Abstract
   
As a special form of communication of the human being, humor can eliminate embarrassment and add flavor to our life; it is the embodiment of human wisdom and taste and it is the treasure of art of human languages. Since the frequent use of verbal humor in daily life and its essential role in social relations, this paper takes the verbal humor in The Big Bang Theory as research subject to analyze the verbal humor from three aspects including the cognitive process from ostention to inference, that is to say, the gap between informative intention and communicative intention; the mismatch between the maximal relevance and optimal relevance; and the differences in cognitive context under the guidance of relevance theory. Meanwhile, the thesis analyzes three rhetorical techniques including irony, metaphor, and hyperbole based on relevance theory. According to the analysis, the thesis points out relevance theory is powerful in explaining verbal humor.

Key Words: verbal humor  relevance theory  The Big Bang Theory  rhetorical techniques

摘 要

幽默，作为一种人类特有的交际方式，可以化解尴尬、增添乐趣，体现人类的智慧和情趣，是人类语言艺术的瑰宝。鉴于言语幽默在日常生活中被频繁地运用和具有重要功能，本文为了帮助人们更好的理解、欣赏和运用幽默，以关联理论为理论依据，选取《生活大爆炸》中的言语幽默为研究对象，就明示和推理的认知过程即信息意图和交际意图的差异，最大关联和最佳关联的反差，以及由认知语境的差异产生的幽默三个方面进行了实例分析。同时对该剧中的修辞技巧包括反讽、隐喻、夸张在关联理论的基础上进行了解读。通过分析,本文指出关联理论对幽默的理解具有很强的阐释力。

关键词：言语幽默 关联理论 《生活大爆炸》 修辞技巧

1 Introduction
Humor is considered as a popular artistic form and it is a pervasive and common phenomenon. In social communication, the proper employment of humor can help to eliminate embarrassment and conflict, lighten the atmosphere, and ameliorate interpersonal relationship. Generally, humor can be classified into visual humor, physical humor, and verbal humor. Among these, verbal humor is considered as the most typical one that can produce laughter. Therefore this thesis only deals with the verbal humor.
As a general theory for the human communication and cognition, relevance theory provides a new perspective for interpreting a large amount of language phenomena. In light of relevance theory, the process of humor comprehension is substantially a process of searching for relevance.