Lin Liu

In the modern society with increasingly fierce competition, humor is regarded as a lubricant of interpersonal relations and an effective tool to enhance interpersonal relations. Humor belongs to the category of communication, and relevance theory is a theory that guides communication and cognition. Veep is an American comedy series produced by HBO, featuring vivid verbal humor and strong comic colors presented by non-verbal media such as characters' movements, facial expressions, and movie plots. However, this comedy has not yet attracted the attention and research of scholars. Therefore, based on the relevance theory framework, this study explores the verbal/non-verbal humor generation mechanism in the fifth season of Veep, further proves the explanatory power of relevance theory, and expands the scope of research on humor, in order to explore humor more deeply and systematically.

relevance theory; humor generation mechanism; Veep; comedy

[1] Biegajlo,M.From which position should I get this joke?!A relevance-driven joke interpretation[J].International Studies in Humor,2014(1):2-14. [2] Diaz-Perez,F.J.A relevance-theoretic account of translating jokes with sexual innuendos in modern family into Spanish[J].Pragmatics,2021(3):331-356. [3] Jiang,Z.T.The internal formation mechanism of verbal humor level[J].Journal of Literature and Art Studies,2020(2):114-125. [4] Kang,X.Y.,&Gao W.C.The cognitive mechanism of humor―based on conceptual blending theory and relevance theory[J].Sino-US English Teaching,2019(7):293-299. [5] Sperber,D.,&Wilson,D.Relevance:Communication and cognition[M].Cambridge:Harvard University Press,1986. [6] Yus,F.Humor and the search for relevance[J].Journal of Pragmatics,2003(9):1295-1331. [7] Yus,F.Humor and relevance.Philadelphia:John Benjamins Publishing Company,2016. [8] Yus,F.Relevance-theoretic treatments of humor.In S.Attardo(Ed.).The Routledge handbook of language and humor.New York:Routledge,2017:189-203. [9] Yus,F.Incongruity-resolution humorous strategies in image macro memes[J].Internet Pragmatics(special issue of humour on the internet),2021(1):131-149. [10] Yus,F.&C.Maiz-Arevalo.Humorous Effects from Covid-19 Memes.The Role of Multimodal Combinations[C]∥ The 17th International Pragmatics Conference.Winterthur,2021:1-32. [11] Zuo,B.Y.Why does humor fail or occur unexpectedly?—An account of humor within an extended relevance theory[J].Journal of Pragmatics,2020(160):1-13. [12] Liu Naisi.Humour in the perspective of correlation theory[J].Journal of Foreign Languages College of the People's Liberation Army,2005(1):16-19+23. [13] Tu,Jing.The correlation theory of humour[J].Journal of Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages,2003(5):92-94. [14] Wang Y.Humorous speech from the perspective of association theory[J].Foreign Language Teaching,2001(1):|23-27. [15] War Haiying.A study on the mechanism of humour generation in films under the framework of association theory-taking the film Agent Bean as an example[J].Foreign Language Research 2023(03):35-41.

点击下载PDF