英语幽默言语的认知语用探究——兼论RT与CB的互补性

English Verbal Humour: A Cognitive Pragmatic Inquiry

幽默言语是人类日常话语中经常出现的一种语言交际形式。本文试以RT和CB为视角来探讨英语幽默言语解读过程中的心理机制,提出对幽默言语的成功解读不仅有赖于关联和推理,同时也有赖于概念整合和新显结构。文章同时指出,RT与CB在对幽默言语的解读中具有互补性,两者结合起来对幽默言语的交际具有更强的解释力。为此,本文提出了一个认知语用工作模型。

Verbal humour is a genre of linguistic interactions that often emerges in daily conversations. From the perspectives of the Relevance Theory and the Conceptual Blending Theory, this paper aims to probe into the mental mechanisms involved in the process of English verbal humour interpretation. The paper holds that the successful reading of a verbal humour is decided not merely by relevance and inference, but also by conceptual blending and the emergent structure. It is also maintained that RT and CB supplement each other in relation to the happy understanding of a verbal humour. They have more explanatory power when they are combined. The paper, therefore, proposes a cognitive pragmatic working model.