Humor in Discourse: A Linguistic Study of the Chinese Dialect Film, Crazy

This paper is a corpus study on humor in discourse of the film, Crazy Stone (疯狂的石头). Three levels of humor are examined. The first level is strictly linguistic in the study of humor. The second level is from the societal perspective. The third level is the interaction between language and the socio-political context. According to these three levels, three basic findings are (1) the linguistic devices used for creating humorous effect in verbal interactions include phonetic, lexical and discourse devices, (2) irony to current societal situation in China results from the social interactions among interlocutors, and (3) language choice and language form as dialects which contrast with standard and connection with local culture in the socio-political context of modern China are used to create humor.