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摘 要

人们在使用英语进行跨文化交际的过程中愈来愈认识到，要想圆满完成交际任务，仅仅掌握应有的词汇、语音和语法规则是远远不够的，重要的是要懂得如何在不同的语境中得体地、恰如其分地使用这些语言技能(Wolfson，1989)。在研究语言学的基础上，学者们发现，由于东西方文化、风土人情和风俗习惯等方面的不同，中国人在与英、美人交际时常出现障碍或差错，导致交际失败并引发幽默甚至是损失。语言学者把人们在跨文化交际中出现的没有达到完美交际效果的差错、故障，统称为语用失误 (何自然，1987)。本文从语用学的角度，详细分析了语用失误造成幽默的种类及原因，指出了语用能力的必要性,同时简单探讨了解决方式。

关键词:语用失误；幽默；语用学研究

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ii

ABSTRACT

中文摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1

Chapter Two LITERATURE REREVIEW 2

2.1 Definition of Humor 2

2.2 Definition of Pragmatic Failure 2

2.3 Related Studies about Pragmatic Failure in Writing 3

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY 6

3.1 Research Questions 6

3.2 Instruments and Methods 6

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 7

4.1 Types of Pragmatic Failure Causing Humor 7

4.2 The Causes of Humor by Pragmatic Failures 8

4.2.1 Cultural difference 8

4.2.2 Different ways of understanding 9

4.2.3 Different language environment 11

Chapter Five CONCLUSION 13

References 15

Chapter One
INTRODUCTION

Pragmatics is a new discipline that studies concrete discourse in specific contexts and studies how to understand and use language through context.

The "meaning" of the core concept of pragmatics occupies a very important position. "In pragmatics, there are two concepts that are very basic, first is meaning and second is the context." And the humorous expression requires a definite premise. This article will be analysis of humorous expression in different times and different place, make different effects on different people, based on its discourse and background.

The pragmatic failure in humor is divided into different cases, namely, the pragmatic failure, or the pragmatic wrong usage, which was proposed by the British linguist Thomas in the early 1980s. The reason is that the two sides of both sides’ social and cultural traditions exile understanding in the humorous expression, people are always accustomed to using their own way of speaking to explain both sides’ words, with the different cultural background, people speak in different ways. It affecting the effectiveness of communication, and leading to invalid communication. Most of the former is mainly about language expression, expression structure and other misuse, the latter refers to do not understand or ignore the conversation between the social and cultural background differences arising from the language of the mistakes. The pragmatic failure in humor belongs to social pragmatic failure. This pragmatic failure is due to social distance, social rules, cultural rules and different values caused.

So we can guess, the relationship between pragmatics and humor such as the relationship between scientific theory and research object, so they can be compared with each other.

Chapter Two
LITERATURE REREVIEW

2.1 Definition of Humor

Humor, specific to human beings, is the seasoning of our daily life and an indispensable part of human speech. It not only plays an important role in the improvement of the interpersonal relationships in social activities of many kinds, but also becomes the symbol of personal wit, glamour and education. For a long time, humor has attracted the attention and interest of scholars in many fields. The studies range from psychology, physiology and philosophy to broader ones such as anthropology, pedagogy, aesthetics, sociology, etc. With the steady and rapid development of linguistics, pragmatics provides a new perspective for humor studies.

Verbal humor can satisfy people's social and communicative needs from psychological and emotional aspects. A good understanding of the meaning and working mechanism of humors will contribute to the effective foreign language teaching. In addition, it has a significant impact in social and interpersonal relationships.

2.2 Definition of Pragmatic Failure

Pragmatic failure does not mean that the language used in the word or the sentence is wrong, but the speaker’s mistake is inappropriate, or the way of speaking is wrong, and the expression is not accustomed. The severity of pragmatic failures is much greater than the errors of language use. In the communication, grammatical and phonetic errors can be easily perceived by the speaker from the surface structure of the language, the complainant often blames it to speaker's lack of knowledge of the language. This is understandable. But if a person who speaks fluent foreign language has a pragmatic failure in an unfavorable occasion, or in an inappropriate way, said inappropriate. May cause the audience to misunderstand, or that the speaker lack of education, resulting in unpleasant or serious consequences.

Pragmatics is a new discipline that studies specific discourses in specific situations and studies how to understand and use language through the context. And the production of humorous works requires a specific premise, such as a same humor at different times, to different people in different places will produce different effects, its understanding needs to be based on the reasoning of its discourse and context. Therefore, there is a commonality between pragmatics and humor and they can be compared with each other.

2.3 Related Studies about Pragmatic Failure in Writing

The humor as it is chemical. It changed the fundamental organization of our thoughts and experiences. We must default on its importance in national life.—Lin Yutang（91）

Zhang Dongmei, divides the pragmatic failure into two categories in the article "Pragmatic effects and understanding of English humor". One is that the Language errors: If the speaker wants to clearly and accurately express their intention in a particular context, the language used will be appropriate and decent. Pay attention to the statement of the sense of proportion, what should be said, what should not say, how to say, it need to weigh carefully, or once deviated from the context, the word will be not appropriate, it will make a joke.

E.g: “I’d like you to come right over,” a man phoned an undertaker, “and supervise the burial of my poor, departed wife.” “Your wife!” gasped the undertaker. “Didn’t I bury her two years ago?” “You don’t understand,” said the man. “You see I married again.” “Oh,” said the undertaker “Congratulation!”

It is appropriate to say "Congratulation" for the newlyweds, but it is a funeral contractor who said it in this humor, and the man who is listening to is a widowed man, Was he happy when he listen it? So we can know that the specificity of the context determines the particularity of the discourse.

The second is for the social pragmatic failure. The special relationship between the language symbols and the language used by both sides, due to the differences of social and cultural background they do not understand, or because they are not familiar with the field of conversation, or because the speaker is not familiar with the topic or session of the field, it caused the expression of the error, "answer by non-asked" embarrassing scenes. This is the social pragmatic failures, it mainly happened in the process of cross - cultural communication

E.g: “Cognac? Whiskey? Liqueurs? Cigarettes?” the customs inspector asked the tourist just off the plane. “That’s very nice of you,” said the tourist. “Just make mine black coffee.”

As tourists are not familiar with the procedures of foreign customs inspection, mistakenly think that the customs officers are provide services to him, in fact, the inspectors are asked whether the tourists take above the four types of tax or tobacco tax, which appeared a reasonable problem and a reasonable answer, but make a joke because of the different social background.

From our analysis of the humorous laughter mechanism and the various forms of formation, we can find that a language, on the one hand, has a law of self-sufficiency, which is rigorous and orderly. It makes it possible for language users to follow and make language use as a tool for the exchange of information among all members. On the other hand, all aspects of language have some “loopholes" and some "flaws", which are full of contradictions, Such as the contradiction between words, the contradiction between sound and meaning, the contradiction between the form, the contradiction between the old and the new elements of the language, the incomplete correspondence between the written and spoken parts. The language’s "loose" and "disorderly" side, making the language open and lastingly. Its rigorous orderly constraints of the user's standardized use, its relatively loose and disorder let users have new ideas, and the possibility of performance of personality.

The study of humorous pragmatic failure has practical significance for cross-cultural communication and English teaching. On the one hand, it can help people from different cultural backgrounds realize that the word you think it is appropriate, may be considered abnormal words in different cultural atmosphere. So we can find the communication failure, and to study how to take remedial action, how to adjust the speech behavior norms, so as to avoid communication conflicts. On the other hand, since the same idea can be expressed in different language forms, it is necessary to consider the appropriateness of humor expression: what humor form used in what context can be appropriate. These will appear as research objects in this paper.

Chapter Three
METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Questions

Taking the research gaps mentioned in the literature review into account, this study would answer the following questions:

1. What types of pragmatic failure can cause humor?

2. Why can the pragmatic failure cause humor?

3.2 Instruments and Methods

In the main part, this paper first focuses on the influencing factors of humor effect and influence degree, and points out it attributed on four aspects: the humor sender, the humor occasion, the humor recipient and humor itself. This paper presents a number of propositions that describe the factors that affect the process of the process of humor perception, and the violation of a proposition will lead to humor errors or even complete mistakes.

This paper mainly adopts the method of comparative analysis and step wise induction. By transforming the reference instance into a comparative example, we highlight the effect of different factors on the errors in verbal humor. Then we based on the basic arguments derived from further induction, and thus summed up the universal law. These pragmatic failures are mainly attributable to the wrong way of speaking or the expression habits, or out of date.

Chapter Four
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Types of Pragmatic Failure Causing Humor

People from different cultural backgrounds are face to face during the language communication, since there is no perfect communication effect so the error is called pragmatic mistakes (what natural, 1987; 202). Thomas defines pragmatic failures as "unable to understand the power of speech." Qian Guanlian thinks that pragmatic failure is "the mistake that the speaker has caused inadvertently violating the hearer is not due to the fact that the speaker is unfamiliar with the pragmatic premise of the listener." In the theory of behavioral language acquisition, language is seen as a habit. Learning a foreign language means learning a new habit. In the course of their study, the old habits (mother tongue knowledge) will inevitably have a new habit (target language knowledge) learning impact. A place similar to the target language in the mother tongue will promote the study of the target language, and the difference between the two places will have difficulty in the acquisition of the target language. The effect of this original knowledge on new knowledge is called "migration". The migration that promotes the learning of new knowledge is called "positive transfer", and the migration that hinders new knowledge learning is called "negative transfer". Behavioral psychology suggests that the mistakes made by foreign language learners are the result of negative transfer of learners' native language habits.

British linguist Jenny Thomas divides pragmatic failures into two categories: linguistic pragmatic failures and social pragmatic failures. The mistakes of the language itself include two aspects: one is not the habit of English native language, misuse of English expression; the second is not to understand the way English expression, according to the mother tongue semantics and structure of English. The social pragmatic failure is due to the communicator does not understand the identity, language and topic of both sides. It is worth emphasizing that language is a tool of social communication, the use of language cannot be separated from the specific social environment. Therefore, to clearly distinguish between these two types of pragmatic failure is unrealistic.

There have been experts to participate in Heze College English Corner activities of non-English major students to investigate. The results show that for a long time, foreign language teaching has the emphasis on language ability, ignoring the phenomenon of communicative competence. In the course of teaching, some teachers often regard the teaching of language rules such as grammar, vocabulary and structure as the whole teaching content, ignoring the use of these language rules. Students also think that learning foreign language is back words, back text, analysis of sentence structure, thus ignoring the language of language use, do not grasp the basic grammar rules, the use of English can only rely on the use of native language rules. This will inevitably lead to the emergence of pragmatic failures.

Secondly, a key factor in the cause of pragmatic failure is the lack of understanding of the cultural knowledge of the target language. Although some teachers recognize the importance of the cultural background, but due to the impact of many factors, and did not import the cultural knowledge of the regularization of the system, but only in the text of the scattered knowledge to explain. In this way, students know little about the traditional culture of English and the pragmatic rules used in the process of communication, or know the rules of language but do not use it in practical communication.

4.2 The Causes of Humor by Pragmatic Failures

4.2.1 Cultural difference

Sometimes improper use of courtesy can lead to pragmatic failures, the performance of the conversation does not pay attention to the identity of the object or social status, such as acquaintances and people with their own status quite use the expression of too polite, strangers used too casual The way of expression. What is more obvious is that Chinese students who speak English in English are always bound to show that they are too much respect for each other and make people feel ridiculous.

For example, a student in the confirmation of each other yesterday for friends who know many times mentioned a Westerner. One is wrong with Mr., because, Mr. Followed by the surname, and Marc is given name. Another mistake is that the courtesy level is too high, the other is just a Chinese college students travel to China, social status with their own almost, Not too polite. I believe that students only affectionately asked "Would you be Marc?"

Second, due to the cross-cultural verbal communication, the cultural differences may cause pragmatic mistakes. For example, when talking about a hot dog, because in the Western culture, the "dog" status is very high, the West as a human dog as a faithful friend, as a pet, praise someone good luck often say "You are a lucky dog "In Chinese culture, many of the words related to the dog are mostly derogatory. Recognizing the difference in this cultural value, pragmatic failure is not surprising.

In addition, in the English corner we often hear the Chinese students asked, "Where have you been these days?", "Where are you going?" Like the sentence, in fact, these are regarded as pragmatic mistakes, will be the other side that you are asking for his privacy, and thus do not want to say more to you, which led to the disruption of communication. However, in Chinese culture, similar questions are very normal greeting.

4.2.2 Different ways of understanding

At the lexical level, the different meaning of the same word can cause humor. Take a look at one example:

Reading water meters in an unfamiliar part pf town. I came upon a house with no number. Then I noticed an elderly man gardening at the first house on that block.

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