本论文以斯柏伯和威尔逊提出的关联理论为理论框架，探讨幽默理解的认知过程。关联理论是从认知的角度来阐释交际和对话语的理解，关联理论的认知原则和交际原则已经被用来阐释各种话语的理解过程。言语幽默作为一种特殊的话语应该也可以从关联理论的角度来阐释。基于这一假说以及歧义幽默本身的特殊性，作者在关联理论的基础上提出了对歧义幽默的一种理解模式，以便检测关联理论对幽默的解释力。本论文用所提出的模式对所选的幽默进行了详细的分析。然而幽默的范畴太广而无法把所有种类的幽默囊括进来，因此本研究只限于由歧义引起的幽默，在这里被称为歧义幽默。基于幽默在我们日常会话中的普遍性和重要性，很多学者从两千年前已经开始研究幽默。三大传统理论，即优越/ 蔑视论, 乖讹论和释放论从社会学和心理学的角度来阐释幽默。语言学理论例如，脚本理论和普通言语幽默理论从语义的角度来研究幽默，以及言语行为理论和合作原则从语用学的角度来阐释幽默，但是这两种理论本身的缺陷使其对幽默的解释缺乏说服力。关联理论把人与人之间的交流看作一种认知过程，并通过其对隐喻，反语的阐释显示了它强大的解释力。这些都是本研究的动机所在，旨在探索人类理解幽默的认知过程。本论文采用了定性的分析方法，采用所提出的模式对歧义幽默进行了详细的分析。通过对语料的分析，作者发现幽默的理解是接受者潜意识地寻找关联的认知过程。在这个过程中关联原则发挥着重要的指导作用。歧义幽默的理解过程可以分为两个阶段：首先，听到第一个明示刺激时，接受者在其认知语境和现有语境的基础上推出明示话语的最佳关联假设。之后当听到第二个明示刺激—妙语，接受者立刻感到话语的不协调，不相关性。但是在关联期待的驱使下，接受者愿意付出更大的努力来换取更多的语境效果。最后通过拓展其认知语境，结合第二个明示话语所带来的语境效果，接受者最终推断出言语的歧义所在，并从不协调中找出最佳关联。额外的付出换取了额外的语境效果，这时候，幽默也就产生了，笑声也会随之而来。关联理论的提出使对接受者理解言语幽默的过程的研究成为可能。本论文所提出的理解模式具有实用性。该论文的研究成果能够帮助人们更好地理解幽默，欣赏幽默。

This thesis is a tentative study on the cognitive process of humor understanding from the perspective of Relevance Theory (RT). RT is an approach to communication and utterance understanding based on a general view of cognition, and its principles of relevance have been applied to the interpretation of many types of utterances. Verbal humor, as a special kind of utterance, may also be understood from the perspective of RT. Based on this hypothesis and the special features of this kind of humor, the author tentatively proposed a model—the Double-stage Disambiguation Model, constructed on the basis of RT to prove its explanatory power, and make an experimental test by analyzing relevant samples in detail. However the scope of humor is too extensive to grasp all. Thus the present study only focuses on the verbal humor originated from the source of ambiguity, here, called ambiguous humor.Owing to the pervasiveness and significance of humor in our daily communication, its relevant study started from almost two thousand years ago. Three traditional approaches, namely the superiority theory, the release theory, and the incongruity theory of humor, study humor from the perspective of sociology and psychology. The linguistic theories applied to humor study, such as, Speech Act Theory and Cooperative Theory are not powerful enough to account for the phenomenon of humor. RT proposes a general approach to human communication, which demonstrates its tremendous power in accounting for linguistic phenomena, such as, metaphor, and irony. These serve as the motivations for the present study, which is intended to explore the mysterious mental activity in understanding humor.The present study adopts a qualitative approach to analyze the samples of ambiguous humor under the model proposed here. Through the data analysis, we found that the understanding of humor is subconsciously guided by the relevance-searching feature of human cognition and communication. It helps the recipient construct a hypothesis of optimal relevance when he receives the first ostensive stimulus based on his cognitive environment and the existing context. And then when the second ostensive stimulus—the punch line, comes forth, the recipient immediately finds it irrelevant to the first interpretive hypothesis. It is the search for relevance that motivates the recipient to spare more effort and gain more positive contextual effect. At last the recipient resolves the incongruity through expanding his cognitive environment and reorganizing the first context constructed. When the incongruity is resolved and the optimal relevance is obtained, laughter will come along and the extra effort will get paid off. This thesis proves that RT makes it possible to analyze the course of verbal humor comprehension from the recipient’s perspective and the model proposed is applicable. The research findings of the present study are expected to make their due contribution to humor processing.