This paper takes an integrative approach to the communication and comprehension of humor from the perspectives of the humorist’s manipulation and the recipient’s vigilance informed by relevance theory.It is proposed...This paper takes an integrative approach to the communication and comprehension of humor from the perspectives of the humorist’s manipulation and the recipient’s vigilance informed by relevance theory.It is proposed that,in order to communicate humor,the humorist manipulates the recipient’s expectation of relevance in the setup and in the punchline in two different but related ways:misleading and guiding.It is also proposed that,in order to comprehend and appreciate humor,the recipient exercises vigilance against his/her own shallow processing in the setup and exercises vigilance for special cognitive effects in the punchline.On this approach,humorous communication and comprehension is viewed as an interaction between manipulation and epistemic vigilance.Strategies of manipulation and vigilance are described,and some essential issues arising from the relevance-theoretic approach to humor are reconsidered with some implications drawn.This paper contributes to enhancing the explanatory power of relevance theory for the communication and comprehension of humor.展开更多
In the pragmatics literature the relationship between mitigation and pragmatic empathy remains largely an underexplored,or even worse,a controversial issue,giving rise to the formulation of divergent views of empathy ...In the pragmatics literature the relationship between mitigation and pragmatic empathy remains largely an underexplored,or even worse,a controversial issue,giving rise to the formulation of divergent views of empathy in mitigation.While I treat empathy as a working mechanism providing a general explanation of how mitigation works,Caffi(1999;2007;2013)adopts a“paradox”view on it.The purpose of this paper is to track down the sources of divergence by comparing and contrasting our conceptualizations of mitigation.It is found that the biggest difference lies in the treatment of intersubjectivity.However,although I argue in favor of my empathic view,I see it as complementary,rather than contradictory,to Caffi’s view.The relationship between mitigation and politeness is revisited with its implications for teaching pragmatics briefly discussed.展开更多
文摘This paper takes an integrative approach to the communication and comprehension of humor from the perspectives of the humorist’s manipulation and the recipient’s vigilance informed by relevance theory.It is proposed that,in order to communicate humor,the humorist manipulates the recipient’s expectation of relevance in the setup and in the punchline in two different but related ways:misleading and guiding.It is also proposed that,in order to comprehend and appreciate humor,the recipient exercises vigilance against his/her own shallow processing in the setup and exercises vigilance for special cognitive effects in the punchline.On this approach,humorous communication and comprehension is viewed as an interaction between manipulation and epistemic vigilance.Strategies of manipulation and vigilance are described,and some essential issues arising from the relevance-theoretic approach to humor are reconsidered with some implications drawn.This paper contributes to enhancing the explanatory power of relevance theory for the communication and comprehension of humor.
文摘In the pragmatics literature the relationship between mitigation and pragmatic empathy remains largely an underexplored,or even worse,a controversial issue,giving rise to the formulation of divergent views of empathy in mitigation.While I treat empathy as a working mechanism providing a general explanation of how mitigation works,Caffi(1999;2007;2013)adopts a“paradox”view on it.The purpose of this paper is to track down the sources of divergence by comparing and contrasting our conceptualizations of mitigation.It is found that the biggest difference lies in the treatment of intersubjectivity.However,although I argue in favor of my empathic view,I see it as complementary,rather than contradictory,to Caffi’s view.The relationship between mitigation and politeness is revisited with its implications for teaching pragmatics briefly discussed.
