Overseas and Domestic Research Status of Analysis of Humor from the Perspective of Cooperative Principle

鄒雨娟

【Abstract】In Harvard University in 1967， an American linguistic philosopher， Grice， firstly put forward Cooperative Principle. From then on， overseas and domestic scholars began to pay much attention on CP， and analysis of humor from CP also became popular among researchers. The thesis reviews overseas and domestic research status of the research field from the violation of CP， in order to offer some constructive suggestions and research directions.

【Key words】Cooperative Principle； Violation； Humor； Research Status

1. Introduction

In 1967 Grice firstly put forward CP. He thinks that each communication a common purpose or set of purposes. （Hu Zhuanglin， 2002， p.457） In order to achieve the common purpose， speakers and listeners more or less adopt a cooperative attitude. Hence， there is some common principles by which each participant abides， and those principles are CP. Later， Grice also raised four maxim in CP： （I） The Maxim of Quantity； （II） The Maxim of Quality； （III） The Maxim of Relation； （IV） The Maxim of Manner.

In recent years， CP is used to analyze many different research fields such as translation， teaching， humor， and so on. In these different research areas， analysis of humor from the perspective of CP is the most popular among scholars. Therefore， writing a review article about it benefits scholars or researchers to systematically know overseas and domestic research status of the research field， and contributes to offer some constructive suggestions and research directions about the research area for domestic scholars.

2. Cooperative Principle

The Maxim of Quantity

（1）Make your contribution as informative as is required （for the current purposes of the exchange）

（2）Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

The Maxim of Quality

（1）Do not say what you believe to be false

（2）Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

The Maxim of Relation

The Maxim of Relation refers to the fact that each participant has to make sure that the utterances they say relate to the conversational topic

The Maxim of Manner

（1）Avoid obscurity of expression

（2）Avoid ambiguity

（3）Be brief

（4）Be orderly

3. The Violation of CP and Humor

3.1 Domestic Research Status

Liu Fuchang （1987） believes that it is necessary for each participant in the conversation to deliberately violate CP， in order to achieve humor. Hence， for the Maxim of Quantity， Liu insists that speakers violate the Maxim of Quantity when they do not offer the messages that listeners require. For the Maxim of Quality， he indicates that sometimes speakers need to say some exaggerated or contradictory utterances to make humor. Exaggerated or contradictory utterances cannot offer true messages in the conversations， so employing such words is a violation of the Maxim of Quality. For the Maxim of Relation， he has an opinion that he or she violates the Maxim of Relation when each participant in a conversation does not say some utterances which are not related to the conversational topic. He adds that humor is made under such a circumstance. For the Maxim of Manner， he refers to the fact that speakers intentionally confuse one thing with another in his or her utterances. Those utterances have ambiguity which violates the Maxim of Manner.

On the other hand， scholar Chen Simin （1999） made an analysis based on the conditions of the violation of CP. Grice （1967） made a list of four types of violations of CP.

（1）Speakers intentionally and quietlyviolate CP to mislead others，such as telling lies.

（2）Speakers violate CP on the table to express their unwilling or unableattitudes towards cooperation.

（3）Speakers have to violateone maxim to maintain CP， facing “conflicts”.

（4）Speakers intentionally violate one or several maxims， in order to promote listeners to understand the implications and facilitate the conversations.

Chen thinks that speakers intentionally violate one or several maxims of CP on the surface to lead to some irrelevant utterances which cause humor. In a word， the formation of humor belongs to the fourth type of violation of CP.

To sum up， both of these two research methods came up with the opinion that there is a contradiction where humor literally violates CP， and that it actually asides by CP. Nevertheless， they did not carry out a deep and detailed research on the contradiction， such as the reasons of the contradiction， the specific cases of it， the solutions to it and so on.

3.2 Overseas Research Status

Raskin（1985） puts forward comes up with a Cooperative Principle of Jokes， based on CP.

（1）Maxim of Quantity： make the messages of humor neither too much nor too few；

（2）Maxim of Quality： employ suitable utterances of humor

（3）Maxim of Relation： only say utterances which are relevant to the humor

（4）Maxim of Manner： express humor in a valid manner.

On the other hand， Yamaguchis the Mention Theory and Character-Did-It Hypothesis are different from Raskins. Character-Did-It Hypothesis has two views.

（1）The roles in the jokes are allowed to violate CP， in order to obtain humor

（2）Usually， the describers of jokes aside by CP. If they have to violate CP， the describers need to try their best to lessen the degree of the violation of CP as far as possible， or transfer duty of the violation of CP to roles in the jokes.

Attardo （1993） points out that Character-Did-It Hypothesis can be used to analyze humor only in direct quotes； instead of indirect quotes and descriptive reports. Some researches show that sometimes describers violate CP in indirect quotes and descriptive reports. To sum up， for those three research methods， author thinks that YamaguchisCharacter-Did-It Hypothesis is still a useful and valid theory to analyze humor in the direct quotes although the hypothesis has some disadvantages.

4. Conclusion

Since 1976， Grice firstly puts forward CP， and then domestic and overseas scholars started to pay more attention to it. Employing CP to analyze humor has also became a hot research field in the world. However， overseas researchers make a more deep， detail and systematic research than domestic studies.

References：

[1]Lili，Z.（2012）.Understanding Humor Based on the Incongruity Theory and the Cooperative.

[2]胡壯麟.語言學高級教程[M].北京：北京大學出版社，2002.

[3]胡壯麟.語言學教程[M].北京：北京大學出版社，2006.