A Pragmatic Study of Ambiguity and Puns in English Humor

DOI

10.2991/msie-13.2013.148How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Humor, ambiguity, pun, Cooperative Principles, Relevance theory

Abstract

Humorous language, as the main form to express humor, is popular in our life. In humorous language, ambiguity and puns are important devices to create humor. They also play active roles in helping people to achieve positive communication effects, which make them have distinctive pragmatic characteristics. This paper analyzes the pragmatic characteristics of ambiguity and puns in English humor. First, it introduces the definition and classification of ambiguity and puns, then thoroughly studies the pragmatic features reflected in English humor such as the Deixis, the Presupposition, the Cooperative Principle and the Relevance theory.

Copyright

© 2013, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Chao Gao
AU  - Xinghua Ren
PY  - 2013/11
DA  - 2013/11
TI  - A Pragmatic Study of Ambiguity and Puns in English Humor
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Management Science and Industrial Engineering
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 662
EP  - 665
SN  - 1951-6851
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/msie-13.2013.148
DO  - 10.2991/msie-13.2013.148
ID  - Gao2013/11
ER  -