A Study of Verbal Humor from the Perspective of Register Deviation: Taking The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an Example 语域偏离理论视角下的言语幽默研究——以《了不起的麦瑟尔夫人》为例文献综述

 2023-04-21 09:11:35

文献综述

1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundThe theory of register has always been playing a major role in the field of linguistics. Register deviation, an important branch of register theory, is one of the research focuses currently. The concept of register was first put forward by Reid in his study of bilingualism (Zhang, 1987). In the process of the development of register theory, a great number of scholars and linguists made their contribution, among whom Halliday, Malinowski, Firth, Martin are the most influential. The concept of theory was refined twice by Halliday in 1964 and 1978. Halliday, the representative of the systemic functional linguistics school, lay special emphasis on context, where the language occurs and formed the register theory, with three variables at its core, in 1985 (Zhang, 2021). In actual communication, people tend to not follow the conventional communication mode in order to meet some certain expression and communication needs (Zhong, 2011). A change in any one of the three variables causes a change in the whole meaning. The violation of the norm of the language use, namely register deviation, if properly used, will make the language more expressive. In the ordinary way, register deviation is applied mainly out of the need of humor. In the field of linguistic, humor is still a new comer. Humor is an immanent language phenomenon in human society. Humor effect is formed through the incongruousness of language. Linguists of various schools have analyzed humor from different aspects and applied various theoretical methods, among which Grices cooperation theory, Austin amp; Searles speech act theory, and Sperber amp; Wilsons relevance theory are the most popular rationales from the perspective of pragmatics. The combination of register deviation and humor is still a research hot spot. However, the study on generation of humor from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics is arguably few.Humor is the core of comedy and the deciding factor that determines whether a comedy is successful or not. In modern film and television works, register deviation is used in lines to get the wanted humorous effect. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is one of the best TV family comedies in the past few years as it proves to be popular with viewers and critics alike. After its launch on March 16, 2017, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has gained its large popularity. The first season of this comedy-drama wins two Golden Globe Awards and seven Emmy Awards and received a number of nominations. Thus, it is worthwhile to study how humor is generated in this comedy from the linguistic perspective.Based on the above brief review of the research background, this paper aims to use register deviation theory proposed by Halliday to analyze the humor effects of the lines in the American comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. To be more exact, this paper attempts to clarify the characteristics of register deviation, and further study how register deviation causes humor broadly.1.2 Need for the studyThe study is significant in both theory and practice.Theoretically, the study adopts the register deviation theory to analyze the humor effects in the American comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Communication materials under actual social circumstances are analyzed with systemic functional linguistics. From the view of three register variables, humor materials are studied comprehensively. From a theoretical perspective, there are only a few researches on register deviation and humor effects. This paper will not only provide new materials for the further study of register deviation, but also enrich and deepen the theory of register deviation. Practically, this study helps English learners have a better understanding of humor language from the view of register deviation. New thoughts can be provided to the composition of humor by broadening the research on register deviation. In addition, the study of humor effects in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is beneficial to the development of comedy, thus encouraging people to create more valuable works and promote the industry. As a recently broadcast TV drama, there are only few articles on the specific study of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but a lot of short commentaries written by TV viewers and fans have flooded on major movie critic websites. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is such an appropriate sample that there is not only dialogues with a sense of time but cleverly designed crosstalk. It is necessary to have further study on this piece of work, through which the success of it can be learned.1.3 Research purposesThis paper studies the verbal humor in the script lines of the American TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel through the theory of register deviation, explores the generation and understanding mechanism of verbal humor in specific context, and summarizes its pragmatic characteristics and rules. By reviewing the previous linguistic studies on verbal humor in TV series and comedies, the paper finds that the linguistic studies performed from the perspective of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics outnumbered the humor study in systemic functional grammar, and the studies on humor in systemic functional grammar left a wide space for us to explore. Based on the above statement, this paper aims to use the register theory that proposed by Halliday to analyze the lines in American TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. By explaining the various incongruous phenomena that cause humor in the lines, the paper gets to clarify the connections between humor and register.2.Literature review2.1 Previous studies on register deviationRegister theory is a theory of great importance in Systemic Functional Linguistics. The concept of register is first introduced by Reid in 1965 in his study of bilingualism and it is commonly acknowledged that the principle development of the notion is put forward in 1964 by Halliday who points out that a register can be defined as the configuration of semantic resources that the member of a culture typically associates with a situation type (Halliday, 1976). On the basis of context of culture and context of situation, he summarizes that the contextual factors can be explained by three variables: field, mode and tenor which he finds may decide ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning. Malinowski, the pioneer of contextual theory, divided context into three types: immediate context of utterance, general context of situation and broader context of culture (Zhang, 2013). Influenced by Malinowski, Firth attached importance to the development of language using and the context situation (Zhang, 2013). He raised the idea that meaning exists in context. Zhang (1990) studied regiter deviation from the perspective of english teaching. Guo (2002) pointed out that register deviation lays emphasis on the comicality of characters and create humor effect. Zhang (1987) pointed out that field of discourse indicates the subject matter and setting of the communication. Mode of discourse indicates the medium or channel of communication. Tenor of discourse indicates the relationship of individuals, namely personal tenor, and the purpose of language activities, namely functional tenor. Zhang also holds that Register Theory has the function of prediction and the function of reflecting culture. The coherence of register has been studied in depth and register deviation which is against the norm feature of the register, can make language more infectious and expressive and increase the artistic effect. Deviation is a language phenomenon which means a divergence of grammar and meaning in sentences or texts (Fan, 2018). Based on the three variables of register, register deviation can be divided into three types: field deviation, mode deviation and tenor deviation. Zhang (1987) pointed out three characteristics of register: no clear boundary between registers, bounded and unbounded language and special language included in register. It is believed that field, mode and tenor of discourse are different aspects of register, however, they are inseparable from each other (Cheng red humor, grey humor and black humor; verbal humor and non-verbal humor, etc. The characteristics of humor are mainly manifested as wit, self-mockery and ridicule. As for humor in the field on linguistics, three dimensions of modern linguistics theories on humor are often mentioned: the research about humor production, the research about humor interpretation and the research about humor application. Therefore, humor has been attached more importance to in linguistics area. New insight can be gained in the field of humor when real-life conversational data is taken into consideration and discussed with a fresh and unassuming attitude (Norrick, 1997). Classic comedies as Friends, The Big Bang and The IT Crowd are household names and have been discussed by scholars domestically and abroad. The very most of these studies are researched from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. In the field of register deviation, blank space is left. Though there is no study on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel from the perspective of register deviation, there are still a number of studies on other comedies can be referred to. Zhang (2021) points out that register deviation is contrast to conventional language and is generated because of register, social and mental factors. Interpretive power of the theory of register deviation can be easily seen in explaining how the humorous effect is generated (Sun amp; Feng, 2010). The current social development is showing a trend that register deviation can satisfy audiences desire because of its defamiliarization and novelty (Xiao, 2010). Zhang (2013) believed that knowing more about other countries culture will help to have a deep understanding of humor caused by register deviation and strengthen the ability to use it. Sometimes speakers can better complete communications and convey emotions by deliberately chooseing inconsistent registers and disarranging the sentence structure and vocabulary of the discourse (Zhong, 2011). The study of humorous discourses from the perspective of register theory not only reveals the linguistics principle of humor completely, but also has important guiding significance and the reference value towards humorous discourse further study. 2.3 Previous studies on The Marvelous Mrs. MaiselThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an American TV family comedy set in a middle-class Jewish family in the 1950s in New York City. A well-educated housewife, Miriam Maisel, divorces her husband, Joel Maisel on adultery. Accidentally Miriam make a fabulous stand-up comedy about her tragic marriage in a bar named Gaslight where her husband used to perform comedy. The staff of the bar, Susie Meyerson, discovers her talent and urges her to start her own career as a stand-up comedian. Since when Miriams life is changed. In every episode of this TV series, witty dialogues and elaborately composed stand-up comedies are comical and worth studying. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is arguably one of the best material to have further analysis on in accordance with register deviation and humorous effect. The previous researches are arranged as follows. Zuo (2019) explicates how an imformative incongruity triggers emotive humorous effect and the mechanism of humor reception and investigates obstacles to achieving humor through the lines in the field of pragmatics. Shi (2020) studies female subjectivity from the perspective of postmodern feminism and analyzes how the importance of female liberation. Li amp; Ren (2021) shows a lot of interesting conversations to prove the difference between different languages and cultural contexts from the perspective of functional equivalence theory. By reviewing the previous studies, I find there is few paper which studies The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with register deviation theory. At present, most of the researches on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are from the perspective of translation and feminism, with only a few of them are involved linguistics. Moreover, most of the linguistics researches focus on humorous strategies. This paper aims to apply register deviation theory to analyze the specific manifestations and characteristics of register deviation in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and further analyze the generation of humor.

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