Pragmatická analýza humorných konverzací z řízení letového provozu

Abstract

Viz Rozšířený abstraktThe thesis studies the occurrence of humour in air traffic control (ATC) conversation exchanges and aims at answering the questions of its occurrence in such strictly professional discourse and finding patterns in it. This is done though pragmatic analysis for which theoretical background is provided in the first part of the thesis. Phenomenon of humour is discussed according to Attardo (1994), and its three main theories are presented: incongruity, superiority, and release (Raskin 1985). Division is established between different instances of humour: canned and conversational jokes (Attardo, 1994) and externally humorous situations. Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principle (CP) and its Maxims is described in detail and is related to humour. Focus is on the transgressions of the CP: mainly violation, flouting and infringing. Attardo’s (1990) scheme of understanding a joke is adopted and modified for conversational humour. After introduction of ATC language, the analyses follow. Each consists of four parts: technical circumstances, humorous scheme, CP perspective, and theory of humour. The analysed conversations are divided into two groups: internally humorous and externally humorous. The first are further divided based on the use of a specific shared knowledge of the external world and the second based on the theory better explaining them: superiority or incongruity. With the focus on the internally humorous, the abilities and personality of the ‘humourist’ are proposed as crucial for the occurrence of humour with the main intention being to create more relaxed atmosphere (corresponding to the release theory of humour).