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Abstract：Study of humor discourse has attracted an increasingly numerousattention since 80’s of last century. Traditionally, they approach it mainly from pragmatic aspect. In this paper, I try a new research perspective, metonymic function and scenario concept to study how metonymic link works in the interpretation of humor as a cognitive and mental process.
Key words:humor metonymy speech act scenario
Ⅰ.Introduction
As well known, the following is a dialogue between a customer and the waiter in a restaurant.
Customer: Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!Waiter: That’s OK, the cook used to be a tailor.
In traditional ways, this humor would be approached to from cooperative principles or ambiguity. The punch line of this humor is that the waiter does not behave cooperatively enough. Cooperative principles do have the potential to explain the unsuccessful communication because of the uncooperativeness of the waiter, though it fails to explore why the waiter is not cooperative. In this paper, within the framework of speech act metonymy, I want to show how the theory provides a new angel to this problem.
Ⅱ.Cognitive approach to Metonymy
Metonymy has long been seen as a figure of speech in the language system. It suggests a relation of “stands for”. But cognitive linguistics point that metonymy is, like metaphor, a cognitive mechanism. It is a mapping of a cognitive domain, the source, onto another domain, the target. It is widely accepted that there are three types of metonymies:
(1)Prepositional metonymy-referential: There will be a conversation between Washington and Tokyo. This example shows a typical metonymy, a "stands for" and referential relation.
(2)Prepositional metonymy-predicational: a. Mary was able to pass the exam.b: Mary passed the exam.Sentence a is mostly seen as an assertion of the ability of Mary to pass the exam. But given a context, it can be a declaration of a fact of passing the exam, using potentiality to stand for actuality.
(3)ocutionary metonymy: Can you pass me the salt?
This sentence apparently is an interrogative, but actually it functions as a request on the part of the hearer to perform some action. In this case, interrogative metonymically stands for request. It does not happen within the language system, but in the illocutionary force as in speech act theory, so this type of metonymy is also called speech act metonymy.
Ⅲ.Speech Act Metonymy and Humor Analysis
The theory of speech act metonymy provides us an account of the interpretation of indirect speech acts in terms of speech act scenarios, essentially idealized cognitive models of certain culturally entrenched activities, that include not only an event itself, but also knowledge about preconditions, results and consequences of this event. Usually, a scenario of request consists of at least four parts: the BEFORE component: state the conditions that the action can happen proper, that is the premise for the speech act to have perlocutionary force; the CORE part, that describes the essential feature of the action itself, and then immediate RESULT that obtains if the action is felicitously performed. Finally, there is an AFTER component, which describes the intended consequence of the action .
The Before H can do A.
S wants H to do A.
The Core S puts H under a (more or less strong) obligation to do A.
The Result H is under an obligation to do A(H must/should/ought to do A).
The AfterH will do A.
We assume that each component is metonymically linked to the speech act scenario as a whole. That is, the pragmatic function of each component can, to various degree stand for a request. As for "various degree", it must be concerned with conceptual distance to the CORE on the part of each component. With the conceptual distance to the CORE being different, the pragmatic force to stand for a request accordingly changes. Panther and Thornburg proposed two hypotheses in terms of conceptual distance. In this paper, only the first hypothesis will be examined.
Hypothesis 1: The more distant the component of the scenario from the CORE, the weaker is the force to evoke the scenario, and the more is the inferencing effort on the hearer to know the real intention of the speaker.
Now it is the time to turn back to the humorous dialogue mentioned in the beginning of the paper. This communication is not successful in that the customer does not manage to convey his intention to the waiter. The utterance is not a declarative to announce a fact but stands for a request to remove the fly, change soup, or ask for explanation or repayment. The fact that this component of the scenario, according to hypothesis 1, distant to conceptual CORE, has weak strength of metonymic link to a request is the reason why the waiter does not get the real intention of the customer. So the waiter just gives some verbal explanation to the problem proposed by the customer, but no any action of remedy. If the customer chooses a component less distant to conceptual CORE than this, which therefore has stronger strength of metonymic link, such as You can remove the fly in my soup or something else, the waiter is sure to know what to do.
Ⅳ.Conclusion
Metonymy, traditionally seen as a figure of speech, actually is a kind of cognitive mechanism by which people connect one thing in the world to another and this ability of association helps people draw inferences easily from implicit conversations. Humor, as a discourse type, especially places heavy demands on the listener’s inferencing work. Therefore, it is a new and advisable trend to study humor in the metonymic frame. With the help of metonymies in the process of inferencing, the punch line of humor can be easily reached.
References：
[1]Panther, Klaus-Uwe
Key words:humor metonymy speech act scenario
Ⅰ.Introduction
As well known, the following is a dialogue between a customer and the waiter in a restaurant.
Customer: Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!Waiter: That’s OK, the cook used to be a tailor.
In traditional ways, this humor would be approached to from cooperative principles or ambiguity. The punch line of this humor is that the waiter does not behave cooperatively enough. Cooperative principles do have the potential to explain the unsuccessful communication because of the uncooperativeness of the waiter, though it fails to explore why the waiter is not cooperative. In this paper, within the framework of speech act metonymy, I want to show how the theory provides a new angel to this problem.
Ⅱ.Cognitive approach to Metonymy
Metonymy has long been seen as a figure of speech in the language system. It suggests a relation of “stands for”. But cognitive linguistics point that metonymy is, like metaphor, a cognitive mechanism. It is a mapping of a cognitive domain, the source, onto another domain, the target. It is widely accepted that there are three types of metonymies:
(1)Prepositional metonymy-referential: There will be a conversation between Washington and Tokyo. This example shows a typical metonymy, a "stands for" and referential relation.
(2)Prepositional metonymy-predicational: a. Mary was able to pass the exam.b: Mary passed the exam.Sentence a is mostly seen as an assertion of the ability of Mary to pass the exam. But given a context, it can be a declaration of a fact of passing the exam, using potentiality to stand for actuality.
(3)ocutionary metonymy: Can you pass me the salt?
This sentence apparently is an interrogative, but actually it functions as a request on the part of the hearer to perform some action. In this case, interrogative metonymically stands for request. It does not happen within the language system, but in the illocutionary force as in speech act theory, so this type of metonymy is also called speech act metonymy.
Ⅲ.Speech Act Metonymy and Humor Analysis
The theory of speech act metonymy provides us an account of the interpretation of indirect speech acts in terms of speech act scenarios, essentially idealized cognitive models of certain culturally entrenched activities, that include not only an event itself, but also knowledge about preconditions, results and consequences of this event. Usually, a scenario of request consists of at least four parts: the BEFORE component: state the conditions that the action can happen proper, that is the premise for the speech act to have perlocutionary force; the CORE part, that describes the essential feature of the action itself, and then immediate RESULT that obtains if the action is felicitously performed. Finally, there is an AFTER component, which describes the intended consequence of the action .
The Before H can do A.
S wants H to do A.
The Core S puts H under a (more or less strong) obligation to do A.
The Result H is under an obligation to do A(H must/should/ought to do A).
The AfterH will do A.
We assume that each component is metonymically linked to the speech act scenario as a whole. That is, the pragmatic function of each component can, to various degree stand for a request. As for "various degree", it must be concerned with conceptual distance to the CORE on the part of each component. With the conceptual distance to the CORE being different, the pragmatic force to stand for a request accordingly changes. Panther and Thornburg proposed two hypotheses in terms of conceptual distance. In this paper, only the first hypothesis will be examined.
Hypothesis 1: The more distant the component of the scenario from the CORE, the weaker is the force to evoke the scenario, and the more is the inferencing effort on the hearer to know the real intention of the speaker.
Now it is the time to turn back to the humorous dialogue mentioned in the beginning of the paper. This communication is not successful in that the customer does not manage to convey his intention to the waiter. The utterance is not a declarative to announce a fact but stands for a request to remove the fly, change soup, or ask for explanation or repayment. The fact that this component of the scenario, according to hypothesis 1, distant to conceptual CORE, has weak strength of metonymic link to a request is the reason why the waiter does not get the real intention of the customer. So the waiter just gives some verbal explanation to the problem proposed by the customer, but no any action of remedy. If the customer chooses a component less distant to conceptual CORE than this, which therefore has stronger strength of metonymic link, such as You can remove the fly in my soup or something else, the waiter is sure to know what to do.
Ⅳ.Conclusion
Metonymy, traditionally seen as a figure of speech, actually is a kind of cognitive mechanism by which people connect one thing in the world to another and this ability of association helps people draw inferences easily from implicit conversations. Humor, as a discourse type, especially places heavy demands on the listener’s inferencing work. Therefore, it is a new and advisable trend to study humor in the metonymic frame. With the help of metonymies in the process of inferencing, the punch line of humor can be easily reached.
References：
[1]Panther, Klaus-Uwe