A Rhetoric Study of English Verbal Humor:A case Study of Oprah Winfrey Show Humor is an indispensable cultural phenomenon all over the world. Different countries and regions have different humorous languages to achieve different humor effect. Therefore it is necessary to learn how to appreciate foreign humor. This paper tries to analyze English Verbal Humor in the Oprah Winfrey Show from the perspective of rhetoric. The Oprah Winfrey Show has existed for more than 20 years since it was launched on December 8 , 1986. In its 23 years, the Oprah Winfrey Show has dominated daytime television in America and turned its presenter into not just a celebrity, but also a brand in her own right at the same time. It has reached an audience of 30 million per week. And it was broadcast in more than one hundred countries and regions abroad. And it tops the audience ratings for a long time. The key to the unprecedented success of the Oprah Winfrey Show is closely related to her proficiency in the application of rhetoric. So to say Oprah Winfrey Show is a kind of typical rhetoric practice.
As the ancient traditional theory, the definition of Western rhetoric is quite controversial since its origination. Aristotle has mentioned in rhetoric that “ When the speaker's words is convincing, it is his personality that resonates with convincing force”(Aristotle, rhetoric). Many sayings of Oprah Winfrey are recognized by a broad audience. While in terms of humor, from ancient times to the present, a large number of scholars have studied on humor from various aspects and there are a variety of definitions. But all of these definitions have some limitations. In Oxford Advanced Learners English - Chinese Dictionary, the term humor is defined as “the quality that makes it funny or amusing; the ability to laugh at things that are amusing.”(A S Hornby, 2004:863) English dramatist William Congreve defined humor as “a particular and inevitable manner of speaking and behavior; it is a unique and natural manner for certain person by which people can distinguish him/her from others.”(Sun and Tang,1998:319). In the book On Humorous Rhetoric, Mr.Gao Shenglin defined humor in a broad sense. He considered it as “the language product which is expressed by means of certain structural pattern and then can make somebody laugh.”(Gao
Shenglin, 2006:9) then in terms of rhetoric, it has existed for more than two thousand years. Historically, researchers held that rhetoric was derived from Sicily in ancient Greek in the fifth century B.C, and soon it spread globally. Rhetoric is divided into two types: active rhetoric techniques and passive rhetoric techniques. The pape focuses on the former one, which refers to “the rhetorical techniques whose chief purpose is to express language powerfully and pervasively. Active rhetoric figures can be divided into rhetorical spices and figures of speech.” (Li and Li, 2005:4) rhetoric techniques are the common devices that can be used universally and they are also the focus of the research in this paper. In Oxford Advanced Learners English- Chinese Dictionary, the term rhetoric means “a word or phrase used in a different way from its usual meaning in order to create a particular mental image or effect.”(Hornby, 2004:642) Wu wenshi defined it as “ recognized forms of rhetorical expression that depart from customary construction, order or significance for the purpose of achieving special effects or meanings, and that conform to certain special classifications,” (Li and Li, 2005:3)
It is well known that humor is one of the most important element in the Oprah Winfrey Show. Previously a lot of researchers have made a study of the success of he Oprah Winfrey Show from many aspects, such as culture, economics and so on. Few of scholars study it from the perspective of humor of rhetoric. The writer will analyze the verbal humor effect in the Oprah Winfrey Show from the perspective of rhetoric.
As what has mentioned above, on the one hand, currently a large number of researchers and scholars carried out the relevant research from the perspective of linguistic, semantic, pragmatic or cultural points of view, thus the research on this field is relatively quite limited. On the other hand, humorous language is closely and extensively associated with many other fields and disciplines. Therefore, it is necessary to do a further research in the future.
The thesis mainly focuses on the verbal humor effect in the Oprah Winfrey Show from the perspective of rhetoric. And it chooses some typical examples of Oprah Winfrey Show as the researching material. The author will probe into the the humorous effect in the Oprah Winfrey Show through the analysis of humor language.
To be specific, it analyzes the verbal humorous effect in the light of phonetic rhetorical and rhetorical devices respectively. And rhetorical devices include pun, exaggeration, parody, irony, euphemism and oxymoron. And then it analyzes the application of rhetorical resources for Oprah, mainly involving Oprah Winfrey's own personality charm, Oprah's true love to impress the audience and well-targeted audience. Finally, it is hoped that this paper could make some contributions to the relevant researches of English verbal humor from rhetoric perspective. Verbal humorous effect in English has a huge potential space reserved for further exploration. Therefore the writer would like to make some suggestions for the future researches as follows:
On the one hand, there exist a huge number of classical and successful talk shows, hence it is of great help for the future researchers to choose another programs for analysis and study. On the other hand, this paper chooses the rhetorical perspective to probe into this subject due to the fact that so far few researchers have done this study from this perspective in detail. So it is hoped that the present research would serve as a useful reference material for the future researchers and then could make some contributions to the relevant researches of English verbal humor from rhetoric perspective.
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