关联理论视角下的《哈利·波特》中的幽默乖讹与消解.pdf

中南民族大学 硕士学位论文 关联理论视角下的哈利波特中的幽默乖讹与消解 姓名：刘洋 申请学位级别：硕士 专业：外国语言学及应用语言学 指导教师：许菊 2011-05 humor incongruity and resolution: a case study of harry potter from the perspective of relevance theory iv 摘 要 哈利.波特是英国女作家罗琳女士所作的一系列共七本魔幻小说，虚构 的角色但其语言包含了丰富的幽默表达。幽默研究属于复杂的认知语用现象，其 历史可以追溯至古希腊。柏拉图、亚里士多德、康德、佛洛依德、奥图多等世界 著名学者都曾对这一现象进行研究。这些学者从社会学，心理分析和认知的角度 做了许多研究并发展出许多颇具影响力的理论分支，如：优越论、乖讹论、宽慰 论等。迄今，关于哈利.波特国内和国外的学者做了许多研究，然而他们极 少涉猎小说中的幽默言语特别是从认知和语用的角度。为了弥补这一不足，本文 旨在由乖讹消解理论和关联理论所构成的框架下对哈利.波特中的幽默言语 进行阐释。 根据乖讹消解理论， 乖讹是幽默产生的先决条件。 理解幽默涉及三个步骤即： “设置-乖讹-消解” ，被称为 sir 模型。但对一些学者而言乖讹和消解两个过程 是同时发生且相互融合的。本文以哈利.波特中的幽默会话片段为例，从认 知乖讹，语义乖讹，逻辑乖讹和心理乖讹的角度详细阐释幽默的形成机制。小说 中幽默的消解过程是框架转移和概念整合的过程。在幽默分析过程中，阐释者使 输入言语形成一个框架，但是言语本身和阐释者心理期待相反因而会形成认知、 心理、语义和逻辑的乖讹，这时阐释者就把旧的框架转换成新的，因此使之前形 成的乖讹得以消解。 另外幽默的消解过程也是一个潜意识的过程涉及整合不同心 理空间中形成的概念。 根据关联理论的观点， 哈利.波特中的幽默对话也是一个明示-推理的过 程。说话者明示他的信息意图和交际意图，听话者通过在不同的认知环境中整合 编码的语言信息和语境假设推理出说话者幽默言语建构的交际意图。 小说作者为 了达到幽默制笑的交际目的，给听话者提供了一系列的言语明示以建构认知，心 理，语义和逻辑的乖讹，而读者通过消解这些乖讹来达到语境效果和幽默效果。 小说中的对话者追求的是最佳关联而并非最大关联。 结论指出，幽默制笑的机制是值得广泛和深入研究的问题，本文的研究希望 可以帮助读者更深入的理解哈利.波特小说中的幽默，拓展这一系列小说的 研究领域。 关键词：幽默；乖讹；消解；关联理论； 哈利 波特 humor incongruity and resolution: a case study of harry potter from the perspective of relevance theory ii abstract harry potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the british author j. k. rowling, which contains a plenty of humorous language expressions and fictional characters. humor is a complicated cognitive and pragmatic phenomenon and its history can be traced back to ancient greek. many world-famous scholars such as plato, aristotle, kant, freud, attardo have extended great interest in such a phenomenon. previous researches on humor have been conducted mainly from sociological, psychoanalytic and cognitive perspectives, which have yielded a variety of influential research products such as the classic humor theories of superiority theory, incongruity theory and relief/release theory. so far, domestic and foreign scholars have done a lot of reseaches on harry potter. however, they have seldom touched upon its humorous language, especially from cognitive and pragmatic perspectives. to fill such a gap, this present thesis is aimed to interpret the humorous language in harry potter series within the theoretical framework constituted by incongruity-resolution theory and relevance theory. according to the incongruity-resolution theory, humor is perceived at the moment of realizing the existence of incongruity. the understanding of humorous messages involves a three-step process, that is, setup-incongruity-resolution, which is called sir model. but to some scholars, the incongruity and resolution steps happen simultaneously and are integrated together. in the humorous snatches of conversations chosen from harry potter series, cognitive incongruity, semantic incongruity, logical incongruity and psychological incongruity are revealed in detail in the interpretation of the machanisms for humor formation. the resolution of humor incongruity in harry potter is a process of frame-shifting and conceptual integration. in the process of humor interpretation, the humor perceivers first try to construct a frame-based representation of the inputted sentence meaning, which, however, results in a cognitive, psychological, semantic or logical incongruity with what they have expected or understood, and then they shift from the old frame to a new one in order 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 iii to resolve the incongruity. besides, resolution of humor inconguity is also a subconscious process which involves the integration or blending of some concepts originating from different mental spaces. from the perspective of relevance theory, the humorous conversations in harry potter also belong to a kind of ostensive-inferential communication, which involves the speakers ostension of his informative and communicative intentions and the hearers inference of the speakers communicative intention of humor construction through the combination of the encoded linguistic message and the contextual assumptions drawn from their cognitive environments. the writer of harry potter series makes her communicative intention of constructing humor and eliciting laughter manifest to the readers through producing a variety of ostensive linguistic stimuli to establish a cognitive, psychological, semantic or logical incongruity while the readers get the contextual effect or humorous effect of the conversations in harry potter through the relief of the cognitive, psychological, semantic or logical incongruity. the humor communicator of harry potter is oriented towards optimal relevance rather than maximal relevance. this thesis is concluded by pointing out that the working mechanism for humor production and interpretation is a problem worthy of more extensive and penetrating researches and extending the hope that the present research could make some contribution to the readers better understanding of the humor feature in harry potter and to the extension of the research fields of harry potter series. key words: humor; incongruity; resolution; relevance theory; harry potter 中南民族大学中南民族大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所 取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任 何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡 献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的 法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意 学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文 被查阅和借阅。本人授权中南民族大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内 容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存 和汇编本学位论文。 本学位论文属于 1、保密，在_年解密后适用本授权书。 2、不保密。 （请在以上相应方框内打“”） 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 harry potter: a popular novel series harry potter, as the most famous series of fantasy magic novels in current time, has brought a worldwide reputation to its writer joanna. k. rowling. when the first volume of harry potter was published, its publisher bloomsbury was still worried about the target readers, young boys possible reluctance to buy this book written by a female author, so he even suggested that joanna. k. rowling use the initials of her first and middle names (i.e. j. k. rowling) to hide her female gender. the idea of this novel was conceived by the author on a train trip from manchester to london in 1990. seven volumes of the series have been published up to now, not including the two school books, quidditch through the ages and fantastic beasts and where to find them.these two are supposed to be two of the school books in the seven original books. the harry potter series introduce us into a world of witches and wizards, the main character being a young wizard named harry potter. each volume of the novel chronicles approximately one year of harrys life at the hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry, where he learns to use magic and make potions. besides, from there harry also learns how to overcome all kinds of obstacles magical, social and emotional ones as he struggles through his adolescence. later on, the harry potter series have aroused worldwide attention, and they have been highly recommended by scholars to children and even adults for reading. so far, they have won a variety of awards and have been sold more than 500 million copies and become the bases for a popular series of films, in which rowling served as a producer in two of the seven instalments. now the books have fans of all ages, since their author j. k. rowling did not have any particular target age group in mind when humor incongruity and resolution：a case study of harry potter from the perspective of relevance theory 2 she started to write the harry potter series, although her publishers initially targeted them at young readers aged 8 to 15. the books have more recently been released in two editions, one with the original “childrens“ cover artwork, and one with artwork more consciously aimed at adult readers. additionally, with the development of the harry potter series, rowlings writing has become more and more sophisticated and the content of the books has become more mature as the leading character, harry potter, grows older. for instance, the interpersonal relationships are discussed as an issue for the teenage characters in later volumes. accordingly, the reading age for the books, both in terms of content and style, is rising as the series goes on. 1.2 the writing styles of harry potter rowlings harry potter series books are full of fantasy, mystery and legendary colors. it is a collection of assorted mysterious things: werewolves, centaurs, veela, trolls, horrible dementors, house-elves, mandragora, the monster book of monsterall these things are a surprise to lots of readers and harry potter-manias, making the story amazing and full of riskiness. reviewing the story over again and keeping your eyes onto the legends in the early times of this kingdom, people might find that rowling has drawn on the long fantasy tradition of british literature and adopted themes from the legends spread in the early times. the heroic fantasy archetype can be treated as the theme of this novel series and it is easily found that harrys tale fits the heroic fantasy archetype well. the great author rowling has showed the reader a whole story of a young wizard who struggles to progress through the classic and mythic stages of the heros journey to save the magical world. these books are written in third person limited omniscient mode, with the young wizard harry potter as the central character. generally, the books are written from harrys point of view, with short exceptions in volume 1, volume 4 and volume 6. the telling of the story from harry potters perspective can makes the readers feel 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 3 so close to the character. the author has great ability of drawing a magical world with an elaborate and seamless plot on a very wide canvas, with convincing internal logic which makes the reader feel it is so real. the central clash between justice and evil is drawn in plenty of black-and-white terms, although there is much moral subtlety in many scenes in the books. nevertheless, as the series develop, some of the characters have faced a choice between doing what is right and what is easy, especially for the central character harry potter. potter is not born to go fighting with the evil lord until one of them dies, but he himself chooses to do so, hence moral “shades of grey” have also been presented. the character dolores umbridge (an employee of ministry of magic) especially belongs to this kind who stays between good and bad and so does severus snape. as harrys godfather once told him that not only there are good people and bad people in this world, but also there is someone who is not good or bad as well. rowling makes the fantasy world so real, because this world is made of all these vivid characters. rowling also sets some room for the ideas of racism, genocide, and prejudice; these are the symbols of voldemort and his death eaters, but also occasionally shown in the relationship between the magical and the non-magical (or “muggle“) population, and magical creatures in the wizard-centered world who bear some prejudicial burdens, such as werewolves, house elves, giants and centaurs. they are all branded as half-breeds by the proud and bigoted wizards in the wizarding world. in a word, harry potters original story is a heroic genre known by the readers over the world: the chosen hero was sent away when he was only a little baby for safekeeping and raised by common folk until he is of an age where he can be told his identity and life mission. even the readers who are unfamiliar with traditional cultural myths of britain will still recognize the theme. it is the basis for star wars , superman, star track and other famous stories. humor incongruity and resolution：a case study of harry potter from the perspective of relevance theory 4 1.3 research purpose lots of researches around this fantasy novel have been done by different scholars in different fields and from different points of view. among them, some are focused on its commercial values, its position in the literature history, its social influences, its techniques of expression and so on, but one important point of this work should not be neglected, that is the humor in this novel series. almost all the literary masterpieces, including the serious ones, the comic ones or the fairy tales, cannot avoid employing the technique of humor. sense of humor is the main trend in our social life, so we can easily find that in rowlings novels, humor elements almost pervade everywhere. however, very few previous researches have been done in this aspecthumor incongruity and resolution in the novel series. hence this essay chooses humor as the breakthrough point to the study of harry potter and tries to reveal how the author place humors in every plot and how the humor should be understood by the readers. this research will be done from the perspective of relevance theory which provides a convenient way for interpreting literary discourses. 1.4 thesis framework this thesis is composed of six chapters: chapter one is a general introduction of the novel series harry potter, which serves as the research corpus of this thesis, as well as the purpose of the research. chapter two is the literature review of the major classical humor theories and the previous researches on harry potter both abroad and in china chapter three is the theoretical bases of the present research, including the humor incongruity and resolution theory and the relevance theory. chapter four constitutes the main part of the thesis, which elucidates the humor incongruity and resolution in harry potter. first, the humor incongruity in harry potter is interpreted from cognitive, semantic, logical and psychological perspectives. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 5 then, the humor resolution in harry potter is approached in terms of frame-shifting and conceptual integration. chapter five is another main part of this thesis. it elaborates the humor in harry potter from the perspective of relevance theory. chapter six is conclusion of the whole thesis, which summarizes the main points of the thesis and raises some suggestions for the future reseaches. humor incongruity and resolution：a case study of harry potter from the perspective of relevance theory 6 chapter 2 literature review 2.1 three classical humor theories humor is a complicated notion and its use has a long history. the ability to produce and appreciate humorous language is universally admired by people, which distinguishes us humans from other kinds of creatures. sense of humor also plays an important role in the formation of personality and the realization of social functions. in previous academic researches, some scholars have found some satisfactory ways of interpreting the processes of humor production and understanding from different perspectives such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, literature, sociology, and even medical science, etc. the creation of humor theories can date back to the ancient greeks and they have been explored by many scholars and developed throughout the history of human civilization. from greek plato and aristotle, through kant and freud, to the more resent raskin and fauconnier, they all have studied humor theories. among those theories of humor in the world, the following three types are the most influential and often cited and studied in recent years: superiority theory, release theory and incongruity theory. attardo (1997) identifies the three humor theories with the labels of social, psychoanalytical and cognitive theories of humor respectively. the following is a brief introduction of these three classical humor theories. 2.1.1 superiority theory most of the humor theories are based on the classical greek and roman rhetorical theory, the theories of hostility, malice, derision, aggression, disparagement, and superiority are all included in it. as is pointed out by some scholars, bullies have been incorrectly considered as unskillful and unintelligent. rather, these researchers propose that bullies actually possess a “superior theory of mind” that enables them to 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 7 successfully understand, manipulate, and control their unsuspecting targets. the superiority theory of humor can be traced back to plato and aristotle. this theory explains that a person laughs about misfortunes of others, because these misfortunes assert the persons superiority on the background of shortcomings of others. alexander bain(1998) claims that humor involves somethings degration. bain expands hobbes theory in various directions. bain(1998) believes most of the time people are unconscious of their own superiority and there is no need for a certain person to be derived. it can be an idea or a political institution or we can say that anything that are taken as dignity or respect. he maintains humorously that he can even degrade a sunrise. since the above interpretation of superiority theory of humor are out-of-date in the contemporary era, charles gruner(1997) reinterpreted superiority theory of humor as follows: (i)every humorous situation has a winner and a loser. (ii)incongruity is always present in a humorous situation. (iii)humor requires an element of surprise. according to gruners superiority theory of humor, the laughter always looks down upon the laughable factors and judges them as inferior to something in their mind by certain standards. therefore, according to the standards, there might be many varieties of superiority. 2.1.2 incongruity theory according to immanuel kant (1790), a german philosopher, the laughter is an emotion arises from a strained expectation and then this emotion reduced to nothing suddenly. william hazlitt (1819), in his lectures on the comic writers, proposes that laughter originates from the incongruity when one idea contradicts or goes against another. arthur schopenhauer (1844), in his book the world as will and idea, shows his agreement to this