry. 3

An example of quote can be the slogan: “Make American gay again!” put forward by the organizations that support homosexuality. This slogan is used to mock the campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again!”, that Donald Trump used in his 2016 presidential campaign in the United States of American. It could be argued that it flouts the maxim of manner, for the true meaning and purpose of this slogan are not clear enough, unless the hearer is familiar with Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again!”. A certain degree of shared knowledge is necessary to understand this slogan. If the hearer is equipped with the relevant background knowledge, he will know the illocutionary force of the slogan is to support the homosexual community in America and pour ridicule on Donald Trump.

3 Here I put quote and roleplay as a single category, since the essence of both them is borrowing or mimicking something from others to achieve a humorous effect based on shared knowledge.

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4.6. Wordplay

Wordplay is a form of wit where the language itself, e.g. the meaning, sound, and ambiguity of words or phrases, becomes the instruments to create humorous effects. The most typical type of wordplay is a pun. A pun refers to the intention to make a sentence has a double meaning by using polysemy, homographs, homophones and figurative languages in a certain language environment. Puns can induce a rhetorical and humorous effect of language, but puns are usually specific to a particular cultural and language background due to their linguistic characteristics and limitations. Hay (1995) also points out that if there is an

ambiguity in a speaker’s speech, like a mispronunciation, which is identified by the hearer, it is possible that a humorous effect is also induced without the intentions to make a pun.

An example of wordplay is the advertising slogan by Lloyd Bank, “Money doesn't grow on trees. But it blossoms at our branches.”. The maxim of manner is flouted in this slogan. Branch has two meanings, a division or subdivision of the stem or axis of a tree, or a local operating division of a bank. A person can only understand the real implied meaning of this statement if he knows it is an advertisement from a bank; otherwise it is ambiguous. The illocutionary force of the statement is to tell their customers that their banks can make more money for them in order to attract more customers and investors.

4.7. “Mo lei tau”

I would like to suggest an additional category of wit to the existing categories

proposed by other researchers. “Mo lei tau” is a term stemmed from Cantonese, whose literal meaning is “nonsensical”. Originally it was a kind of Hong Kong subculture, but it gradually evolved into Hong Kong popular culture and developed vigorously through Hong Kong film and television works. In this thesis, the concept is used to include all those incongruous, meaningless conversations without logical relevance. In pragmatics, the fundamental

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illogical conversations in which the maxim of relevance is violated without any implicature conveyed to the hearer. The sole aim of such conversations is to amuse the audience.

The following conversation is an example of “Mo lei tau”

A girl: “You men are always like that, saying boring things on purpose to attract girls, as if he thought he was handsome. “

Zhou: “Miss, you are wrong. I never think I am handsome, but I am handsome.” A girl: “Don't be so disgusting. I'm gonna throw up.”

Zhou: "Why do you deny my handsome against your conscience?" A girl: “Get out.”

This is a conversation retrieved from the comedy movie, Fight back to School. In this conversation, the maxim of relevance is violated by Zhou. Zhou keeps saying something in his own channel without trying to convey an implicature to the girl. Zhou seems to be flirting with the girl, but what he says does not achieve the effect of flirting. For example, the

illocutionary force of the girl’s utterance: “Don't be so disgusting. I'm gonna throw up.” is that “I don’t like you. Please leave me alone.” However, Zhou’s reply: "Why do you deny my handsome against your conscience?" does not restore his image, and even continues to deepen his negative impression. There is no implicature created and conveyed by this utterance. Zhou’s intention is not even clear. As a result, this is a completely illogical conversation. Since this is a conversation taken from a comedy movie, Zhou’s words are probably used to entertain the audience.

5. Styles of Humor

In addition to the types of humor, and their corresponding taxonomies, Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir (2003)propose a different notion of humor from another academic perspective. A more general classification of humor is proposed by focusing on the relationship between humor and psychological well-being. They identified four styles of humor with different features and functions.

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Table 2

Four Humor Styles Proposed by Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir (2003) Humor

styles Features Functions

Potentially positive to psychological well-being Affiliative humor

A speaker spontaneously says some funny things, and actively engages in some witty banter to amuse others.

To enhance one’s

relationships with others, or mitigate the tensions within the conversational group.

Self-enhancing

humor

A person can be amused by the things that are not going well in life, and can maintain a positive, humorous attitude towards the stress in life.

Using humor to regulate one’s emotions Potentially negative to psychological well-being Aggressive humor

Using humor in an aggressive way at the expense and detriment of one’s relationship with others

To criticize or manipulate other people

Self-defeating

humor

Trying to amuse others by saying or doing funny things at the expense of the self, including disparaging oneself and laughing with others when being disparaged.

Using humor to flatter other people

6. A Pragmatic Perspective on Wit

The concepts of humor, joke and wit are clear after sorting out the definitions and types of humor, which answers the first research question: what is humor. A taxonomy of wit is also proposed to demonstrate the various manifestations of wit. In this section, wit, as the primary research object of this thesis, will be analyzed from a pragmatic perspective. A pragmatic model of wit focusing on the linguistic construction and structure of a witty utterance4 is proposed to answer the second research question: how is humor (wit) constructed and why can it induce a humorous effect. This model includes the necessary

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conditions and features of wit, which are extracted from other studies, to suggest how wit is constructed in terms of pragmatics.

Firstly, there are two conditions, regarding the locutionary and illocutionary force of an utterance, need to be met for an utterance to be witty.

Condition Ⅰ: A witty utterance is a speech act that flouts at least one of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle. Attardo (1993) asserts that any humor violates at least one of the maxims of CP, but I would like to further argue that wit flouts, not violates, at least one of the maxims of CP. It is worth pointing out that Attardo does not really distinguish violating and flouting the maxims, for he considers flouting the maxims is a superficial and temporary way of violating the maxims. However, in both positions humor is created by being not compliant to the maxims. Implicature is created in an utterance by flouting the Grice’s CP, and humor is always created by using the speakers’ implied meaning as a medium. In most cases, the implicature is part of the illocutionary force of an utterance, and by understanding the implied meaning of a speaker, the hearer understands the humor of the utterance. When a speaker violates the maxims, he has a clear intention to make the hearer only understand the literal meaning of the utterance without getting the implicature, which amounts to lying (Meibauer, 2011). However, from the examples introduced before, for wit to be successful, it is necessary that the hearer also understands the implied meaning of the utterance, or

otherwise, for instance, teasing would be purely disparaging, and irony would be solely lying. Understanding the implicature is essential for the hearer to understand that the speaker is trying to be humorous instead of only expressing the literal meaning.

Condition Ⅱ: The second essential condition for an utterance to be witty is that its locutionary force must be incongruous, based on the current context or unexpected according to the politeness theory. Incongruity means that an utterance does not make sense unless the hearer shares the same background knowledge with the speaker so as to understand the

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implied meaning, the illocutionary force, of the utterance. Incongruity is thus a hint for the hearer to infer that there is an implied meaning which is different from its literal meaning in the speaker’s utterance. Any incompliance to the maxims creates such incongruity. Like in the example of irony on page 22, when a speaker is flouting the maxim of quality, based on the shared knowledge between the interlocutors, the hearer does not expect the speaker would say, “He is a fine friend.”, where instead the hearer would expect the speaker directly blames the one who betrayed him. The real intention and meaning of the utterance could only be understood if the hearer is equipped with the relevant background knowledge, so that the incongruity could be solved. Therefore, if a speaker flouts the maxims of CP, a superficial incongruity will always be created in the locutionary force of an utterance.

Incongruity may also be related to face. In terms of politeness, the interlocutors in a conversation would assume that all the participants are aware of each other’s face, so a speaker should use as few FTAs as possible in a conversation, especially bald-on-record FTAs, to save the hearer’s face and show his politeness. However, teasing, for example, whose locutionary force is a bald-on-record FTA, may be considered very impolite, if the hearer does not understand the real implied meaning, the illocutionary force, of the utterance, and believe that the speaker is trying to disparage him, hurting his positive face. Such words that threaten the hearer’s face are inconsistent with his assumption that all the participants in a conversation are polite and will try to save each other’s face. Such inconsistency and unexpectedness create incongruity, but this incongruity can be easily resolved if the hearer understands that the utterance is a witty utterance of teasing which is used to create humorous effects rather than disparaging the hearer. Therefore, the locutionary force of a witty

utterance could be detrimental to the hearer’s face, and creates incongruity.

When both of the above conditions are met, the speaker successfully creates a witty utterance with incongruity. However, for this utterance to successfully create humorous

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effects, the hearer has to resolve the incongruity to understand the implied meaning, the illocutionary force, of the utterance. Therefore, the third condition of a witty utterance is related with its perlocutionary force.

Condition Ⅲ: The hearer has to successfully resolve the incongruity and understands the implied meaning, the illocutionary force, of the witty utterance. Two compatible and complementary models are used in this thesis to explain the process of understanding the witty utterance. Although these two models are initially designed to explain the mechanism of jokes, since the writers do not really differentiate wit and jokes when they propose them, and as is argued before, wit could be seen as a broader joke whose premise is naturally given by the context to both the interlocutors, so the models also have the capacity to explain the mechanism of wit with some modifications.

The first model is the incongruity-resolution model, a two-stage information-processing model proposed by Suls (1972) to analyze the cognitive information-processing of jokes.He suggests that in the first stage, the hearer finds his expectations about the texts or words based on the previous words are disconfirmed by the ending of a joke, which means the punchline of a joke creates him an incongruity. In the second stage, the hearer uses a sort of “problem-solving” technique, which aims at finding a “cognitive rule” that could reconcile the

punchline with the preceding words. A “cognitive rule” is defined by Suls (1972) as “a logical proposition, a definition, or a fact of experience.” (p.82). The incongruity will be resolved as long as such a cognitive rule is found, and the hearer would judge the joke as humorous. In brief, as is shown in Figure 1, the two stages in Suls’s model are very clear: the first stage is about how the hearer feels the incongruity and surprise, and the second stage is about how the hearer gets the humor by resolving the incongruity.

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Figure 1

Incongruity-Resolution Model Proposed by Suls (1972)

Note reprinted from “A two-stage model for the appreciation of jokes and cartoons: An information-processing analysis”, by Suls, J. M., 1972, The psychology of humor:

Theoretical perspectives and empirical issues, 1, p. 85

Figure 2

Modified first stage of the incongruity-resolution model to make wit compatible

Suls’s model was designed to describe the appreciation process for jokes, but also suitable for wit with some modifications in the first stage of this model.

The original model for jokes is analyzed first. As is shown in Figure 1, in the first step of the first stage of this model, the hearer will establish a narrative schema predicting the following utterance based on the information given by the speaker. To tell a joke, a speaker

PERCEIVE THE CONTEXT STORE SETTING FORMULATE NARRATIVE SCHEMA PREDICT TEXT TEXT PREDICTION MATCH? NO SURPRISE & NO CONGRUITY SURPRISE & INCONCRUITY Stage 1 Stage 2 NO YES

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has to create relevance solely by himself, e.g. “Have you heard the joke about the Chinese student and his picky supervisor?”, so all the relevant information is given by the speaker. The narrative schema regards the storyline of the joke told by the speaker, for jokes are basically amusing stories. The prediction is then compared with the utterance made in reality, and, for jokes, it is necessary to see whether it is the end, the punchline, of a joke. If it is the punchline and the predictions match the actual utterance, no surprise or incongruity would be felt by the hearer, for the predicted ending is consistent with the actual ending, so the whole process terminates at no humorous effect is made in this joke. However, if it is not the punchline of the joke, but the predictions match the actual utterance, the narrative schema will be retained and elaborated with the utterance newly made, since the story in the joke goes the same way as the hearer predicts, and the hearer will continue to predict the utterance accordingly. If the predictions do not match the actual utterance, and it is not the punchline, then the schema would be modified to be more consistent with the utterance, for the plot in story of the joke has changed to another direction different from the hearer predicts. If the predictions do not match, and this utterance constitutes the punchline of the joke, an incongruity and a surprise are successfully created by this utterance.

However, the difference between jokes and wit that matters in this model is that a joke is a speech event consisting of many speech events with a clear ending, but wit is a single utterance that is more impromptu, without any foreshadowing. As for a joke, every time the hearer hears an utterance made by the speaker, there will be a judgment that whether this utterance is the end of the joke, the punchline, or it is just an utterance helped to establish the premise for the joke as foreshadowing. In contrast, for wit, there will be no such

judgement, since it is a single utterance, a speech act, which is always the punchline of a joke whose premise is the context of the conversation. Considering this model’s compatibility to

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wit, due to this difference, there must be some modifications in the stage 1 of Suls’s model to make it compatible with wit.

As is shown in Figure 2, the modified first stage model for wit is proposed accordingly.

In the first step, instead of receiving all the information from the speaker, the hearer extracts the information from the context and the preceding conversation to build a schema predicting the following utterance. The hearer will formulate a schema by referring to the context of the conversation (place, time, participants, the previous conversation, etc.). The schema here is related with the situation of the communication rather than the storyline of a joke, e.g. the schema for checking-in in a hotel and interaction with receptionists. Then, the predictions about the nature of the interaction and the appropriate interactional moves are made from the schema instead of the possible plots of the story in a joke.

These predictions are compared with the utterance made in reality. Since a witty utterance is a single speech act, no judgement of whether it is the punchline will be made at this point. If the utterance meets the prediction, the interaction can only be processed as serious. If the utterance does not meet the prediction, an incongruity and a surprise are incurred accordingly.

At the end of the stage 1, an incongruity is created because the utterance made in reality does not match the hearer’s prediction. In stage 2, in order to understand the joke, the hearer will try to engage some sort of problem-solving technique to find out a cognitive rule that explains how the punchline of the joke could be compatible with the previous texts. It is argued that, as for wit, the same problem-solving technique can be also applied to find a cognitive rule that is capable to explain how a witty utterance could be compatible with the nature of the interaction and the context. Instead of proposing a detailed method of how a cognitive rule is found, Suls (1972) proposes a very theoretical idea of how human’s brain

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works to find this cognitive rule. He argues that human’s brain will try different cognitive rules one by one, and each of these cognitive rules will create a new expression that is different from the original utterance. The expression created by a certain cognitive rule will be examined to check whether it could fit into the schema established by the hearer perfectly. If the answer is yes, the hearer will get the humor embedded in either a joke or wit, for the problem solving is successful and the hearer understands how the witty utterance follows the context and the nature of the interaction, or how the punchline follows the previous texts in a joke. If the answer is no, the process will be iterated until a cognitive rule that creates an expression that could fit into the schema perfectly is found. Briefly, Suls proposes a

theoretical model of how the hearer understands humor by resolving the incongruity, which is an impractical idea that lacks the capacity that can be applied to real cases.

Even though Suls’s incongruity-resolution model provides details about how the hearer feels the incongruity intentionally made by the speaker, the second stage of Suls’s incongruity-resolution model about how the hearer resolves the incongruity and feels amused is not satisfying, so another model with a detailed and more practical explanation of how incongruity can be resolved is adopted to complement Suls’s model. This model is Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humor (SSTH) proposed by Raskin (1979). Raskin’s model is the first model explaining humor from a pure linguistic perspective.

The core concept of Raskin’s theory is called Script Opposition. Raskin’s idea is that in humor two distinct scripts holding opposite ideas (e.g. good vs. bad, sex related vs. no sex related) are compatible, if the overlapping area in the two scripts can be found. First, a text consistent with the idea of one script will be presented. Then a script-switch trigger, usually the punchline of a joke, is used to present an idea that is inconsistent with the script that has already been evoked. The hearer will thus look for an alternative script which 1) is consistent with the idea conveyed through the punchline, and 2) has an overlapping area with the script

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that has already been evoked. If such a script is found, the hearer will be able to understand the joke made by the speaker, and feel amused. Raskin states that the key in understanding humor lies in the overlapping area of the two scripts.

Raskin’s idea of scripts refers to “a large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it … a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker” (p. 330) The scripts do not only include the direct lexical definitions of a word, but also the semantic information and extralinguistic knowledge inferred or presupposed from this word or phrase. Basically, the scripts Raskin proposes include a speaker's complete encyclopedic knowledge related to a certain linguistic unit, so native speakers may have similar but not totally identical scripts for the words they common use because of the similar cultural backgrounds and knowledge, whereas for second language learners, the scripts for a same word may be quite different due to differences in their knowledge of L2. Figure 3 shows the possible scripts evoked by the word “doctor” suggested by Raskin (1973, p.331) It may not include all the possible scripts that will be evoked by the word “doctor”, but it nonetheless shows how scripts should be like, and what kind of knowledge or information may be contained in the scripts of doctor.

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Figure 3

The Possible Script of Doctor Proposed by Raskin (1979)

Note. reprinted from “Semantic mechanisms of humor” by Raskin, V, 1979, Annual Meeting

of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 5, p.331

Raskin does not differentiate humor, joke and wit. These terms are even used

interchangeably in his article, and as the examples he gives actually belong to the category of wit proposed in this thesis, by default his model has the capacity to explain both jokes and wit. Considering Raskin’s theory in terms of wit, the context and the previous conversation present a script to the hearer about the nature of the interaction and the appropriate

communication moves, and then a witty utterance, as a script-switch trigger, is made by the speaker, to present an idea that is inconsistent with the script perceived by the hearer, which basically means this utterance does not follow the context of the communication. In order to understand this witty utterance, the hearer will look for an alternative script that overlaps with the one that has been evoked and is consistent with the idea conveyed in the witty utterance. If there is such a script that could be retrieved from the hearer’s knowledge base, in Raskin’s

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word, World Knowledge, he successfully understands the witty utterance made by the speaker, but if there is no such script found, the wit fails.

The two theories discussed are compatible. As what Long and Graesser (1988) point out, Raskin's search procedure for the alternative compatible script is similar to Suls's stage 2, the resolution phase. Incongruity will be created by a script-switch trigger in stage 1, and Raskin’s idea of Script Opposition is a more detailed and practical theory of how incongruity is resolved, which is a perfect complement to Suls' s inadequate and unsatisfying explanation of the problem-solve technique in stage 2. However, even though the overlapping of area of the two scripts may not be the only way of solving the incongruity, it presents a very

reasonable linguistic explanation of how to connect the context and the witty utterance. In conclusion, incongruity in an utterance and solving the incongruity from one’s knowledge base are the common necessary conditions for successful humor in both theories.

If all the three conditions proposed above are met, a witty utterance is successfully made by the speaker and appreciated by the hearer. Nevertheless, in the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis, in addition to the three conditions regarding making and

understanding a witty utterance, there are two crucial features of wit. One focuses on the function of wit as a speech act, while the other concerns the cancellability of the implicature of wit.

Feature Ⅰ: The functions of a witty utterance

There are two arguments regarding the functions of wit I would like to suggest. First, I would like to argue that, a witty utterance, in which a close relationship is a common foundation between a speaker and the hearer, e.g. couples and brothers, even though on the surface it may be deemed as aggressive humor, the illocutionary force can still play a role in facilitating the solidarity between interlocutors. The second argument is that, in all cases of

Cultural Differences in Appreciating Humor: A Pragmatic Exploration

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