OntheApplicationofHumorinMr.ObamasSpeech

1、on the application of humor in mr. obamas speech contentsabstract in chineseabstract in english 11. introduction22. literature review22.1 relative studies on humor22.2 relative studies on obama's speech43. theoretical framework53.1 conversational implicature63.2 cooperative principle73.3 relevan

2、ce theory84. analyses of obama's speech at white house correspondents' association dinner.94.1 sample analyses of humor referring to conversational implicature94.2 sample analyses of humor by violating cooperative principle maxims104.2.1 violation of quality maxim leading to humor114.2.2 vio

3、lation of quantity maxim leading to humor134.2.3 violation of relation maxim leading to humor144.2.4 violation of manner maxim leading to humor144.3 sample analyses of humor with reference to relevance theory155. conclusions16references.17appendix.19幽默在奥巴马演讲中的运用摘要 幽默是人类区别于其他动物所特有的品质，它存在于会话、演讲、电影、广告、

4、电视剧、文学作品等口头和非口头的形式中。因其对改善人际交流起着重要的作用，至今，已有不少学者从语言学、修辞学等角度分析了会话、广告、影视、文学作品中的幽默。但很少学者运用语用理论去分析演讲中的幽默，因此,为了弥补这部分的空缺，作者将运用语用学理论分析幽默在政治演讲中的运用及其效果。本文将运用会话含义，合作原则和关联理论分析奥巴马2009年5月9日在白宫记者协会晚宴中发表的演讲。众所周知，这篇演讲不同于他以往严肃的演讲，是他上任百日后的幽默发言。分析发现会话理论同样适用于演讲，即使它与会话不同。这个发现不仅连接了语用理论和演讲中的幽默，还有利于人们更好地理解、欣赏和创造幽默。关键词 幽默；演讲；

5、语用学；会话含义； 合作原则； 关联理论 on the application of humor in mr. obamas speechabstract humor is a trait of people distinguishing from other animals. it can be observed in interlocutions, speeches, movies, advertisements, television shows and literary works, both verbal and non-verbal. its importance as a lan

6、guage device to improve interpersonal relationship is so great that many scholars in different areas have studied on it from various angles, such as linguistics, rhetoric and so on. however, seldom scholars have ever studied the humor in speeches from pragmatics viewpoint. so the author will adopt p

7、ragmatic theories to analyze how humor works in political speeches. the object of this study is the speech of american president barack obama at the white house correspondents association dinner on may 9th, 2009. it is well known that, the speech delivered after his one hundred days in office is a h

8、umorous one different from his previous speeches. the analysis will be based on conversational implicature, cooperative principle and relevance theory. analysis reflects that though speeches differ from conversations in form, they can be explained by conversational rules. the finding not only connec

9、ts with pragmatic theories and humor in speeches, but also offers a tool for people to better understand, appreciate and create humor.key words humor; speech; pragmatics; conversational implicature; cooperative principle; relevance theory1. introduction nowadays, humor is prevalent in our daily life

10、，from our daily conversations to political speeches, from literary works to commercial advertisements and television shows. it is not unusual for us to perceive it, since it brings us joy and happiness. when talking about humor, we may all present a smile on our faces. it is common that we regard hu

11、mor as something that can produce laughter. however, when asked what is humor and how does it work, we dont know its definition, let alone its operational mechanism.thus, the thesis aims to let the public know more about the operational mechanism of humor through analyzing the application of humor i

12、n obamas speech from the perspective of pragmatics. meanwhile, it is trying to bridge the gap between theories of pragmatics and humor in political speeches, since few studies on humor in speeches from the perspective of pragmatics exist. in this thesis, the qualitative method will be adopted to ana

13、lyze the application of humor in obamas speech at the white house correspondents association dinner. several sentences selected from this speech will be expounded by using relevant theories of pragmatics. prior to the analysis, literature review and theoretical framework will be respectively introdu

14、ced. in the last chapter, a conclusion will be made to comment on the thesis. 2. literature review2.1 relevant studies on humor the word humor has witnessed great changes in meanings since its birth dating back to two thousand years ago(李军华，1996：3).according to oxford advanced learners english-chine

15、se dictionary (2004:863), it used to mean one of the four liquids that were thought to be in a persons body and to influence health and character. gradually, it develops into these two major meanings: one is the quality of being funny and amusing, and the ability to laugh at things that are amusing;

16、 the other is the state of ones feeling or mind at a particular time. in general, it involves three aspects: fun-maker, funny things, and fun-receiver. it was first introduced into literary works by english famous writer ben johnson in his two comedies every man in his humour and every man out of hi

17、s humour respectively in 1598 and 1599(李军华，1996：4). from then on, humor usage in various realms comes into being, which, at the same time, raises peoples interest in study on how humor works in these different fields.scholars at home and abroad have done some research on it from varied angles.the ea

18、rliest study on humor may date back to aristotles book rhetoric in which he puts forward comical things and its definition as some mistakes or ugliness that wont bring pain and harm in poetics(the authors translation)(aristotle, qtd. in张海云 2003：2). later on, many scholars make studies of it from the

19、 aspect of rhetoric. both gong weicai (1993) and li junhua (1994), respectively in their books the art of humorous language and humorous language, give a complete and deep analysis on the production of humor in terms of figures of speech, such as simile, metaphor, pun, irony, hyperbole, zeugma and s

20、o on. zhang qian (2006), based on their studies, applies those figures to analyze english humor in her paper rhetoric in english humor.apart from rhetoric, psychology has also been used to search for the source of humor. famous philosophers like hobbes, freud, and kant are supposed to first work out

21、 the three popular theories of humor, respectively superiority theory, relief theory and incongruity theory(胡慧勇，2006：111). hu huiyong (2006) thereby compares these theories and reveals their weaknesses in his essay the comparison of popular humor theories.only after 1970s does the study on humor fro

22、m the perspective of linguistics take up an appropriate proportion in a variety of studies on humor(the authors translation)(昌根花，2008：37).li lanping (2002) uses preposition and cooperative principle (cp) to explicate humor in english. huang jinrui (2007) resorts to conversational maxims, conversatio

23、nal implicature, deixis, and speech acts to expound english humor while zhu xiaodong (2007) adopts cp and relevance theory (rt) to amplify the production of humor.with regard to cp, no one would forget to mention its founder, herbert paul grice. he is the first person to put forward this theory in 1

24、967, which lay a solid foundation for linguists, like sperber & wilson, raskin and yamaguchi, to make a general pragmatic explanation of humor. dan sperber and deirdre wilson propose relevance theory to analyze humor while raskin suggests a set of different maxims governing joke-telling on the b

25、asis of grices cooperative principle (cp). they are maxim of quantity(give exactly as much information as is necessary), maxim of quality(say only what is compatible with the world of the joke), maxim of relation(say only what is relevant to the joke) and maxim of manner(tell the joke efficiently)(r

26、askin，qtd. in 刘乃实2002：142). compared with raskins maxims, yamaguchi believes that the mention theory can better explain humor. according to the theory, it is characters in the joke but not joke-tellers that violate the cooperative principle. however, liu naishi (2002) argues it is contradictory sinc

27、e yamaguchi says in his character-did-it hypothesis that the joke-tellers either transfer the responsibility for violating cp to the characters or reduce the intensity of that when telling jokes.therefore, cp and rt are the most important theories to analyze humor. without doubts, the author is goin

28、g to apply them to the analysis of humor in speech.2.2 relevant studies on obamas speechas is known to all, barack hussein obama was elected as the 44th american president in 2008 and took office in january 20th, 2009. as soon as he announced that he was going to take part in presidential campaign,

29、it attracted lots of peoples attention to make a study of his speeches, especially the presidential election victory speech and inauguration speech.in 2009, scholars like jin yuping, zeng yaping, huang zhending, yang guirong and zi ying, tend to explore the phonological features, lexical features an

30、d syntactic features in the victory speech. they point out that obamas articulation is clear; intonation is rhythmic; tone is encouraging. in addition, the words used in the speech are simple and easy to catch. figures of speech are rich, containing parallelism, repetition, contrast and metaphor. on

31、 the other hand, zeng yaping, wang xin and hu youzhen see it from different views. the former one takes norman faircloughs critical discourse analysis (cda) into consideration whereas the latter two consider the speechs interpersonal function based on hallidays systemic-functional grammar. furthermo

32、re, guo kanjun and lin qing (2009) hold that bakhtin's dialogue theory can be applied to analyze the speech. in spite of the differences between them, one common thing they have is more insight can be found in their contributions, for they not only touch upon the linguistic features on the surfa

33、ce but look deep into the unstated meaning conveyed in the speech.with respect to the inauguration speech, guo jing (2009) depends on hallidays systemic-functional grammar to identify the features on the part of ideology. by contrast, feng yanming (2009) makes use of verschuerens dynamics of communi

34、cation to explain how obama adjust his language to international tendency, national conditions, individual opinions and audiences emotions. above all, cooperative principle and politeness principle are mentioned in the dissertation, even if they are not specifically specified nor are they put into a

35、nalyzing the speech. in fact, the real practice of theories of pragmatics is in xiang dajuns thesis titled a cognitive pragmatic analysis of obamas inauguration speech (2009), where he discusses the relation between language of speech and cognitive context, cognitive effect, cognitive effort on the

36、strength of relevance theory.however, such application of theories of pragmatics in obamas speech is not a lot, even fewer in his speech at the white house correspondents association dinner. thus, it gives the author a reason to make a study of it.3. theoretical frameworks usually, traditional speec

37、h is treated as a form of monologue, but as a matter of fact, it possesses the essence of dialogue(the authors translation)(郭侃俊、林青，2009：13). according to the dialogue theory of bakhins, guo kanjun and lin qing has proved that speech is an expression of internal dialogism. so speech is also fit for t

38、he following conversational maxims.3.1 conversational implicaturethe term implicature is coined by grice. according to the figure drawn by jiang wangqi (2000), it can be divided into two categories: conventional and non-conventional. conventional implicature is associated with specific lexical items

39、 or expressions, e.g. but, even, yet, and results in additional meaning (yule, 1996:45). in comparison with conventional implicature, conversational implicature, as a subclass of non-conventional implicature, “is a type of extra meaning, or inference, deriving from the words used in interaction with

40、 the context”(jiang wangqi, 2000:55-56). in order to distinguish conversational implicature from other implicatures, grice suggests several properties of it, four of which as levinson claims are more important, namely, cancellability (or defeasibility) meaning the implicature is cancellable or defea

41、sible by “adding some other premises to the original ones”, non-detachability (or inference based on meaning rather than form) referring it is “attached to the semantic content of what is said but not to the linguistic form used”, calculability stating it can be inferred by interlocutors, non-conven

42、tionality emphasizing it can be calculated only when “one knows its conventional meaning and the context in which it is used”(levinson, 1983:119). conversational implicature plays a crucial role in successful interlocution due to the following reasons brought up by levinson. first, implicature stand

43、s as a paradigmatic example of the nature and power of pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena. a second important contribution made by the notion of implicature is that it provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean (in some general sense) more than what is actually “said” (

44、i.e. more than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expressions uttered). thirdly, the notion of implicature seems likely to effect substantial simplifications in both the structure and the content of semantic descriptions. (levinson, 1983:97-98)3.2 cooperative pri

45、nciple cooperative principle, the theory of conversational implicature, is originally proposed by herbert paul grice in his william james lectures delivered at harvard in 1967 (jiang wangqi, 2000:34-35). grice observes that “our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected

46、remarks, and would not be rational if they did. they are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participants recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose, or at least a mutually accepted direction” (jiang wangqi, 2000: 37). thus, he summarizes cp as: “make

47、 your contribution one that is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (grice, qtd. in levinson 1983:101). to specify cp further, grice introduces four maxims as follows:a. the maxim of quality try to make your co

48、ntribution one that is true, specifically: (i) do not say what you believe to be false (ii) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidenceb. the maxim of quantity (i) make your contributions as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange (ii) do not make your contributio

49、n more informative than is requiredc. the maxim of relation make your contribution relevantd. the maxim of mannerbe perspicuous, and specifically(i) avoid obscurity(ii) avoid ambiguity(iii) be brief(iv) be orderly (grice, qtd. in levinson 1983:101-102) generally, we are apt to be cooperative in exch

50、anging information by sub-consciously bearing the maxims in mind. when we are about to violate them, we may remind our listeners with cautious notes or hedges yule (1996:38) mentioned in his book pragmatics, such as “as far as i know”, “i guess” and the like.nonetheless, on some occasions, people wo

51、uld fail to obey the maxims for some reasons. humor arises just in this case.3.3 relevance theory in the light of cp, linguists raise many doubts. “on l.horns (1988:130-1) account, the gricean framework is at best incomplete and at worst inadequate beyond repair to the task of predicting non-logical

52、 inferences in conversation. it is both internally redundant and in consistent” (jiang wangqi, 2000:86). relevance theory thus comes into being in place of cp. “it was formally proclaimed by dan sperber & deirdre wilson in their book relevance: communication and cognition in 1986” (jiang wangqi,

53、 2000:87). before introducing the principle of relevance, lets see what relevance is. the notion of relevance in their book is “a phenomenon is relevant to an individual if and only if one or more of the assumptions it makes manifest is relevant to him” (sperber&wilson, qtd. in jiang wangqi 2000

54、:101). the phenomenon here refers to stimuli, for instance, utterances, which can be perceptible or inferable (jiang wangqi, 2000:100).to make it clear, they make a comparative definition clarifying the relation between contextual effects, efforts made by an individual and relevance. they believe th

55、at “a phenomenon is relevant to an individual to the extent that the contextual effects achieved when it is optimally processed are large” and “a phenomenon is relevant to an individual to the extent that the effort required to process it optimally is small”(sperber&wilson, qtd. in jiang wangqi

56、2000:101). that is to say, one can achieve the best degree of relevance under the largest contextual effects with least effort. then they define the principle of relevance as: “every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance” (sperber&wilson, qtd. i

57、n jiang wangqi 2000:101). unlike grice, sperber & wilson also involve their research with human cognition. they point out that “human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance”, which is named by them cognitive principle of relevance in comparison with the above one that is later renamed communicative principle of relevance (sperber&wilson, qtd. in jiang wangqi 2000:101). rt concerns both explicit and implicit assumptions, intending people to complete and enrich the literal meaning and work out it