摘要

幽默作为生活的调味剂，无处不在，在人际关系中起着重要的作用。有很多种因素会引起幽默。由于人类文化的差异，英语幽默笑话的理解和欣赏对中国学习者来说是个难点。语言学家们对幽默的研究涉及到哲学，心理学，社会学，语言学等众多领域。与这些领域比较起来，使用语言学尤其是语用学对话语幽默的研究历史相对较短。从语用学的角度看，幽默的产生有一定的规律，语用原则与英语幽默的产生有着内在的联系。本文从语用学的角度出发，以示例的形式全面地综述合作原则内容在解释幽默生成中的运用，旨在系统揭示幽默的实现形式及各种语用学理论对幽默生成的解释，进而使我们能更好地理解和运用幽默。通过研究发现当人们说话违反合作原则时，幽默效果就很有可能产生。
言语幽默能满足人们的心理、情感、社会和交际需求。对幽默的意义和工作机制有很好的理解，将有助于有效地进行外语教学。此外，它在社会和人际沟通中有着很大帮助。

关键词：英语幽默；语境；合作原则
 
Abstract

Humor can be found everywhere, which adds flavor to life and plays an important role in interpersonal relationships. As difference in culture, it is difficult for Chinese learners to understand and appreciate English humorous stories. Across history, many researchers have studied and analyzed humor from different angles，such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, linguistics. By contrast，linguistics, especially pragmatics, is rather a new field in the study of verbal humor. The occurrence of humor has certain rules from Pragmatic Principles. From the perspective of pragmatics，this paper illustrates the application of pragmatic theories to interpreting the realization of humor with an aim to systematically reveal the realizations of humor. It is found that humorous effects might be produced when cooperative principles are violated.
Verbal humor can meet people’s psychological, emotional, social and communicative needs. A good understanding of the meanings and working mechanisms of humor will contribute to the effective foreign language learning. In addition, it helps a lot in social and interpersonal communication.

1. Introduction
Humor, which is an important form of verbal communication, is a language art, not only in English but also in Chinese. It can be found that humor exists all around us. Whenever you open a newspaper or a magazine, or turn on the television or the radio, or surf on the Internet, you are sure to be faced with humors of different kinds. These humors, like the seasoning of a dish, add much taste to life.
Humor is a life’s freshener. It can free people from tediousness, awkwardness or unhappiness. The saying goes: "Laughter is the best medicine" and "A clown in town is worth a dozen doctors." This shows that humor plays an important role in facilitating the physical and mental health of humans. Humor is also an important part of all culture, language, language style and language domain.