Ⅰ.Introduction
　　Humor is an art of speech,full of wit and interest and pregnant with meaning. Humor reflects a variety of life aspects.Because of its linguistic artistic quality, humor could not exist without language internal rules or special context.In pragmatics humor can best be presented by cooperative principle. Experts find that when people break these rules, their speech always produce conversational implicature and humor is a typical kind of it.
　　Ⅱ.Cooperative Principle and Humor
　　This general principle was named by Grice as the Cooperative Principle, which consists of four sub-maxims. 1>quantity maxim referring to information as required,no more no less；2>quality maxim by which the participant should not say what he believes to be false or something that he lacks adequate evidence；3>relation maxim emphasizing relevance；4>manner maxim by which the speaker must avoid obscurity of explanation and ambiguity. The following essay would explore how humors are produced by violating these maxims.
　　A.Humors Produced by Violating the Maxim of Quantity
　　The pompous executive concluded his talk, “ Does any one have any question?”
　　“Yes. Sir, to what do you contribute your success?”
　　“There are two rules for success in any organization. Rule NO.1: Never tell people everything you know. Are there any more questions?”
　　According to cooperative principle, lacking information as required is the violation of quantity maxim under which circumstances humor occurs. When asked for the experience of success, the executive said there were two pieces of experience, but he actually provided inadequate information and the experience he introduced did not contain any useful content but was enough to overrule any questioner who wanted to borrow his experience of success. He deliberately broke the maxim of quantity to smartly maintain his secret of success.
　　B.Humors Produced by Violating the Maxim of Quality
　　Two travelers arrived at the hotel and were shown a rather dingy room.‘ What?’said one‘Does this pigsty cost?’
　　Promptly the proprietor replied:‘ For one pig, two dollars; for two pigs, three dollars.’
　　The traveler was over exaggerating which violated the maxim of quality. Proprietor had glib tongue and gave a smart answer. The traveler would find that at last he was the one who had been humiliated.
　　C.Humors Produced by Violating the Maxim of Relation
　　The census taker knocked on the door of a rural lodge.An old-timer came out, asking what the census taker wanted.
　　“The president has sent us across the country to find out how many people live in the United States.”The man replied.
　　“I’m sorry you came all the way out here to ask me,” said the hillbilly,“cause I don’t have the faintest idea.”
In this humour, the census taker was counting the total population door by door. He was just explaining to the old-timer why he came here and what he was doing, however, the old timer may be quite experienced and was ready at any time to help others to solve problems. He took it for granted that the census taker was dispatched by the president to inquire him the exact number of American population. Irrelevant answer led to this humor.
　　D. Humors Produced by Violating the Maxim of Manner
　　Violating maxim of manner deliberately, the speaker may mislead the hearer or cause the hearer confused. Good at applying the maxim of manner is also a talking skill to engender humour. First, giving people illusion deliberately would result in humor.
　　A: Did your treatment for stammering work?
　　B: Peter piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.
　　A: How amazing!
　　B: Yes, b-b-but th-th-that is not s-s-something I v-v-very often w-w-want to s-s-say.
　　B didn’t answer A’s question flatly, but B said a tongue twister which gave A an illusion that his stammering had been cured, so A gave B a false comment “ How amazing!”
　　Ⅲ.Conclusion
　　Humor is an indispensable part of our daily life.Enjoying humor is neither too hard nor too easy,but if we have mastered a general understanding of the humor system, it would be relatively easy to understand and interpret humor and explore the covert implicature. By doing this, we can make the conversation between people more effectively and use language more actively.
　　Bibliography：
　　［1］ Jef Verschueren.Understanding pragmatics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. 2000.
　　［2］ K. M. Jaszczolt. Semantics and pragmatics. Peking: Peking U- niversity Press. 1999.
　　［3］ Yule.G.The study of language. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. 2000. 戴曼纯，何兆熊导读.
　　［4］ 耶夫. 维索尔伦著，钱冠连译.《语用学诠释》.北京：清华大 学出版社.2003. (责任编辑：南粤论文中心)转贴于南粤论文中心: http://www.nylw.net(代写代发论文_毕业论文带写_广州职称论文代发_广州论文网）