Output file VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣KIM PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣ KIM PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC FACTORS CAUSING LAUGHTER IN BRITISH FUNNY STORIES Nghiên cứu yếu tố ngôn ngữ gây cười điển hình số truyện cười nước Anh M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HA NOI - 2012 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THI ̣ KIM PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME TYPICAL LINGUISTIC FACTORS CAUSING LAUGHTER IN BRITISH FUNNY STORIES Nghiên cứu yếu tố ngơn ngữ gây cười điển hình số truyện cười nước Anh M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: Associate Professor Võ Đại Quang, Ph.D HA NOI - 2012 z TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Objectives of the study Scope of the study: Design of the study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background: 1.1.1 Humor 1.1.2 British humor 1.1.3 Funny stories and Jokes 1.1.4 Pun 1.1.5 Ambiguity 1.1.6 Lexical ambiguity 1.1.6.1 Polysemy 1.1.6.2 Homonymy is traditionally defined as different words with the same forms In Lyons (1995, p.55), homonyms are classified into absolute and partial ones 1.1.6.3 Polysemy vs Homonymy 11 1.1.6.4 Transference of meaning: 11 1.1.7 Grammatical ambiguity 13 1.1.7.1 Morphology 13 1.1.7.2 Syntax 13 1.2 Previous works 14 1.3 Summary: 16 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 17 2.1 Research governing principles 17 i z 2.1.1 Research question 17 2.1.2 Data types to be collected 17 2.2 Research methods 18 2.2.1 Major methods: 18 2.2.1 Techniques for data collection 19 2.2.2 Techniques for data analysis 19 2.3 Summary: 20 CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 21 3.1 Data Analysis 21 3.1.1 Lexical ambiguity: 21 3.1.2 Grammatical ambiguity: 26 3.1.2.1 Morphological ambiguity: 26 3.1.2.2 Syntactic ambiguity: 28 3.2 Findings and discussions: 33 3.2.1 Findings: 33 3.2.2 Discussions and implication for language teaching and learning 34 3.3 Summary: 34 PART III: CONCLUSION 36 Recapitulation 36 Concluding remarks 36 Limitations 37 Suggestions for further study 37 REFERENCES 39 APPENDIX I ii z PART I: INTRODUCTION Rationale Peoples from all over the world, with different cultures and lifestyles, seem to have one thing in common – sense of humor There are a great amount of funny stories from culture to culture Each culture has its own typical joke-making characteristics Reading funny stories helps people relax with great efficiency The way Vietnamese learners read and understand Vietnamese jokes is not quite similar to the way English people English learners may have some difficulties in reading between the lines in some funny stories if they don‟t have the needed cultural and linguistic background In my opinion, a research into linguistic factor causing laughter in British funny stories will bring about benefits to readers and pedagogical implications for teaching and translation And, this is the rationale for my study Aims of the study The purposes of the research are as follows: To help English learners have a clear understanding of linguistic features available in English funny stories or jokes To help English learners discover an interesting part of English besides complicated grammar points or long complex reading passages To help English learners communicate more successfully with native speakers via joke understanding Objectives of the study This study is an investigation into British funny stories and their linguistic features with reference to cultural perspective to point out the typical factors that cause z laughter In doing this, typical features causing laughter in funny stories can be pointed out This objective can be further elaborated into the following research question: What are the typical linguistic features that cause laughter in British funny stories? Scope of the study: The issues raised in this thesis are investigated from both linguistic and cultural perspective The study primarily deals with research issues from a linguistic approach Furthermore, there is a difference in humour creating way from country to country so the stories are also studied under culture perspective As the exploitation of linguistic features in funny stories is quite huge and diversified, and the number of stories has been increasing year after year, the analysis is supposed to be selective rather than comprehensive in three senses: (i) only two groups of stories are chosen, (ii) only 33 stories are selected as typical samples and (iii) in each group, just some stories are picked up for a further in-depth study Design of the study In addition to “References” and “Appendix” parts, the study consists of three main parts: Part 1: Introduction This part discusses the rationale, scope, aims, objectives, and design of the study Part 2: Development This part is divided into three chapters: Chapter 1, Literature review, presents the previous studies related to the topic and a brief theoretical background with such concepts and conceptions as Humor, British humour, Funny stories and jokes, Punning, Ambiguity, Lexical ambiguity, Grammatical ambiguity z Chapter 2, Methodology, describes the research-governing principles, data collection instruments and data analysis procedure Chapter 3, Analysis and Discussions, offers a detailed analysis of the data, the results obtained and discussions of these results Part 3: Conclusion This is the last part of the thesis which provides a recapitulation of the main points presented, concluding remarks on the research objectives, limitations, and suggestions for further studies z PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background: 1.1.1 Humor Humor is not as easy to define as it seems There have been several people who tried to find out something about humour Avner Ziv from Israel gives one example to define humour: Humor is defined as a social message intended to produce laughter or smiling As with any social message, it fulfills certain functions, uses certain techniques, has content, and is used in certain situations These aspects of humor can be understood as relating to the questions of why people use humor (its functions), how it is transmitted (techniques), what it communicates (content), and where and when it is communicated (situation) Some of these aspects of humor are universal, characterizing humor everywhere Others are more influenced by culture Another definition is found in Merriam-Webster's entry on the word “humour”: that quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous something that is or is designed to be comical or amusing These definitions pretty much capture the essence of what could be called our general definition of humor, and they capture the basics of what humor is, but there is more to humor than just the ability to make people laugh or to be able to laugh at funny things While laughter is indeed a typical reaction to humor, things are more complicated than that Something is perceived as humorous even though nobody laughs at it people laugh at things that not really humorous, as laughter can also be an emotional response to fear or embarrassment Therefore, humor cannot be defined simply as something that makes you laugh The response to humor is important in the z definition of something as humorous, but there are aspects and details to humor and laughter which are sometimes overlooked 1.1.2 British humor The British have a unique sense of humour Of all the characteristics which the English are known all over the world, the sense of humour is one of the best-known and most positively regarded In England, you may consider humour a way of getting along in society Britain is the only country in the world which is inordinately proud of its sense of humour In other countries, if they find you inadequate or they hate you, they will call you stupid, ill-mannered In Britain, they will say that you have no sense of humour This is the final condemnation, the total dismissal 1.1.3 Funny stories and Jokes Funny stories are the stories that are told to make people laugh (Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary) It is characterized by humorous phenomena There are two theories for what people find humorous, incongruity theory, superiority theory The most popular theory of why we find jokes funny revolves around the concept of „incongruity‟ The idea is that we laugh at things that surprise us because they seem out of place It‟s funny when clowns wear outrageously large shoes, people have especially big noses or politicians tell the truth In the same way, many jokes are funny because they involve ideas that run against our expectations “A bear walks into a bar Animals talk.” And so on But there is more to this theory than such simple forms of incongruity In many jokes, there is an apparent incongruity between the setup and the punch line Scientists refer to this as the „incongruity-resolution‟ theory We resolve the incongruity caused by the punch line, and the accompanying feeling of sudden surprise makes us laugh The superiority theory also explains why we laugh at certain types of jokes Many jokes make us feel superior to other people In these types of jokes, people appear stupid because they have misunderstood an obvious situation, made a stupid mistake, been the hapless victim of unfortunate circumstance or have been made to look stupid z by someone else According to the theory, these jokes cause us to laugh because they make us feel superior to other people According to the definition on Wikipedia, a joke is a question, short story, or depiction of a situation made with the intent of being humorous To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices Jokes may have a punch-line that will end the sentence to make it humorous Their purposes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers The desired response is generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is said to have "fallen flat" 1.1.4 Pun According to Wikipedia, the pun, or also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect Because of the multiple meanings of words or similar sounding words that helps cause ambiguities and laughter to readers or listeners However, not most of people can apply pun in their daily conversations because pun is an art of using and playing with words Moreover, the listeners also have a wide range of vocabulary and knowledge of local or regional dialects and particular cultures to understand the intentional use of words of the speakers Pun expresses the beauty of words; therefore it differs from another kind of word play- malapropism Malapropism is an amusing mistake somebody makes when they use a word with sounds similar to the word they want to use but means something different Pun mentioned here is to emphasize the art of playing with words based on linguistics factors such as phonology, homophony, morphology, etc 1.1.5 Ambiguity According to Wikipedia, ambiguity of information is the ability to express more than one interpretation It is generally contrasted with vagueness, in that specific and distinct interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately apparent), whereas with information that is vague it is difficult to form any z ... “someone with a first degree”, and (d) ? ?a young male unmated fur seal during the mating season” 1.1.6.4 Transference of meaning: A word may have both a “literal” meaning and one or more “transferred”... which cause laughter in funny stories They are Ambiguity, Lexical Ambiguity and Grammatical Ambiguity In each of these theories, the author has pointed out some details and sample analyses In short,... all kinds of transference of meaning, metaphor is the most familiar The term “metaphor” refers to cases where a word appears to have both a “literal” and a “transferred” meaning, which are easily