1 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN QUÝ THE LINGUISTIC DEVICES MAKING WITTINESS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE HUMOUROUS STORIES: A STUDY OF CONTRASTIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ( Các phương tiện ngôn ngữ tạo nên sự dí dỏm trong truyện hài Anh-Việt: Nghiên cứu đối chiếu phân tích diễn ngôn) -------------***------------ M.A Thesis – Program 1 Field:Linguistics Code: 602215 HÀ NỘI-2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES HOÀNG THỊ XUÂN QUÝ THE LINGUISTIC DEVICES MAKING WITTINESS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE HUMOUROUS STORIES: A STUDY OF CONTRASTIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ( Các phương tiện ngôn ngữ tạo nên sự dí dỏm trong truyện hài Anh-Việt: Nghiên cứu đối chiếu phân tích diễn ngôn) -------------***------------ M.A Thesis – Program 1 Field:Linguistics Code: 602215 SUPERVISOR: NGÔ HỮU HOÀNG, Ph.D LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .II LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS. III TABLE OF CONTENTS .Aims of the study .Scope of the study .Method of the study .Organization of the study. 7 CHAPTER 1: THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Definition of Discourse.
Types of Discourse. Humour and Its Categories. Overview of Humourous Stories. The Incongruity Theory in Humour.
Figure of Speech as Linguistic Devices in Humourous Stories. 18 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY. 20 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Discussion and Contrastive Findings.
Context in the Interpretation of Jokes in the Humourous Stories. 37 CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATIONS OF TRANLATION AND TEACHING. Implications of Translation. Implications of Teaching .Suggestions for the Translators, Teachers and a Further Study.
Suggestions for the Translator and Teachers. Suggestions for a Further Study. 47 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 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. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. 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: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 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 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 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. 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 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 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. 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. Aims of the study LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.