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Violation of Cooperative Principle and English Humor

Violation of Cooperative Principle and English Humor Abstract:Humor is an art of a language, which is caused by kinds of reasons. From the pragmatic perspective, a lot of humor comes from the violation of Cooperative Principle. The paper just conducts an analysis on the generation of humor through violation of Cooperative Principle

Keywords: humor; violation; Cooperative Principle

ⅠIntroduction

English language is rich in humor. The word “humor” originates from French. It is a piece of art as well as a way of life. It can bring a lot of pleasure as well as inspiration. Basically, there are two kinds of humor: one is “Lingual-humor”, the other is “Non-lingual humor”. “Lingual-humor” is a kind of humor generated through the use of language, whereas “Non-lingual humor”is generated without the tool of language. It is quite interesting and practical to make analysis on the generation of humor, especially the “Lingual-humor” which is used by people quite often. Former researches always see this phenomenon from the perspective of psychology. Recently, the pragmatic analysis of humor reaches to its height. This paper aims to discuss the problem based on the “Cooperative Principle” which is a pragmatic perspective.

ⅡPaul Grice’s “Cooperative Principle”

The American philosopher, Paul Grice pointed in Logic and Conversation that (1975), whatever cultural background the interlocutors had, they must observe a general conversational principle when they talked. He called this principle “co-operative principle”. That means the two parties have to be in cooperative attitude if they try to communicate successfully. If the speakers don’t abide by the coo perative principle on purpose when they talk, they must fail to reach the aim of communication. Their ultimate purpose was not for information transmission. In this case their violation to these maxims often leads to other meaning, known as implication. Humor is just one of the outcomes by violating conversational principle. There are four

maxims under this general cooperative principle just as follows:

Maxims of quantity

1 Make your contribution as informative as required

2 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

Maxims of quality

1 Do not say what you believe to be false

2 Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

Maxims of relevance

1 Be relevant.

Maxims of manner

1 Avoid obscurity of expression

2 Avoid ambiguity

3 Be brief

4 Be orderly

ⅢViolation of the maxims of “Cooperative Principle” and humor On most occasions, people tend to follow the previous principles, but sometimes they will violate some of these principles consciously in order to achieve a certain aim. If someone violates some of the principle in order to bring some pleasure or generates a relaxing atmosphere, then it comes humor. Let’s see it respectively:

ⅰViolation of the maxim of quantity

This maxim states that one’s contribution should provide sufficient but not too much information. But in real communication, the interlocutors always provide more than or less than really needed, then it generates humor.

1 violation of the first maxim in quantity: give less than it is required

e.g. Man: Does your dog bite?

Woman: No.

(The man reaches down to pet the dog. The dog bites the man’s hand.)

Man: Ouch! Hey! You said your dog doesn’t bite.

Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog.

In this conversation, the woman only gives the man a very simple answer “No” which is not sufficient information. This causes the man to be bitten by the dog which is quite funny.

2 violation of the second maxim in quantity: give too much information

e.g. A: Why don’t you study hard?

B: The more we study, the more we know. The more we know, the more we forget. The more we forget, the less we know. The less we know, the less we forget. The less we forget, the more we know. So why we study?

Obviously, B is trying hard to find an excuse for himself of being lazy in study. What he is saying is much more than required. This paragraph of non-sense just brings a funny effect.

ⅱViolation of the maxim of quality

This maxim states that one’s contribution to a conversation should be truthful. If someone violated this maxim, humor will also be aroused.

1 violation of the first maxim of quality: say what is false on purpose

e.g. Customer: What is this fly doing in my soup?

Waiter: It’s swimming in it.

In this conversation, the waiter must know clearly they should be responsible for the fly in the soup, and the customer must be very angry about the untidy food. The using of “it’s swimming” brings a relaxing atmosphere and avoids a conflict or something serious.

2 violation of the second maxim of quality: say something lack adequate evidence

e.g. Woman: How old do you think I am?

Man: you don’t look your age.

In western countries, women don’t want to tell their age, so when answering such questions one should be careful. Here, the man gives a very clever answer. Although he is not sure about the wom an’s real age, but his answer will not offend the woman at all and is very humorous.

ⅲViolation of the maxim of relevance

The demand for relevance simply means the speaker should only include

information in his communication that is relevant to the discourse topic. Otherwise the conversation will be blocked even stopped. The communicators should talk about the same thing. If one party wanted to avoid the current topic and found another seem-to-be-relevant topic to discuss, he just violated the maxim of relevance. And his see-to-be-relevant answer often makes another party feel funny.

e.g. An elderly woman entered a chemist shop and asked:“What do you have for gray hair?”

“Great respect, madam,” replied the salesman.

The real intention of the elderly woman is to buy a certain medicine for curing gray hair, but the salesman misunderstands her and gives a irrelevant answer which brings a lot of fun.

ⅳViolation of the maxim of manner

Avoiding obscurity of expression means what you said must be easily or clearly understood. Avoiding ambiguity means there is no the presence of more than one meaning in what you’ve said. As for being brief and being orderly, what you said should be concise and well arranged. Through examples we can see how violating the maxim of manner causes humor.

1 violation of avoiding obscurity of expression: say some obscure expressions

e.g. Lady (standing in the middle of a busy street): “officer, can you tell me how to get to a hospital?”

Policeman: “Just stand where you are and you will find how to get to the hospital.”

The policeman does not give a clear answer of how to get to a hospital but telling the woman indirectly it is very dangerous standing in the middle of a busy street. It is

a humorous way of warning.

2 violation of avoiding ambiguity: generates ambiguity on purpose

e.g. A: where is Washington?

B: He is dead.

A: I mean the capital of The United States.

B: They loaned it all to Europe

In this conversation, the ambiguity is brought in by the two ambiguous words, Washington (the president or the capital of The United States) and capital (the Washington city or the money). B is deliberately violating the maxim of avoiding ambiguity for humor as well as playing an irony on American politics.

3 violation of being brief: be wordy

e.g. The boss: “Why are you late again?”

The employee: “On Monday, It was raining, and there are many people at the bus stop. On Tuesday, my watch stopped. On Wednesday, I went to say the doctor, and today, I bumped into one of my old friends, we haven’t seen each other, so we talked and talked and I forgot the time.”

In this example, the boss only asks the employee why is he late today, but the employee gives the reasons for being late each former day which makes the thing more complicated and also funny.

4 violation of being orderly: be in disorder

e.g. Her files of pins extend their shinning rows; puffs; powders; patches; bibles; trifles; billet-doux.

In this sentence, the pins and powders are put together with the bible, which is quite an irony. But the seemed disordered sentence shows the woman’s disrespect toward the god and the Christianity.

ⅣConclusion

Form the above examples, it is easy to see that the violation of the maxims of the Cooperative Principle can bring various kinds of humor. Of course, the Cooperative Principle is not the only reason for generating humor, but it does give us a new and effective perspective to analyze humor in English language. What’s more, it also gives us a lot of inspiration of how to become humorous and how to add more pleasure to our life.

Reference:

1 黄奕. 幽默与合作原则J. 外语研究. 2006.6

2 沈静楠. 英语幽默与合作原则J. 长春理工大学学报(社会科学版). 2006.9

3 莫海文孙玲玲. 西方幽默与会话合作原则的背离J. 绥化学院学报. 2005.6

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