The linguistic devices making wittiness in
English and Vietnamese humourous stories: a
study of contrastive discourse analysis
Hoàng Thị Xuân Quý
Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Ph.D. Ngô Hữu Hoàng
Năm bảo vệ: 2012 Abstract. Reading humourous stories is the good means of entertainment because it can
help the readers to release the stress and reduce the tension. Beside the function of
entertainment, humour is the special means of reaching the better things which satisfy
the progressive thoughts and the lower-class‟s dream of equality. This study is aimed at
investigating the figure of speech as linguistic devices in the English humourous stories
and Vietnamese humourous stories. The analysis is carried out on 50 samples collected
from the different books of English and Vietnamese humourous stories. The results
show that there is the similarity in the using of metaphor between these two languages.
Besides, Vietnamese humorous stories have the higher percentage of metonymy,
comparing to English humourous stories. Context is the important element that helps the
reader to understand and interpret the figure of speech in the humourous stories.
Furthermore, the study offered the implications of translating and teaching so that the
translator and teachers can use in their jobs.

Keywords. Ngôn ngữ học; Phân tích diễn ngôn; Tiếng Anh

- Tại vì nếu em cứ ngồi mãi một bên như vậy thì cơ thể em sẽ phát triển không đồng đều.
Translated version:
Develop unequally
In the evening the baker often takes his girl friend to the park bench.
Once he asked her:
- My dear, why do you change your side after the half-date?
She answered softly:
- Because if I remain one side, my body would develop unequally.
In the past, there were a lot of studies about the humour of scholars, humorists, philosophers and
psychologists, dating back as far as Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, to Darwin and Freud, Eastman
and Pittington, through to Koestler and Midess; plus more than 100 theories of humour and
laughter, some of them brilliant investigations into the social and behavioral nature of humour
and laughter. According to the standard analysis of Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (internet
23), humor theories can be classified into three neatly identifiable groups: the incongruity,
superiority, and relief theories. Incongruity theory is the leading approach and includes historical
figures such as Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, and perhaps has its origins in comments
made by Aristotle in the Rhetoric. The paradigmatic superiority theorist is Thomas Hobbes
(1958: c.8, internet 5), who said that humor arises from a “sudden glory” felt when we recognize
our supremacy over others. Plato and Aristotle are generally considered superiority theorists,
who emphasized the aggressive feelings that fuel humor. The third group, relief theory, is
typically associated with Sigmund Freud and Herbert Spencer, who saw humor as fundamentally
a way to release or save energy generated by repression. Today, there are two well-known
linguistics as Salvatore Attardo and Victor Raskin with Script-Based Semantic Theory Of
Humour (SSTH) and The General Theory Of Verbal Humour (GTVH) respectively. The main
hypothesis is quoted by Avro Krikman (2006:31, internet 7) as follows:
SSTH is the theory refers to a text which can be characterized as a single-joke-carrying text if
both of the conditions are satisfied. The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different
scripts. The two scripts with the text is compatible are opposite in a special sense defined in
section 4. The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on
this text.

the stories and played the substantial role in making laughter. The implicatures of the opening
and the body is the only cause and condition for the closings and the lessons of morality would
be from such implicatures. Nguyễn Thị Hồng Nhung is the author of the master thesis:
‘Implicature in English and Vietnamese funny stories’. In this study, she discovered both
languages have the same implicature mechanism based on flouting or violating the maxims that
are important for the writers in order to evoke feelings and reactions in their readers (Nguyễn Thị
Hồng Nhung, 2010, p.37).
It can be seen that there have not been any study of HS under discourse analysis and contrastive
between English and Vietnamese implemented before by any researchers in Vietnam, so the
author of this study believes that this would be the first time this subject is carried out and hopes
that it would be new approach to the humour under discourse analysis in Vietnam as well as to
the literature of which HS are the object of the study. In addition, the study would be helpful for
the translators to be good at their translation from English and Vietnamese and vice verse
because when reading the literature works, in terms of the discourse analysis views, the readers
not only understand the humour mechanism, the linguistic devices, the nature of humour, etc but
also are supplied with the knowledge of language, people characteristics, attitudes and thoughts
of the culture the stories belong to. Besides, the study also is necessary for the teachers in their
jobs because it is said that the successful teacher need to have good sense of humour. Through
the study, the knowledge would be helpful for them to tell the jokes in the appropriate time to be
the warm-up activities.
2. Aims of the study
- In the study, the researcher investigates the figure of speech as linguistic devices
making the wittiness and then help us to understand/explain why people laugh when
reading EHS and VHS.
- The role of context in the HS, then readers can understand the jokes by the context
when reading them.
- To provide implications for the translators to understand the jokes in the stories and
have good interpretation with the right transfer. Besides, it is necessary to tell HS in
language teaching, then the students can be supplied with language knowledge,
cultures and motivated in learning, warm-up activities and release their study tension.

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