TITLE:
A Study of Semantic Clash in Skit-Humor within the Framework of Co-Selection
AUTHORS:
Lele Sun
KEYWORDS:
Semantic Clash, Co-Selection, Skit-Humor
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.8 No.5,
May
13,
2020
ABSTRACT: Co-selection is the core mechanism of language
description in corpus linguistics. Within its framework, this study tries to
explore the distribution of punchlines in skit-humor and investigates the
phraseological features of verbal humor, which is the main part of skit-humor
in the skits, to find out the semantic clash. The categories of punchlines
in the skits could be broadly classified into verbal humor and nonverbal humor.
Verbal humor accounts for the majority of the punchlines in the skits. It is
believed that semantic clash is the primary factor for verbal humor which may
elicit laughter. Chinese verbal humor in the skit-humor could not be
transferred into English because the controversial attitude is lost in the
process of conversion. This, in turn, indicates that the semantic clash may
contribute essentially to the punchlines in Chinese skit-humor. Relexicalization is one of
the fundamental linguistic process in appreciating humor and offers the basis of a powerful and elegant explanatory
hypostudy. It describes how humor depends upon the interplay
of the phraseological and the open-choice language principles, the sudden shift
from the first to the second.