Abstract
English jokes are humorous and implicit. However, for people whose mother language is not English, it’s hard to completely understand English humor. This paper presents a pragmatic analysis of English humor in order to help the reader get a better understanding of English humor. Some examples of English humor are analyzed in relation to cooperative principle, deixis, relevance theory, speech act theory, and presupposition.
Keywords  English humor   pragmatics   cooperative principle   deixis   relevance theory   Speech act   presupposition

英语幽默是诙谐而含蓄的。但是对于母语不是英语的人来说，完全理解英语幽默是不容易的。为了帮助读者更好地理解英语幽默，本篇论文从语用学角度对英语幽默进行了分析。本文选取了一些英语小幽默，从合作原则、指示语、关联理论、言语行为理论和前提理论几个角度进行分析。
关键词  英语幽默   语用学   合作原则   指示语   关联理论   言语行为   前提

Humorous language is a very common linguistic phenomenon in our daily life, which usually refers to those uncoordinated, ridiculous and amusing words. It’s easy for us to understand Chinese humor stories, but when it comes to English ones, we may find it difficulty to understand some of them. Therefore, in order to enjoy English humor more, we have to learn how English humor amuses and how pragmatic knowledge is used in it. In this paper, I will analyze English humor by using five pragmatic theories: cooperative principle, deixis, relevance theory, speech act theory, and presupposition. We will take some short and easy English humor stories as examples and analyze them with the theories listed above.
English humor has been studied by many scholars from different aspects for many years, and among them the pragmatic analysis is of high popularity. Those predecessors almost use three categories of theories in their analysis overall: cooperative principle, relevance theory, and speech act theory. However, these are not all the pragmatic theories that we can use to analyze English humor. We can also study English humor from other important aspects such as deixis and presupposition.