The linguistic devices making wittiness in English and Vietnamese humourous stories a study of contrastive discourse analysis

The linguistic devices making wittiness in English and Vietnamese humourous stories: a study of contrastive discourse analysis Hoàng Thị Xuân Quý Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạ

The linguistic devices making wittiness in English and Vietnamese humourous stories: a

study of contrastive discourse analysis

Hoàng Thị Xuân Quý

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Ph.D Ngô Hữu Hoàng

Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract Reading humourous stories is the good means of entertainment because it can

help the readers to release the stress and reduce the tension Beside the function of entertainment, humour is the special means of reaching the better things which satisfy the progressive thoughts and the lower-class‟s dream of equality This study is aimed at investigating the figure of speech as linguistic devices in the English humourous stories and Vietnamese humourous stories The analysis is carried out on 50 samples collected from the different books of English and Vietnamese humourous stories The results show that there is the similarity in the using of metaphor between these two languages Besides, Vietnamese humorous stories have the higher percentage of metonymy, comparing to English humourous stories Context is the important element that helps the reader to understand and interpret the figure of speech in the humourous stories Furthermore, the study offered the implications of translating and teaching so that the

translator and teachers can use in their jobs

Keywords Ngôn ngữ học; Phân tích diễn ngôn; Tiếng Anh

Content

1 Rationale

It cannot be denied that humour plays an important role in the human life and the whole society because it is not only the means of entertainment but also the weapon to criticize the groups of people with the purpose of clearing away the negative attitudes, the out-date thoughts, the discrimination existing in the society Besides, humour is the special means of reaching the better things which satisfy the progressive thoughts and the lower-class‟s dream of equality The laughter at the specific objects with the deeply social meanings always carries the humour and exists long in the spiritual products of human beings In the relation with the humour, the laughter is indispensable, but the humour may also include wittiness, joke, criticism, etc About these categories, the researcher is going to mention in the next part of the study so that there is a full overview of what is investigated into

It is said that Aristot is one of the first author that investigated the nature of humour when he stated that the humour is aesthetic However, it is necessary to note that the humour is aesthetic

only when it is aimed at the specific object with the deeply social meanings The humour was born out of hostility If there had been no hostility in man, there had been no laughter (and, incidentally, no need for laughter) All the current humour and wittiness retain evidence of this hostile origin types

Furthermore, humour is the product of the society when people, by different means, make the laughter in the spiritual works like the HS, the play, the cartoons, the funny pictures and movies, etc Among those types of literature, the short humourous stories (hereafter called HS) are really important in amusement by just some short sentences, and it is easy for the readers to provoke the laughter at ease to entertain or satire the negative sides of human beings or the whole society Being different from the other types of art like cartoon, funny pictures and play; the humorous stories use the only means of language to express the laughter like the following story:

Phát triển không đồng đều

Buổi tối, anh thợ làm bánh mì thường dẫn người yêu ra ghế đá công viên Có lần anh hỏi:

- Em yêu, tại sao cứ nửa buổi hẹn hò là em đổi chỗ bên này qua bên kia vậy?

Cô gái bẽn lẽn:

- Tại vì nếu em cứ ngồi mãi một bên như vậy thì cơ thể em sẽ phát triển không đồng đều

Translated version:

Develop unequally

In the evening the baker often takes his girl friend to the park bench

Once he asked her:

- My dear, why do you change your side after the half-date?

She answered softly:

- Because if I remain one side, my body would develop unequally

In the past, there were a lot of studies about the humour of scholars, humorists, philosophers and psychologists, dating back as far as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, to Darwin and Freud, Eastman and Pittington, through to Koestler and Midess; plus more than 100 theories of humour and laughter, some of them brilliant investigations into the social and behavioral nature of humour

and laughter According to the standard analysis of Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (internet 23), humor theories can be classified into three neatly identifiable groups: the incongruity, superiority, and relief theories Incongruity theory is the leading approach and includes historical

figures such as Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and perhaps has its origins in comments

made by Aristotle in the Rhetoric The paradigmatic superiority theorist is Thomas Hobbes

(1958: c.8, internet 5), who said that humor arises from a “sudden glory” felt when we recognize our supremacy over others Plato and Aristotle are generally considered superiority theorists, who emphasized the aggressive feelings that fuel humor The third group, relief theory, is typically associated with Sigmund Freud and Herbert Spencer, who saw humor as fundamentally

a way to release or save energy generated by repression Today, there are two well-known linguistics as Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin with Script-Based Semantic Theory Of Humour (SSTH) and The General Theory Of Verbal Humour (GTVH) respectively The main hypothesis is quoted by Avro Krikman (2006:31, internet 7) as follows:

SSTH is the theory refers to a text which can be characterized as a single-joke-carrying text if both of the conditions are satisfied The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts The two scripts with the text is compatible are opposite in a special sense defined in section 4 The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text

GTVH is presented as a theory that allows us to relate perceived differences between jokes to six hierarchically ordered Knowledge Resources (parameters), namely knowledge concerning Language; Narrative Strategies; Target(s); Situation; Logical Mechanism(s); Script Opposition(s)

The investigation of the linguistic devices making the wittiness by discourse analysis is a large field that was implemented by the linguistics in the world Generally, this matter is investigated and explored long before by many people in the field of language However, everything seems to

be different in Vietnam because the study of humour is less and the study by discourse analysis, especially the professional and contrastive one of English humourous stories and Vietnamese humourous stories (hereafter called EHS and VHS respectively) Let‟s begin with Vũ Ngọc

Khánh who presented us the book named Hành Trình Vào Xứ Sở Cười (translation: The Journey

to the Land of Laughter) in 1996 He gave us the overview of VHS, including the folklores and

the scholar-styled literatures on the aspects of time and space During the history, Vũ Ngọc Khánh (1996:7) claimed that from the 17th century, VHS has developed with the appearance of Trạng Quỳnh collection whose the objects to be laughed at were the king, officials, Gods and Budda, monks, traders, etc Also from this century, we have had other scholar-styled authors like Nguyễn Bá Lân or Nguyễn Cư Trinh, and in the modern time there are Tú Mỡ, Tú Xương, Vũ Trọng Phụng, Nguyễn Công Hoan, Bút Tre, etc About the aspect of space, he stated that the humour is created by people in the specific lands like Vĩnh Hoàng village, Đông Anh villages, Hòa Làng villages (Vũ Ngọc Khánh, 1996, p.54) One more point in his book is that he introduced us the linguistic uses for making laughter, including puns, slang and bad language

We can find the words having the co-equal meanings as follows: ‘Lên phố Mía gặp cô hàng mật, cầm tay kéo lại, hỏi thăm đường’ (Translated version: Downtown to Sugarcane street, see Miss

Treacle, ask her the direction) Another author should be mentioned is Nguyễn Hoàng Yến when

he discovered the pragmatic mechanism through the disseration: „ Truyện Cười Dân Gian Việt Nam Dưới Góc Độ Dụng Học‟ (The Vietnamese Folklores: A Study of Pragmatics) Based on the

cooperation principles of Grice Maxim, politeness principles, reference and implicature, Nguyễn Hoàng Yến (2011: 110) found out that implicatures in conversation appeared at the closings of the stories and played the substantial role in making laughter The implicatures of the opening and the body is the only cause and condition for the closings and the lessons of morality would

be from such implicatures Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung is the author of the master thesis:

‘Implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories’ In this study, she discovered both

languages have the same implicature mechanism based on flouting or violating the maxims that are important for the writers in order to evoke feelings and reactions in their readers (Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung, 2010, p.37)

It can be seen that there have not been any study of HS under discourse analysis and contrastive between English and Vietnamese implemented before by any researchers in Vietnam, so the author of this study believes that this would be the first time this subject is carried out and hopes that it would be new approach to the humour under discourse analysis in Vietnam as well as to the literature of which HS are the object of the study In addition, the study would be helpful for the translators to be good at their translation from English and Vietnamese and vice verse because when reading the literature works, in terms of the discourse analysis views, the readers not only understand the humour mechanism, the linguistic devices, the nature of humour, etc but also are supplied with the knowledge of language, people characteristics, attitudes and thoughts

of the culture the stories belong to Besides, the study also is necessary for the teachers in their jobs because it is said that the successful teacher need to have good sense of humour Through the study, the knowledge would be helpful for them to tell the jokes in the appropriate time to be the warm-up activities

2 Aims of the study

- In the study, the researcher investigates the figure of speech as linguistic devices making the wittiness and then help us to understand/explain why people laugh when reading EHS and VHS

- The role of context in the HS, then readers can understand the jokes by the context when reading them

- To provide implications for the translators to understand the jokes in the stories and have good interpretation with the right transfer Besides, it is necessary to tell HS in language teaching, then the students can be supplied with language knowledge, cultures and motivated in learning, warm-up activities and release their study tension

3 Scope of the study

The types of humour can be cartoons, funny pictures, plays, etc However, this study is limited to the verbal humour The object of research is the EHS and VHS

This research is limited to investigate the figure of speech as the linguistic devices like metaphor, metonymy and others which make the wittiness in the selected EHS and VHS

4 Method of the study

By means of quantitative method, the investigation is carried out through text analysis, previous researches, individual analysis and observations

Data are gathered in the books collection of EHS and VHS

Based on the collected books, the samples shall be sorted out in terms of the figure of speech as linguistics devices and types of the theory of humour

5 Organization of the study

There are three main parts in the study as follows:

Introduction

This part includes rationale, aims of the study, scope of the study, organization and methods of the study

Development

Chapter 1: The Theoretical Background

The researcher represents the ideas of other linguistics and researchers about their previous studies and books to build up the theory as the background for this study to be based on and develop

Chapter 2: The Study

This part gives the detailed description of the study, which includes data collection, data analysis

and the results and discussion

Chapter 3: Implication of Translation and Teaching

In this part, the researcher offers the implications for the translator and teacher how to apply the humour in their jobs

Conclusion

This is the last part of the thesis which summaries the findings and makes suggestions for the translators and teacher; and a further study

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