The Comprehension of Humor in Indirect Speech Acts with Frame-shifting Theory

Abstract

Being a common type of language behavior in human being’s society, humour plays an essential role in human life, especially in communication. If the hearer is lacking in linguistic competence, the transmission of information will be hindered, and the speaker’s meaning will be misinterpreted or twisted. Most of the humours are generated or produced by unsmooth information exchanged from the speaker, which is intentional or unintentional. Humour generation process is the process of proposing and creating a framework consciously, and then activating the elements associated with another framework and confirming the identified information through transferring to another frame. So that Frame-shifting Theory is very necessary when comprehending the process of humour generation. The writer lists some humours examples existing in Indirect Speech Acts in the paper, which focus on how the hearer comprehends the humour with the Frame-shifting Theory.