Cultural Differences in Appreciating Humor: a Pragmatic Exploration MA

Cultural Differences in Appreciating Humor: A Pragmatic Exploration

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

August 2019 2

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.

Key words: humor, pragmatics, failed humor, pragmatic failure

Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 4 2. Theoretical Framework ...... 5 2.1. The Cooperative Principle ...... 6 2.2. Speech Act Theory ...... 8 2.3. Politeness Theory ...... 9 2.4. Intercultural Pragmatic Failure ...... 12 3. What is Humor? ...... 13 3.1. Definitions of humor ...... 14 3.2. Types of humor: jokes and wit ...... 17 4. The Taxonomy of Wit ...... 20 4.1. Irony ...... 21 4.2. Teasing & insulting ...... 22 4.3. Self-deprecation ...... 23 4.4. Miscommunication of speech acts ...... 24 4.5. Quote & roleplay ...... 25 4.6. Wordplay...... 26 5. Styles of Humor ...... 27 6. A Pragmatic Perspective on Wit ...... 28 7. Cultural Differences, Pragmatic Failure and Failed Humor ...... 42 7.1. Cultural differences in appreciating humor ...... 43 7.2. Failed humor and pragmatic failure ...... 49 7.2.1. Pragmalinguistic failure ...... 50 7.2.2. Sociolinguistic failure ...... 52 8. An Example of a Witty Utterance and Possible Failed Humor ...... 55 9. Conclusion...... 60

Cultural Differences in Appreciating Humor: A Pragmatic Exploration

1. Introduction

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.

2 EFL stands for English as a Foreign Language.

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

6 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

7 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

8 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

9 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

10 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.”

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.

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

13 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.

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 encompasses amusement and comic reactions, psychological cognitive appraisals comprising

15 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.

Table 1 includes all the definitions aforementioned.

Table 1

Definitions of Humor and their Defining Factors Definitions of humor Defining factors “Humor establishes incongruous Illocutionary force and perlocutionary relationships (meaning) and presents them to force: Speakers’ intentions to induce a us with a suddenness (timing) that leads us humorous effect and the hearers’ to laugh.” (Berger, 1976, p. 113) interpretation as humor.

“Jokes are any structured communication, Illocutionary force: The speaker’s with a witty or funny intent, which the intentions to induce a humorous effect is speakers seemed to know in advance of what is all needed. telling it.” (Winick, 1976, p.124) (This definition clearly covers only verbal humor.) “Humor encompasses amusement and comic Perlocutionary force: Comic reactions, reactions, psychological cognitive appraisals mirthful emotions, expressions of comprising perceptions of playful laughter, etc. are all related with the incongruity, mirthful emotions, and vocal- effects on hearers. behavioral expressions of laughter” (Yue, Jiang, Lu, & Hiranandani, 2016, p. 1).

“Humor is anything done or said, purposely (For verbal humor) Perlocutionary force: or inadvertently, that is found to be comical This is the broadest definition, where or amusing” (Long & Graesser, 1988, p. 37). 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.)

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

17 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

18 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,

19 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

20 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

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

22 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

23 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.

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.

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.

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 assumption is that all conversations are logical. However, in comedy movies, there are many

27 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.

Table 2

Four Humor Styles Proposed by Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir (2003) Humor styles Features Functions A speaker spontaneously says To enhance one’s some funny things, and relationships with others, Affiliative actively engages in some or mitigate the tensions humor Potentially witty banter to amuse others. within the conversational positive to group. psychological A person can be amused by Using humor to regulate well-being Self- the things that are not going one’s emotions enhancing well in life, and can maintain humor a positive, humorous attitude towards the stress in life. Using humor in an aggressive To criticize or manipulate Aggressive way at the expense and other people humor detriment of one’s Potentially relationship with others negative to Trying to amuse others by Using humor to flatter psychological saying or doing funny things other people Self- well-being at the expense of the self, defeating including disparaging oneself humor and laughing with others when being disparaged.

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

4 In this thesis, a witty utterance refers to the utterance that is qualified as wit.

29 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

30 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

31 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 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.

Figure 1

Incongruity-Resolution Model Proposed by Suls (1972)

Stage 1 Stage 2

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

NO PERCEIVE FORMULATE TEXT STORE PREDICT SURPRISE & THE NARRATIVE PREDICTION SETTING TEXT INCONCRUITY CONTEXT SCHEMA MATCH?

YES

NO SURPRISE & NO CONGRUITY

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

33 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

34 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

35 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

36 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.

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

38 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

39 wit, a witty utterance is a face-saving act, which means that considering the hearer’s face, using wit is always a better way to express the speaker’s opinion than expressing it bluntly.

The first argument is that, wit, as a speech act, made between two interlocutors with a low social distance, and a high degree of intimacy, e.g. friends, brothers or couples, can still functions as a vehicle to build solidarity even if the witty utterance involves some aggressive elements. As argued before, a witty utterance may be on the surface unexpected according to politeness theory, which basically means such utterances would amount to FTA in some cases. For example, the locutionary force of teasing is even a bald-on-record FTA. However, such witty utterances are constructed on the basis of mocking impoliteness within the frame of positive politeness strategies. In close relationships, the potential aggressive part of humor, usually associated with impoliteness, is essentially polite. Dynel (2008) argues that rapport is built via teasing by claiming the common ground between the speaker and the hearer. Both the incongruity-resolution model and Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humor (SSTH) emphasize that a certain solution needs to be found to resolve the incongruity so as to understand the humor, and such solution is offered by the overlapping area of two scripts.

Between people with a high degree of intimacy, there is some shared knowledge and code for communication, or at least some common attitudes or values shared by this group of people.

Alluding to these unique and common features would create an alternative script to solve the incongruity. Therefore, even if there are some aggressive and “impolite” elements, their real function is to generate the feelings of familiarity, confirming one’s in-group identity. The real intention, the illocutionary force, of the speaker in such situation is to foster solidarity, which could be seen as flouting the maxim of quality and thus creating a humorous implicature

(Dynel, 2008). Therefore, teasing, for example, between people who have a long social distance, and a low degree of intimacy, e.g. acquaintances or colleagues, is usually considered as aggressive humor, but between people with rapport-based relationships, e.g.

40 brothers or couples, is essentially affiliative humor. Briefly, the witty utterances made between rapport-based relationships, e.g. couples or friends, even if the locutionary force may seem to be impolite and aggressive, the witty utterances can still function to save the hearer’s positive face and foster solidary.

The second argument is that a witty utterance, in all cases, is always a face-saving act.

In reality, there are many cases of wit in which the real intention of the speaker is to belittle others, e.g. insulting. Martin, et al. (2003) use the term: “aggressive humor” to refer to this style of humor which is detrimental to the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, where the speaker tries to use humor to criticize the hearer. Dynel (2008) argues that such style of humor is “aggressive verbalization which may be veiled as, or mistaken for, teasing”

(p. 249). Generally speaking, aggressive humor occurs when the real intention of the speaker is to criticize, disparage the hearer, or exert power over the hearer in dyadic communication.

In the communication of three or more people, the speaker may also use aggressive humor to amuse the third party by disparaging another ratified participant in the communication. Since the speaker includes an aggressive part into his witty utterance, the utterance is considered as a genuine threat to the face of the targeted person. Zajdman (1995)’s argument is that in such case, humor is actually a face-threating act, but I argue that even in such cases when the real intention of the speaker is to belittle someone, the wit he uses is still a face-saving act. The key of my argument lies in the definition of facing-saving acts. The definition of facing- saving acts is a relative concept for FTA. Yule (1996) defines facing-saving act as “if some actions might be interpreted as a threat to another’s face, the speakers can say something to lessen the threat.” (p.61). A facing-saving act is not defined based on the actual result that whether this utterance presents a genuine threat to the hearer’s face, but instead is defined based on a hypothetical situation that a certain FTA is inevitable, so a counteract is made to mitigate the threat. Such counteracts are facing-saving acts. For example, asking for help

41 from the hearer is an FTA to the hearer’s negative face. If a person wants to ask someone for help, the FTA of requesting for help is unavoidable, so the speaker may use some terms like

“Sorry to interrupt you. May I…” to mitigate the threat conveyed by the FTA. Such terms are face-saving acts. In brief, face-saving acts are always embedded in FTAs to mitigate the threats FTAs bring to the hearer. In wit, a speaker who has the intention to belittle others could do it bluntly, and belittling others is definitely an FTA, but he uses wit as a face-saving act to mitigate the threat on the target person’s face, for wit is more indirect, which needs the hearer’s interpretation. For instance, the utterance: “Is your mathematics taught by a physical education teacher?”, as a criticism to the hearer’s mathematical ability, is more indirect than a blunt statement like “You are so stupid in doing mathematics.”, so the former witty utterance functions as a face-saving act. In conclusion, wit, in all cases, is a face-saving act.

Feature Ⅱ: The cancelability of a witty utterance

An important feature of implicature is that it can be cancelled, which is also one of the features of wit. The superficial incongruity may not always be solved by the hearer, which may cause confusion in the hearer’s mind and potentially damage the face of the speaker for inexplicable words. Moreover, on the surface, a witty utterance may be considered as very impolite, so it may damage the face of the hearer, if the hearer fails to appreciate the wit, e.g. incorrectly understanding the illocutionary force of the utterance as presenting hostility rather than fostering solidarity. However, for instance, in teasing, due to this feature, if the speaker finds that his witty utterance is not properly appreciated by the hearer, in order to not really damage the hearer’s face by his disparaging words, the speaker could simply say “I was joking” to take back the words, and cancel the implicature. Another example would be those speakers with the intention to insult others. If the utterance a speaker makes has an insulting illocutionary force without an insulting locutionary force, which means that no intention of insulting can be perceived from the literal meaning of the words, he can always retreat back

42 to their locutionary force by saying something like “My words are only literal.” to avoid further disputes and save his own face. Therefore, using wit instead of a bald-on-record FTA could also save the speaker’s own positive face, which underpins Feature Ⅰ that wit is a face-saving act.

In conclusion, the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis consists of the following conditions and features:

• Condition Ⅰ: The witty utterance is a speech act, which flouts at least one of the

maxims of the Cooperative Principle.

• Condition Ⅱ: The witty utterance must be on the surface incongruous based on the

context or unexpected according to politeness theory.

• Condition Ⅲ: The hearer has to process the incongruity and the unexpectedness of a

witty utterance in his mind, and only if the congruity can be resolved by his

knowledge, a successful witty utterance is made.

• Feature Ⅰ: 1) The witty utterances made between rapport-based relationships, e.g.

couples or friends, even if the locutionary force may seem to be impolite and

aggressive, the illocutionary force can still play a role in facilitating the solidarity

between interlocutors. 2) In all cases, wit is a face-saving act.

• Feature Ⅱ: Since wit is conveyed by the implicature of an utterance, so wit can also

be cancelled to save both the speaker’s and the hearer’s face.

7. Cultural Differences, Pragmatic Failure and Failed Humor

In this thesis, I will zoom in on theoretical explanations for cultural differences5 in appreciating humor between native Chinese and English speakers and discuss the reasons for failed humor between Chinese people and people from Western cultures from two interrelated aspects: culture and pragmatics.

I will only focus on the failed humor occurring between native Chinese speakers who have a good command of English as L2 and native English speakers. A specific situation of failed humor will be analyzed: a witty utterance in English is told to both native Chinese and

English speakers, but native Chinese speakers fail to appreciate the humor embedded in the utterance, whereas the native English speakers successfully understand the wit. However, this is not an absolute situation, for some native Chinese speakers may still manage to appreciate the humor embedded in the witty utterance due to different knowledge bases. The reasons for such failed humor will be discussed in this section.

7.1. Cultural differences in appreciating humor

First, cultural factors in appreciating humor will be discussed. Fay (1996) states that culture involves complicated sets of shared ideologies, beliefs, and value principles which enables a group of people comprehend their life styles and give them directions on how to live a life. Chen & Starosta (1998) deem culture as the foundation of people assigning meanings to their perceptions of the world, which also determines what particular types of messages and events would attract them and how they choose to present themselves to those events. Thus, an individual’s ways and styles of verbal communication reflect and epitomize the beliefs and worldviews of his own culture (Lin, 2008).

5 However, the general cultural differences which will be introduced later may amount to stereotypes in some people eyes. As what is claimed by Scollon and Scollon (1981) “the patterns we are describing hold true in general way and are the patterns on which people have developed ethnic stereotypes” (p.13). Cultural differences do exist due to historical, educational reasons, but they could become over- generalized believes about a particular category of people, called stereotypes, in some extreme views. Cultural differences and stereotypes are like two sides of a coin, developing together, influencing each other.

In such a theoretical context, cultural differences between Chinese and Western cultures will also lead to differences in using and appreciating humor. For instance, Chen and

Martin’s (2007) research found that, regarding the styles of humor (affiliative humor, elf- enhancing humor, aggressive humor, and self-defeating humor), the frequency of Chinese students making a humorous utterance of each particular style of humor is lower than that of

Canadian students. The most important result of their study is that there is a significant difference in the use of aggressive humor between Chinese and Canadian university students, where Chinese people show more tolerance to others, and barely use aggressive humor, while

Canadian university students use aggressive humor more frequently. The results of Chen and

Martin’s study also demonstrate that Chinese people tend to use humor to conceal their issues and consider this behavior as self-enhancing rather than self-defeating, which explains that why Chinese people use more self-enhancing humor than self-defeating humor. Chinese people use more affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor to cope with stress, while

Canadian people use more aggressive humor to tease their friends.

In brief, two cultures have different concepts and understandings of humor. In North

American culture, most jokes and wit are sexual or essentially aggressive, and it is considered that there is a large overlapping area between aggressive humor and affiliative humor. In contrast, in China, more jokes or wit are made based on social interactions, and aggressive humor and affiliative humor are considered as two completely different styles of humor.

Thus, from this perspective, in Chinese people’s ideology, humor is probably more narrowly defined, which may only include affiliative humor and elf-enhancing humor.

In this thesis, it is argued that the reasons for such differences in using and appreciating humor are 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.

Individualism vs. collectivism. Chen, Watkins and Martin (2013) did another study on the cultural differences in using and appreciating humor by adding some variables like individualism, collectivism and facework into consideration. Zheng and Huang (2010) deem

Chinese people’s orientation to collectivism, vs. the individualism embraced by the people from English-speaking countries, is an important source of cultural differences in understanding and appreciating humor. The essential feature of collectivism is that people are bound with each other into a large group, whereas the fundamental characteristic of individualism is that people are independent individuals who are distinct from their group.

Therefore, people who embrace individualism will have a strong sense of independent self, and value their own achievements more than team honors. In contrast, people who embrace collectivism will consider themselves as members of a team, and pay more attention to the progress of the team than the gains and losses of themselves. There is also another crucial dimension usually associated with these two concepts, horizontal vs. vertical, which is defined based on one’s acceptance of inequity. “Horizontal means that in a societal group people would expect there is equity between its members, while those who accept there is inequity between individuals in a societal group would be classified as ‘vertical’.” (Chen,

Watkins & Martin, 2013, p. 59)

According to these definitions, a conceptual framework including four possible cultural dimensions validated by different nations could be established, as well as the theoretically possible humor styles embraced within a certain cultural dimension.

Table 3

Cultural Dimensions and their Preferred Humor Styles based on Chen, Watkins & Martin (2013) Cultural Feature Possible humor styles correlated with the dimension cultural dimension Horizontal People have a strong sense Since horizontal individualism highlights individualism of independent self and one’s uniqueness and equity, it is associated consider others as of equal with self-enhancing humor that promotes status. individual’s personal integrity while tolerating others. Vertical Individuals see them as As vertical individualism emphasizes the individualism different independent self, competition within a social group, where inequity is generally enhancing oneself at the expense of others, expected. a correlation between aggressive humor is expected. Horizontal People see them as members Horizontal collectivism is highly associated collectivism of a cultural group and with a wish towards a harmonious society consider everyone has equal with mutual happiness, so it may lead to the status. use of more affiliative humor which fosters the solidarity of a group. Vertical Individuals are Hence vertical collectivism includes collectivism interdependent, but unequal sacrificing oneself to improve the group members of a social group, cohesiveness, self-defeating humor is where hierarchy is generally expected to be more used in a social group accepted within the group. embracing this cultural dimension.

Although some Chinese people may also embrace individualism, but traditional

Chinese culture has been widely deemed as a culture highly embracing collectivism by social scientists. (Hui & Villareal, 1989; Chen, Watkins & Martin, 2013). On that basis, Chen,

Watkins & Martin (2013) did an empirical study trying to confirm the correlations suggested in the table 3 in the Chinese context. The results confirm all the positive correlations except the correlation between vertical collectivism and self-defeating humor. The results indicate

47 that Chinese people generally embrace horizontal collectivism and regard them as interdependent and equal members of a group, who tend to use affiliative humor and elf- enhancing humor to enhance themselves and the solidarity of the group.

However, Western countries generally embrace individualism. The United States of

America is considered as a model of such culture and ideology (Hoover & Nash, 2016;

Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler & Tipton, 2007). The clash between Chinese and Western cultures in the embracement of collectivism vs. individualism results in a fact that people from Western countries and Chinese people appreciate different styles of humor accordingly, i.e. Chinese people prefer affiliative humor and elf-enhancing humor, while people from

Western countries prefer aggressive humor and self-defeating humor. As Chinese people give more priorities to their collective community, while people from English-speaking countries, i.e. Western cultures, pay more attention to their personal developments, some jokes or wit made by the people from Western cultures that demean some communities, usually aggressive humor, are not preferred by Chinese people. Although the scale of Chen, Watkins and Martin’s (2013) study with only 272 participants is not big enough to state that the results are absolute, the conceptual framework of cultural dimensions provides interesting guidelines for analyzing the cultural differences in using and appreciating humor.

Face. It is precisely because of the clash between Chinese and Western cultures in the embracement of collectivism vs. individualism, two cultures have different levels of attention attached on others’ face and self’s face, i.e. people from Western cultures generally care more about their own face, but Chinese people care more about others’ face. Such cultural differences also result in difference in using and appreciating humor, as Gao (1998) points out, face is an essential variable which significantly influences interpersonal communication.

Chen, Watkins and Martin’s (2013) study also explores how four styles of humor associate with the concept of face. They distinguish saving one’s own face and saving others’

48 face. Their results indicate that affiliative humor is positively corelated with saving others’ face, which demonstrates that people who are more concerned with others’ face tend to use humor as an indirect positive face strategy to improve the relationship. Aggressive humor and self-defeating humor, on the other hand, are found positively correlate with saving self’s face, which means people who care about their own face are more inclined to use humor as a way to protect or improve their own public image by disparaging others. Self-defeating humor functions as a direct way to reduce the threat to the speaker’s own face and minimize the speaker’s perceived weakness or failures known by others to protect his own face from being threatened.

The different levels of attention attached on others’ face and self’s face are also the results of the different embracement of collectivism or individualism by different cultures.

People from the cultures embracing collectivism, e.g. Chinese culture, would sacrifice their own interests, in particular, face, for the collective goodness, so they are more concerned with other’s face, which results in more use of affiliate humor. In contrast, the people from the culture embracing individualism, generally Western cultures, tend to care more about their own personal public image, which results in more use of aggressive humor and self- defeating humor.

The differences in the embracement of individualism vs. collectivism and people’s concern with self’s face vs. others’ face also lead to different attitudes towards humor between the Chinese culture and Western cultures. Yue, Jiang, Lu and Hiranandani (2016)’s study confirms that Western cultures see humor more positively than Chinese culture, and

Canadians see humor as a more important part of life than Chinese people, for Canadians think everyone should have a sense of humor, but Chinese people only expect those comedians have it. Yue’s (2011) study indicates that even though Chinese people consider humor as important, but themselves do not want to be humorous. In her survey, Chinese

49 students rank “caring for face”, and “conservative” as the top two most important characteristics for Chinese people, but they also consider these two factors are among the least important characteristics for humor, so they do not believe that orthodox Chinese people should be humorous. Therefore, this study indicates that even though Chinese people think that humor is important, they believe a sense of humor is incompatible with Chinese traditional personal traits.

Conclusively, humor is considered more or less in a negative way by Chinese people.

The main reason is probably that Chinese people do not appreciate aggressive humor in particular, but aggressive humor accounts for a large proportion in all humorous utterances and is used most frequently by people from Western cultures (Chen, Watkins & Martin,

2013). Because of Chinese culture embracing collectivism, Chinese people value collective goodness more than personal development and deem aggressive humor a serious threat to others’ face. On the contrary, Western cultures embracing individualism, so people from

Western cultures have a stronger sense of independent self, and are more concerned with their own face, which leads to more use of aggressive humor to improve their own public image at the expense of others’.

7.2. Failed humor and pragmatic failure

Apart from the differences in using and appreciating humor due to different embracement of collectivism or individualism and different levels of care for others’ face and self’s face by Chinese and Western cultures, native Chinese speakers sometimes cannot understand an English witty utterance for the lack of relevant pragmatic knowledge. In this case, it is not that native Chinese speakers do not appreciate the humor, but the humor does fail since native Chinese speakers cannot get the illocutionary force of the witty utterance.

The main reason for failed humor is argued as intercultural pragmatic failure in this thesis, i.e. native Chinese speakers lack relevant English pragmatic knowledge to understand

English witty utterances. Even though there are various sources for pragmatic failure, cultural differences and negative pragmatic transfer might be the primary reasons for intercultural pragmatic failure. Thomas (1985) first proposes the idea of pragmalinguistic failure and sociolinguistic failure, and Lin (2008) summaries the pragmatic failures often conducted by

Chinese students.

7.2.1. Pragmalinguistic failure

Lin argues that the pragmalinguistic failure often conducted by Chinese students consist of inappropriate transfer of expressions and inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies. Inappropriate transfer of expressions is based on the translation from Chinese to

English, or vice versa, where on lexical level, students may take it for granted that the

English translation of the Chinese words have equivalent cultural connotations and then directly use them into intercultural communication contexts. For instance, “You break my heart.” has a direct corresponding translation in Chinese which has same literal meaning, but its connotation in English is often associated with love affairs, whereas in Chinese it basically means “making somebody sad or disappointed” (Lin, 2008) without the necessary connections with love affairs. As a result, before the student learn the context in which an

English expression is often used, they may transfer their Chinese pragmatic knowledge directly into English context, and cause confusion, embarrassment or misunderstanding.

The idea of inappropriate transfer of expressions combined with Raskin’s theory of

Script Opposition can successfully explain the failed humor between native Chinese and

English speakers. For example, a speaker tries make a witty utterance of wordplay by the word, “bread”. “Bread” has the literal meaning as a bakery food, but it often carries an implied meaning of “survival” or “livelihood” in Western cultures, as in “You need earn your bread”. The opposite scripts here would be “food vs. livelihood”. A Chinese student may not be able to get the humor due to his lack of the knowledge that the word “bread” is associated

51 with the script of “livelihood”, so he could only associate “bread” with its literal meaning, the script of “food”. Without getting the implied meaning of a word, wordplay would certainly fail. The reasons for different scripts existing in people’s mindsets are largely due to cultural differences, and in the example given above, the different scripts derive from different food cultures. In western countries bread is the most common staple food to satisfy one’s hunger, while in China, rice and noodles are the most common food to get energy, so in Chinese people’s mind, the script of “livelihood” is more likely to be associated with the word “rice” rather than “bread”.

On the basis of inappropriate transfer of expressions, inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies is derived. Inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies means that based on the Chinese translation of a certain speech act in English, Chinese students may take it for granted that the illocutionary force of this speech act is the same as it in Chinese. The most common example is “How are you?”. In the corresponding Chinese translation, both the locutionary and illocutionary force of “How are you?” is a question asking the hearer about his recent physical or living conditions. However, in English, its illocutionary force is just a greeting to say hello. Many Chinese beginners of English would deem “How are you?” is a question, and answer to it accordingly, for the lack the relevant English pragmatic knowledge of the illocutionary force of this speech act.

Inappropriate transfer of speech act strategies can also cause failed humor between

Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. Those witty utterances including English slangs are typical examples, e.g. “Tell me about it.”. In the conversation, A: “My boss is driving me crazy.”, B: “Tell me about it.”, the locutionary force of “Tell me about it.” is a request for more information about the hearer’s boss detailed behavior that drives the hearer crazy. However, in English, its illocutionary force is that “I feel the same way or I have had the same experience.” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2019), which expresses the speaker’s feelings

52 instead of a request. In this way, “Tell me about it” could be considered as an irony, for the speaker’s intended meaning is different from the literal meaning of the utterance. If a Chinese

EFL learner does not know the illocutionary force of “Tell me about it.” in English, and takes it for granted that it has the same illocutionary force as its Chinese corresponding translation, which is its literal meaning as a request for more information, he will fail to understand the real intended meaning of the speaker, as well as the humor embedded in the utterance.

The primary reason for pragmalinguistic failure is probably negative pragmatic transfer. Kasper (1992, p.207) defines pragmatic transfer as “the influence exerted by learners’ pragmatic knowledge of languages and cultures other than L2 on their comprehension, production, and learning of L2 pragmatic information.” Accordingly, negative pragmatic transfer refers to one unitizing the rules of the pragmatic knowledge from his L1 directly into his L2, but since the rules are different in two languages, they lead to intercultural communication failure, as well as failed humor.

7.2.2. Sociolinguistic failure

In addition to pragmalinguistic failure, there are also sociolinguistic failure conducted by Chinese students. Sociolinguistic failure, according to Lin is based on cultural and value judgements and social factors. As cultures vary from nation to nation, and even differ within a country among various ethnic groups, there are various ways of verbal communication representing different understandings and interpretations of speakers’ ideology. Hence, cultural divergence leads to different language use, as well as pragmatic rules, which eventually causes negative pragmatic transfer, and pragmatic failure.

Chinese students may use their own cultural system to interpret the situation and being unaware of others’ cultural and social traditions. For instance, Lin (2008) states that

Chinese students tend to use rejections to a compliment trying be polite without realizing that self-belittling as a Chinese politeness strategy to show one’s modesty may in other cultures

53 indicates that the compliment is questionable, and causes embarrassment. Yu (2004) conducts empirical research studying the difference in the responses to compliments between English native speakers and Chinese EFL learners. The result is that EFL learners in Taiwan tend to use more rejections than acceptances to a compliment, which is consistent with the study results achieved by Lin (2008). The results pinpoint a transfer of L1 sociocultural strategies.

Nevertheless, in western cultures, where English is the native language for speakers, the response behavior to a compliment is more likely to be acceptance and gratitude.

Lin (2008) also argues that sometimes Chinese politeness strategies of showing concern may also sometimes be considered as too enthusiastic in some Western cultures and deemed as intrusion to others’ privacy. Moreover, Chinese students sometimes do not know what speech act strategies to use in certain situations or between certain social relationships, like between professors and students, for they do not know how to interpret this social distance in another culture.

Yu (1999) compares the ways of making requests by the Chinese students using both

Chinese and English and those by native English speakers. She finds that the requests made by Chinese students in both languages are more indirect with the phrases like “I hope” or “I want”. Although the statements of requests with these phrases are more face-threating than the ones used by native English speakers, the results indicate that Chinese people tend to use a totally different pattern of expressions when making requests by adopting more direct speech act strategies. Due to such a negative pragmatic transfer derived from different cultural conventions, confusion, embarrassment or even breakdown of a communication are highly likely to occur.

Sociolinguistic failure is closely related to section 7.1. “Cultural differences in appreciating humor”, for the clash between Chinese and Western cultures in the embracement of collectivism vs. individualism and different levels of attention attached on others’ face and

54 self’s face are the main sources of sociolinguistic failure between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. Such Sociolinguistic failure can also cause failed humor.

For example, a teacher asked a question in a class, “Martin. Are you O.K. with this explanation?”, and Martin answered by “I am O.K. with the explanation, but I am not O.K. with your pronunciation of my name!”. In this example, Martin teases the teacher based on the teacher’s unstandardized pronunciation of Martin’s name. In Western cultures, the social distance between teachers and students is very close, so it is common for teachers and students make jokes or tease each other. In this example, Martin and the teacher are probably good friends, so the teacher knows Martin’s utterance is a witty utterance of teasing rather than a remark showing disrespect to the teacher. The function of Martin’s utterance is foster the solidarity between him and the teacher instead of showing his aggressiveness and disrespects. However, in Chinese culture, there is a great social distance between teachers and students, so it is impossible for students and teachers become good friends where students can tease their teachers. A teacher has an absolutely superior position and more power. Moreover, since Chinese students are more concerned with others’ face, so they will never tease their teachers in public, for they think such kind of behavior shows their disrespects and pose a serious threat to their teachers’ face. Under these circumstances,

Chinese students probably do not think Martin’s utterance is humorous, and instead will consider Martin’s utterance is aggressive and disrespectful. This is an example of failed humor caused by sociolinguistic failure, and it also exemplifies that Chinese people do not appreciate aggressive humor in particular.

In conclusion, as what Lin (2008) indicates, the pattern of using English expressions by Chinese EFL learners is significantly influenced by their sociocultural background. Their behaviors and thoughts in intercultural communication are subconsciously governed by their native pragmatic rules, ideologies and values. Hong (1991) also indicates that Chinese EFL

55 learners who have great English grammatical competence are not necessarily equipped with the equivalent pragmatic competence, which would refrain their effective communication with native English speakers. Since insufficient pragmatic knowledge can result in misunderstandings in a conversation, many researchers suggest that the lack of pragmatic knowledge is the primary cause of pragmatic failure for Chinese learners (He & Yan, 1986;

Lin, 2008). Zheng & Huang (2010) also suggest that in intercultural communication, speakers are always directed by some cultural norms. Based on these norms, people choose what should be said and the way of saying them in a conversation and evaluate the productions of the other parties accordingly. As EFL learners are influenced significantly by the cultural norms derived from their own nation, language and ideology, they will probably subconsciously apply the rules generated from these norms into the target language while communicating with native English speakers who hold other rules and norms, misunderstandings or even breakdowns of communication would probably be incurred. It is for the same reasons, humor do fail between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers.

8. An Example of a Witty Utterance and Possible Failed Humor

In order to illustrate how intercultural pragmatic failure may lead to failed humor based on the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis, an example of wit given by

Raskin (1979) is adopted and elaborated.

Figure 3

An Example of wit and its Opposition Scripts Given by Raskin (1979)

Note. reprinted from “Semantic mechanisms of humor” by Raskin, V, 1979, Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 5, p.333

Figure 3 is an example of wit given by Raskin. Firstly, the pragmatic model of wit is applied to this example.

The conversation in this example is simply a question made by a tourist and an answer made by native. The witty utterance in question is the answer made by the native,

“Best we can do is babies. Different in the city, I suppose.”. First, the premise of the witty utterance, the question made by the tourist and the context, should be analyzed. The locutionary force of the tourist’s utterance is a question, which basically means “Is there any great person with a good fame born here?”, to request more information. However, the illocutionary force of this question is a contempt to the village the native lives in, which means “I do not like here. It is so poor and backward.”. Therefore, the context of this conversation could be that a tourist from a city is visiting a village which is, in his opinion, poor and backward, so he asks a question in a condescending voice which shows his disdain to the village. However, in this question, the word, “big” is ambiguous, for it has two possible meanings. It can mean that a person's size is big, or it can mean that a person is great, who

57 has a great fame. As a result, the ambiguity of the word, “big”, gives the hearer, the native, an opportunity to fight back against the disdain of the tourist.

In the first part of the answer, “Best we can do is babies.”, the native willfully misinterprets the locutionary force of the question and chooses to answer according to the meaning of “big” as in a person's size is big, so this witty utterance amounts to wordplay. The native flouts the maxim of relevance, since the native is not really answering the question the tourist askes.

The second part of the answer, “Different in the city, I suppose” follows the first part, which ridicules the tourist in its illocutionary force. The maxims of quality and relevance are flouted. The native is ridiculing the tourist instead of directly answer the question that whether there are any great people born here. The maxim of quality is also flouted, for the village in terms of the size of newborns, is apparently not different from the city, for objectively speaking, only babies can be born instead of “big men”. The illocutionary force of this utterance is to ridicule the tourist as an arrogant city man, counter his contempt for the village.

Therefore, Condition Ⅰ of the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis: the witty utterance is a speech act, which flouts at least one of the maxims of the Cooperative

Principle, is met. As the answer is irrelevant to the question the tourist askes, the witty utterance is incongruous on the surface, so Condition Ⅱ is also met.

After hearing the native’s utterance, the tourist would feel there is an incongruity in the native’s utterance, since his question is not answered directly, so he wants to find a way to resolve this incongruity. Raskin’s SSTH is applied to explain how the incongruity is resolved, which claims that the key in resolving the incongruity lies in the overlapping area of the opposition scripts. The opposition scripts in the first part of the answer are “size” vs.

“fame”, and the overlapping area of two scripts is simply the word, “big”, for “big” has two

58 meanings regarding either a person’s size or a person’s fame. If the tourist knows that “big” has these two possible meanings, he can successfully resolve the incongruity and understands the humor embedded in the witty utterance. The opposition scripts in the second part of the witty utterance are “city” vs. “village”, which is an implied opposition from the context.

When the tourist hears the utterance, “Different in the city, I suppose.”, the script of “city” is evoked. The tourist definitely knows that he is from the city, and now he is visiting the village, so the overlapping area of the two scripts is the exactly the present situation of the tourist, a man from a city visiting a village. As a result, the tourist knows that the native is using this utterance to evoke the identity of the tourist, an arrogant man from a city, to pour ridicule on him, which is the illocutionary force of the speech act. Thus, Condition Ⅲ will be met if the tourist successfully resolves the incongruity using his World Knowledge, and understands the illocutionary force of the witty utterance.

Feature Ⅰ: wit is a face-saving act, is presented in this example, for the native uses a witty utterance to pour ridicule on the tourist to counter his disdain to the village, instead of directly and bluntly accusing the tourist is an arrogant and disrespectful person. This witty utterance also has Feature Ⅱ, for it can be cancelled. The native can always retreat back to his locutionary force by saying something like “My words are only literal.” to avoid further disputes with the tourist who may realize that the native is ridiculing him.

Next, the reasons for the possible failed humor in this example between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers are explored.

The first possible failed humor occurs in the first utterance, “Best we can do is babies.”. The key in understanding the humor embedding in the utterance lies in the opposition scripts: “big in size” vs. “big in fame”. A native English speaker is able to find the connections between the dual meanings of “big” immediately. However, this opposition may not be properly understood by a Chinese EFL learner. The reason may derive from the

59 inappropriate transfer of expressions (Lin, 2008). For a Chinese EFL learner, as the Chinese translation of “big” only contains the meaning that refers to a person’s size is big, he may not be able to get the implied meaning of “big” in English that refers to a person’ fame is big. If the hearer cannot connect the word, “big”, to both scripts, there is no overlapping area between the two scripts in his mind, so he cannot resolve the incongruity in order to understand the humor in this witty utterance. As a result, humor fails.

Thomas (1983) argues that pragmalinguistic failure is a language issue. It is possible for students to learn the context in which a certain English expression is used, as well as the implied meaning of a certain word. Thus, Chinese EFL learners can easily understand this witty utterance if they are taught that, in English, the word, “big” is capable of referring to both a person’s size is big and a person’s fame is big. However, sociolinguistic failure could not be easily learnt, for they are caused by different cultural traditions which are deeply engrained in people’s mind, and this humor can be failed due to sociolinguistic failure.

The failed humor in this example may also be caused by sociolinguistic failure. In

Chinese traditional ideology, tourists usually have a higher level of social status than the natives, so it is not common for the native to ridicule the tourist the first time they meet, but instead, the native should be more inclined to show his hospitality to the tourist to make the tourist feel welcomed, even if the tourist is a bit condescending or arrogant. The social distance between the tourist and the native is also very large in Chinese culture, so negative face strategies are often adopted by the native, where the language tends to be very formal to show his respect. In such a cultural context, a Chinese tourist may not be able to understand the second witty utterance, “Different in the city. I suppose.” is actually ridiculing, for ridiculing, as an FTA in this example, is detrimental to the tourist’s negative face, which is not common under such social distance and hierarchy in social status in traditional Chinese ideology. A Chinese EFL learner would be accustomed to think that flattery rather than

60 hostility is more likely to be offered by the native during the first exchange in such social relations. As a result, he will misinterpret the utterance, and fail to get the humor embedded in it.

In conclusion, the witty utterance in the example given by Raskin (1979) perfectly fits into the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis, whose validity is also examined though the illustration of the witty utterance. This example is also used to demonstrate the possible failed humor between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers, which shows that intercultural pragmatic failure could be the primary cause of such failed humor.

9. Conclusion

There are three main contributions, corresponding to three research questions, of this thesis to academia. First, a modified taxonomy of wit is proposed after a synthesis of the definitions, terminologies, types and styles of humor, which answers the first research question, “What is humor?” Second, a pragmatic model of wit is proposed based on the

Cooperative Principle, speech act theory, and politeness theory, in which Suls’s (1972) incongruity-resolution model and Raskin (1979)’ s Script-Based Semantic Theory of Humor

(SSTH) are adopted to explain how humor is cognitively processed and understood by the hearer. The pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis focuses on the conditions and features of a witty utterance to answer the second research question, “How is humor constructed and why can it induce a humorous effect?”. Last but not least, cultural differences in appreciating humor is explored, while intercultural pragmatic failure caused by cultural differences and negative L1 pragmatic transfer is considered as the primary cause of failed humor between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. The third research question, “What are the reasons for failed humor between Chinese people and people from

Western cultures?” is answered accordingly.

The significance of the study also consists of three parts. Firstly, the modified taxonomy of wit, which is compiled based on Hay’s (1995) and Long & Graesser’s (1988) taxonomies of humor, is partially established according to pragmatics. Some categories of the modified taxonomy of wit are classified based on different perspectives of pragmatics, for in the process of classification, similar categories that can be explained through the same perspective of pragmatics are merged. A new category that has never been proposed before,

“Mo lei tau”, is also added in to this taxonomy. Secondly, in the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis, the conditions and features of a successful witty utterance are proposed to suggest the linguistic construction of wit from the perspective of pragmatics.

Using the knowledge of pragmatics to explain the linguistic construction of wit is innovative in academia. Lastly, it is the first time that intercultural pragmatic failure is connected with the failed humor between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers, where intercultural pragmatic failure is considered as the primary cause of failed humor between different cultures.

However, pragmatic failure may not be the only reason for failed humor. The interpretation of humor depends on many subtle factors, like the social distance and shared background knowledge between the interlocutors, the context of the communication, cultural differences, etc. Therefore, a detailed analysis of an occurrence of humor should be conducted on the basis of a case study, for a person’s inference of intention of the speaker, interpretation of the humorous utterance and the understanding of contextual factors are nuanced, where minor differences may lead to totally different results due to an individual’s different mindset. This thesis suggests that in the future research on failed humor, intercultural pragmatic failure should be considered as an important variable influencing a person’s interpretation of humor.

Future research should be carried out mainly from two perspectives. First, more case studies should be done to examine the inclusiveness of the modified taxonomy of wit and the validity of the pragmatic model of wit proposed in this thesis. In this way, more details can be added to the theoretical study of this thesis. Second, other possible alternative theories that explain how the hearer processes and understands humor should be examined to investigate the robustness of the Condition Ⅲ suggested in the pragmatic model of wit. Since Suls’s

(1972) incongruity-resolution model and Raskin (1979)’ s Script-Based Semantic Theory of

Humor (SSTH) are not the only possible explanations of how humor is possessed and understood by the hearer, other alternative theories can be great complements to the theoretical model proposed in this thesis.

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