Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Malaysian wit and humor (English)'

There are various approaches to the explanation of humor in the field of humor research. Some of these theories, while providing interesting insight into the phenomenon known as humor, remain limited in their ability to account for how humor is recognized. Others do not even address the issue. This thesis compares five different theories in humor research by analyzing the humorous short story "My Watch" by Mark Twain. These theories are: 1. a typological approach to humor, 2. a social- functional model, 3. incongruity theory, 4. Grice's Cooperative Principle taken from linguistic pragmatics, and 5. the General Theory of Verbal Humor devised by V. Raskin and S. Attardo. The comparative analysis, following an extensive review of the literature, first interprets the humor in the short story in the light of each theoretical model. During the course of the analysis, the limitations inherent in each theories' treatment of humor are illustrated and these argue and provide evidence for the adoption of the General Theory of Verbal Humor because of its greater sophistication in building a model of humor recognition. Furthermore, in analyzing Twain's short story this thesis establishes the generalizability of this more sophisticated theory to at least some types of literary humor, specifically the tall tale. Finally, further research implications and general connections between the theoretical approaches discussed in this thesis and the teaching of the English language to non-native speakers highlight the practicality of applying insights from humor research to the field of teaching.

From 1958 to 1959, Mishima Yukio published a series of satirical essays titled Lessons in Immorality, in the magazine Weekly Morningstar. Lessons in Immorality was made into a television series, a stage play, and a film. Famous in the West for writing serious novels, Mishima's work as a humor writer is largely unknown. In these essays Mishima writes in a very comic style, making liberal use of hyperbole, burlesque, and travesty, in order to parody and satirize contemporary Japanese morality. Mishima uses humor to create a world in which Mishima Yukio, iconoclastic author and pop-culture figure, is an arbiter of his own honest and just morality that runs counter to the norms that Japanese at that time considered to be honest and just. Additionally, Mishima used Lessons in Immorality as a forum to discuss some of the serious concerns that are central to his famous novels. Because Mishima was writing for young men and women, he wrote about his complex philosophical and aesthetic ideals in a very humorous and accessible style. Thus, in addition to displaying Mishima's talent as a humor writer, these essays also give the reader fresh perspectives on Mishima's serious literature. In this paper, I will present the writing styles, rhetorical tools, and philosophical discussions from Lessons in Immorality that I believe make the series essential reading for anyone interested in Mishima or postwar Japanese literature.

Teachers of English to speakers of other languages have often incorporated humor in the curriculum, yet a recent computer search revealed that there were no empirical studies which have shown that curricular humor enhances English language learning. The three specific questions of the thesis are: does the use of curricular humor 1) improve memory/recall, 2) improve over-all English proficiency, and 3) result in the subjects' having more positive attitudes towards Americans, and if so, does a more positive attitude correlate with improved memory/proficiency?

James Thurber, along with others who wrote for The New Yorker magazine, developed the 'little man' comic figure. The little man as a central character was a shift from earlier nineteenth-century traditions in humor. This twentieth-century protagonist was a comic antihero whose function was to create sympathy rather than scorn and bring into question the values and behaviors of society rather than affirm them, as earlier comic figures did. The little man was urban, inept, frustrated, childlike, suspicious, and stubborn. His female counterpart was often a foil: confident and controlling enough to highlight his most pitiable and funniest features. Contradictory gender roles and stereotypes are essential to Thurber's humor. This thesis thus reads Thurber's work as critical of gender roles. Thurber's humor demonstrates that expectations for men and women to be socially masculine and feminine are often incongruous with their capabilities and natures. Often his work is funny because of the way it portrays gender as performance and as expectations imposed upon people instead of as inherent qualities in men and women. These roles create conflicted characters as well as conflict between the characters that Thurber draws in his stories, often a quarreling husband and wife. Also characteristic in Thurber's humor is the element of neurosis. Thurber often played with the vernacular concepts of neurosis, and he capitalized on public obsession with Freudian psychology with his satires and with fiction and essays about various anxieties and daydreaming. Neurosis works well as comic material because it also catalyzes the battle of the sexes. To support my interpretation of Thurber as a critic of societal gender roles, Freud's book The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious is useful at illuminating a deeper 'tendency' in Thurber's humor. Thurber is often thought of as a misogynist, for his personal behavior and for his unflattering literary portrayal of women as unimaginative nags. This thesis also examines the complexities and developments of Thurber's attitudes toward women. Most importantly for Thurber, his little man figure and the battle of the sexes was a way to express the importance and power of the liberated human imagination.

This thesis offers the first critical examination of the sound of laughter in Romantic poetry. Part one locates laughter in the history of ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and explores the interplay between laughter and key intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, and social issues in the Romantic period. I chart a development in thinking about laughter from its primary association with ridicule and the passions up to the early decades of the eighteenth century, to its emerging symbiosis with politeness and aesthetic judgement, before a reassertion of laughter's signification of passion and naturalness by the end of the eighteenth century. Laughter provides an innovative means of mapping cultural markers, and I argue that it highlights shifts in standards and questions of taste. Informed by this analysis, part two offers a series of historically aware close readings of Romantic poetry that identify both an indebtedness to, and refutation of, earlier and contemporaneous ideas about laughter. Rather than having humour or comedy as its central concerns, this thesis identifies the pervasive and capricious influence of the sound of the laugh in the writing of Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats. I detect the heterogeneous representations of laughter in their work that runs across a diverse range of genres, poetic forms, themes, and contexts. As such, I argue against the serious versus the humorous binary which prevails in literary criticism of Romanticism, and suggest that laughter articulates the interplay between the elegiac and the comic, the sublime and the ridiculous, the solitary and the communal. Moreover, I detect a double-naturedness to the sound of laughter in Romantic poetry that registers the subject's capacity to signify both consensus and dispute. This inherent polarity creates a tension in the poems as laughter ironically challenges what it also affirms. Never singularly fixed, the sound of laughter reveals the protean nature of Romantic verse.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009.
Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 9, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-346). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2004.
Full text to be digitised and attached to bibliographic record.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The following thesis develops a theory of parody as a multifunctional practice in relation to selected works of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Tom Stoppard. The study discusses parody as a mode of generic engineering (rather than a genre itself) with ideological ramifications. Based on an understanding of literary and non-literary genres as social institutions, this thesis describes the practice of parody as one of engineering generic or discursive incongruity with a particular cultural purpose in mind. In refiguring generic conventions, the parodist simultaneously reworks their implicit ideological premises. Parody hence comes to serve as a means of negotiating with "the world" through generic modification, and the notions of parodic social agency and cultural work are consequently central to this thesis. Focusing on The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest respectively, Chapters Two and Three discuss Wilde's use of parody, and especially parodic "word-masks", for subverting the aesthetic and social conventions of Victorian England, and covertly propagating a gay subculture through parodic injokes. Word-masks - central to Wildean parody - entail the duplicitous use of an object text / genre as a cover under which a parodist hides other meanings. If Wildean parody might be described as claiming a covert agency, Joycean parody must, in contrast, be acknowledged as expressing deep-seated political ambivalence. Chapters Four and Five of this thesis discuss Joyce's Ulysses with specific reference to his use of parody to conflate, relativize and problematize the dominant aesthetic and Irish nationalist discourses of the early twentieth-century. Joycean parody also demonstrates parodic ambivalence and this is especially evident in what might be called his "parodic patriotism". In contrast to Wilde's and Joyce's use of parody for the expression of subversive or progressive political views, Stoppard's parodies confirm conservative English values not only in their reification of the English canon but also in terms of the ideological premises with which they invest their hypotexts. Chapters Six and Seven examine how parody can serve as one of the ways in which modem artists have managed to come to terms with tradition. Focusing on Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Travesties respectively, these chapters explore parody's capacity to function as tribute or homage to the writers of the past being parodied. Ultimately this thesis aims to demonstrate the continuum of parodic cultural work or effects of which parody, as a mode of generic engineering, is capable.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis word daar - met verwysing na geselekteerde werke van Oscar Wilde, James Joyce en Tom Stoppard - 'n teorie van parodie as multi-funktionele praktyk ontwikkel. Parodie word bespreek as 'n vorm van generiese manipulasie (eerder as 'n genre op sigself) met ideologiese implikasies. Op die basis van 'n vertolking van literêre en nie-literêre genres as sosiale instellings, beskryf hierdie tesis die praktyk van parodie as die bewerkstelling van generiese en diskursiewe ongelyksoortigheid met 'n besondere kulturele oogmerk in gedagte. In die herfigurering van generiese konvensies is die beoefenaar van parodie terselfdertyd besig om hulle geïmpliseerde ideologiese aannames te herbewerk. Parodie word dus 'n metode om met behulp van generiese modifikasie in omgang met "die wêreld" te verkeer; en die idee van die sosiale agentskap en kulturele aksie van parodie staan dus ook sentraal tot hierdie tesis. Hoofstukke Twee en Drie fokus onderskeidelik op The Picture of Dorian Gray en The Importance of Being Earnest. In hierdie twee hoofstukke word Wilde se gebruik van parodie bespreek, met besondere aandag aan sy parodiese "woordmaskers" om die estetiese en sosiale konvensies van Victoriaanse Engeland te ondermyn, asook sy bedekte propagering - deur middel van parodiese binne-grappe -- van 'n gay subkultuur. Sentraal tot Wilde se parodie is woordmaskers wat 'n dubbelsinnige gebruik van teks en genre inspan as 'n dekmantel waaronder die beoefenaar van parodie ander betekenisse verskuil hou. As Wilde se parodie beskryfkan word as bedekte bemiddeling oftussenkoms (covert agency), moet Joyce se parodie - as teenstelling - identifiseer word as 'n uitdrukking van diepliggende politiese ambivalensie. In Hoofstukke Vier en Vyf word Joyce se Ulysses bespreek met spesifieke verwysing na sy gebruik van parodie om dominante estetiese en Ierse nasionalistiese diskoerse van die vroeë twintigste eeu saam te voeg, te relativiseer en te bevraagteken.. Joyce se parodie illustreer ook parodiese ambivalensie - 'n aspek wat duidelik blyk uit wat sy "parodiese patriotisme" genoem kon word. In teenstelling met Wilde en Joyce se gebruik van parodie as uitdrukking van ondermynende of pregressiewe gesigspunte, bevestig Stoppard se parodie konserwatiewe Engelse waardes nie net in hulle vergestalting van Engelse kanoniese tekste nie, maar ook in terme van die ideologiese aannames wat hulle aan hul hipotekste toeskryf. Hoofstukke Ses en Sewe ondersoek hoe parodie kan dien as een van die weë waarlangs moderne kunstenaars daarin geslaag het om hulleself te versoen met tradiese. In Hoofstukke Ses en Sewe - waar daar onderskeidelik op Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead en Travesties gefokus word - word ook aandag geskenk aan die vermoë van parodie om te funksioneer as huldeblyk of eerbetoon aan skrywers wie se werke geparodieer word. Hierdie tesis poog om die kontinuum van parodiese kulturele werk te illustreer waartoe parodie, as 'n vorm van generiese manipulasie, in staat is.

幽默是人類社會的一種普遍現象，是人們言語交際的一部分，在日常生活中無處不在。研究者們對幽默的研究涵蓋了心理學、哲學、社會學、人類學、神學、文化學等不同的領域。幽默被認為是最難研究的課題之一，翻譯幽默更是難上加難。我們至今對言語幽默的文本語言特徵、對言語幽默的譯文的文本語言特徵、對涉及言語幽默的翻譯過程知之不多。在言語幽默的翻譯中，有時候原文的幽默信息在譯文中完全保留，有時候則不能，原因何在，有關這方面的研究至今不多見；以漢語幽默文本的英譯為語料建立單向平行語料庫，探討漢語言語幽默英譯的一般及特殊規律的研究，尚無人做過，這正是本研究的目的所在。
本研究以錢鍾書的小說《圍城》及其英譯本為語料，運用言語幽默概論的理論框架，建立原文和譯文對照的雙語單向平行語料庫，采用語料庫檢索的方法，對語料進行描寫與分析，得出了“譯文要傳遞原文幽默信息需要保留或轉換原文的表層及深層參數特徵，特別是深層參數的腳本對立、表層參數的修辭手段及語言中的本源概念的研究結論。
主要研究結果有三：
一是展示了言語幽默翻譯的一般規律，即“譯文需要保留原文中的腳本對立；
二是展現了漢語言語幽默翻譯的特殊規律，即“要保留原文中的腳本對立，就需要轉換漢語所特有的修辭手段和漢語本源概念；
三是顯示了漢語言語幽默的文本語言特徵，即，漢語言語幽默具有表層和深層的參數特徵。表層參數的核心是修辭手段，深層參數的核心是腳本對立；表層參數具有“相似性之奇特統一、“語言要素之巧妙轉移和“不和諧邏輯間之和諧三大特徵；深層參數具有“真實的與非真實的語境對立、“正常的與非正常的語境對立、“合理與不合理的語境對立三大特徵，反映了現實與經驗、話語現實與語言經驗、話語邏輯與正常邏輯的矛盾衝突。
Humour is regarded as a universal human phenomenon, and funny situations, funny stories, even funny thoughts occur everyday to virtually everybody (Raskin 1985: 1). Humour represents a multidisciplinary and fertile research field. So is Translation Studies. Both draw from linguistics, psychology and sociology, among other disciplines, for their descriptions and their theoretical models and constructs (Zabalbeascoa 2005: 185). What is surprising is that the link between translation and humour has not received sufficient attention from scholars in either field (ibid).
This research attempts to explore how Chinese humorous texts are transferred into English and what factors affect humour transference in the target text, with a focus on the universality of the translation process, by tapping on fresh methodologies of modern Translation Studies such as bilingual corpora and the General Theory of Verbal Humor. The bilingual corpus for the research is from Wei Cheng (Fortress Besieged) (1947/1991/2003), a humorous fiction by the Chinese writer Ch’ien Chung-shu (1910-1998) and its English translation by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao (1979/2003). Adopting the General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) (Attardo & Raskin 1991; Attardo 1994, 2001) as the theoretical framework, the research makes a quantitative and qualitative analysis on the samplings from the corpus and obtains some encouraging findings as follows:
(a) Transference of humour in the source text to the target text needs transference of the Script Opposition embedded in the deep parameters of the source text, which shows the universality of translating Chinese verbal humour into English;
(b) More specifically, transference of the Script Opposition embedded in the deep parameters requires transference of specific Chinese rhetoric devices and socioculturally-bound Chinese alien sources in the target text;
(c) Chinese verbal humour has three features in the surface parameters and three features in the deep parameters, which shows the textual characteristics of Chinese verbal humour. The surface parameters show the features of similarity among quite different things, transference among quite different linguistic elements and congruity among incongruous logical elements. The deep parameters show the following three features: opposition between real and unreal situations; opposition between normal and abnormal situations, opposition between possible, plausible and fully or partially impossible or much less plausible situations.
The research draws a conclusion that verbal humour may travel from one culture to another via translation if the target text successfully transfers the Script Opposition embedded in the deep parameters of the source text, the Rhetorical Device in the surface parameters and the alien concepts hidden in the Language Parameter.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
Detailed summary in vernacular field only.
戈玲玲.
Sumitted date: 2011年12月.
Sumitted date: 2011 nian 12 yue.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 307-319)
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
Ge Lingling.
摘要 --- p.i
前言 --- p.vi
目錄 --- p.vii
圖表目錄 --- p.x
Chapter 第一章 --- 導論 --- p.1
Chapter 1.1 --- 研究目的 --- p.2
Chapter 1.2 --- 原文及作者簡介 --- p.7
Chapter 1.3 --- 《圍城》的外文譯本 --- p.14
Chapter 1.4 --- 對《圍城》及其英譯本的研究 --- p.16
Chapter 1.5 --- 論文結構 --- p.20
Chapter 第二章 --- 幽默評述及研究 --- p.22
Chapter 2.1 --- 詞典中對幽默的定义 --- p.22
Chapter 2.2 --- 前人對幽默的評述與研究 --- p.27
Chapter 2.2.1 --- 西方的評述與研究 --- p.27
Chapter 2.2.2 --- 中國的評述與研究 --- p.31
Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- 林語堂、錢鍾書論幽默 --- p.32
Chapter 2.2.2.2 --- 其他評述與研究 --- p.34
Chapter 2.3 --- 言語幽默的可譯性 --- p.37
Chapter 2.4 --- 小結 --- p.42
Chapter 第三章 --- 理論框架 --- p.44
Chapter 3.1 --- 語義腳本理論 --- p.44
Chapter 3.2 --- 言語幽默概論 --- p.48
Chapter 3.2.1 --- 六個參數 --- p.50
Chapter 3.2.1.1 --- 四個必要參數 --- p.51
Chapter 3.2.1.2 --- 兩個可選參數 --- p.59
Chapter 3.2.2 --- 六個參數的層級排列：言語幽默相似度測量系統 --- p.65
Chapter 3.3 --- 言語幽默概論運用於幽默翻譯研究：Attardo（2002） --- p.70
Chapter 3.4 --- 理論框架的延伸 --- p.73
Chapter 3.4.1 --- 漢語特有的修辞手段 --- p.74
Chapter 3.4.2 --- 言語幽默語段的表層參數和深層參數 --- p.76
Chapter 3.4.2.1 --- 表層參數 --- p.78
Chapter 3.4.2.2 --- 深層參數 --- p.84
Chapter 3.5 --- 小結 --- p.87
Chapter 第四章 --- 《圍城》中幽默語段及其英譯本的雙語平行語料庫 --- p.89
Chapter 4.1 --- 抽樣過程 --- p.90
Chapter 4.1.1 --- 《圍城》及其英譯本讀者問卷調查 --- p.90
Chapter 4.1.2 --- 理論參數 --- p.91
Chapter 4.2 --- 建立語料庫 --- p.92
Chapter 4.3 --- 標注漢英對應文本 --- p.94
Chapter 4.3.1 --- 技術性標注 --- p.94
Chapter 4.3.2 --- 理論參數標注 --- p.95
Chapter 4.3.3 --- 本源概念及其翻譯策略的標注 --- p.97
Chapter 4.4 --- 檢索漢英對應文本 --- p.99
Chapter 4.4.1 --- 檢索編程 --- p.100
Chapter 4.4.2 --- 檢索功能 --- p.102
Chapter 4.5 --- 標注的誤差測定 --- p.114
Chapter 4.6 --- 小結 --- p.117
Chapter 第五章 --- 原文中言語幽默語段的分析 --- p.118
Chapter 5.1 --- 原文幽默語段的表層特徵 --- p.118
Chapter 5.1.1 --- 表層特徵一：相似性之奇特統一 --- p.119
Chapter 5.1.2 --- 表層特徵二：語言要素之巧妙轉移 --- p.129
Chapter 5.1.3 --- 表層特徵三：不和諧邏輯間之和諧 --- p.138
Chapter 5.2 --- 原文幽默語段的深層特徵 --- p.143
Chapter 5.3 --- 不規範的參數類型 --- p.149
Chapter 5.4 --- 表層與深層特徵的對應關係 --- p.160
Chapter 5.5 --- 小結 --- p.169
Chapter 第六章 --- 英譯本分析 --- p.171
Chapter 6.1 --- 英譯本的表層特徵 --- p.172
Chapter 6.1.1 --- 譯文表層特徵一：相似性之奇特統一 --- p.172
Chapter 6.1.2 --- 譯文表層特徵二：語言要素之巧妙轉移 --- p.182
Chapter 6.1.3 --- 譯文表層特徵三：不和諧邏輯間之和諧 --- p.186
Chapter 6.2. --- 英譯本的深層特徵 --- p.186
Chapter 6.3 --- 不規範的參數類型 --- p.194
Chapter 6.4 --- 譯文表層與深層特徵的對應關係 --- p.212
Chapter 6.5 --- 小結 --- p.222
Chapter 第七章 --- 譯文、原文對比分析 --- p.224
Chapter 7.1 --- 譯文、原文總體對比 --- p.224
Chapter 7.2 --- 譯文、原文分類對比 --- p.226
Chapter 7.2.1 --- 同型轉換 --- p.227
Chapter 7.2.2 --- 異型轉換 --- p.229
Chapter 7.3 --- 譯文、原文表層參數與深層參數的異同對比 --- p.231
Chapter 7.4 --- 譯文、原文表層與深層特徵對比 --- p.234
Chapter 7.5 --- 譯文、原文參數的層級排列對比 --- p.235
Chapter 7.5.1 --- 參數層級排列與原文的參數排列對比 --- p.235
Chapter 7.5.2 --- 參數層級排列與譯文的參數排列對比 --- p.237
Chapter 7.5.3 --- 譯文、原文中六個參數的層級排列對比 --- p.239
Chapter 7.6 --- 小結 --- p.241
Chapter 第八章 --- 《圍城》中言語幽默的英譯策略 --- p.243
Chapter 8.1 --- 同型轉換時的翻譯策略 --- p.244
Chapter 8.2 --- 異型轉換時的翻譯策略--譯文仍然是幽默語段 --- p.259
Chapter 8.3 --- 異型轉換時的翻譯策略--譯文不是幽默語段 --- p.267
Chapter 8.4 --- 小結暨討論 --- p.282
Chapter 第九章 --- 結論 --- p.286
Chapter 9.1 --- 研究結果 --- p.286
Chapter 9.2 --- 研究局限 --- p.291
Chapter 9.3 --- 研究前景 --- p.292
附錄一 --- p.294
參考文獻 --- p.307