论文总字数：43802字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Research Background 1

1.2 Need of the Study 1

1.3 Research Purposes 2

1.4 Structure of the Study 2

2．Literature Review 3

2.1 Definitions of Key Concepts 3

2.2 Theoretical Framework 4

2.3 Related Empirical Studies 5

2.3.1 Researches on verbal humor 5

2.3.2 Researches on humor generation mechanisms 6

2.3.3 Researches on applications of presupposition 6

2.4 Research Gap 6

3. Research Methodology 7

3.1 Research Questions 7

3.2 Corpus for the Study 7

3.3 Corpus Analysis 7

3.4 Research Methods 8

4. Results and Discussion 9

4.1 Nature of Pragmatic Presupposition and Generation of Verbal Humor 9

4.1.1 Subjectivity 9

4.1.2 Defeasibility 10

4.1.3 Consensus 12

4.1.4 Concealment 13

4.2 Application of Presupposition and Generation of Verbal Humor 14

4.2.1 Transforming pragmatic presupposition 14

4.2.2 Misinterpreting pragmatic presupposition 16

4.2.3 Preserving pragmatic presupposition 17

4.2.4 Pointing out pragmatic presupposition 17

5. Conclusion 19

5.1 Major Findings 19

5.2 Limitations of this Study and Suggestions for Future Research 20

References 21

Acknowledgments

Here I would like to take the opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to those who have contributed to this paper.

Firstly, I want to appreciate my supervisor Professor Sun Li, who is a knowledgeable and easy-going teacher with a high sense of responsibility. It is her generous help and patient guidance that I am able to finish my thesis studying on presupposition.

Secondly, I would like to thank all the other teachers who have profound knowledge and dialectical thinking in Nanjing Tech University.

Last but not least, I eagerly want to thank my parents and considerate friends, who provide me with accompany and selfless assistance. They give me warmth and courage on my way to success.

Abstract

In recent years, presupposition has attracted much attention in the field of linguistics. Although there has been a lot of research on the relationship between presupposition and humor, but the previous researches on presupposition and humor often takes presupposition theory as a part of it when discussing humor mechanism, which are not comprehensive. It is universally acknowledged that sketch is popular among individuals, which is funny and humorous. Reasons of that are worth our consideration and exploration.

The author intends to explain the value of presupposition theory in verbal humor from the aspects of the nature and application of presupposition, making up for the deficiency of presupposition theory. The sketches were involved in this study are Help or not, Real Teacher or Fake Teacher, Yesterday Today Tomorrow, Disturbance and so on. It can be found that the use of presupposition is one of the important factors to produce humor in sketch. Therefore, in the thesis, the author will summarize some strategies to better promote presupposition to create verbal humor. In conclusion, the author's thesis will be carried out from two aspects, one aspect is to analyze the nature of presupposition in combination with sketch corpus, the other is to summarize how to better make full use of presupposition to obtain verbal humor in sketch.

Meaningful use of presupposition in the sketch can make the language more attractive, bringing joy to the audience. The author hopes that this research, which combines presupposition with speech humor, can be helpful for the academic development in this field.

Key words: presupposition; sketch; verbal humor

中文摘要

近年来，预设在语言学领域引起广泛关注，虽然对于预设和幽默之间的关系已经有了大量的研究，但以往关于预设和幽默的研究往往是在论及幽默机制的时候, 只将预设理论作为其中的一部分，论述得不够全面和详细。众所周知小品是观众喜闻乐见的一门艺术，语言风趣幽默，其中深受欢迎的原因值得我们思考和探究。

笔者拟从预设的性质、使用等方面，结合小品语料来阐释预设理论对言语幽默的价值所在，旨在弥补预设理论在这方面研究的不足。笔者论文中研究涉及到的小品有《扶不扶》、《真假老师》、《昨天 今天 明天》、《扰民了您》等，将对其中精彩片段进行分析。通过研究小品语料可以发现，预设的使用是产生小品幽默重要的因素之一。因此在论文中，笔者也总结了一些策略从而更好地产生言语幽默。笔者的论文将从两个方面进行开展，一方面是结合小品语料分析预设的性质，另一方面是总结如何更好地应用预设在小品中取得言语幽默。

有策略地在小品中运用预设可以使得小品中的语言更有魅力，从而给观众带去欢乐。笔者希望这一将预设和言语幽默结合起来的研究可以为本领域的学术研究有所补充，同时，提高小品中言语幽默创作的策略性。

关键词：预设；小品；言语幽默

Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Pragmatic presupposition, as a common way of expression in everyday discourse communication, mainly appears in spoken language, which has a key influence on utterance communication. Due to the fact that the sketch focuses on humor, so the arrangement of language in sketch is very important.

With the rise of the sketch, the study of the sketch is endless. But those documents pay more attention on the language features of the sketch from a perceptual perspective, lacking the necessary linguistic theory to support the deep-seated discussion, which cannot study how the language in the comedy sketch is used and why it is used like that. So this paper will use the theory of pragmatic presupposition to investigate the language in comedy sketch. Proper use of pragmatic presupposition strategies in sketch creation can enhance the comedy effect of sketch. At the same time, using pragmatic presupposition theory to analyze the language characteristics in comedy sketch can better reveal the causes of comedy effect and further promote the formation of verbal humor.

1.2 Need of the Study

The thesis has both practical and academic meanings. On the one hand, the previous understanding and analysis of pragmatic presupposition is unilateral and monotonous, not systematic and comprehensive. Pragmatic presupposition has many functions in discourse, which reflects the pragmatic strategies and communicative intentions of the speaker. Lots of sketches are to deliberately set the presupposition, so that the presupposition becomes excessive, thus producing strong contrast, giving the audience a sense of disharmony, and then forming humor (He, 1997:68). This thesis is based on the understanding of other studies on pragmatic presupposition, combined with my own understanding and summary, then giving a more systematic and comprehensive analysis of pragmatic presupposition.

On the other hand, by discussing the pragmatic presupposition in the sketch, we can have a better understanding of the kinds of pragmatic presupposition and its nature and function. Then we can apply the pragmatic presupposition into various fields, such as advertising or literature and so on. Last but not least, using presupposition to study the verbal humor can also broaden the theoretical category of the study of verbal humor.

1.3 Research Purposes

In my paper, I would discuss the relevant issues more systematically. Our country's famous master of language and art, Lao She, once said, no matter how the plot of comedy is beautiful, the effect of comedy will be lost if not always equipped with sharp, vivid words. So on the basis of combining the research results of others and my full understanding of the important role of pragmatic presupposition in verbal humor, we would discuss how to apply these features and functions of pragmatic presupposition into sketch, advertisement, literature and so on.

1.4 Structure of the Study

This thesis focuses on three points: presupposition, sketch and verbal humor, which consists of Introduction, Literature Review, Research Methodology, Results and Discussion and Conclusion.

In the first few parts of the thesis, I mainly introduce the main concepts in the paper, and briefly discuss the literature review of these concepts and the methods used in this paper. In the main part of the paper, Results and Discussion, I put forward two questions, and then based on these two questions, analyzing and summarizing the nature of presupposition, which plays a vital role in verbal humor in sketches. Then I further explore how to better use presupposition in sketches to get verbal humor. Last but not least, I talk about the findings and limitations of this study in the part of conclusion.

2．Literature Review

2.1 Definitions of Key Concepts

Sketch is a small piece of art. In the broadest sense, sketch refers to the short literary style in the Buddhist sutras of ancient India. In the narrow sense, sketch means the short art of speaking and acting, the basic requirement of which is that the language is clear and the form is natural. The comedy sketch is the most representative of that. Comedy sketch takes advantage of people's common and ubiquitous life scene as the creative theme, with two or three actors in a dozen minutes to perform a conflict scene, in order to make people happy and enlightened. Chinese comedy sketch originated in the early 1980s, it inherited and developed the advantages of drama, crosstalk, a song-and-dance duet popular in the Northeast of China and so on. Humor skills are the key conditions to ensure comedy sketches can reach the high level. The main component of the humor skills are humor conversation in comedy sketches, that is, the dynamic verbal humor in communication（Wang, 2009）.

You mo is a loanword, which is translated from the English word "humor" and originated from Latin. The definition of the word "humor" has always been various. The Modern Chinese Dictionary (2002) interpreted it as interesting or funny and meaningful. Xu Lixin (2003) argued that there are four categories of definitions of humor: a quality or ability of the speaker, a feature of discourse and context, objective entities (such as literary works, events and contexts), and expression techniques (such as rhetorical devices). In summary, we can see that although the definition of humor is still inconclusive, it must contain two core elements: laughter and significance. The widespread use of the word "humor" is due to the British humanist dramatist Ben Jonson, whose creation of Every Man in His Humor and Different Personality are known for humor. Lin Yutang was the first person to introduce this concept into China.

Presupposition, also called premise, which is a philosophical concept first appeared in sense and reference (which was wrote by the German philosopher G. Frege). Presupposition was once regarded as an "elusive concept" and it was famous for difficult to define (Shi, 1990:180). Since the 1960s and 1970s, with the development of semantics and pragmatics, presupposition has become the focus of linguists. Philosophers, semanticists and pragmatics have argued fiercely about the nature and characteristics of presupposition from different aspects.

For the two different aspects of presupposition: pragmatic presupposition and semantic presupposition, Frege, Stroudson and other scholars have thoroughly analyzed the difference between the two. The conclusion is as follows: semantic presupposition is an anaphora that must be satisfied by the assertion made by sentence. But pragmatic presupposition is more closely related to context. Due to the fact that my thesis is based on the sketch, the sketch pays great attention to the situation and the context, therefore this thesis mainly discusses the pragmatic instead of the semantic presupposition.

Above is the elaboration of definitions of key concepts in this paper. Human beings are a group of language communication, so the ubiquitous presupposition is closely related to our life. The exploration and study of presupposition can not only help human beings to improve their language awareness and ability to master language, but also enrich their understanding of the essence of language. Therefore, this study is devoted to finding out the rules of using presupposition in the sketch, so as to further explore how to use presupposition more effectively to achieve the effect of humor in sketch, which can also supplement the academic research in this field.

2.2 Theoretical Framework

This study adopts the theory of pragmatic presupposition as the theoretical framework to conduct an analysis of verbal humor in sketches. Pragmatic presupposition is the speaker's assumption of the context of speech and a prerequisite for discourse to carry important information. Shi holds that pragmatic presupposition is also the common knowledge of both parties, which requires both parties to have the common background knowledge (2011). Stalnaker put forward the concept of pragmatic presupposition in 1974. Pragmatic presupposition, according to Stalnaker, is a propositional attitude of the speaker, which is a proposition that the speaker assumes or considers to be a fact, and the hearer will assume the same. Therefore, presupposition is a kind of assumption or judgment that the speaker is right (Deng, 2012: 129).

The field of pragmatic presupposition application is also very extensive. For example, pragmatic presupposition is widely used in literary works, news, advertising, humor and other materials. Different materials apply pragmatics presupposition appropriately, thus producing the satisfactory effect. Therefore, pragmatic presupposition is not as dispensable as some components of a sentence, and it really exists in the whole discourse sentence, just as human life exists in the body. We should try our best to find the trace of pragmatic presupposition in language, constantly investigate and study every phenomenon of pragmatic presupposition, and then discover its rule, and add new knowledge content to pragmatics.

2.3 Related Empirical Studies

This paper mainly focuses on three aspects: humor, sketch and presupposition, of which the predecessors also carried out related study and analysis.

2.3.1 Researches on verbal humor

Verbal humor is a genre of linguistic interactions that can be perceived in daily conversations. Freud (1960) initiated the linguistic analysis of humorous text in identifying joke techniques in terms of sounds, syllables, repetition, and variation. (Wang, 2006: 18)Austin amp; Searle's theory analyzed the humor production from the perspective of misunderstanding the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act. Sperber amp; Wilson (1981) established the relevance theory which provides a new perspective for the analysis of humor. Zhang Shujing (1998), Chen Chunhua (1999) and Li Lanping (2002) elaborated on humor utterance which is generated by violating Cooperative principle by citing lots of examples. From the above research, we can see that the scholars both at home or abroad have made great accomplishments in study in verbal humor itself.

2.3.2 Researches on humor generation mechanisms

There are also many literatures which have studied the humorous language of the sketch from different perspectives. For example: Ni Gang amp; Xu Tianle (2010) interpreted the humor in the sketch No need for Money from the relevance theory; Li Yan (2012) analyzed the humor of the language in Zhao Benshan's sketch from the perspective of adaptation theory; Li Yanguang (2011) studied the humorous language of Zhao Benshan's sketch from the perspective of frame conversion theory. There is no doubt that the humor in sketches still can be studied in many different ways.

2.3.3 Researches on applications of presupposition

Presupposition, as an important theory in pragmatics, has long been applied to the study of various kinds of linguistic phenomena. For example: Chen Xinren (1998) analyzed the function of presupposition in advertising language from the aspects of the consumers' minds; Deng Lin(2012) analyzed language in English from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition ( 2012); Zhang Xinxin (2010) studied the application of presupposition in comedy; Du Yihui（2010）utilized pragmatic presupposition to analyze the humorous elements in the film. They all believed that pragmatic presupposition plays an important role in the mechanism of verbal humor.

2.4 Research Gap

There is no doubt that numerous studies have been carried out on the three aspects mentioned above: the study on verbal humor, the study on humor generation mechanisms and the study on application of presupposition respectively, but the study that combines that three aspects, that is, the analysis of verbal humor in sketches from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition is rare. Even if there were, the previous researches are often limited at the scope of a certain work, which briefly discusses a certain aspect of pragmatic presupposition, taking presupposition theory as a supplementary part. These claims are not comprehensive and detailed.

So in order to make up for the research gap, I will conduct an analysis on verbal humor in sketches from the perspective of presupposition. This study will discuss the nature and use of presupposition in detail in the speech humor on the basis of the broad range of sketch. Besides, I will make full use of the corpus in the sketch to prove the presupposition theory is a necessity to speech humor, making up for the weaknesses of presupposition analysis in previous studies.

1. Research Methodology

3.1 Research Questions

In this thesis, I mainly deal with these two questions:

(1) What are the properties of pragmatic presuppositions that are creating humor in a sketch?

(2) How do pragmatic presupposition help achieve speech humor?

3.2 Corpus for the Study

The corpus used in this research are well-known comedy sketches in recent years, for example: Help or not, Real teacher or fake teacher, Yesterday Today Tomorrow, Disturbance, Small incidents in a big town and so on, which can reveal the important features of comedy sketch language in shaping characters, highlighting themes, increasing humorous effect and showing comedy spirit.

3.3 Corpus Analysis

The author chooses a few representative fragments in comedy sketch and analyzes the reason for the production of humorous effect. Sketch is a common situation comedy, whose plot often comes from life and whose typical character is humor. Language is the basis of the development of the plot and the means for actors to design "baggage" in sketch. The words of the sketch tend to describe the common sense of life and daily etiquette of the characters. How does this humorous effect generated?

Now I will discuss how to carry on the corpus analysis at the beginning of my study. This paper mainly analyzes dialogues in the sketch, and analyzes what skills they use in the dialogue to produce humorous effect. As the saying goes, a word can make people laugh or jump. After observing and summarizing the funny fragments in each sketch, I found that the reason for the production of humor is that the discourse in the sketch violates the characteristic of the presupposition, consensus, and the speaker's utterance exceeds the listener's presupposition expectation. It is confirmed that presupposition is effective and widely used in sketch.

So the author will analyze the nature of presupposition in combination with verbal humor in sketch on the basis of referring to previous literatures. In addition, since presupposition in the sketch can produce humorous effect, how do we better use presupposition to produce humor? In fact, in this procedure, the author also combines the nature of presupposition to further explore how to better use presupposition.

3.4 Research Methods

Research methods applied in this study includes: literature review, exemplification, analysis and induction. First of all, before writing this paper, I have carried out a lot of literature search and reading, giving a summary of the previous research. Therefore, the literature review method was used in my study. Secondly, due to the fact that this study needs corpus analysis in the sketch, I sum up many dialogue examples in the sketch to demonstrate my opinion, utilizing the method of exemplification.

Last but not least, analysis and induction are also applied in this study. Based on the theory of presupposition, the author analyzes the causes of humor in the collected corpus, which can help us sum up the nature of presupposition. Secondly, since it is effective to use presupposition in the sketch to produce humor, then the techniques of application of presupposition in the sketch can also be summarized according to the corpus. So in this study, the adoption of analysis and induction is very important and necessary.

Results and Discussion

4.1 Nature of Pragmatic Presupposition and Generation of Verbal Humor

Nature of pragmatic presupposition includes subjectivity, revocability, consensus, concealment and so on. The sketch makes full use of these properties of pragmatic presupposition to create verbal humor. Verbal humor is the essence of language and the reflection of human wisdom, which has the interpersonal and social functions of pleasure, education, goodwill and resolution. Now I will discuss the nature of these pragmatic presuppositions in conjunction with the corpus in the sketch.

4.1.1 Subjectivity

He Ziran(2004) thinks that, presupposition can be objective fact, can be regarded as fact in the speaker's mind, and can also refer to hypothetical situation. Therefore, to some extent, pragmatic presupposition itself does not have the necessary authenticity or validity, which is the subjective understanding or attitude of both parties to a proposition or sentence. The application of subjectivity in pragmatic presupposition can be found in sketch Disturbance:

Da Peng: Let's find someone who won't ask you for money.

Hua Shao: Someone who likes to do housework.

Da Peng: Good figure.

Yue Yunpeng: Is this easy to find?

Cai Ming: It is easy to find, feather duster. 

In this sketch, Cai Ming deliberately sets up such a presupposition in order to attack Yue Yunpeng. Yue Yunpeng can not find a girlfriend who does not want money, likes to do housework and has a good figure. Someone who meets the above criteria is only feather duster in Cai Ming's eyes, obviously which is the fact that Cai Ming thinks subjectively. This presupposition is to let Yue Yunpeng, even the audience feels that he can not find such a girlfriend. The actors use presupposition subjectivity to produce a great humorous effect, which makes the audience laugh.

This pragmatic strategy is also used in sketch Small incidents in a big town.

Ai Lun: (distributes leaflets) Hi, guy! There is a bungalow in the center of the lake. (Ai Lun is interrupted by Wang Ning)

Wang Ning: Don't be blind! I tell you, am I? You should distribute leaflets what people need!

Alan: Ok ~~ (Ai Lun takes a look at passerby B and delivers the leaflet) To treat all sorts of complication!

This dialogue is a typical case of pragmatic presupposition subjectivity. In the process of handing out leaflets, Ai Lun first hands out the leaflets selling house to passer-by A, and Wang Ning reminds him to distribute flyers what people need. Wang Ning sets the presupposition that "passer-by A does not need to buy a house". Ai Lun then hands out a leaflet on the treatment of complicated diseases to passerby B, setting the presupposition that "passerby B is in poor health and has a difficult disease to treat ". Obviously, these presuppositions are all subjective speculation, producing a very strong comedy effect and bring a lot of laughter to the audience.

4.1.2 Defeasibility

Defeasibility is one of the characteristics of pragmatic presupposition. The speaker adds the presupposition after saying the presupposition, which negates the presupposition and causes the presupposition to be revoked. That means, the speaker intentionally guides the hearer to accept some kind of presupposition, but then negates or says the words which conflict with this presupposition, causing the audience's psychological expectation to fail, thus forming the humor. He Ziran believes that, in a certain context, pragmatic presupposition can be revoked, which depends on the speaker's attitude and belief (He Ziran, 1997). In a sketch, when the presupposition is revoked, the meaning expressed logically contradicts the context of verbal communication or people's consistent cognition of something, producing disharmony and bringing the humorous effect. For example: Help or not help,

Shen Teng: Oh, are you hurt?

MaLi: Oh, my elbow! Oh, my knee! Oh, my waist! They all don't hurt!

Shen Teng: (speechless) Aunt, let us do not use exclusion, will you? Since you aren't hurt, let's try to go.

In this sketch, When Shen Teng asks Mali if she is hurt, she slowly says a pile of body parts "elbow", "knee", "waist" and so on. From which we think that all the places she says are badly hurt. When people agree with the presupposition that Ma Li falls badly, Mary denies that presupposition, Individuals' conjecture according to that presupposition is proved to be wrong. Things move in the direction that the audience do not realize, so the audiences are amused.

There are also two other examples in the sketch Real teacher and fake teacher.

The first example:

Cleaner: No, I can't help you. I can't. I have to go. I really have to go.

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