毕业论文课题相关文献综述

Literaturereview

Different researches of humor appear in differentperiods. Traditionally, there exist three dominant theories: SuperiorityTheory, Release Theory and Incongruity Theory. Currently, the Script-basedSemantic Theory, General Theory, and Audience-based Theory have held peoplesattention.

Superiority theory, which is also calleddegradation, disparagement and derision theory, has a long history. It derivesfrom Aristotles (384-322) view that comedy is based on an imitation of menworse than average, of people who are ridiculous, which accounts for thepleasure one feels when the less fortunate and less desirable figures arelaughed at. Later, Thomas Hobbes develops his views in that laughter bears onones social status and superiority over ones peers. He (1651) explains thathumans are in constant competitions with each other, and looking forshortcomings of other persons. Laughing at the inferior builds ourself-confidence and makes us feel superior. However, this theory is not sopopular now as it was in ancient times, because not any humor can display asuperior-inferior relationship and the feelings of superiority is not enough toexplain why people laugh. Whats more, sometimes instead of being amused, wewould rather pity those who are inferior and suffering.

Release Theory is primarily a psychological oneabout humor, closely associated with Freud. In his book, Jokes and Their Relation to Unconscious（1960）Freudstates that there is a strong link between the unconscious and both jokes anddreams, and that the latter two employ similar techniques (condensation,displacement) to carry out their joke-work and dream-work. explains that the psychic energy in our bodyis built as an aid for suppressing feelings in taboo areas, like sex or death. Whenthis energy is released , laughter can be experienced , not only because thisenergy is released, but also these taboo thoughts are being entertained.

The incongruity theory of humor. Virtuallydominating contemporary psychologicalresearches on humor, is the most influential approach adopted to theproblem(Raskin,1985). In congruity theory, enjoying a long history, may go backas far as to the Greeks and the Renaissance(Attardo,1994). However, it isformally proposed by Kant and Schopenhauer.

Raskins scrip-based semantictheory of humor(1985) was the first linguistic-based theory of humor. Raskinstheory posits that the text of a joke is always fully or partly compatible withtwo distinct scripts and that the two scripts are opposed to each other in aspecial way. The punchline triggers the switch from one script to the other bymaking the hearer backtrack and realizes that a different interpretation of thejoke was possible from the very beginning(AttardoRaskin,1991:308)

In the revision of Raskins script-based semantictheory of humor, Attardo and Raskin(1991) collaborate to put forth a GeneralTheory of Verbal Humor (GTVH) BASED ON six knowledge resources (KRs),namely,script opposition, logical mechanism, situation including the audience, target,narrative strategy, and language. This new theory incorporates, subsumes, andrevises (Raskin, 1991:329) Raskins script-based semantic theory and Attardosfive-level model but still concentrates virtually exclusively on the text ofthe joke. The Audience- Based Theory of Verbal Humor (Carrel,1993) posits thathumor resides with the audience, and thus, nothing is inherently humorous. Thatexplains why some joke texts will succeed on the part of one audience and failon another.