A Study of Deixis in Humor
Abstract: Humor is a good flavoring in daily life. To study the mechanisms of humor has profound significance. Pragmatics and humor are closely linked. Deixis is one of the important components of pragmatics. The key to transmit deictic information successfully depends on whether the participants are in the same specific context. Otherwise, deictic information will be come blurred and ambiguous. The paper aims to describe the role deixis plays in the process of humor. The ambiguity of the deictic information is the primary cause of humor in the perspective of deixis. The study is carried out by analyzing the excerpts of an American comedy Friends. It is hoped that the analysis will help to gain a better insight into the mechanisms of humor and its relationship with deixis in a pragmatic perspective.
Keywords: humor, deixis, deictic information, ambiguity
Contents
Abstract 1
摘 要 1
Introduction 2
1.1 Generative Process of Humor 2
1.2 Definition of Deixis 3
1.3 Purpose of The Paper 4
2 Literature Review 4
3 Analysis of Humor in the Perspective of Deixis 6
3.1 Categories of Deixis 6
3.2 Person Deixis 6
3.2.1 Violation of the Transfer Rules of Person Deixis 6
3.2.2 ‘Inclusive We’ and ‘Exclusive We’ 7
3.2.3 Shift of Participant Roles 8
3.3 Spatial Deixis 9
3.3.1 Ambiguity Caused by ‘Here’ and ‘There’ 10
3.3.2 Verbs That Indicate a State or Motion 11
3.3.3 Preposition Phrase as Place Deixis 12
3.4 Temporal Deixis 12
3.4.1 Uncertainty of Date 13
3.4.2 Phrases of Temporal Deixis 13
3.4.3 Humor Caused by Tense 14
3.5 Social Deixis 15
3.5.1 Closeness 15
3.5.2 Co-culture 16
3.5.3 Formality and Informality 17
3.6 Discourse Deixis 18
3.6.1 Visible Deictic Expression 18
3.6.2 Discourse Connectors 19
4 Conclusion 20
References 21
Acknowledgements 22
